Why I don't think War Elephants need a buff

Some units and strategies aren't part of the meta for a reason. Either it's just not very powerful, it's slow, or it's easy to counter. Full Eagle Scouts is not very powerful, a naked FC is slow, and full Men-at-Arms is easy to counter. None of these strategies are competitively viable. And full Elite War Elephants is one of these strategies. It's just too slow and expensive, and is hard countered by Monks.

Some people advocate for War Elephants to be buffed, to make them more viable, because of this. However, I believe this viewpoint is wrong. Just because something isn't part of the meta, doesn't make it bad and deserving of a buff. There's actually a paradox involved.

And that's because of the surprise factor. The only time where full Elite War Elephants in a 1v1 is actually viable is as a surprise. It's because it's not part of the meta that makes it actually good; no one expects it, and no one has the appropriate counters ready. And it's not often that you see this strategy. However, when you do see it, it usually works. And that's because it catches most people off guard.

If elephants were to be buffed, and become part of the meta, then it would become boring. Things that are rare in competitive play are the most fun things to play and to watch, specifically because they're rare, they're something new. See Resonance22's Break the Meta series. Some of the units that we never see are actually very powerful and can win games, due to being bad. See the paradox? A unit is bad = a unit is not part of the meta = a unit is not expected = a unit is good.

This is why I disagree with people asking for things to be buffed to be made more viable in the metagame. Sure, weak civs (pre-patch Magyars) deserved buffs, definitely, you don't want a whole civ to be a Break the Meta focus, but individual units and strategies can be.

I just played a game against another similar rated player to me and I was going mass xbows and eskirms in castle age, then once I got imp, I surprised him with 3 trebs and a shit ton of FU Elite War Elephants. The reason it worked is because he didn't have the Monks ready in time. You can't stop an elephant push; you need to prevent it entirely, stop it in its early stages. Once they come trampling into your town, you're pretty much dead.

Other non-viable competitive strategies do work, just like eles. Non-meta strategies funnily enough do have a place in the meta. Full Eagle Scouts is not viable because of the extra wood cost of the 4 Barracks and the Market to click up, and they don't pack as much of a punch as other units, however the strategy works simply because opponents panic and don't know what to counter with. A naked FC sometimes works simply because your opponent would never expect you to be that greedy and would therefore not prepare to go full on with the feudal aggression and might instead just go for scouts or straight archers, which runs into full walls and then Knights from your opponent who got to castle age way before you. Mass Men-at-Arms from the Goths is easy to counter and not part of the meta, however it works simply because your opponent panicks when you're destroying everything and cannot keep up archer production and micro well enough at the same time to counter you properly.

I do agree that some strategies are not good even in this surprise situation, like mass Long Swordsmen simply because the regular units we literally always see (Knights and Crossbowmen) just beat them straight-out, and the surprise factor doesn't work because your opponent already has the counter ready since the counter is a central unit that you'll be making in almost every game.