hmmm, what's all this about Indian elephants being bigger than African elephants? Some specially-bred Indian war elephants or something?rs2excelsior wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 8:39 pm Wasn't one of the big differences that the larger Indian elephants could carry three riders (a mahout and two fighters), while the North African elephants could only carry two.
I guess there’s a kind of 'tension' between the players' need for a generalising set of rules that focuses on common traits and the tendency of human nature to look for specific features in Civilisations and History rightly or wrongly.rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2020 9:23 pm FOG is a top-down rules design. The main weapon is the elephant itself, whether they had 2 or 3 fighting crew would make little difference in the grand scheme of things. Old wargames rules paid too much attention to minor details like that and ended up less realistic as a result. (Over-representing a difference is worse than not representing it at all).
The Indian vs African Forest elephant thing was only important in 1 historical battle, and it was because the African Forest elephants were frightened of the larger Indian elephants, not because the latter had an extra crewman. The two types rarely had the opportunity to meet in any case. It's a cool difference to include for the Battle of Raphia (as we have done), the only historical battle where it had an effect, but it isn't needed in the rules as a whole.
It's a design philosophy thing. We try to concentrate on what was a regular part of Ancient warfare, and not on things that only occurred in one or two recorded instances.
The species of elephants used by the Ptolemies at Raphia, Roman and Carthaginian armies, and other Mediterranean powers who couldn’t get their hands on Indian elephants (such as the Seleucids and their herd which they got from the Maurya empire) was a now-extinct species of North African forest elephant (notice I specified north African when I mentioned them earlier. These elephants were smaller than both Indian and sub-Saharan African elephants.76mm wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2020 3:12 am hmmm, what's all this about Indian elephants being bigger than African elephants? Some specially-bred Indian war elephants or something?
As far as I know African elephants are bigger:
https://animals.mom.me/size-indian-afri ... -1775.html
