Slitherine

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.

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.

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