| “ | Hardworking support Elephant. Universal resource drop-off. Bonus to all resources dropped off. | ” |
| —In-game description | ||
The Worker Elephant is a unique economic elephant unit of the Tughlaq Dynasty in Age of Empires IV: Dynasties of the East. It can be produced from the Town Center or Tughlaqabad Fort, starting in the Dark Age. Worker Elephants operate like a mobile resource drop-off point, including the ability to research technologies. They functionally replace the Mill, Mining Camp, and Lumber Camp for the Tughlaq Dynasty and increase the amount of resources that Villagers drop off.
The Worker Elephant has its own unique unit type. They are not classified as workers, elephants, or cavalry, meaning they do not take bonus damage from units or benefit from technologies targeting these unit types.
Unique mechanics[]
The Worker Elephant has a unique production mechanic among all units. It can be produced normally through the unit creation interface at the Town Center or Tughlaqabad Fort like other units, but the unit is produced as soon as its icon is clicked, more akin to an activatable ability. That is, not only is it produced instantly, but it skips any unit queue that already may be in progress at its building. This means that a player cannot cancel the production of a Worker elephant in the case of a misclick as is possible with other units. Furthermore, Villagers can also place the 'foundation' of an elephant through their build menu as they can do with other standard buildings. As soon as this outline is placed, the Worker Elephant is immediately created at the Town Center or Tughlaqabad Fort nearest to the outline's location, and both the elephant and the Villager begin walking to that location. The Villager will automatically start gathering any nearby resource after reaching the location, regardless of whether the elephant has arrived or not.
The Worker Elephant can be tasked to a resource like a Villager can. While it cannot gather directly from the resource on its own, targeting a particular resource will allow the elephant to automatically move to nearby resources of the same type after its target is depleted, as a Villager would do. This allows Worker Elephants to automatically stay close to woodlines as they are depleted without manual input from the player, although they may target different specific resources than their Villagers if the resources are close together (such as with trees).
Like drop-off buildings, Worker Elephants have the ability to convert and attract neutral Sheep. Since they are mobile, this allows them to scout for Sheep around the map to some degree, although their slow speed and extremely low Line of Sight means that their effectiveness in this regard is limited. As a unit, Worker Elephants recover hit points through healing, and not repairing. This makes them vulnerable in early Ages before healing units become available, especially when far away from their Town Center. They can get attacked by Wolves, like other units, but cannot be attacked by provoked Boars.
Abilities[]
Elephant Economics (Passive): Villagers drop off 5% extra resources. Can be improved by an additional 5% for every unique Worker Elephant gather rate technology researched- Field Repair Site (Active, requires unlock). The Worker Elephant will travel to and place a Field Repair Site at the target location. This ability may not be used while there is an active Field Repair Site on the map.
Available technologies[]
Gather rate technologies[]
The gather rate improvement technologies for each resource normally found in the drop-off buildings of other civilizations are consolidated into the unique Worker Elephant line of technologies. These additionally increase the amount of resources Villagers drop off.
Other technologies[]
Further statistics[]
| Technologies | |
|---|---|
| Ability |  Field Repair Site (Can create sites which automatically repair siege engines)
|
Dialogue lines[]
The Worker Elephant has the same dialogue lines as the War Elephant and Tower Elephant.
- Main article: War Elephant (Age of Empires IV)/Dialogue lines
Changelog[]
- With patch 15.2.7380, Worker Elephants no longer benefit from Blacksmith technologies and can no longer capture Sheep from outside their vision range. Although not mentioned in the patch notes, they also no longer benefit from Biology, Mahouts, or Elephant Caretakers, which used to apply.
Trivia[]
- It is not a mobile building, but rather a unit which serves as a drop-off and research site.
- Worker Elephants uniquely are not impacted by the inna jiffy cheat code and therefore will not research technologies instantly.
Gallery[]
