This article is about the unit in Age of Mythology. For the similar unit in other games of the series, see War Elephant. |
The War Elephant is an elephantine Egyptian cavalry unit in Age of Mythology that is trained at the Migdol Stronghold from the Heroic Age.
Attack bonus[]
- Buildings: ×3
Bonuses and improvements[]
Specific[]
- Undocumented "Medium Elephants" upgrade (automatically granted after advancing to Heroic Age): increases attack and hit points by 10%.[1]
- Heavy Elephants and Champion Elephants increase attack by 10% and LOS by 1, and increase hit points by 15% and 20%, respectively.
- Tusks of Apedemak (Thoth) increases attack by 10% and HP by 20%.
General[]
- Copper Weapons, Bronze Weapons, and Iron Weapons increase attack by 10%.
- Copper Mail, Bronze Mail and Iron Mail decrease hack vulnerability by 10%.
- Copper Shields, Bronze Shields, and Iron Shields decrease pierce vulnerability by 10%.
- Levy Migdol Soldiers and Conscript Migdol Soldiers decrease training time by 20%.
- Valley of the Kings (Thoth) decreases training time by 66%.
Strategy[]
War Elephants are incredibly strong and can destroy almost everything in their path. Due to their large bonus attack against buildings and high pierce armor, they can act as a third Egyptian siege unit, along with Siege Towers and the Catapult. Their main drawbacks are that they are expensive (each costing 250 resources), very slow, and take up 5 population slots.
As well as being slow, War Elephants are large. This makes them easy to hit with arrows, though they can shrug them off to some extent due to their decent pierce armor. Like all cavalry, War Elephants are weaker against infantry, but due to their fair hack armor and massive hit point total, only a large group of infantrymen will prevail against them. The best way to defeat these mighty units is to use anti-cavalry units such as the Katapeltes. Failing that, myth units with insta-kill special abilities, such as the Cyclops, Mummy, or Medusa, or other powerful myth units like Azure Dragons and Fire Giants can dispatch them quickly.
Changelog[]
Age of Mythology[]
- Originally, War Elephants had 12 attack and 20 hack armor. With patch 1.05, they have 14 attack and 25 hack armor.
History[]
“ | The Egyptian War Elephant is expensive and slow, but is mighty in combat, particularly against buildings. They can be defeated by large groups of infantry or by Camels and Prodromos. The generals of ancient times, tracing back at least to Hannibal, were intrigued by the use of elephants in battle. The size and strength of the beasts were enough to shake any troops, but especially those who had never seen the animal before. In practice, elephants may have been more for show than effectiveness. Wounded elephants were difficult to control and likely to disrupt friends as much as foes. They were used as platforms for commanders and archers, and were ideal for breaking into dense enemy formations if they could be coaxed to do so. While the Indians first introduced elephants to the Mediterranean, the Ptolemies of Egypt were the first to use the larger African elephants in warfare. Classical texts are very clear that generals knew to counter war elephants with pigs. | ” |
—In-game help section |
Trivia[]
- When a player saves a game after researching the Champion Elephants upgrade, upon loading that saved game, the unit name reads as "Heavy Elephant", despite the fact that the unit retains the Champion upgrade
- When this occurs, and the War Elephant happens to be the player's favorite or most trained human unit in a standard game, the Favorite Soldier Count under the Mythology tab of the player when viewing the Achievements Aftermath is displayed as "Heavy Elephants"
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ In the game files, the technology is called "Medium Migdol Shadow" (dbid
651
) and is present intechtree.xml
.