War Elephants 2023
This mod is inspired by a lot of other elephant mods on the workshop, but many of those are outdated. The initial goal of this mod was to add a non mercenary version of the Armored Syrian War Elephants and a lighter unarmored version to certain factions, but then I ended up adding and improving elephant units across the Grand Campaign, Imperator Augustus, and Empire Divided.
The two Syrian Elephant units are called "Asian Elephants", and are very similar to the Indian Elephants, but the riders on them use javelins rather than bows, and both the elephants and riders have a lot more of a Hellenic appearance. They also have a higher recruitment cost and upkeep than the Indian Elephants as these factions would’ve had a harder time acquiring and maintaining elephants.
The factions that use the new Asian Elephants are:
Epirus
Macedon
Pergamon
Pontus
Sardes
*Sardes can also recruit Armored Asian Elephants as a bodyguard, as a counter to the fact that Cyprus can recruit African War Elephants as a bodyguard in vanilla.
In addition to the additions of the Asian Elephants, I have added a level 4 animal trainer to Eastern and African factions, and have allowed some of the reasonably appropriate factions to recruit elephants, and use them as a bodyguard. This mainly affects minor factions to spice up their rosters, but Parthia is now able to recruit Armored Indian Elephants, Nabataea can recruit African Elephants, and Masaesyli can now recruit African War Elephants and use them as a bodyguard.
Finally I have improved the variation in the elephants and riders gear, and fixed some minor bugs when it comes to unit cards, particularly with the Empire Divided elephant unit cards.
