War Elephants

Summary
War Elephants are an extremely powerful brigade introduced by the Eagle King DLC. They are available as a starting unit for certain Greek factions in the Invasion Sandbox, and can sometimes make an appearance as a mercenary brigade for Greek, Illyric and Sicilian factions.

"Massive beasts originally tamed for war in India, the usage of war elephants spread to the Mediterranean War after Alexander encountered them in his invasion of India. War elephants are strong, hard to kill, and capable of devastating charges."

- In-game Description

History
The practice of taming elephants for use in warfare and/or agriculture may have begun as early as 2000 BC in the Indus Valley, though the exact extent of early elephant warfare in the Bronze Age is unknown. Elephant warfare was certainly very prominent in India by the middle of the 1st Millennium BC however, with the largest empires allegedly being able to field thousands of war elephants.

The usage of war elephants spread westwards into Persia, which possessed small amounts of war elephants when conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 330s BC, though they apparently didn't play a major role in any of the Persian-Macedonian battles, being present at the Battle of Gaugamela but allegedly failing to deploy in the final clash. Alexander's invasion wasn't forced to seriously fight against war elephants until they reached India, where war elephants were much more numerous and more prominently used in battle.

Following their clashes against the Indians, the Hellenistic successor kingdoms of Alexander adopted the usage of elephants themselves. These elephants and their trainers were mostly imported from India. Elephant warfare spread to northern Africa as well, where several states such as Ptolemaic Egypt and Carthage employed local North African elephants, from a now-extinct subspecies of African elephant that were smaller than Asian and other African elephants. Asian and North African elephants faced off against each other in the Battle of Raphia, where the larger Asian elephants used by the Seleucids easily routed the North African elephants of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Tactics
War Elephants have easily the highest charge strength and defenses of any brigade in the game. However, they are slow and very expensive, and do not have an exceptionally high melee damage after the initial charge impact. To make the most of these elephants, some tactical care is still required to ensure they get the most benefit of their high charge strength by using them as a shock unit.

The elephants' main tactical weakness is their slow speed, and they can theoretically be taken down by hit-and-run tactics from missile units. Also, while they have high charge blocking, a fully powered charge by cavalry or late-game infantry can still topple one or two of the elephants, if they are stationary and not executing a counter-charge of their own. While the loss of one or two individual soldiers isn't a terrible calamity for other brigades, this is very costly for war elephants due to their low brigade size in combination with their high cost and very limited availability.