India has no special unit

[caralampio]

Have you noticed that India has no advantage in its "special" War Elephant unit? It is the exact equal of the Knight. Same requisites, same costs, same 4-3-2. Actually worst because you can't upgrade Horsemen to Elephants.
The manual lists the Elephant as 4-4-2 which would be nice, but they must have figured that it would be too powerful and it got downgraded somewhere along the design process.
An interesting idea for a future development would be to allow elephants to anyone with Horseback Riding and access to Ivory, and make them something like 3-2-2.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

The benefit of the War Elephant is that it requires no resource, and can thus be built in any city regardless of your trade net.

Dan

[Capt Dizle]

Dan, have you ever played a full game of Civ3? Have you played one post patch? Has Sid ever played a full game? Does Sid even acknowledge the existence of Civ3?

[MOHonor]

Jimmy, you have a life outside of these forums? Do you think threadjacking is the height of insight? Is your medicine running low and you're losing control? Do you even know why you're laughed at and ignored?

[Dida]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
The benefit of the War Elephant is that it requires no resource, and can thus be built in any city regardless of your trade net.

Dan

erg, that's no advantage.

[Skanky Burns]

While it seems to be an advantage, its a long shot that anyone is ever going to use it.

Most of the time you will have iron and horses near the start, or just after a short war. Therefore if you have these resources, the only cities that can't build the unit due to lack of resources would be new, far away cities.

Now, the advantage of the Indians is that these far away cities can still produce the W.E., despite not having any resources.
The catch - these cities will be soo corrupt that it will take 80 turns before they will even pump out their first unit.

Therefore its no advantage.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Dida


erg, that's no advantage.

erg, it's the least advantaged. Someone has to draw the short straw.

Salve

[muppet]

Originally posted by notyoueither


erg, it's the least advantaged. Someone has to draw the short straw.

Salve

In the case of the Americans, English and French, one can argue that someone must draw a short straw.

In the case of India, it's more like a broken toothpick.

[The Eliminator]

It is no wonder that you jagoffs don't get the answers you're looking for from Firaxis. Lighten up.

[muppet]

c'mon man. That was light-hearted humor. I've never criticized firaxis or their responses to date. In fact, i'm honored that Dan even bothers to appear on these boards.

Ok, truly serious, on topic, and constructive response to 1st post:

Caralampio,

If the Indian War Elephant appears to be underpowered, you can adjust the unit stats to suit your custom preferences. If you go into the editor, you can maybe add +1 to attack, and add that the unit requires iron as a strategic resource. This would put it more in line with other special medieval units.

I believe firaxis had to consider the overall game balance and variety when they designed the special units. It may have been considered too much for the War Elephant to have both increased combat stats and no need for resources. Also the proposed 4-4-2 stat is already taken by the Japanese Samurai.

A low resource situation may arise easily on smaller maps, or scenarios where we've chosen to limit the seeding of resources. The India Civ is the only one that I can play where I do not consider starting location as critically or early expansion and conquest territory as selectively, which is also an advantage.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Eliminator
It is no wonder that you jagoffs don't get the answers you're looking for from Firaxis. Lighten up.

What the h*ll is negative about this thread?

I'm sure that we aren't bursting Dan's or Jeff's or Soren's bubble. I'll bet they were just sitting there gloating over it. Those 3 conspirators thought, *Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, look at that awesome War Elephant. Ain't it just the best? Wait till the gang on Apolyton see this. They'll say we're gods! Oh boy!*

Come on. It's a very weak unit in any game where horses are available (all that I've played so far). I'm sure this is no surprise to the Firaxians.

Salve

[Optimizer]

The War Elephant looks way too cool to be exclusive to the Indians, and it is not really good enough for being a Unique unit.

My solution looks like this:
The War Elephant is a 4/1/1 available to anyone and requires Bronze Working and Elephants (Ivory remade to a strat. resource).

The Indian UU is the Gurkha, a Rifleman with an attack bonus and the Alpine ability.

Gonna try this when my Civ 3 works again.

[Tarquelne]

I agree that no S-resource requirement isn't enough of an advantage. Or maybe just not the sort of advantage I like to see for a civ's unique unit - I'd rather have the advantage be one the civ will always get, not conditionally.

And I thought War Elephants were in the wrong era, anyway. I made them an Ancient unit replacing Horsemen, 3/1/2, not requireing Horses, but more expensive than Horsemen. (3/1/2 is what Mounted Warriors have - I changed them to 2/2/2.) I also wanted to spread the unique units around a little more - there are still 2 other Knight varients.

[godinex]

I think the best way of make the Indina UU is asking a Indian player what is the best way for make it.

In the case of the Elephants the solution is simple: 5-3-2 or 4-4-2

[TheBigTurkey]

or have the elephant be able to destroy all units in a square it attacks, like in civ2 for every unit.

[Coracle]

For those interested in REALITY and HISTORY, the War Elephant unit should be a 4.1.2, but at a reduced cost.

Such units were AWFUL on the defensive.

For those who care nothing about history, do what you want. That goes for Firaxis which is so clueless it gave Elephants three times the defense power of longbowmen, and gave knights the dame defensive strength as cavalry with rifles.

[Amesjustin]

My new Mod makes Elephants 4-2-2, all terrain, +1 HP - available with HorseBack Riding and Ivory, still UU for india

[Hurricane]

Or why not make it a Civ 2-catapult style 6-1-1? Elephants are not that fast, are they?

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by godinex
I think the best way of make the Indina UU is asking a Indian player what is the best way for make it.

In the case of the Elephants the solution is simple: 5-3-2 or 4-4-2

I agree completely. I made the elephant in my scenario 5-2-2 and also gave it a bonus hit point as i did wth a few other of the under powered units in general, such as the battleship, which is to weak in my opinion. ive had a few other ideas too.
its defense is only 2 because like the earlier post says, they were poor on defense. If taken by surprise they were easily starteled and often trampled as many of the friendly soldiers as they did enemy. I also think i read somwhere that the Romans learned to use large tacks as barriers against Hannibal's few surviving elephants becuse they have sensitive feet, or something like that.
I gave them an extra hit point because, well, they are massive packederms(sp?). I mean, in the modern day you need massive, restricted use rifles in order to take those suckers down....Ever see the movie Tremors where the survivalist guy Bert blows one of the things away in his base ment with an elephant gun....

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Coracle
For those interested in REALITY and HISTORY, the War Elephant unit should be a 4.1.2, but at a reduced cost.

Such units were AWFUL on the defensive.

For those who care nothing about history, do what you want. That goes for Firaxis which is so clueless it gave Elephants three times the defense power of longbowmen, and gave knights the dame defensive strength as cavalry with rifles.

Though they were poor on the defensive they were truly fearsome and terrifying on a rampaging offense. At least according the Age of Empires help menu. But realisticly, logically, a War Elephant has to have a higher attack than a knight. I mean what would be more scarry to you if yo were a foot soldier, a mounted armored man coming at you, or a man on a armored elephant charging towards you, wailing those elephant trupeting noises.
I love the idea of another thread about making the elephant a general unit and i think the Ghurka idea is excellent, though, Ghurka soldiers in the sense of modern rifleman would have to be a British, i mean, a English unit, because they have fought for the British for the past 100 years or so, i believe (i may be very, very wrong, though), kind of like the soldiers in the French Foreign Legion are foreigners fighting for France.

hmmmm, that gives me an idea.

[Panag]

Originally posted by caralampio
Have you noticed that India has no advantage in its "special" War Elephant unit? It is the exact equal of the Knight. Same requisites, same costs, same 4-3-2. Actually worst because you can't upgrade Horsemen to Elephants.
The manual lists the Elephant as 4-4-2 which would be nice, but they must have figured that it would be too powerful and it got downgraded somewhere along the design process.
An interesting idea for a future development would be to allow elephants to anyone with Horseback Riding and access to Ivory, and make them something like 3-2-2.

hi ,

the elephant should move 2 spaces true forest and jungle , then it would be nice , .....
in the editor some people make it required to have ivory before you can build it , as India , ....

have a nice day
have a nice day

[Optimizer]

If Elephants were a strategic source, one could use them together with horses to build a Zoo Park improvement. That would make them useful throughout the game.

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by panag
the elephant should move 2 spaces true forest and jungle , then it would be nice , .....

This is one of those obvious-in-retrospect things that makes me want to slap my forehead and say "Why didn't I think of that?!" Of course! This is an obvious benefit to give to elephants! Really, why didn't someone think of it sooner?

[Chakra]

Hey guys,
As a genuine, bonafide Indian (and into history) here are my 78,000 lire worth:

1) As someone has already stated, Elephants are pathetic on the defensive. Well - they're pathetic in a chaotic retreat, pathetic if used in close conjuntion with infantry units (if they panic, they trample everything!) - but I imagine a defensive elephant unit would have to be used as an 'offensive defense' (I don't believe any mounted units can be used as static defenders) The things about Elephants is that they're slow: they need fodder and a lot of love and affection as well.

2) Therefore, it seems reasonable to me to give an elephant a 5/4/1 ADM. I understand that the A might seem a little excessive, but anyone has ever seen a rampaging elephant - well, then they might come around to my point of view.

Finally, Gurkhas as a special unit are a lovely idea, but they're really not Indian - they're more Nepalese (though they do have a regiment in the Indian army and have served with distinction). So they're not really distinctively 'Desi.' Incidentally Kramerman, the Gurkhas were inducted into the armies of India and Britain as a "special ethnic group" - since enrollment took place on the basis of caste/race as it was imagined to be - and they are inducted into the British army. So not quite as fallen as the Kepis-Blancs.



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"Nuke 'em all to Hell and Beyond" - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

[Optimizer]

I think that the Elephant unit should appear earlier in the game.

[Gangerolf]

never mind