Elephant unit

This article is about the military units riding elephants. For the wild animal, see Elephant.

Elephant units are a type of mounted units that ride elephants instead of horses, explicitly or implicitly. They appear in every game of the Age of Empires series.

Overview[]

All elephant units have a large number of hit points, among the most for a single unit in their respective games. This may allow them to outlast even common cavalry counters like polearm infantry and camel units in combat. However, elephants are slow, which renders them vulnerable to conversion, ranged siege weapons, or artillery fire that can be dodged by other mounted units. Since elephants are also expensive and slow to train, they must be paired with other units that can deal with these threats.

Usually, ranged elephants just add the durability of the elephant to their non-elephant equivalent and have a similar attack to it. A typical example is the Elephant Archer in Age of Empires, which has the same hit points as the War Elephant and the attack and range of the Composite Bowman. Melee elephant units like the aforementioned War Elephant, on the other hand, are heavy cavalry units with high attack that can be devastating against massed units and buildings due to their ability to deal trample damage, affecting several nearby tiles at once. Thus, while melee elephants are undoubtedly cavalry units, they can be comparable to siege weapons in some aspects.

Elephants are only native to parts of Africa and Asia; for this reason, they are exclusive to civilizations hailing from those continents.

Age of Empires[]

Aoe1 Elephant Units — All elephant units in *Age of Empires: Definitive Edition*

In Age of Empires, there are two elephant lines available to some civilizations: the melee War Elephant, which is trained at the Stable, and the ranged Elephant Archer which is trained at the Archery Range.

List of elephant units[]

War Elephant - Armored Elephant (the latter since The Rise of Rome)
Elephant Archer

Elephant heroes[]

Hannibal (Armored Elephant, The Rise of Rome)

Civilizations[]

Nine civilizations have access to elephant units of any kind:

Carthaginians
Egyptians (except Armored Elephant)
Hittites
Lac Viet
Macedonians (except Elephant Archer)
Palmyrans (except Elephant Archer)
Persians
Phoenicians
Sumerians (War Elephant only)

Civilization bonuses[]

Carthaginians: Elephant units have +25% hit points.
Hittites: Elephant Archers have +1 attack.
Lac Viet: Elephant units created 25% faster. Elephant Archers have +2 armor.
Macedonians: War Elephants have +2 Line of Sight and are four times more resistant against conversion.
Persians: Elephant units move 25% faster.
Phoenicians: Elephant units cost -25%.

Team bonuses[]

Palmyrans: Technologies affecting elephant units are researched 30% faster.
Persians: War and Armored Elephants are created 20% faster. Upgrading to Armored Elephant is 20% faster.
Phoenicians: Elephant Archers have +2 line of sight.

Trivia[]

The access to elephant units of the Hittites, Palmyrans, and Sumerians is probably for balancing purposes since none of these civilizations used war elephants historically (though the Palmyrans seem to take some of their inspiration from the Numidians, oddly enough).
- Similarly, the Romans were able to field war elephants in battle, but they are the only of the Rise of Rome civilizations with no access to them. On the other hand, the Romans' elephant handlers were North African auxiliaries, not ethnic Romans.
Despite the elephant units being clearly of an African species, several civilizations that have access to them were located in the Middle East and partly in Europe (in the case of the Macedonians) and would have used Asian elephants.

Age of Empires II[]

Elephant units AoE2 DE — All Elephant units in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

In Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, the War Elephant returns, this time as the unique unit of the Persians, the only one of the previous civilizations that survived and continued to use war elephants into the Medieval period. The later expansion The Forgotten brings back the Elephant Archer as one of the two unique units of the Indians. Both units can only be created at the Castle which makes them more difficult to mass than in the previous game, but their function remains largely the same.

In Rise of the Rajas, a less powerful, 'generic' version of the War Elephant is introduced: the Battle Elephant. It can be created at the Stable and has roughly half the hit points and two-thirds the cost of the War Elephant. The Battle Elephant is only available to the four Southeast Asian civilizations introduced in the expansion, each of which has a unique technology and/or bonus that benefits Battle Elephants in a different way. The Khmer at that point were the only civilization with access to two elephant units, as they can train the Battle Elephant and their unique Ballista Elephant, a Scorpion on an elephant.

In Dynasties of India, the Indian civilization is split and the Elephant Archer becomes an Archery Range unit that replaces the Cavalry Archer for the Bengalis, Dravidians, and Gurjaras. These three new civilizations and the Hindustanis also receive a new elephant line, the Armored Elephant, which replaces the Battering Ram line. Bengalis and Dravidians also receive the Battle Elephant, similar to the Rise of the Rajas civilizations, making them the civilizations with the most number of elephant units at 3.

Besides the Cavalry armor class, all elephant units belong to the War Elephant armor class and any other that suits their type (Unique Unit, Archer, or Siege Weapon). Tatar Flaming Camels are particularly dangerous because they have a large bonus attack against the cavalry class and an enormous one against the War Elephant class.

Unlike in the previous game, all elephant units have Elite upgrades.