Pledge: Bring back recruitable Elephants for Epirus

[skysyk]

I nagged long with mysself to post this Thread, but could you please bring back recruitable Elephants for Epirus? With the removal of factional Mercenaries, Epirus lost the DEI-introduced (i think?) ability to recruit fresh Elephants. I don't want to start a historical debate if this should even be possible ("if epirus had x, he would have done y, and in the end brought more elephants to epirus, bla bla bla"), but it pretty much changes the epirote early and mid game ^^ Wether this is done through re-introduced factional mercenaries or some kind of epirote building, i dont care ^^

[Dresden]

I will check into this and see what can be done but would probably be for 1.0.

[skysyk]

I will check into this and see what can be done but would probably be for 1.0.

Hooray ^^ I would just suggest to bring back some of the factional mercenaries. I mean, you did that basically for Carthage, maybe some others like epirus can too enjoy a thing like that.

[Butan]

For both historical and gameplay reason, me want Epirus to be able to have elephants mercs! So enjoyable

[Matmannen]

I agree elephant mercs for epirus, but not the Indian elephants, give them African like the Epirus historically used...

[Alu10]

and not the tower elephants, simple elephants with one man on the back, am i right?

[trumfnator]

Any new plans in this regard?

[lnrd907]

Yea, Epirus is perhaps the only faction in which the factional mercenary system was actually needed. However, I wish there was a way to tie a resource to a unit. I was thinking that maybe an Ivory resource and some scripting could fix the problem. For example, create a new AOR Elephant unit tied to Apollonia. Then have a small script running that checks if the owning faction of Apollonia has access to this ivory resource, if true then they could recruit that AOR elephant unit. Therefore, Epirus would have to keep a trade agreement with an ivory producing faction to recruit the AOR elephant unit. Obviously, in this case and historically Egypt would be the faction that has the ivory resource for Epirus. Its in essence similar to certain buildings where you need a specific resource in order to build it.

Also, I think Ivory would make a great new additional resource in DEI. As it was very valuable in ancient times. Possible locations could be in 3-4 provinces that historically had elephants i.e. Africa, Libya, Aegyptus?, Ethiopia, Syria, Arachosia, Baktria?, Gedrosia?.

[KAM 2150]

I know people might hate me for that but Epirus has no better rights for fielding Elephants then Macedonia or Rome ; P Their elephants were either spoils of war or gifts, but not breed in their lands.

What would be REALLY good is what we had in MTW2 where you had to wait certain amount of turns for some units to replenish...man, I know that mechanics was not the most realistic but it was great gameplay wise and it would fit elephants for Epirus very well. Maybe those factional mecernary elephants can be somehow tied to it (like one elephants squad per 15-20 turns).

[zonks40]

I know people might hate me for that but Epirus has no better rights for fielding Elephants then Macedonia or Rome ; P Their elephants were either spoils of war or gifts, but not breed in their lands.

What would be REALLY good is what we had in MTW2 where you had to wait certain amount of turns for some units to replenish...man, I know that mechanics was not the most realistic but it was great gameplay wise and it would fit elephants for Epirus very well. Maybe those factional mecernary elephants can be somehow tied to it (like one elephants squad per 15-20 turns).

What if they had the ability to train Elephants but give them a recruitment time of 10-15 turns?

[Dresden]

In theory we could do that in the startpos. I could look into it.

[Dresden]

In theory you can set mercenary regeneration levels in the startpos. I would have to unpack it and do some changes to get them factional mercs but it could make sense.

[Jivaro]

Excellent news!
I love you guys!

[Irishmafia2020]

This would be awesome - it would give a great incentive to play a difficult faction, and it would give the player some flexibility at the beginning of the game when the elephants are expensive... I often want to disband the elephants as Epirus, just so I can afford decent cavalry, but then I wouldn't get elephants again until I invaded Africa or Syria... I usually disband the Seleucid merc elephants for that very reason, and I can buy them again later.

Factional mercenaries have a replenishment time, don't they? You could make it so that only Epirus could buy these elephants, but they are only available after a 20 turn replenishment...

I remember that Europa Barborum had them recruitable as a factional unit - that probably wasn't realistic, but it made the Epirotes a unique and interesting faction!