Cataphract Elephants with 15 hitpoints, are they impossible to kill?

[bhudspat]

So I am playing as Parthia and I came across a Free city south of Parthia with a few units in it including 2 units of cataphract elephants, as I moved toward the city 75% of the army met me halfway and had among other infantry and missile troops one of the 2 units of cataphract elephants.

So I do my usual surround and decimate the enemy from a distance and it worked great until I had 10 units worth of full strength horse archers fire all their remaining arrows at the elephants. Well not only did I not kill one elephant with one lucky arrow, I charged in all the horse archers and a heavy cavalry unit and my general. still no dice the damn elephant whooped my ass with out taking even one casualty.

Anyone have a foolproof plan to take out these damn invincible elephants?

[Sertorio]

Yes mate, check the 2º post on this thread, please. Problem is not the hit points but the armour, which i being reduced for the next patch. Until then editing the EDU is the best option. However i doubt HA will cut it.


http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...at-Eastern-War

[tungri_centurio]

yea even with stats changed HA do not kill them you still need fire or good spearmen to surround them

[bhudspat]

I guess i will have to keep some archers in that army heading west. I tweaked the stats (cut all the elephants armor and hit points in half) and went back to the battle. The cataphract elephants now had 24 armor instead of 52 but still had 15 hit points. Same strategy picked off all the foot troops with my horse archers then expended the rest of my arrows on the elephants to no effect meanwhile my general and a unit of cataphracts got tangled up with the elephants suffering 75% casualties and didn't even put a scratch on the 36 elephants. Then my horse archers ran out of ammo and i charged all my horse archers in, about 750 in total and after about thirty seconds of hand to hand with 10% casualties on my side and 0 for the elephants the first elephant fell, then another and another. The route started and i ended up killing all the elephants but one were dead and i chased him off the map :-).

So just tweak the stats and the elephants become manageable and definitely add a layer of difficulty to the game and i can't wait until the Patch is released.

[Archesel]

Can someone post here an edited EDU he judges "right"?

[Post Hoc]

Here are few suggestions from various people.

I would suggest that you reduce the hitpoints. Look for the line "stat_health" for each of the elephants, e.g.

stat_health 8, 40

(except the numbers will be different from that). Reduce the first number (the number of hitpoints) to 1 so the line reads something like:

stat_health 1, 40

We're in the process of tweaking these for 2.6

type elephant cataphract
dictionary elephant_cataphract
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier greek_big_elephant_archer, 18, 6, 1
mount elephant indian cataphract
attributes sea_faring, frighten_foot, frighten_mounted, hardy, power_charge, can_run_amok
formation 7, 11, 13, 16, 1, square
stat_health 1, 40
stat_pri 8, 22, pointed_stick, 100, 60, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 12, 22, no, 0, 0, melee, other, blunt, none, 25, 0.33
stat_sec_attr ap, launching
stat_pri_armour 10, 20, 5, leather
stat_sec_armour 23, 3, flesh {these instead of 40,3... here seems to be the problem but play with numbers!}
stat_heat 2
stat_ground -1, 2, -5, -1
stat_mental 28, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 100
stat_fire_delay 100000
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 16078, 5467, 2416, 3220, 2010[B]
ownership seleucid, slave

type elephant cataphract
dictionary elephant_cataphract
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Heavy_1
soldier greek_big_elephant_archer, 18, 6, 1
mount elephant indian cataphract
attributes sea_faring, frighten_foot, frighten_mounted, hardy, power_charge, can_run_amok
formation 7, 11, 13, 16, 1, square
stat_health 1, 40
stat_pri 8, 22, pointed_stick, 100, 60, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25, 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 12, 22, no, 0, 0, melee, other, blunt, none, 25, 0.33
stat_sec_attr ap, launching
stat_pri_armour 10, 20, 5, leather
stat_sec_armour 1, 1, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground -1, 2, -5, -1
stat_mental 28, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 100
stat_fire_delay 100000
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 16078, 5467, 2416, 3220, 2010
ownership seleucid, slave

[Rushwithoutmercy]

Siege weaponry will 1 hit kill Cataphract Elephants. Make sure to take out the enemy general so when the flaming projectiles hit, they run amok.

Otherwise, if you can't afford to recruit them, which apparently is an issue for so many here, just edit the EDU.

Games are hard, apparently.

[bhudspat]

Siege weaponry will 1 hit kill Cataphract Elephants. Make sure to take out the enemy general so when the flaming projectiles hit, they run amok.

Otherwise, if you can't afford to recruit them, which apparently is an issue for so many here, just edit the EDU.

Games are hard, apparently.

Parthians do not have siege equipment, or at least I haven't got a city large enough for them. The stats they had made it like the Polish during World War II trying to take down panzer tanks with actual horse cavalry LOL.

[bhudspat]

Thank you all for your input.

I just faced a selecuid army of equal size and they had one unit of Cataphract Elephants. I unfortunately did not have foot or spear archers in this army but I did have 6 Babolonian HA and 3 Dahae HA in the stack though. I also had 3 persian spearman and 3 light infantry with javelins. I picked off about half of the enemy army with my horse archers when the CE's charged into my spears I put all the infantry units there on loose formation and the skirmisher light infantry were standing their ground throwing javelins at the elephants stomping my fine Persian Spearmen into the sand and throwing them this way and that. the three units of Dahae HA were also firing into the elephants. after loosing a quarter of all the spearman they took an elephant down then the javelins took out 3 more sending the elephants into a panic and they trampled about half of my spearmen and a quarter of the light infantry. Then within half a minute my HA and Javelins killed off the rest of the elephants (I think there were 10 at the start of the battle with a driver and two archers. Once they went amok I think it was a mistake to not recall the spearman to a safer place. They stayed trying to bring down an elephant but I lost completely 2 companies of spearman and was left with one unit at about 60.

So there we go my game has the Cataphract Elephants at 26 Armor and 15 hit points they are still beast and take forever to go down (exactly as they should be) but they are not the Abrams tanks that they were which makes the game a pleasurable experience.

My hats off to the developers, I am half way through my first Campaign on Roma Surrectum, I just started playing a week ago. My empire is spreading slowly but surely into Seluculid territory and taking away city by city turn by turn. The 4 seasons are awesome, all TW games should have 4 turns or more a year. Does anyone know of an Empire TW mod that does what this does to Empire?