Elephant Archer (Age of Empires II)

The Elephant Archer is a cavalry archer unit unique to the Indians civilization, and are featured in Age of Empires II: The Forgotten.

Tactics
Elephant Archers have high HP and pierce armor, and deal the same amount of damage as the Cavalry Archer line, but with a slightly lower attack rate. Despite being mounted, Elephant Archers move quite slowly, even more so than the regular foot archer line, but they are still faster than Persian War Elephants. They have the same extra high attack bonuses that Persian War Elephants do.

Elephant Archers have more HP than any other Archer in the game, including the War Wagon. They pack the durability of a War Elephant into a powerful package with the range and attack of a Cavalry Archer. Their extremely high HP and pierce armor makes the Elephant Archer function much like a mobile Tower with the advantage that they can be healed by a Monk. Their high HP allows them to take lots of damage and still fire many arrows.

Because of their high pierce armor, they are also good as an anti-archer unit. However, they are vulnerable to Pikemen, as they have an attack bonus against mounted units. Though not listed in-game, they are good at destroying buildings, demolishing them much faster then any other archer in the game.

They benefit from all archer and Cavalry Archer upgrades, plus Husbandry and Bloodlines as they are also a mounted unit. Like the persian War Elephant, they are very susceptible to convertion and as such they must be deployed with an escort to protect them from enemy monks.

Team Bonuses

 * A team containing Teutons, Elephant Archers are more resistant to conversion.

Unit Design
In the mod version Age of Empires II: The Forgotten Empires and the retail version Age of Empires II HD: The Forgotten, up to patch 3.4, the Elephant Archer was represented by an Age of Empires I Composite Bowman mounted atop a War Elephant. The Elephant Archer got redesigned in patch 3.5. Further redesigns were made in patch 3.6.