How do you get elephants?

If you play the seluclide army they produce many elephants. As do the Carthinians. The factions slowly opened up for me as I played.

There is a cheat for creating elephants in any faction.

there is a cheat by creating lot amount of elephants: open console with ~ (but dont hold shift while opening console because it wont open) if you cant you will need another patch. i always can open console. you can look for a cheat by searching in web i dont remember it realy. you asking what building you need to recruit elephants click on your settlement then open building browser and then click on any building in building browser and it has to be writen: "enables training of: elephants."check does elephants are heavy/light/misile CAVALRY. if its cavalry then elephants has to be trained in stables but you will need to build basic stables first then you can build beter, and beter stables. to build beter stables you will need also to extend governor. good luck! !!

You need to be Parthia, Carthage or Selucia (if that is the right word) and build an lephant pen. My friend said that if you look closely at the map you may see animals. If there are elephants, mercenary elephants are avaliable for hire, but this may be the same with training elephants in settlements. Simply get high population in settlements so you can upgrade them and get elephant pens.

Not all races can produce all units. Rome (I assume you're probably playing as Rome) does not get to recruit elephants. Carthage, the Parthians and the Seleucid Empire can recruit elephants -- if you want to use elephants, play as one of those races and build a high-level stable. You can unlock new races by exterminating them in campaign mode, or if you don't want to do that, check the URL http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic/30723#.T2-thzGm92A
For how to hack R:TW and unlock all factions.

Dud war elephants are awesome ! They even scare away the powerful chariots of the egyptians !! Use them wisely !

To be a Parthia, Carthage or Seleucid is not enough.
Look closely to the map: it contains different resouses, for example, near Antioch it's Wine and Silk.
Also near this city you can find a figure of an elephant and of a camel. Put your cursor on it and you'll see this message: "Elephants: Allows the training of elephant units" ("Camels: Allows the training of camel-mounted units" respectively).
It's verified and kinda obvious, only in such privinces you could train them.
That's why, for example, you can train them in Antioch, but can not in Tarsus.
P.S. Sorry for my English)
P.P.S. I added some screenshots.

Spoiler:

click to reveal