Total War: Rome II - War Elephants (Historical Discussion)

Hey what's up guys this is Oakley Hi-Def and we're going to be covering some of the images that were released today. So the first one is going to be the War Elephant, Eliphas Maximus Indicus and you can see the various different elements that will come with the elephant. They show basically the armor and look how ornate it is, the heavily armored elephants that you'll be seeing in the game. In addition to the scythe tusks that they'll show off, the tower on the back, the various armor that it'll wear on its body, its head, all that stuff. And look at this, it looks awesome. Now I wanted to discuss something that one of the subscribers pointed out right here. In the previous video I talked about how the African elephants were larger than Asian elephants. Now that's true in one sense and false in another sense. So basically the way it works is today the African bush elephant is in fact larger than the Indian elephant. But at the time the Carthaginians were not employing the African elephant. So they were actually employing the North African war elephant which was smaller and is now extinct and they were easier to tame than today's bush elephant. So in fact at the time the war elephants used, the Indian variant was larger. Anyways, let's go ahead and talk a bit about war elephants in the time being. So early Indians were presumably the first to domesticate and tame the elephants. Their early Vedic hymns, those are Indian sort of poems and stuff like that, that talk about using elephants for transport. They would use them to move heavy objects such as trees, create paths. And there are mentions of those around the 1st and 2nd millennia BC. Next the Mahabharata and the Ramayana talk about war elephants in their use. You know, as we've seen them, these huge lumbering war elephants. And that was mentioned around the 4th century BC and it became commonplace for Indian kings to have a large number of war elephants. It would be the pride of their army, the bulk, the hitting force, the ancient tanks, so to speak. The Indian elephants were then sort of spread throughout the world during conquest. So the Indians, for example, when they were encountered by Alexander, Alexander famously fought Porus at the Battle of Hadaspus and Porus fielded around 100 elephants at that battle. And that wasn't the first time that Alexander had met elephants but, you know, seeing them in numbers of 100, that was the first time he saw them employed so widely. And that was very fearful to his troops. They're hard to take down. And if you guys saw the movie Alexander, you would see part of that, the elephants in place and Alexander charging bravely at them. In any case, Alexander was able to win the Battle of Hadaspus with heavy casualties. And he was so struck by the nobility and the honor of Porus the king that he actually reinstated him as a king in the region and allowed him to govern with the sort of the go ahead of Alexander. And they really strongly reflect each other. Anyways, Alexander was not able to extend, you know, his reach further into India. There are rumors of other kings that had even greater power than Porus who were supposed to have been able to field thousands of elephants. So, you know, Alexander would have had a hard going. Anyways, from the Indians, the elephants were then spread to Persians. So, you know, the Persians were able to field elephants under Darius and Xerxes. And, you know, as I said before, Alexander had previously encountered elephants and that was at Gagamella where the Persians under Darius had, you know, fielded about 15 elephants. And they were so intimidating to the Macedonian troops that Alexander felt he had to do a sacrifice in order to avert, you know, their rage and their anger. But in any case, the main shock value of the elephants comes in, you know, their size, the fact that you don't know what to do with them when you encounter them, not only fear amongst the troops but also horses who would have been scared of them. And that's basically the striking force of the elephant is just their shock factor, their brute strength factor. But at Gagamella, they proved to be ineffective. In any case, Alexander was so struck with the elephants that after his conquest, he established, you know, elephant regiments here and there to, you know, guard his city at Babylon. And then later when he died, his successor kingdoms would often field these elephants in their armies, particularly the Seleucids and this spread to Greece. We saw Pyrrhus of Epirus who would later use them in his invasion against the Romans. So you can see them sort of spreading west in these conquests and you can see they were a force to be reckoned with. Anyways, the Indian elephant would always be a huge part of Indian culture and Indian warfare until eventually the Tamerlane who were basically the successor kingdom to the Mongols. These were a Muslim group that rose up and they conquered much of India and they were able to defeat the Indian elephants using their swift and mobile cavalry. So that kind of struck the, you know, the end note for the Asian elephant or the Indian elephants, I should say, although they were still used, you know, very frequently. So that's the Indian elephant side of thing. And again, at the time, they were larger than the African elephant. So the African elephant, as I said, would have been the North African war elephant, smaller that is now extinct. And as I said, they're easier to tame and they were used by Numidians, Carthaginians and Egyptians. So, you know, most famously, those would have been used by Hannibal. And Hannibal was able to cross the Alps with elephants. Most of them died, but Hannibal's personal, excuse me, elephant, Surus, survived. And Surus means the Syrian. So Syria is, of course, not in Africa, so you can presume that the Carthaginians were using elephants imported from abroad. So presumably the Syrian, the name of that elephant, it was a larger elephant. And we think it was a huge extinct Asian subspecies called Eliphaz Maximus Asurus, which was presumably pretty large, but again, is now extinct. So, you know, that's basically what I wanted to cover for the war elephants. Thanks so much for pointing out the details. I love it when you guys show your historical knowledge and, you know, we'll go ahead and put out these facts. I, of course, will follow up with research of my own and, you know, share that with you guys. Anyways, yeah, the last image right here is going to be showing sort of Anatolia and Turkey. It's a big image. You can see the campaign map. It looks awesome. I just wanted to point it out. You can see the, I don't know if those, I think that's a sea tile, either a sea tile or trade lanes. If you look at those dotted lines, I think those are trading lanes. You can see how extensive they are. Just the whole campaign map and its beauty. How many of these different cities there will be and the sprawl of them. You know, this looks really great. I'll keep covering the news, you guys, bringing you all this. I will be traveling soon, so that's kind of a bummer, but before I leave, I'll make sure to make an announcement. I'll probably start some sort of contest where I'll do a Rome 2 giveaway, maybe several copies. So when I leave, I'll make sure to give you guys the resources and kind of tell you where you can find the information while I'm gone and also give you something to think about in terms of that Rome 2 giveaway. Anyways, thanks so much. Stay tuned for more news. See you guys next time.