Siege Elephant vs Rams comparison

Comparison of the new armored and siege elephants to the traditional ram line.

0:27 Cost and stat comparison
1:30 vs Buildings
2:05 vs Melee units
3:05 vs Ranged units
3:20 Other differences
3:40 Civ bonuses & unique techs

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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition

[harishsundar]

Thanks to the devs for adding elephant civs so that SOTL can put elephant facts

[AgeofNoob]

Folks, just FYI, the splash damage of the Siege Elephant is much smaller than that of the Siege Ram. Hence, when attacking multiple layers of fortified walls, or hitting buildings built next to one another, Siege Rams are still significantly more effective at clearing a tightly built area.

[StephenParlow]

Siege elephants retaining the negative melee armor of rams seems really strange to me. It feels like they're just reskined rams with food cost instead of wood when I feel like they should be more like a siege-focused, weaker Persian war elephant

[Gigas]

I love how armored/siege elephants are the most counterintuitive units in the game now. The armored elephants have straight up tusk swords and siege elephants have spiked bands on their tusks, yet they look like they do less damage than a villager when attacking halbs. What's more, they're covered in mail with scales the size of Serjeant shields but get -2 melee armor. Mr. Of The Law, if you do another video on weird AoE2 logic, can you please include this?

[jt]

They could do a bit more damage to units even if it's still low. That would make them more different from rams.

[milkandcookiesTW]

I'm not particularly well versed on the balance side of AoE2, but the design of this unit is weird and kind of underwhelming to me. A super heavily armored Elephant getting dumpstered in melee by basic human troops is a bit strange. Kind of seems like just a reskin of Siege Ram functionality, rather than taking the extra steps to give it a unique niche and hybrid role that still retains core elephant characteristics in combat. Feel like they could have done a bit more with it to make it interesting, which is a shame because the model itself looks really cool

[zeroyuki]

Sharing other people opinions:
1. They already have three weakness bonus: vs cav, vs elephants, and vs siege. Make it have 0 or 1 melee armor so it has an actual tradeoff defensively against rams.
2. Same with offensive. Give a little more base atk and reduce anti building dmg a little bit, especially since rams has the advantage of splash damage.

[TheEmpireDabsBack]

I haven't played AoE in like 5 years yet I never miss a SotL upload. idk what it is about hearing stats, comparisons, analysis, and your voice/cadence but happy to be subscribed all these years!

[Binarokaro]

From a meta point of view, I actually think it's really cool that they're starting to diversify the civs more. Remember that video about how on a scale of "every faction plays about the same" to "Starcraft", AoE2 is p comfortably on the "every faction plays about the same" side? I think something like this, having regional units that replace a generic unit, is moving towards each faction being more specialized, but without completely changing the core of how things work, and I think that's actually pretty cool

Anyways, I just love elephants and I'm glad there's more of them now

[rogueonline]

Since armored elephants attack units as well, does that mean they will target them first when it comes to choosing between a building and a unit?

[robbylava]

I love that these are in the game, but I'm not a huge fan of how they've been implemented. Personally, I think it would have been more interesting if they did more damage to units but had less bonus versus buildings and a slower attack, maybe with their damage to units having a better area of effect but lower base than a normal elephant unit. That would make them more like crowd breakers and much worse and one-on-one combat, which still feels fitting of a siege unit to me. The gazillion Pierce armor also feels a little bit weird.
Take with a massive pinch of salt, I'm no RTS Dev, and I'm really pleased that we can have a few more elephant units in the game even if I see a little bit of missed potential with these.

[Spearced]

Damn Spirit, you're churning out the videos today! Still so great to see how much traction AoE2 gets in 2022, and you're a huge part of what's kept my (and I imagine, many others') interest in the game alive over the years. Thank you.

[gamesandstuff]

Can Armored Elephants be healed by Monks, or Repaired by Villagers?

[kodys]

I feel like every day for the next week or so will feel like Christmas morning, with new AoE2 videos to watch. A fun time for fans of this 22 year old game.

[zhiz]

I wonder whether they still benefit from siege engineers, on top of blacksmith and stable upgrades

[tyranitararmaldo]

This video was elephantastic!

Also Gurjaran Siege Elephants look absolutely brutal! Totally slipped by me that their bonus worked on this unit in the Siege Workshop.

[Darkcamera]

I feel there was so much potential wasted I don’t think armoured elephants should’ve have been reskinned rams it would’ve been more interesting and fun if they were capabilities of some melee fights with seige damage focus rather than being a ram reskin

[juliannavarro]

I love the elephant facts that pop on here and there, it makes me so happy

[jakelewis]

Dude your voice is just sun shine in a rain storm after a chaotic day I love hearing that chill smooth "hey guys spirit of the law here" makes my day better 😌

[wildtrickster]

Siege ram getting wrecked by melee units makes logical sense, like how are you gonna attack them back? you can try to run them over but people can just move away and flank, but with elephants it feels soo weird seeing melee units not taking damage.

Siege rams have wheels and is a rigid structure, whereas an elephant should be able to freely move and completely destroy whatever's in its vicinity, esp. one strong enough to melt down buildings.

I think one way to implement the elephant ram right way is to do a "charge+exhaust" mechanics, like when you tell the elephant to attack a building, it sprints for a certain distance and deals a good chunk of damage, then it becomes "exhausted" for a certain amount of time and attacks slow till then. You can tweak the numbers to make it take the same amounts of time as the current one. This way, the elephant Also attacks melee units like normal elephants, but gets "exhausted" after a certain amount of time, coz of all the armor it has and becomes vulnerable by not being able to attack fast, it still does damage like normal elephant but Much slower. I think some variation of this method would make much more realistic and thematic sense.