Well after I made the "lack of info" thread here, I realized we got very little information on the Elephantry, so I decided to go in and see how their stats compare to cavalry, which is what they were referenced to as a comparison in the dev diary.
It appears war elephants might be direct upgrade to cavalry, and even line artillery. They have a ton of soft attack, but this is because they require artillery... so are they war elephants or artillery movers? and in any case they aren't in the combat support battalions but rather in the same line as cavalry and camelry, making them the only mobile battalion that is both artillery and normal org booster. They also have higher supply use, which is strange as weren't they used in WW2 to help with supply?
Anyway here are the stats. These are all using India's starting tech and no extra modifiers
Benefits of Elephants over Cavalry
(Most of these stem from the inclusion of artillery as a requirement for the battalion)
4x the soft attack as a cavalry battalion (6 -> 24.8)
Over 4x the breakthrough (3 -> 12.6)
More piercing (due to the artillery) (4 -> 9)
Slightly more suppression (2 -> 2.3)
More hard attack (1 -> 3.4)
Slightly more HP (25-30)
Various terrain buffs:
5% movement and 5% attack to forest
15% movement and 5% attack to hills
15% movement and 5% attack to mountains
15% movement and 10% attack to jungle
All of these are directly better than what cavalry has, which is mostly -5% and -10% attack/movement on most of those
Weakness of Elephants over Cavalry
More IC: (51-60 -> 205-223)
Slightly slower (6.4kmh -> 6.0)
Slightly less org (70 -> 60)
Much higher weight (0.5 -> 1.2)
Double the supply use (0.04 -> 0.08)
Less reliability (90% -> 85%)
More manpower (1000 -> 1100)
Double the training time (120 -> 210)
Require a little over double the infantry equipment (120 -> 250)
Require 28 artillery (for reference, that's more than artillery support at 24 but less than line artillery at 36)
Various terrain debuffs:
-25% movement and -15% attack to urban (cavalry only had 5% on attack)
-10% movement and -10% attack to marsh
-70% to amphibious (Cavalry had -40%)
Elephants are probably better than using line artillery
-Elephants have the same combat width as cavalry (2) despite their large size and usage of artillery. This means that:
-6 width of Elephantry will have more artillery (84) than 6 width of line artillery will have (72).
-6 width of Elephantry will have 60 org and 74.4 soft attack, while 6 width of line artillery will have zero org and only 50 soft attack. also, 90HP compared to 1.2
-And Elephants are quicker than line artillery, 4.0 -> 6.0 and suffer way less movement terrain penalties
In a per width basis, it appears there is no reason to use line artillery as India if you have elephants unlocked. The only downside is a higher IC cost and not having the +10% fort attack bonus that artillery gets - but that 10% bonus for artillery doesn't matter anyway as a generic 9 infantry division with 1 line artillery will have that value diluted all the way down to 1%.
The high IC cost is offset by the comparatively insanely high org and HP, meaning they will suffer less losses and fight for longer. Elephantry might require less artillery per battalion, but their additional infantry equipment brings their IC to be higher than line artillery.
1936 line artillery IC: 126
Elephantry IC: 205-223
Should an India player only use elephantry to replace all their infantry battalions? Only if you can afford to produce a million artillery. But it does seem very beneficial to never use line artillery as India. In fact, just replace all line artillery in your entire army with elephantry. Line artillery's biggest weaknesses was their lower HP and org, but elephants have the same org as infantry and will actually raise the HP of an infantry division. Because of the way terrain buffs work, if you use 9/1 divisions then the terrain buff from the 1 elephantry or 1 line artillery get diluted by the infantry. So Line artillery's negligible terrain debuffs are also replaced by Elephantry's now-negligible terrain buffs.
In the long run you'll need to produce more artillery, but i believe this is worth it.
Edit: The increased hard attack / piercing the artillery grants Elephantry units means Elephants are more effective at fighting tanks than most other units in the game.
It appears war elephants might be direct upgrade to cavalry, and even line artillery. They have a ton of soft attack, but this is because they require artillery... so are they war elephants or artillery movers? and in any case they aren't in the combat support battalions but rather in the same line as cavalry and camelry, making them the only mobile battalion that is both artillery and normal org booster. They also have higher supply use, which is strange as weren't they used in WW2 to help with supply?
Anyway here are the stats. These are all using India's starting tech and no extra modifiers
Benefits of Elephants over Cavalry
(Most of these stem from the inclusion of artillery as a requirement for the battalion)
4x the soft attack as a cavalry battalion (6 -> 24.8)
Over 4x the breakthrough (3 -> 12.6)
More piercing (due to the artillery) (4 -> 9)
Slightly more suppression (2 -> 2.3)
More hard attack (1 -> 3.4)
Slightly more HP (25-30)
Various terrain buffs:
5% movement and 5% attack to forest
15% movement and 5% attack to hills
15% movement and 5% attack to mountains
15% movement and 10% attack to jungle
All of these are directly better than what cavalry has, which is mostly -5% and -10% attack/movement on most of those
Weakness of Elephants over Cavalry
More IC: (51-60 -> 205-223)
Slightly slower (6.4kmh -> 6.0)
Slightly less org (70 -> 60)
Much higher weight (0.5 -> 1.2)
Double the supply use (0.04 -> 0.08)
Less reliability (90% -> 85%)
More manpower (1000 -> 1100)
Double the training time (120 -> 210)
Require a little over double the infantry equipment (120 -> 250)
Require 28 artillery (for reference, that's more than artillery support at 24 but less than line artillery at 36)
Various terrain debuffs:
-25% movement and -15% attack to urban (cavalry only had 5% on attack)
-10% movement and -10% attack to marsh
-70% to amphibious (Cavalry had -40%)
Elephants are probably better than using line artillery
-Elephants have the same combat width as cavalry (2) despite their large size and usage of artillery. This means that:
-6 width of Elephantry will have more artillery (84) than 6 width of line artillery will have (72).
-6 width of Elephantry will have 60 org and 74.4 soft attack, while 6 width of line artillery will have zero org and only 50 soft attack. also, 90HP compared to 1.2
-And Elephants are quicker than line artillery, 4.0 -> 6.0 and suffer way less movement terrain penalties
In a per width basis, it appears there is no reason to use line artillery as India if you have elephants unlocked. The only downside is a higher IC cost and not having the +10% fort attack bonus that artillery gets - but that 10% bonus for artillery doesn't matter anyway as a generic 9 infantry division with 1 line artillery will have that value diluted all the way down to 1%.
The high IC cost is offset by the comparatively insanely high org and HP, meaning they will suffer less losses and fight for longer. Elephantry might require less artillery per battalion, but their additional infantry equipment brings their IC to be higher than line artillery.
1936 line artillery IC: 126
Elephantry IC: 205-223
Should an India player only use elephantry to replace all their infantry battalions? Only if you can afford to produce a million artillery. But it does seem very beneficial to never use line artillery as India. In fact, just replace all line artillery in your entire army with elephantry. Line artillery's biggest weaknesses was their lower HP and org, but elephants have the same org as infantry and will actually raise the HP of an infantry division. Because of the way terrain buffs work, if you use 9/1 divisions then the terrain buff from the 1 elephantry or 1 line artillery get diluted by the infantry. So Line artillery's negligible terrain debuffs are also replaced by Elephantry's now-negligible terrain buffs.
In the long run you'll need to produce more artillery, but i believe this is worth it.
Edit: The increased hard attack / piercing the artillery grants Elephantry units means Elephants are more effective at fighting tanks than most other units in the game.
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