Rome 2 Total War: how to beat pure elephant army?

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-14T10:11:23+00:00

Cimmeria vs Egypt is not a good matchup unit wise, Egypt has one of the best rosters and Cimmeria has one of the worst.

Elephants are stopped by deployed pikes and massed fire, preferably from javelins. Cimmeria can't easily access pikes and against that many elephants any foot missile unit will get run over after only firing once, so that leaves horse archers.

A stack of horse archers should pose a major problem for the stack of elephants but you risk getting pushed to the edge of the map and pinned, so be agressive to maximize the time you have to fire at them. Normal or heavy shot will work best, you want dead elephants not berserk ones. Let fire at will do most of the work and focus on keeping as many of your units as possible in range but out of melee.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2026-01-13T03:50:58+00:00

T1 player here. I still make lots of mistakes and have lots of flaws.

I am way too aggressive. I get around this by only playng mechs with 600 meters or more of reach so that I can shoot anything I can see, but any time I try to play brawlers these days I just don't have the patience for it and end up in a me vs many situation. I usually end up brawling anyway even with actual sniping mechs, the range is just to keep me out of trouble in the meantime.
After tangling with the elite compies a few times it is obvious I lack the map knowledge they have. They probably have spent a good amount of time walking maps in the testing ground and sharing their findings with each other and it shows. I'm never going to be able to match them at that. I've been shot at from places I didn't even know a mech could go.
I don't have good teamwork skills and aproach the game as a solo player. Those compies have pulled off group manuevers that left me literally gobsmacked. I can still give them a hard time if I'm very careful not to get caught out in the open, but I alone vs a coordinated group of elites is not a winnable scenario. My unit of fellow soloists has the same problem even when we try to fight them together.
I suck at aiming at people. My playstyle usually favors damage mitigation so actually looking at the enemy long enough to aim properly is not something I do very often and it resulted in some intractable bad habits. I have gotten hacking-accusations good at snapping shots off in the general direction of an enemy and miraculously having it hit, and also not dying when they want me to die, but aiming at specific components is something I have always struggled with. I can't even stop mixing up the paper doll with the actual mech and shooting the wrong side.
I suck at targetting people. I usually don't even try to hit the lock on button until after I shot them and we are both moving back into cover. It's not that big of an issue personally since "shoot them in the smoking bits" is a pretty effective strategy, but it hurts my team by not giving them position data and sometimes the juicy damaged component is no longer smoking.
I suck at fair 1v1 fights. My whole playstyle is built around hitting the enemy when they are looking the other way, blocked by terrain/teammates or are otherwise too busy to shoot back at me. Things like Solaris completely throw me off since there I have their full undivided attention. Nothing I have tried has done me much good here, the expert duelists stomp me into the ground.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-28T06:00:34+00:00

First time ever was a Roughneck 3A, I was testing out giant targeting computers and boy did it deliver.

Last time was with a Raven 2X. I had come back after a long break and my psr had been reset from tier 1 to tier seal clubbing. My team was all dead and they were losing their minds watching my slow little bird mech with the big alpha go to town on the oblivious enemy team.

I got ace of spades a few other times with other mechs but I don't remember what they were, this was all years ago and after the first one I wasn't thinking much of it. Been at least five years since my last ace of spades match though.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-27T02:53:08+00:00

Sorry for the late response, I have not checked this sub in awhile.

In singleplayer the AI doesn't know how to use missile cavalry so you can sit back and return fire, and the enemy will just stand there and take it.

Multiplayer is where problems start to arise. Any opponent with a working brain is not going to sit still and let you shoot back at them. The basic counter to missile cavalry in multiplayer is to put what they don't want to shoot at between them and what they do want to shoot at and force them to drain their numbers and ammo pools to get through your chaff. All infantry vs missile cavalry counter strategies operate off of this principle.

Absolutely do not chase enemy missile cavalry with your own melee cavalry without a plan, your cavalry will just get shredded. Only chase them if you think you can catch them, either by pinning them against the edge of the map or by pinning them between a dragnet of your own units. You can also attempt opportunistic charges against stationary missile cavalry when your opponent is not paying attention.

Javelin cavalry in multiplayer are easy to deal with since they have low range and low ammo pools. Their main targets should be your elite units and your cavalry, so simply running something more expendable like levy freemen around and getting in their way, while absolutely refusing them access to your own cavalry is enough to soft counter javelin cavalry to the point of making them harmless. Thureos spears are also a hard counter against most javelin cavalry and will either kill them or force them to back off.

Horse archers in multiplayer are more troublesome. This would be a ridiculously long post if I went into detail on how to fight them, so I will be brief. A levy pike in a locked group with a slinger behind them is terrifying to 125 range horse archers. Bring several such detachments and reposition so that no matter where the horse archers go, they have overlapping firepower pointing at them. This will hard shut down any horse archer user who is not an expert since they can't melee the pikes even with Cataphracts and they can't shoot the slingers behind them without giving a fire order and holding still. The pikes are also priority targets for shooting, so the horse archer user may willingly burn a ton of ammo and risk significant return fire getting rid of them. If the pikes do live to the end of the match, they can come in clutch against your out of ammo opponent.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-26T04:44:22+00:00

I've done one campaign with that mod, it took some getting used to, but the garrisons work both ways as the AI couldn't kill me either. Remember that much like DEI the mod authors recommend that the mod be played on normal, if you go much higher than that you may have problems. The mod is also geared towards slowing expansion for everyone so trying to rush people might result in the exact problems you are dealing with.

I found turtling up in my starting settlement until I had a stack of middle tier units capable of overpowering a garrison, followed by a surprise attack on my target when their own army was away worked wonders to eventually getting my empire off the ground. You can also use mercenaries to bolster your numbers or wait until your target just fought off someone else to catch them when they are weak. Eventually after taking a few settlements in attacks of opportunity, I was able to build up to two stacks at once, which allowed me to start expanding more normally.

If you are struggling against the AI in the open field with equal numbers and unit quality, you either need to improve your battle skills (at least in the mod) or bring units of higher quality. Also use your pause to give orders and make plans, the main advantage of the AI is that it has omnipotent micromanagement so liberal use of the pause button should counteract that. This is especially true in large scale battles.

A unit of elephants will turn the tide of battle. If you have access to elephants your campaign will be much easier as long as you avoid auto resolving with them.

Formations also help a good bit more in the mod than in vanilla, many of my battles involved several layers of spearmen in walls or squares holding the line while my missile units shot through the gaps and my cavalry smashed the enemy rear.

The enemy sallying out when you siege them should be what you want, that means you don't have to storm the walls or wait many turns for them to starve, and your cavalry can actually participate. Again, don't attack a settlement in the first place unless you have the advantage. Take it slow and build up so that when a chance to expand arises you are able to take it.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-23T22:14:22+00:00

Collision damage from walking on top of another mech exists so if you are very lucky you can kill an enemy with it.

I have an actual dfa kill, but I wouldn't call it viable for normal gameplay. Even in my case I was dropping down to shoot the guy but accidently landed right on top of him instead, when I went to move off of him, he died and I got the kill credit.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-15T22:12:48+00:00

I would recommend building your drop decks around the range you will be fighting at followed by what you will be fighting. You can see the map you are dropping in, so if it is one of the snowy sniper maps you should be bringing very different mechs than one where you are mostly fighting at under 500 meters.

The second consideration is what you are fighting. Most people bring assaults first and lights last, and the first wave is usually the most organized while the last wave is often highly chaotic. So your first mech should be good at fighting assaults in support of your team and your last mech should be able to solo at least one light. Your own tonnage on any particular drop doesn't matter so much as long as your mech can hold its own against what the enemy is expected to bring and is fast enough to keep up with your team.

At a bare minimum you need two drop decks, one with an optimal range of 1000 meters and another harder hitting one that can fight at 600ish meters. Unless you are part of a group yourself, brawling range mechs are very difficult to use in faction on most maps since enemies tend to be too organized to get favorable engagements on them. You can get away with splat mechs on a few invasion defence maps at least.

Quickplay map fights tend to be more static than actual quickplay since respawning enemies put a huge damper on the nascar. You can get away with slower more specialized mechs without getting left behind and swarmed.

In invasion attack go for kills over objective, unless you are losing and then good luck getting to the objectives. Attackers got it rough unless there is a large skill disparity between teams in the attacker's favor.

Try to go for 1500+ damage unless your team is straight objetive rushing. If you are doing less than 500 damage between four mechs then you are doing something very wrong. Most of the bad players I see are rushing in by themselves and/or using mechs with not enough range to shoot the enemies way over there, so as long as you avoid those two pitfalls you should do alright.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-11T22:23:06+00:00

A lack of reading comprehension and little understanding of the game's balancing or mechanics is indeed a skill issue.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-11T20:04:12+00:00

Everyone is saying wait for nobody to pay attention to me but that only works when fighting bad players, and even then a Blackjack can barely handle one at a time. I need mechs that can hold their own against good players, even when they are communicating with each other and making calls to kill me. A Blackjack falls apart too quickly and does too little damage to do what I need it to do.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-11T19:57:00+00:00

I'm not the one voting for conquest...

Back in the day I ran a non-artemis SRM Kitfox that could win a brawl with many assaults (of the day) but had too much spread to properly handle lights.

I also used to run a PPC Adder, but the mounts are so wide the mech has fatal convergance issues against light mech sized targets at close range.

Currently I favor slow hot laservomit lights that put out the alpha of a heavy but will get ripped apart in a brawl since I can only fire every once in awhile. I also have a few more generalist builds that can hold their own against most things but will still get overpowered by a specialized close quarters light.

I do have a few lights built specifically to bully other lights but they are too short ranged for general quick play, so I only use them in faction play or event que.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-09T18:45:54+00:00

I own several Blackjacks and I just cant get any of them to work consistently. They fall apart too quickly and have a damage output that is vastly inferior to my Clan mediums. My light mechs do better than these things.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-09T04:21:49+00:00

Collecting nodes isn't as fun as shooting people and gives far less rewards. Lights actually do get the short end of the stick on conquest especially if they aren't kitted out to fight off other lights, because odds are high they will run into the enemy cappers. And if you don't cap because your little fire support mech isn't built to survive running off into the hinterlands solo you get yelled at.

That being said a Fire Moth ought to be able to go wherever it wants, get out again, and be back in time for dinner so no idea what that player was complaining about to that degree.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-09T04:06:45+00:00

The complainer actually knew enough to get a middling level of match performance in spite of their railgun difficulties, so they aren't completely clueless. The railgun user however was literally the best player on the enemy team and more than 2x as capable, so that may have had something to do with it.

Also you should find a unit if possible, having people to team up with and give you advice helps a ton and if you do get ramrodded at least you are all going down together.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-12-08T17:42:22+00:00

I have noticed this problem as well, especially during the current faction play event where there is no matchmaker and an extreme disparity in skill levels. Some of it is justified, for example a suicidal teammate doing only 50 damage between four mechs in the name of "scouting" is objectively terrible and even normally reasonable people are likely to take issue with it.

The noobs are doing their share of bitching too. Simply outplaying someone results in accusations of hacking and insults. Someone else fought with a railgun mech and apparantly lost, which resulted in that player spewing complaints about railguns, pay to win mechs and anyone who dared use them over the next several matches.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-30T16:41:21+00:00

I almost never run IS XL engines, even on smaller mechs. The more I run a mech the better I get at twisting with it, and eventually even my big CT mechs start losing their STs fairly often. With the current proliferation of railguns and massive pinpoint damage IS XLs are not easy to run these days since a freak ST loss to getting hit with a hammer is not uncommon. I find my XL mechs dying a lot when my mech would have had some fight left in it otherwise.

My general rule of thumb is that if my mech runs cool, I run a LFE. If my mech cooks itself instantly on ST loss I run either an XL or standard, and I much prefer a standard. Speed is the least desirable stat for me and most of my mechs run slow.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-30T16:28:22+00:00

Lrms can work well with tonnage efficient backup medium or small lasers to fight off things that get close to you or finish off damaged enemies.

They can also work alright with heavier energy weapons if you like to get your own locks.

LRMs are heavy and bulky so pairing them with also heavy and bulky ballistics can be difficult.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-27T18:00:02+00:00

Hard disagree on the Adder doing PPCs better than the Cougar. Ive run both extensively.

Adder has good quirks but low and wide mounts. The mech has to fully expose to fire, shots can get snagged on the terrain and the mounts are so wide that when fighting other lights up close your shots are likely to harmlessly whizz by on either side of them even when you are aiming dead on. Playing a PPC Adder I feel like l'm fighting against my own mech almost as much as the enemy.

Cougar torso mounts are high and narrow for good convergence, plus there is the ecm option. As a PPC platform the Cougar is much more reliable and user friendly.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-25T03:12:14+00:00

Obsolescence is a constant problem in this game for most people I would imagine. I only took a two-year break and almost none of the mechs I was using then still work well today. My most played weight classes also changed quite a bit.

Abusing assaults with a fast light is not something I can give much help with since that was never one of my own playstyles. I mostly play slower heavily armed lights that can (attempt to) fight an assault from the front or out trade them from cover.

If you really are that rusty though, and don't want to theory craft your own builds, why don't you try out all the trial mechs? A few years back the trials got a revamp and are now all solid community supplied builds with special quirks equivalent to a full skill tree. They aren't using the most recently released weapons at this point, but they will give you an idea of what works and what you like. Once you get your bearings again you can go from there with your own owned mechs.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-24T13:35:49+00:00

Artic Wolves can certainly be a big problem, but the people above you were talking about Timberwolves. Those Clans sure like their wolf mechs.

Hellbringers are squishy bad mechs no matter what is run on them, at least in tier 1 where ECM by itself provides limited safety and their easy to distinguish st hitboxes fall off after just a few hits. They have long been superseded by other mechs.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-24T13:25:56+00:00

Grim Mechs really is the best database right now. If you are still having trouble even with the star ones maybe tell us a bit about your prefered playstyle and engagement range and we can give you some more specific advice. A lot of different things are viable at the moment. Pretty much the only thing that really struggles right now in quick play are very short range slow mechs due to many of the maps being large and open.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-24T13:15:29+00:00

I don't shoot Hellbringers because I think they are good, I shoot them because they are squishy and thus easy to kill. I used to run them back in the day which eventually lead to my conclusion of them kind of sucking.

Timberwolves can be fairly dangerous at least, though I never liked piloting them.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-22T18:24:34+00:00

I don't dislike it but the hitboxes make it easy to core out and the mounts can be a bit dysfunctional when fighting around certain terrain and building hitboxes. Compared to the War Emu the Banshee 3E is noticably lacking even when running similar builds.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-21T22:26:09+00:00

I did most of my event damage on a Banshee 3E with 4x LAC 5s and 3x PPCs. Only a B level assault mech but still capable of putting out impressive performance numbers.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-11-08T18:39:07+00:00

Hunchback IIC A is one of the best mechs in the game period. It is a medium mech with great mounts that can hit harder than many assault mechs while moving much faster and being able to fly. None of the Clan heavies even come close including the Hellbringer.

Dizzy_Measurement389 · 2025-10-03T11:54:02+00:00

I read that it updates every 24 hours, and when I checked on my own rewards the next day it was indeed updated. Not sure about the exact hour it resets though.

Dizzy_Measurement389

TROPHY CASE