hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to go back to taking a look at the new
dynasties of india's civilizations specifically their elephant archers and going from a unique
unit to now a regional one it can be a little tricky to keep track of the new civ bonuses and
gauge their respective impacts the goal here is that you leave with a better understanding of when
the elephant archer is going to be an effective unit to include in your army when playing each
of the three civilizations that have them and how their different bonuses and texts play into that
we'll start off by going through the civilizations individually and what they have going for them
followed up with a bit more practical comparisons against some common units
i want to start though by briefly laying out what i think the role of the elephant archer is
intended to be notice it replaces the cavalry archer as no civilization has access to both of
those units and it's affected by cavalry archer upgrades including specialized ones like parthian
tactics while elephant archers even take cavalry archer bonus damage in fact they take up the
same slot in the user interface so it seems clear civilizations will only ever get one or the other
where the cavalry archer gives a lot of mobility over the regular crossbow line as its main selling
feature though the elephant archer gives tankiness in two special cases whether it's the conventional
crossbow line or even archery unique units the elephant archer gives you similar firepower but
will trade cost effectively against pure archer armies the second advantage is they survive
manganese shots a lot better as fun as it is to try to dodge manganese with crossbows or cavalry
archers you're really playing with fire and while elephant archer numbers are more costly to build
up you won't lose them to one lucky mangonel keeping in mind the importance of durability
to both of these rolls we'll start off our list with the bengalis their unique flavor is that
they take less bonus damage and are more resistant to conversion probably the most significant unit
impacted by that is of course the spear line the halberdier for example has 10 attack when fully
upgraded but an additional 60 bonus damage against elephants compared to 32 against most cavalry
and 26 against camels in this case you're getting functionally almost 25 less damage overall though
for the elite skirmisher because of some negative armor complications behind the scenes it only ends
up being about half that amount and skirmishers remain a very effective counter still the fact
this applies to their counter units specifically and the bengali's lack heresy we're talking about
them holding up better against exactly the units that you're probably most worried about
the other specialty they initially appear to have is greater damage output with a unique tech
in castle age giving 20 faster attack i should point out though this is a very misleading attack
at the start of castle age elephant archers fire every two seconds or 30 arrows per minute with
this technology they fire 20 more or 36 arrows the problem is that bengalis are missing thumb
ring which also increases elephant archer fire rate by nearly the same amount thumb ring also
happens to be cheaper and affects many different units unlike this unique tech which only affects
two in addition thumb ring also improves accuracy while the bengali's unique tech doesn't the irony
is that while it initially looks like you can expect additional damage output from the unique
tech if anything you're paying a little more to end up with either the same damage or a little
less than just getting thumb ring to begin with the one exception is they have parthian tactics
which gives plus two attack against spearman so in post imperial they do a little better than they
otherwise would they're in fact the only elephant archer civ that have parthian tactics meaning they
end with the highest pierce armor out of all of the elephant archer civilizations and the highest
total combined armor that may not be an incredibly useful metric in isolation but it does start to
tell a story altogether we have the picture of a unit that while initially appears to be focused on
offense if you read their civ card upon closer inspection between the reduced bonus damage and
greater armor instead we end with the impression that they're meant to be an especially good
damage sponge slash sort of an anti-halberdier specialist the next civilization we'll look at
is the dravidians their big bonus that jumps out is their elephant archers attack 25 percent faster
i realize it feels like we've seen this already but this time it's not a trick they have thumb
ring and after that they just attack faster than any other civilization by 25 percent in addition
to that they also have unique tech letting their elephants regenerate hp but make no mistake this
is not intended to be a tanky version of the unit looking at their tech tree dravidians are missing
parthian tactics bloodlines and even husbandry so compared to bengali's we're talking about
less armor hp and lacking a bit of speed making it harder to get away from any of their counters
the dravidians really have the glass cannon of the elephant archer world for raw damage
per second this is the best elephant and is going to give the range damage output that you need to
support the dravidian's infantry but it comes at the cost of being generally less resilient
i've seen the interesting comment made that dravidians are basically hard countered by onagers
as their stable is downright awful but that's where i think the elephant archer can actually
help by being better against those than either infantry or their other archery range options
it may not be tanky compared to other elephant archers but compared to the dravidian's late
game alternatives it does stand out the final elephant archer civilization is the good jars
for them one thing that jumps out right away is that their mounted units do 50 more bonus damage
that said even though they are mounted elephant archers actually have no bonus damage whatsoever
so this only really applies to stable units more relevant for our purposes here are their unique
tax the first reduces their food costs from 90 to 68 though their 70 gold cost is unchanged keep in
mind it takes 27 elephants just to pay back the total cost of this tech so it's arguably not that
impactful in especially early castle age the other unique tech gives elephant archers plus four melee
armor compared to the zero they start with that sounds like quite a bit but against the halberdier
60 bonus damage it really doesn't sound like that much and the importance of this is really gonna
depend on the match up at the same time they're also missing the final armor upgrade so in context
while they end with the most melee armor they're dead last in pierce armor their final bonus is
their team's elephants are all trained 25 percent faster interestingly notice that all of these
bonuses and techs also affect camels and it seems more like elephant archers may not have been the
primary focus typically gurjaras so far are played with some sort of shrivamsha rider or camel combo
to counter archers and knights respectively unlike dravidians gurjaras also already have a unique
ranged support unit in the chakram thrower which isn't too bad against mass archers adding in the
fact gurjaras also have good cavalry to deal with siege it's harder to find a role that can only be
filled by the elephant archer we'll still try them out head to head against the others in a variety
of situations though in a moment and especially see if their cheaper costs can make them stand out
just a quick reminder before that the hindustanis don't have elephant archers they have cavalry
archers instead as again it seems civilizations can only have one or the other so that's their
individual flavors but now let's get back to the big question who is elephant archers stand out
in different situations when we put everything together and is there a clear best we'll start
things off in castle age very simply head to head with castle age upgrades the dravidians are the
clear winner thumb ring plus 25 faster attack more than makes up for lacking bloodlines in this case
aside from that bengalis anchor jars are functionally about the same with gurjaras winning
thanks to a little more hp remember thanks to a unique attack the jars are potentially cheaper
though and if we account for that discount they actually win even against the dravidians
likewise against pikeman there isn't a noticeable difference in the end results bengali survive a
bit longer and dravidians deal damage faster but none are really great against pikeman without a
blocking unit in front on the other hand against knights dravidians actually stand out quite a
bit as being the best even beating a knight one-on-one for albeit a much larger cost per unit
i think this test reveals why we don't see elephant archers in 1v1s very often at least
against cavalry civs as you can see here even generic knights with equal numbers are fighting
very cost effectively while being much easier to mass that said what about against crossbows in
this case of course elephants would win one-on-one but even with equal resources they still do very
well in this matchup it's actually bengali who end up doing the worst when we account for cost
though they still end with two thirds of their hp left so it's hardly a poor result in these tests
i'm letting gurjaras use an extra unit to reflect their discount so keep in mind their elephants are
still the best on a per unit basis now this isn't to say that elephant archers are good against
anything ranged as non-elite skirmishers have plus 10 and elite skirmishers have plus 13 against
elephant archers meaning regardless of what civilization we're talking about the skirmishers
are going to dominate and this is probably reason number two that they aren't used all that often
in 1v1 games but now let's switch to the imperial age where we have more unique texts factoring in
which should help differentiate the civilizations in a very simple head-to-head matchup again this
time it's the bengalis who stand out thanks almost entirely to their high pierce armor even with the
dravidian's faster attack and healing helping them out over a long period of time it can't make up
the difference again gurjaras are lagging behind but even if we account for their cost the discount
isn't enough to save them while they were the best in this sort of test in castle age even dravidians
end up beating them with half their hp left over the argument that gurjaras discount makes them
a sneaky value play in castle age really doesn't hold up as well in the late game it seems as the
other elephant archers pull ahead with additional attacks it's a similar story against halberdiers
where bengalis taking less bonus damage is more impactful at close range than even the dravidians
faster attack and again gurjara come out the worst of course a lot of that is coming down to the fact
that the halberdier has so much bonus damage and if we try again with saracen heavy camels who have
less bonus damage against elephants we actually hit a sweet spot where reduced bonus faster attack
and plus for melee armor all basically end up giving you the same result though none of these
cases are particularly compelling considering the camel's much cheaper cost taking away bonus
damage altogether against the paladin it turns out that your jars actually hold up the best when you
consider their low cost and similar performance to the others my takeaway is that their plus 4 melee
armor attack actually starts to do some real work when bonus damage is taken out of the equation
and all three civs are on similar ground of course their big specialty is against foot archers where
bengali steal the show with 82 percent of their hp left when starting with balanced resources
this is their tankiness from parthian tactics showing up again but you can see they really
stand out compared to the others on the other hand against skirmishers it's a similar story to castle
age where they all do about equally terribly again i want to highlight the bengali's bonus
damage reduction doesn't do a lot in this case and if anything dravidian's faster attack makes them
perform about the same or even slightly better so just to end on a few final thoughts digging into
things a bit deeper ended up changing my mind on some of my initial assumptions despite how it may
look bengalis are not an offensive powerhouse with their unique tech and are instead a damaged sponge
especially in imperial age against archers after they're fully upgraded with parthian
tactics where i think they stand out ahead of the others dravidians instead are the real heavy
hitters and like i said before i consider them a glass cannon while they initially stand out
in castle age and i'd say they're number one at that point they're a little less dominant in a
relative sense by the late game which in fairness probably says more about the bengali's power spike
than really anything else gurjara elephant archers on the other hand i'd say feel a bit more bland
their specialty is in the late game holding up against melee units and just being a bit cheaper
but going back to the start of the video and what i see is the role of the elephant archer it really
isn't to excel against melee units per se except maybe the halberdier which gurjara melee armor
doesn't really help against anyway overall i'd say they're probably the weakest elephant archers but
they're also the civilization that rely on them the least considering their variety of options at
both the stable and castle to fill similar roles in all cases though the unit is certainly a weapon
to keep in the back of your mind especially against archers though also be aware of its
limitations that's all for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time
you