Exorbitant Ammounts of Elephants Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

Hey, I've been playing Dominions for around 6 months, so I'm fairly new. And I've just joined the forum though I've been lurking for a few months.
Anyways my problem is this.
I've just started a game with MA Marignon on a random sized medium map with 4 bots.
It's Fall of year one and all of a sudden I come up on a nation called Ecnaphale that contains 280 elephants and slingers, mostly elephants though.
I'm not really worried since Indies usually don't bother to attack me, but I'm wondering what the best way to deal with this would be?
Screencap:

Size 6 (prevents trampling) SC which will eventually massacre them or some powerful battlefield-wide magic like master enslave or just damage (to cause their routing).
P.S. It is quite odd that there are so many of them.
P.P.S.Attack with scout too have better understanding what is awaiting you. Maybe that army is under starvation already, in this case it will be much easier to route elephants.

Hi @ThisIsAlex

I'm a newb (compared to many) too, just that I've been a newb for longer than you

You're hardly likely to have a Size 6 SC, it's Fall of Year 1! Nor are you ready to be master enslaving

1. By far the simplest thing you can do is just ignore them and the province. If there _really_ are 140+ eles, you're better off not going there... Simplez.

2. Put a scout there. Without a scout, you can't believe the icons/information you see on the map. You may find there aren't actually so many troops or hefalumps. If you sit there long enough, some AI will prolly come attack it, and you can see how he does, and take it from him if he succeeds

3. I had a look at your MA Marignon. You don't have (cheap) missile troops, and you don't have routing spells like panic/terror. I'd like to build lots of those Flagellants and bless them (Friars) in battle to do damage to the elephants. They do seem to rout quite easily if you can last a couple of turns, yours have good morale. But how many you can build depends on your dom level, I don't know if you can build Flagellants in other cities? This is not good if there are many slingers there. Which would only leave your pikers/halberdiers, I don't know but wonder whether long weapons help against trample?

You don't have panic or terror, but you do have paralyze (MR check) and prison of fire (morale check). Those may help instead, but your own size 6 blocker is the best bet. See if you have any summons or recuitables that fit the bill.

That is a STUPID amount of elephants. Christ.

I'm pretty new to the game myself, but knowing what I do about Dominion 3, trample, and MA Marignon there's nothing you can field early game to take that province. Flagellants aren't capital restricted, but morale isn't their problem so much as their squishiness. I'm reasonably sure elephants are vulnerable to archers, but Marignon's got crossbows, meaning you'll probably be dead before they get off their third shot. Your other strong units won't last much longer, either. In short, I don't think there's anything you can reliably do early game to take that province.

Midgame, I think, opens up some options for you that would otherwise leave you waiting for a lategame SC (Marignon has a few good national options in that category, iirc, but why wait that long for one province?). Personally, I'd take advantage of Marignon's weak astral and produce some communions. IIRC, communion slaves share buffs of their communion masters. That means you can body ethereal+luck your mages for increased survivability, followed up with whatever deabillitating, routing, or pure damage spells you can manage. If you can field a decent buffer of royal knights, so much the better.

>>Flagellants aren't capital restricted, but morale isn't their problem so much as their squishiness
In my humble experience, elephants seem quite prepared to rout after charge if they take damage (sometimes they even seem to rout while en-route to the enemy, I'd keep my forces right back and let them come all the way across). If he could get, say, 30 from 60 flagellants to survive the first contact and then hit all adjacent eles to damage them, I think there is a good chance they will rout, back into the rest, which will rapidly lead to a chain-reaction rout of the lot.

Just do a risk/reward analysis. Do you really need that province? Or could you just as well be taking other provinces in the early game?

I have no idea what spawned the crazy amounts btw. Never really seen that on normal games.

>>>If he could get, say, 30 from 60 flagellants to survive the first contact and then hit all adjacent eles to damage them, I think there is a good chance they will rout, back into the rest, which will rapidly lead to a chain-reaction rout of the lot.
It's possible. But depending on just how many elephants are there, having 30 to 60 Flags survive is a tall order. An elephant can bring down, what, four at a time? More? I think this strategy's a very expensive gamble.

That's probably the legion bug (massive amounts of independents way over the normal range) which nobody has gotten to reliably reproduce. It exists in Dom4 as well. Eventually the elephants will die of disease caused by starvation, but it will take a ridiculous amount of time.

Some sort of underflow perhaps?

Assasinate the commanders Before you attack and the elephants will route.

Why not just wait until you get flaming arrows and just mass produce your crossbowmen?