Varu

Overall strategy
A living, breathing, killing machine, a Varu is in essence an elephant trained to main and kill, using its legs and its tusks. This elephant, the largest in the world, is owned and ridden by its owner, an aristocratic archer armed with the powerful Indian longbow, and is in effect capable of slightly outranging OTHER archer units. In fact, it can be said to possibly be the farthest-shooting archer unit in all of Alexander. In addition,a Varu has excellent LOS, thus making it highly ideal as a support unit for other ranged units with good range but low LOS, such as mercenaries.

Be it as it may, however, Varu are not invincible, as powerful as they are. While they can demolish a fair deal of units close up, they will forever be vulnerable to several units. Pike units, on account of the long reach of their weapons, are capable of resisting Varu. Equally, light infantry archers and skirmishers, although weak and outranged by the Varu's pasenger's own weapon, are sufficiently cheap and powerful enough to be used to swarm it at a distance. At the same time, the Greeks also have access to the Skorpio, a powerful mechanical bow whose weapon is more than capable of outranging any archer unit in the game. A wise Indian player (using either Magadha or Gandhara) should take all this into account when planning to deploy Varu in the field.