Zama and the elephants

[dbeves]

I believe I am right in saying that at Zama Hannibal had about 80 elephants and were arrayed in the centre at the front in a line as they charged the roman line.
Yet the scenario ha just two units either end. Not sure what the strength for elephants mean but it just seems odd.

Explanation ?

[rbodleyscott]

I believe I am right in saying that at Zama Hannibal had about 80 elephants and were arrayed in the centre at the front in a line as they charged the roman line.
Yet the scenario ha just two units either end. Not sure what the strength for elephants mean but it just seems odd.

Explanation ?

Because each unit can only occupy 1 square, we cannot represent those elephants as a spread out line. If there was a line of elephant units across the front, with the elephants represented as they currently are, they would have far too much effect on the battle, compared with what they had historically.

Each elephant unit has a zone of control of 3 squares, so they do in fact have an effect as if they were more spread out.

So this representation is a compromise to get as close to the historical effect as we can.

[dbeves]

I believe I am right in saying that at Zama Hannibal had about 80 elephants and were arrayed in the centre at the front in a line as they charged the roman line.
Yet the scenario ha just two units either end. Not sure what the strength for elephants mean but it just seems odd.

Explanation ?

Because each unit can only occupy 1 square, we cannot represent those elephants as a spread out line. If there was a line of elephant units across the front, with the elephants represented as they currently are, they would have far too much effect on the battle, compared with what they had historically.

Each elephant unit has a zone of control of 3 squares, so they do in fact have an effect as if they were more spread out.

So this representation is a compromise to get as close to the historical effect as we can.

Mmmm ok not sure I get that. So the strength number is the number of elephants in the unit ? So there are 40 elephants in the units in that small space ? Surely smaller units would have less effect if spread out and each unit was smaller. I am not sure what you mean by "with the elephants represented as they currently are" - what is it about how they are currently represented that would mean smaller strength units more spread out is wrong and leads the scenario to have only two but with 40 in each. I have seen an elephant and from what I remember they are pretty large so having the unit represent 38 seems wrong for all kinds of reasons.

[rbodleyscott]

I believe I am right in saying that at Zama Hannibal had about 80 elephants and were arrayed in the centre at the front in a line as they charged the roman line.
Yet the scenario ha just two units either end. Not sure what the strength for elephants mean but it just seems odd.

Explanation ?

Because each unit can only occupy 1 square, we cannot represent those elephants as a spread out line. If there was a line of elephant units across the front, with the elephants represented as they currently are, they would have far too much effect on the battle, compared with what they had historically.

Each elephant unit has a zone of control of 3 squares, so they do in fact have an effect as if they were more spread out.

So this representation is a compromise to get as close to the historical effect as we can.

Mmmm ok not sure I get that. So the strength number is the number of elephants in the unit ? So there are 40 elephants in the units in that small space ? Surely smaller units would have less effect if spread out and each unit was smaller. I am not sure what you mean by "with the elephants represented as they currently are" - what is it about how they are currently represented that would mean smaller strength units more spread out is wrong and leads the scenario to have only two but with 40 in each. I have seen an elephant and from what I remember they are pretty large so having the unit represent 38 seems wrong for all kinds of reasons.

The normal representational scale has 20 elephants in a unit, Zama uses a scaling factor to avoid having an unmanageable number of units on the map.

So if you consider the elephant's ZOC of 3 tiles width, which prevents any unit from passing without engaging the elephants, and imagine that the elephant unit on 1 square in fact represents 20 elephants spread out across 3 squares. With each square representing 60 paces/metres that gives up to 9 metres per elephant, which does not seem unreasonable.

Of course the scaling factor does screw up the ground-scale logic, but is a compromise to avoid unwieldy scenarios which many machines could not handle well.

If each unit was smaller, and there were more of them, those units would have to be very much weaker to avoid having an excessive effect on the battle overall.

We did consider these matters, and the way they are currently represented seemed the best compromise for the sake of playability.

[GiveWarAchance]

Elephants are brutally powerful in the game. I just fought an enemy elephant unit and it took at least a dozen costly attacks to damage them but they routed quickly once elephants started dropping.
I think 2 elephant units would be quite deadly so over 2 most probably would make Hannibal overwhelmingly powerful.

[shawkhan2]

Just fought Zama with its two elephants, beating Romans 63% to 46%, a near run thing.
The elephants are quite powerful when kept away from the harassing velites. The Tanks of the ancient world, blowing holes in the opposing line, and letting your troops exploit the gap.