ranma100 wrote:

I have noticed some very strange Elephant units.  I know that people put bowman and the like on elephants.  But did somebody really put gatling guns and cannons on elephants?

There were similar debates about mounted culverine on elephants in total war community (for Empires if I well remember). Because you can't find representations / drawings of them. It's by the way a culverine on the artwork and not a cannon, even if it should be a tad smaller, it's why the unit is a Gunner class in the game.

It was not that common, but there are a bunch of texts which mention it. There is even speculations suggesting than Mughals used their "volley gun" (multi-barrel cannon) on elephant back, but I find that a bit too much crazy personnally :p

Actually, Burmese used Elephants with culverine a lot ! There are well showed into models in the museum of Bangkok. And I personally think, than it would have been a better emblematic unit for Early Modern Burma.

About the pictures posted by G4M5T3R , the first one is misleading, The only comment I found about it is "An American corporal aims a Colt M1895 atop a Sri Lankan elephant. The  reason why the corporal is atop the elephant is a mystery but elephants  were never a weapons platform adopted by the US Army. It’s probably a  publicity picture, not something the army would actually try to employ. "

The second picture instead is a real thing, and from the Haw wars. I don't know if designers were aware than it was a real thing to be honest ! Because the only iteration of this singularity was done by Siam and it's the only picture, I didn't find anyone else. You can see an elephant with a vickers machine gun on the right. And I find a comment saying than the blurred man on the left have a gatling instead (personally it's too blurred, I don't see anything :p ).

It was really uncommon and rare I guess. But still okay for video games. My only nitpick about gatling elephant unit is than the soldiers of the game, don't have the uniform of the period showed in the picture.

It's a bit like Khmer, the ballista elephant was more an experiment, than something widespread on the battlefield. Anyway : emblematic, funny and singular, it don't stop them to produce any other generic units as everyone else.