Were war elephants actually worth it...

well, in Asia war elephants were used effectively. most of the guys on the howdah were armed with ranged weapons, including black powder. its like how horse arches would run around in circles, war elephants would stand their ground. if you get to close, you get stamped on, you turn your back, you get shot.

yeah I was wondering why they were used for so long in Asia, whether it was because they were used effectively or just bc the North African population went extinct and Indian ones didn't

they hopefully break formation but if not they still force changes from the enemy just by being there

PROTIP: Westerners and Middle Easternshits never learned how to deploy them properly. They used them like cavalry (i.e. deployed on their own)

In South/Southeast Asia they were deployed with escorting infantry per elephant, who ran alongside their charges in formation, dangerously running between elephants. In addition to what said.

Which is why in those regions elephant usage lasted well past the BCs and into the 1700s AD.

contd. Your pic is from Osprey. And just to show you how Classical Europe/North African/ME civilizations used them, it was like this. All on their own as if they were like horse-cavalry.

>not wanting combat donkeys
its about exploiting what you have, not saying horses arn't more useful for their utility. but elephants are much more inclined to stay in a fight, and stamp around a bit. horses are all about hit and run, elephants are all about disrupting infantry, to break up formations and such.

but what if they run amok

Usually corralled by the herd (i.e. the formation).

RIP Escort Infantry though.

well, in India, combat was this weird giant even distribution of weapons and gear. you'd easily have thousands of troops on the field, but with the complete adoption of amour or weapon tech like in Europe. pretty much anything that killed people, still had targets vulnerable to it.

the classic example is chainmail, in europe you eventually saw weapons purpose made to defeat chain, until Armour moved on. In Inda, you see chainmaile and anti chainmail weapons linger for practically forever.

having a giant fleshy target for blackpowder weapons makes very little sense in the western world, but in Asia where the battlefield if full of all sorts of anachronistic units, you can still get alot of millage out of elephants. but now with tiny little cannons on their back.

seriously, Indian wars were meat grinder.

****WITHOUT*** the even adoption or distribution of tech

>not even phoneposting

>phalanx: the unbeatable infantry
>elephants: the unbeatable cavalary
>lol dude let's just put them together mayne like 4 real why has no one thought of this b4??

Did they also put cannons on them or is that just Medieval 2 bullshit?

Real life isn't like your paradox games. In most ancient states, and well into the feudal era, the ability of a political unit to actively decide what kind of military it wanted to have was extremely limited. You called for a muster, and MAYBE (but not often) you provided arms out of state expense. But usually, whatever the sort of fighting the local people trained to do, that was what you had, and whomever was in command made the best of it.

You didn't have people sitting down and thinking "Hmm, is the war elephant the most efficient use of a limited pool of resources that we have". You have people thinking, "Hey, we've got these elephants, because those crazy elephant-tamers/trainers gave us some. What can we do with them?"

>Real life isn't like your paradox games.
>Describes crusader kings

>Ancient states had little control of the composition of their armies

How to spot a massive fucking brainlet. Holy shit how can someone post like that, acting like top shit about this topic, going so far to imply a person is using video games to base their historical knowledge and then fuck up this badly?

This isn't the medieval period you know? States were centralized and a not keen on letting their aristocracy run around with their own private armies. This sort of shit is only allowed to fly when the country is basically collapsing and the central government can't control their aristocracy.

The only parts of an army that an Empire didn't have much control over were client states.

>. Holy shit how can someone post like that, acting like top shit about this topic, going so far to imply a person is using video games to base their historical knowledge and then fuck up this badly?
Because it's true.

>States were centralized and a not keen on letting their aristocracy run around with their own private armies.
FIrst off, that's not what I said at all. I stated that there were not conscious decisions by a top-level state to employ a certain method of fighting. Please demonstrate who it was that decided that "Hoplites are the way to go" for most of Greece, or that "We really want a cavalry heavy army with lots of foot-archers for support" that the Achmaenids used.

Secondly, you DID have lots of private armies. Hell, the collapse of the Roman Republic had a lot to do with the employ of such private armies, which lead to things like the expeditions to Gaul and Carrhae. Earlier Republican times also had lots of private army usage,, and I suggest you take a look at Livy, book 2, chapters 48-49; where you have the Fabii family taking on the burden of the war with Veii. Carthage's most famous military expedition, Hannibal's over the Alps, was essentially a rogue aristocrat with his private army.

You have no fucking clue what you're talking about, as emphasized with this statement

>The only parts of an army that an Empire didn't have much control over were client states.
Which implies ONE polity for ONE period of its history, completely missing the fucking point.