Priests are the way to go. even if there are about 14 or 15 cats, and esp in ror. like i said, you'd never keep your priests together anyways, so with one shot, u shouldn't have more than 2 dying. and it's practically guaranteed to convert if you've got a couple eles in there to draw the fire first. the enemy wouldn't know what the heck was happening. he'd be concerned about those eles getting too close to his cats to notice that you're not trying to kill the cats, but take it for your own. if we're talking ror, this is doubly hard for the cat to kill the ele w/o ballistics. but in this situation, scythes work, as someone pointed out. before i was talking purely aoe, but since we went ror too, i'd use scythes, but i really don't think armored eles are all that great. +3 attack, a little extra armor, and seigecraft. unless you're planning to take a city by storm, i don't really like AE's. personal opinion of course. i just don't think they're worth all that gold to upgrade. of course if you've got piles of gold just lying around, what the heck.
akaval, i wasn't belittling you. i was just making the point that i really don't think someone would sit ships just out of range of the shallows waiting for the hittite cats to come rolling through. of course if you can do it, more power to you. i still think that the cats will wipe out any ship that approaches, esp if the cats come in large numbers. of course, ships could also be used to draw fire, then the wololoing starts. if it's a water game, i personally would be more worried about controlling the seas than i would be about attacking over shallows, so i'd be making range 13 galleys with 9 attack and a few fire galleys with 30 attack to control the waters. I dunno, i think giving hittites fire galleys was too much b/c now they have an awesome chance on the sea, probably one of the top chances, maybe topping minoans (BTW, i was able to win the sea with hittite against minoans on an islands DM game, so it's easily do-able now whereas before, it was only a thought). besides, controlling the seas just makes me feel like i have greater power than my opponent b/c with the sea comes and extra 9 or so tiles of land along the coast, great for building buildings or landing parties.
out of 10 cats, with 10 egy priests and something else to draw the cats' attention, i'm sure i could convert about 7 or so of the cats. works for me. it'd be okay if i lost about 4 priests or so too. and if you're really into it, you can get 10 out of 10 with martyrdom, and you wouldn't even have to worry about all the other upgrades!