Bombard towers making no damage to rams never made sense to me. It's a bloody canon ball!!! How is that less effective than arrows agaisnt a covered siege engine???
@@RandomBeing They used to be. Before The Conquerors Bombard towers dealt Melee damage, but it got changed to ranged damage as they tended to hard counter everything except trebs.
Hope some civ have unit teach that add Melee damage to the Bombar Tower just small one... like 20 - 30 damage :v Vietnamese may be to remove paper money and some thing for them to counter high Pirce Armor Unit ( if the dev dont want get them some hand cannoneer). It very sad that your civ have a chinese invention as unique teach rather than gunpowder teach...
@@felipea1399 uh what? they get more range, they get more damage because of the garrison that does more and so on. it really isnt that hard. they are just straight up without any doubt the strongest castles in the game
Would be interesting if the outpost would be changed to have 1 garrison slot and can shoot if garrisoned with a worker/archer. Feudal age outpost rush! :D
As a Bulgarian I gotta say your pronunciation of Krepost is actually pretty good. Krepost literally means fortress. There are no true castles (as in very fortified houses of feudal lords and then military instalations) in Bulgaria but there are like 4000 fortresses which are the opposite of the castle mainly military but could provide housing for a lord. If you see something with towers and crenelations sticking up on hill here it's actually a Krepost. The model of the Krepost in the game is actually a modified Hrelja's Tower in Rila Monastery build in 1342. ;)
"You know those arrow slits that we use to allow archers to shoot at attackers from buildings?" "Yeah" "LET'S HAVE MORE!!!" -Japanese engineer, CE 1354
You should also have mentioned the "wall" effect of each of these. A castle effectively is a 4x4 wall where as a tower is just a 1x1 wall. That won't change the numbers a ton but is important for players like the Goths who don't get walls as a way to partially enclose an area. Also I'd like to see how much masonry and the hoardings upgrade effect the longevity of these.
A very important point to note here is that Towers have the armor class "stone defenses" while castles and kreposts dont. This means Bombarc Cannons (+40), Tarkans (+12), Elephants (+7/10(Elite)), Villagers (+6), Ballista/Archer Elephants(+3/+4(Elite)) Obisdian arrows (+6), Sappers (+15). deal significantly more damage to towers than to Castles and Kreposts.
There are a few considerations. For example, Castles have a much longer firing period, so if the first arrow of a volley kills the target, it has a long time where it's firing at nothing. Also, it's important to consider effectiveness when garrisoned; castles just tend to overkill more, while keeps, with less arrows each, tend to just become more effective.
One important factor not touched on here is that a castle keeps doing full damage until completely destroyed, while towers decrease in damage as you whittle down their numbers. If your enemy fails a push and does 3/4 of the total damage needed to take out your defences then the castle has not lost any of its firepower while the towers have lost 3/4 of theirs.
Hi Spirit, great vid as always. I think given we're looking at post-imp defensive buildings, you have to consider how they stand up against trebs. Trebs often miss towers, whereas they always hit castles. That should be factored in to their longevity. Love your vids!
Another factor to consider maybe space efficiency? Like we can build 4 towers in the same space of castle. That is especially important in special maps like arena or zombies maps.
Can i just say how amazing your content and your passion about this game is ? I used to play AEO 2 nearly 10 years ago when i was in high school with my friends. But i was never really good at it. Recently i wanted to get back into it and hooked up into your educational videos. Ever since then i've been binge watching them. It's awesome to see how many strategies and effort you need to put into this game that i had no idea. Thank you. Even your 3-4 year old videos helped me a lot.
What about teutons castles and with crenellations, celt castles and towers with strongholds and the the factor that the castles of incas and franks are cheeper? Aren't those things change things up?
Teuton castles actually do quite a bit less damage, since they lack Bracer and have to spend a lot of stone on Crenelations. Sure they cover more area, but that also means less castles per tile so less damage. If you count crenelations as about -1 castles, plus bracer, Teutons end up doing only like 55% the DPS of other civs, even worse compared to ones with bonuses like Franks. Say you've got 2000 stone to use, Teutons get 2 castles, Franks get four, and twice the damage output!
@@Snowfireblues Not bombard towers, gotta have gunpowder units garrisoned for that. For the rest, they become the equivalent of a vanilla crossbowman. Which, in the imperial age, is...kinda meh.
I love the Krepost in the castle age. You can build 2 of them for 1 castle price, it is sturdy enough not to be taken down in the castle age (need lot of rams or trebs), and 2 for 1 means you can lock down TWO locations on the map instead of one. you can guarantee defending all weaker points, or really constrain the opponents room of expansion.
@@cengiztaner4754 I never did a multiplayer game with the most recent version let alone competitive. Personally, in the solo games, I do find castles to be the best for defense even if they do cost a decent amount of stone. As for the double castle, usually it is the cross fire which helps depending on how close the castles are.
I think what went unmentioned in the economic consideration is that due to being able to move on to imperial age after building just one krepost it means you can go to imperial having spent less villagers on stone
First time i felt that softl did no do in-depth analysis! 1) attacks when garrisoned - is there any change in attack based on army inside ? 2) elevation hills and cliff 3) fire rate and attack spread 4) hidden bonus attack
It's worth noting that if you build as many towers as you can for the same Stone as you build a castle, and your enemy sends in an army he has to destroy each Tower individually, whereas if the castle is gone all of your arrows have stopped shooting. Not sure if that makes sense, hopefully I'm getting the point across that I'm trying to make.
one missing factor: footprint, as in the space they cover can be a downside and uppside depending on cirkumstances. normaly your first castle will be in an important spot, the fact that a few vilagers can stand at the other side of it and be relatively save from archer fire and it being so dam big you got the time to garison them is a slight strength for the castle
They’re also way more intimidating, when I see a castle I know I need rams, trebs or bcs, a few towers though can crumble against just knights or infantry without heavy losses to the attacker. Then again the defender should also have an army and military buildings but yes
@@MaryamMaqdisi if you winn a trade aganst a rushing player you can punish that buy taking their map controll away buy removing towers, castles less so. they produce units temselves an are thus never quite undefended. they do go down rather fast later on with 3+ trebs hitting em tho
yea i mean there is really nothing that compares to it. but tbh, i feel like defensive buildings are overestimated. they are really not that hard to take down in most cases. in most cases, the armies themselves are the bigger factor
@@jurgnobs1308 Absolutly agree on that! Still the ability to snipe most bombard cannons, pump out a few TTKs to deal with rams or incoming melee units and denfend with your own BBC with Siege Engineers against trebs makes them ridiculously durable 11
@@jurgnobs1308 When you are attacked its a bonus in battle you dont want to miss out on. Especially towers in feudal or castles in castle age can give you a huge advantage in reaction time and the battle itself. In imperial they are more like a passive bonus behind your army and can harass raiding units.
The cost of Crenelations makes that less so, unfortunately. You're looking at an extra 400 stone investment, that's almost as much as a castle all on its own, meaning your damage output will always be something like 1/3rd LESS than other civs. And that's before you even consider the lack of Bracer, which substantially reduces their damage against enemies with pierce armor. That's an extra 12.5% less damage against enemies like knights. Less castles with less damage? Hard to rate that as 'best', imo.
One thing I kinda missed in the video is that more towers (Bombard/Yasama/Keep), can fit in the same space of 1 Krepost or Castle. Since a Krepost takes up 9 tiles and a Castle takes up 12 tiles, filling this space with towers could be an interesting comparison. Especially considering Bombard Tower and Yasama having a better 'DPM per resource spent' and 'HP per resource spent' than the Krepost and Castle. The Bombard tower still will have the overkill issue ofc.
From my experience: bombard tower is the coolest and the weakest of them all. Even AI dodges those slow moving cannonballs between attacks. What's more those towers have no splash damage (or its incredibly small), which makes them useless vs an army. My guess is either fully loaded archer tower or just a castle
If only you had seen the horror of the original AoC bombard towers which dealt MELEEE DAMAGE. Either you had trebuchets and an army to defend them or there was no way to take those beasts out
@@diegeigergarnele7975 in all honesty i only played aoe2 long before that change. What was it.... 16 years ago? Havent touched it since. So yea, i remember them at their prime. They weren't as godly as you remember :P
@@diegeigergarnele7975 It should. Otherwise, why bother to build them? All this time I thought bombard tower have area damage and good against ram. But with what shown in this video, they are useless.
Teuton calculation is easy, +150 DPM per garrisoned infantry, or up to +1500 to all values except bombard towers, and +3000 to castles with 20 garrisoned. About double that for Hand Cannoneers. Trouble is you start running into issues of overkill there as well, for example garrisoning 20 units in castles actually reduces their DPM because it ends up shooting arrows that hit the ground after the target dies. Frank castles do 33% more damage per resource than standard castles, again, easy. For koreans, tech costs weren't included so not relevant to the comparison.
Well, you could technically fire multiple cannonballs. But might get a bit too complicated for this overview. Though while franks, kelts, etc. would modify the list a little (chinese, too, probably), koreans might actually have an interesting variable here, in the extreme range. More coverage if resources are scarce, and they are extremely good against seaborne attacks. Then again, don't we all know that teutons build castles and koreans build towers?
Can you like make an updated video of this? I wonder if this all stayed the same after 3 years of patches, also can you include some more unique techs like Britons with their +2 tower attack due to yeomen, teutons +33% castle/tower atttack speed (stronghold), and maybe even considering garrisoned units?
What about Briton towers and Celtic castles and towers? Also Turks BBTs Teutons castles and Korean towers only have extra range so the damage output should be he same, but they could be more usefull in some situations like against bombard cannons.
Yeah I wondering why he would include japanese tech but not any other defensive upgrade tech? You could even include up upgrades like Byzantines or Chinese.
They also save significant resources on researching techs and, in the case of Koreans, have all of your towers instantly upgrade upon hitting Castle/Imp is very nice.
I think people are really missing out with Briton towers. Against Elite Skirmishers, for example, longbows only do 3 damage per shot, but a tower does 8. That means a longbow loses 72% of its damage, and garrisoning in a tower means they lose 47% instead. Similar results against Knights. That's a 35% increase in damage!
"Hi im spirit of the law, i am not biased. Here are the defensives, one of them being a keep with a unique ability, even though there are others who also have a unique effect to them that might change gameplay, im just going to ignore them. Conveniently, this unique keep is from my favourite civ, the japanese in case you did not know." - Age of Empires weeb propably. Still like his videos.
@@91rumpnisse To be fair, most of those bonuses are relatively small compared to the different options he showed here. For example, in the test he provided, a Briton tower would only end up doing about 480 dps vs 420, which isn't really a big difference compared to Yasama at nearly a thousand. For the most part, they can be considered comparable to standard towers, while Yasama towers cannot.
@@RoulicisThe garrisoning as such is also a big factor when considering anti-raiding, where double garrisoning comes in handy as well and beefs them up.
@@matt_9112 Yep, but as far as Dps goes, Teutons towers starts getting an advantage the moment they garrison enough people inside. Which means that from 0 to 5 units garrisoned, their towers are completely generic
Solid video. By normal person standards, but for Spirit of the Law? I am concerned about his wellbeing and hope he's hanging in there. Where's the comparison to town centers? Where's the factoring of outstanding civilization buffs for defensive buildings? Where's the care to stipulate about the civ bonuses inherent to the Krepost and Yamasa towers compared to generic civs? If I'm playing the Japanese does this comparison hold wholly true, or do generic civs have better/worse castles? Where's the in-depth situational analysis for best use and placement of the structures relative to factors like opposing civilizations, map style, the current age, your army composition, or construction time? In defensive play, how does using defensive structures compare to not using them? Is a stone wall with archers a better choice?? What about specific unit type countering effectiveness? No talk about the implications of research buffs?! And not even a mention of relevance for naval defense?? Something's not right, I tell you what... 👉
I think he missed those for brevity. Factoring in hoardings, Byzantine bonus, range and chemistry upgrades, types of units you'll be going up against etc. would make this easily a 20-30 minute video Maybe a part II is coming
not sure if i missed it, but the tower also takes less space to build so it gives you higher resource concetration in a given area, unlike krepost or castle
I think it's worth a mention that you could transition from regular towers into Yasama towers quite easily via 1 tech if you're Japanese. most other civs have a bit more trouble with the transition though.
It would be nice to see with equal resources how do they perform against hussars rushes (let's say, in a couple of minutes) defending the same area with villagers and farms
When it comes to the bombard tower, would prefer the time in the early history of the game where it did its full damage vs rams... Also if you are willing to spend population you can make archery range units and put those in the tower for extra arrows.
hi sotl, i dont think measuring dmg output vs 1 pa targets makes much sense since late imp raiding partys will almost always consist of high pierce armor units.
Another important effect not considered is population room. Kreposts cost 350 but give the same pop space as a castle, or 4 houses. Subtracting that cost gives you a real cost of 250S, and a real Damage per Resources of 7.34.
I think any of the Cannon based units and buildings should totally destroy any wood based seige weapon, including rams. Seems unrealistic not to be that way especially given the cost and long game required to unlock gunpowder units.
I think you should run the tests again, but this time with moving cavalry on patrol, instead of stationary units, as per the spirit of raiding, like with 10 paladins. I think the bombard tower would perform the worst here, and castles would kill the paladins the fastest. Prove me wrong SOTL :)
Since you already mentioned that the range is measured from the buildings edges, I think its important to consider that the castle covers an area with a diameter of 10 while the other buildings only cover an area with a diameter of 8.5.
4:10 error. Krepost has smaller footprint so its range "diameter" is 17 tiles versus the 20 of the castle. 18% more coverage for the castle. This decreases to 13% with bracer.
I think he meant relative to towers. Having -1 range but 3x3 footprint instead of the towers 1x1 will result in exactly the same area. But yes, much less than castles that are 4x4 and also +1 range.
I made a pretty good fortification that takes up a 3x3 tile space. Arranged in any way, there are 3 bombard towers and 6 keeps with units garrisoned in. Teutons for their 2x garrison amount can simply go all keeps and Koreans for their increased range are the best for these. They can average 1260 damage per volley (1350 for Teutons if they go keeps only). They are very resource-heavy and if you want to increase the firepower by adding garrisoned units it is even worse, taking up population limit. However if you're only concerned with fortifying your team it's a pretty good fortification. It can shred rams and elephants and is only countered with Trebuchets, which can then be taken out by hit-and-run cavalry. Paired with castles, it is pretty much unstoppable and is also pretty intimidating.
Should have done the damage test against units with 6, 7 and 8 pierce armor, since those are the values of the primary late game raiding units of hussars, paladins and elite eagles.
@@Salnax You're looking at only half the picture. The video was about raiding protection in part. A tower with a larger range protects a larger area against attacks requiring fewer for full coverage, raids generally don't try to take down towers. Also extra range allows static fortifications to hit units that would sometimes outrange them as well.
The nerf of bombard towers was and is ridiculous. It's a super expensive tower that needs two super expensive techs to unlock and they are hard countered by trebs anyway. Un-nerf the bombard tower!
The damage per minute for bombard tower doesn’t account for the tech Arquebus so the number is slightly off. Though it’s barely noticeable so overall the DPM still stands
@@demiserofd more garrison space for villagers and +3 range is still a good investment. Also it works when you create teutonic knights and garrison them instead of sending them one by one to a barrage of arrows or onager shots, until you have enough to effectively attack. Although i respect your opinion, i still think teutonic castles are a competitive choice
I think this video can now get an update. I always wonder what to build around the farms. Wondering how arrow slits impact this. I would love a comparison against the different raiding units like, knights/chevalier, light cav/hussar, step lancers and cav archers. 1 castle vs 5 keeps?
Some other things up for consideration are blacksmith upgrades, I believe they also add range and damage to castles and towers. I think a very good defensive civ would be the Teutons on account of increased garrison space in towers and their unique upgrade for the castle, increasing its range.
with the tower bombard there is a big impact at the beginning of an attack because it's releasing a lot for damage in one hit, it's useful if the ennemy go back juste after
There are additional ways in which size matters. For smaller buildings: + Concentrated firepower + Harder to hit with trebuchets and onagers + Fewer enemy melee units fit around their circumference + Fewer wall blocks are needed to give extra static protection from melee units - Fewer villagers can repair at once. - Repairing villagers are more exposed, particularly to onager fire against a tower. - Less "teleportation" advantage. - Less walling effect. - Less area coverage at same range, but + enemy units also need longer range or shorter distance to hit the smaller building. This can be significant in some cases.
the best defensive building is the house.
Not even the owner can get inside.
Laughs in Khmer
haha so good.
CFV Okay I admit this was he funniest.
then hun's defence is most invincible one kek
600th like here pogchamp
0:22 that sick 360° from the boyar just to die 2 seconds later
~You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record baby, right round round round~
Gotta go out with style
He almost did 360 noscope
F
Boyar: Ight ima commit die
Random villager shouting: " *do a 360!* "
Best defence is goth offence.
Defend in the Dark Age with tower? Non-goth non-militia spam could never!
*Goth Game Plan*
**happy infantry noises*
its not just about infantry,its only about infantry.
Everything outside your TC range is goth militia.
Bombard towers making no damage to rams never made sense to me. It's a bloody canon ball!!! How is that less effective than arrows agaisnt a covered siege engine???
as a kid i always thought that bombard towers are great against rams bc of what you said.
Before the Conquerors 1.0c (I think?) patch, bombard towers dealt full damage to rams. Borderline balance nightmare.
@@RandomBeing They used to be. Before The Conquerors Bombard towers dealt Melee damage, but it got changed to ranged damage as they tended to hard counter everything except trebs.
@@nikkar69 a balanced must be reached. Neither full damage or ultra nerfed arrow damage. Half damage can be a good start point.
Hope some civ have unit teach that add Melee damage to the Bombar Tower just small one... like 20 - 30 damage :v Vietnamese may be to remove paper money and some thing for them to counter high Pirce Armor Unit ( if the dev dont want get them some hand cannoneer). It very sad that your civ have a chinese invention as unique teach rather than gunpowder teach...
I think that since you were including Yasama towers and Kreposts you should have considered Frank Castles
or teuton castles
Frank castle just cheap. Not so impressive. No bracer hurts.
@@jurgnobs1308 The problem with Teuton castles is that they dont get higher hp, cheaper cost or attack. It would make the comparison harder
@@estellebright2579 yes it is. 25% cheaper is quite a lot (and SotL was considering cost-efficiency too)
@@felipea1399 uh what? they get more range, they get more damage because of the garrison that does more and so on. it really isnt that hard. they are just straight up without any doubt the strongest castles in the game
Best building to protect villagers from raiding - Feitoria. Villagers work in overseas colonies of Portugal;)
Request: "Which is the best defensive civilization" up next.
Yes!
byz ez
I bet he will say the japanese
obviously byzantines
Teutons, by far!
Didn't even mention the Outpost... pfft.
Would be interesting if the outpost would be changed to have 1 garrison slot and can shoot if garrisoned with a worker/archer.
Feudal age outpost rush! :D
@@Kalenz1234 that's a good idea !
the best type of tower
@@Kalenz1234 give it as a bonus to a civ. Maybe Portuguese? Haha
*Palisades
As a Bulgarian I gotta say your pronunciation of Krepost is actually pretty good. Krepost literally means fortress. There are no true castles (as in very fortified houses of feudal lords and then military instalations) in Bulgaria but there are like 4000 fortresses which are the opposite of the castle mainly military but could provide housing for a lord. If you see something with towers and crenelations sticking up on hill here it's actually a Krepost. The model of the Krepost in the game is actually a modified Hrelja's Tower in Rila Monastery build in 1342. ;)
What a nice history lesson.
Lovely little Bulgarian history sammich
Well this is gonna need an updated version with the Donjon now
Is me or this whole vid is SotL trying to make us play with japanese? 11
He always tried to when he can 11
haha 11 haha
I'd like to play with a Japanese too tbh
"Is me or this whole -vid- *channel* is SotL trying to make us play with japanese?"
Fixed that for you. And yes. yes it is.
@@SpiritOfTheLaw "imagine being a fan of the japanese"
This post was made by the goth gang.
I think there's some satisfaction in having multiple bombard towers in a small space with cannon balls everywhere.
an important thing of the bombard tower: The canonball wrecking the poor unit it hits is damn satisfying.
Spirit on the law : most known Japenese fanboy
Also Spirit of the law : " I'm starting to think Japense might be good"
@@aespa690 oh come on it was just a chill joke. We all have seen someone who go crasy woth Japenese towers. We know it's great
@@aespa690 what i mean is : i don't know if it's accurate and i don't care. I just made a bad joke. If you want to debate, go somewhere else please.
😂
@@aespa690 just furring 3 arrows with our garrison units it's hard to compete with olmosr every civ
@@aespa690 you posted that many times
"You know those arrow slits that we use to allow archers to shoot at attackers from buildings?"
"Yeah"
"LET'S HAVE MORE!!!"
-Japanese engineer, CE 1354
A typical Japanese tower: cdn.architecturelab.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/06_Gijs-Van-Vaerenbergh_%C2%A9Mine-Daelemans1.jpg
Hahahahahha
You should also have mentioned the "wall" effect of each of these. A castle effectively is a 4x4 wall where as a tower is just a 1x1 wall. That won't change the numbers a ton but is important for players like the Goths who don't get walls as a way to partially enclose an area. Also I'd like to see how much masonry and the hoardings upgrade effect the longevity of these.
5:35 "... to secure a really important location"
Important Location: ENEMY BASE
To be fair, that is a pretty important location
A very important point to note here is that Towers have the armor class "stone defenses" while castles and kreposts dont. This means Bombarc Cannons (+40), Tarkans (+12), Elephants (+7/10(Elite)), Villagers (+6), Ballista/Archer Elephants(+3/+4(Elite)) Obisdian arrows (+6), Sappers (+15). deal significantly more damage to towers than to Castles and Kreposts.
There are a few considerations. For example, Castles have a much longer firing period, so if the first arrow of a volley kills the target, it has a long time where it's firing at nothing. Also, it's important to consider effectiveness when garrisoned; castles just tend to overkill more, while keeps, with less arrows each, tend to just become more effective.
One important factor not touched on here is that a castle keeps doing full damage until completely destroyed, while towers decrease in damage as you whittle down their numbers. If your enemy fails a push and does 3/4 of the total damage needed to take out your defences then the castle has not lost any of its firepower while the towers have lost 3/4 of theirs.
Hi Spirit, great vid as always. I think given we're looking at post-imp defensive buildings, you have to consider how they stand up against trebs. Trebs often miss towers, whereas they always hit castles. That should be factored in to their longevity.
Love your vids!
I don't even play age of empires, I just really enjoy your way of presenting information. Thanks for making these videos.
"Starting to think Japanese are pretty good"... joke was so genius I couldn't even laugh.
Defensive buildings, for the people who want to keep playing AOE, but still want to maintain that quarantine
Another factor to consider maybe space efficiency? Like we can build 4 towers in the same space of castle. That is especially important in special maps like arena or zombies maps.
Can i just say how amazing your content and your passion about this game is ? I used to play AEO 2 nearly 10 years ago when i was in high school with my friends. But i was never really good at it. Recently i wanted to get back into it and hooked up into your educational videos. Ever since then i've been binge watching them. It's awesome to see how many strategies and effort you need to put into this game that i had no idea. Thank you. Even your 3-4 year old videos helped me a lot.
What about teutons castles and with crenellations, celt castles and towers with strongholds and the the factor that the castles of incas and franks are cheeper? Aren't those things change things up?
Teuton castles actually do quite a bit less damage, since they lack Bracer and have to spend a lot of stone on Crenelations. Sure they cover more area, but that also means less castles per tile so less damage. If you count crenelations as about -1 castles, plus bracer, Teutons end up doing only like 55% the DPS of other civs, even worse compared to ones with bonuses like Franks. Say you've got 2000 stone to use, Teutons get 2 castles, Franks get four, and twice the damage output!
@@demiserofd remember this applies to TC, Keeps and Bombard towers and allows any garrisoned unit to fire arrows from it
@@Snowfireblues Not bombard towers, gotta have gunpowder units garrisoned for that.
For the rest, they become the equivalent of a vanilla crossbowman. Which, in the imperial age, is...kinda meh.
@@demiserofd Still worth looking at, for behind the walls kind of scenarios
SnowFireBlues bbt don’t have good accuracy, so garrisoning hand cannoneer just waste a lot of damage as cannon balls miss quite a bit.
Love the defense topic. Would like to see more on defensive setups, walling etc.
I love the Krepost in the castle age. You can build 2 of them for 1 castle price, it is sturdy enough not to be taken down in the castle age (need lot of rams or trebs), and 2 for 1 means you can lock down TWO locations on the map instead of one. you can guarantee defending all weaker points, or really constrain the opponents room of expansion.
also pump out konniks twice as fast if you need to
+1 on that .. kreposts make a lot of sense in castle age ...
why would you use a single castle or krepost to lock down an area anyways? I almost always use at least a pair of castles as a gate to most areas.
@@jasonsumma1530 are you telling me you place down a double castle in a competitive game?
@@cengiztaner4754 I never did a multiplayer game with the most recent version let alone competitive. Personally, in the solo games, I do find castles to be the best for defense even if they do cost a decent amount of stone. As for the double castle, usually it is the cross fire which helps depending on how close the castles are.
happy to see you updating regular content while you're working on the villager pathing mechanics after building a TC or camp/mill.
I think what went unmentioned in the economic consideration is that due to being able to move on to imperial age after building just one krepost it means you can go to imperial having spent less villagers on stone
First time i felt that softl did no do in-depth analysis!
1) attacks when garrisoned - is there any change in attack based on army inside ?
2) elevation hills and cliff
3) fire rate and attack spread
4) hidden bonus attack
It's worth noting that if you build as many towers as you can for the same Stone as you build a castle, and your enemy sends in an army he has to destroy each Tower individually, whereas if the castle is gone all of your arrows have stopped shooting. Not sure if that makes sense, hopefully I'm getting the point across that I'm trying to make.
Yes but keeps cost wood too. 5 keep cost 625 stone and 400 wood, calculate that and you get 2.5 towers, so well 2.
What about harbours? They should be considered above all the mentioned because they are trash buildings
Harbours after the nerf just don’t do enough damage to units. Trash for sure but u can only build it on water, further limiting its usefulness.
Well, Malay harbours could be interesting...
one missing factor: footprint, as in the space they cover can be a downside and uppside depending on cirkumstances. normaly your first castle will be in an important spot, the fact that a few vilagers can stand at the other side of it and be relatively save from archer fire and it being so dam big you got the time to garison them is a slight strength for the castle
They’re also way more intimidating, when I see a castle I know I need rams, trebs or bcs, a few towers though can crumble against just knights or infantry without heavy losses to the attacker. Then again the defender should also have an army and military buildings but yes
@@MaryamMaqdisi if you winn a trade aganst a rushing player you can punish that buy taking their map controll away buy removing towers, castles less so. they produce units temselves an are thus never quite undefended.
they do go down rather fast later on with 3+ trebs hitting em tho
Love your videos! This game is my favorite game of all time
Teutonic castles with crenellations are the best defensive structure with the unique A2AD capabilities in my experience.
yea i mean there is really nothing that compares to it.
but tbh, i feel like defensive buildings are overestimated. they are really not that hard to take down in most cases. in most cases, the armies themselves are the bigger factor
@@jurgnobs1308 Absolutly agree on that! Still the ability to snipe most bombard cannons, pump out a few TTKs to deal with rams or incoming melee units and denfend with your own BBC with Siege Engineers against trebs makes them ridiculously durable 11
@@jurgnobs1308 When you are attacked its a bonus in battle you dont want to miss out on. Especially towers in feudal or castles in castle age can give you a huge advantage in reaction time and the battle itself. In imperial they are more like a passive bonus behind your army and can harass raiding units.
@@schmid1.079 true, in castle age they do make a huge difference.
The cost of Crenelations makes that less so, unfortunately. You're looking at an extra 400 stone investment, that's almost as much as a castle all on its own, meaning your damage output will always be something like 1/3rd LESS than other civs. And that's before you even consider the lack of Bracer, which substantially reduces their damage against enemies with pierce armor. That's an extra 12.5% less damage against enemies like knights.
Less castles with less damage? Hard to rate that as 'best', imo.
One thing I kinda missed in the video is that more towers (Bombard/Yasama/Keep), can fit in the same space of 1 Krepost or Castle.
Since a Krepost takes up 9 tiles and a Castle takes up 12 tiles, filling this space with towers could be an interesting comparison. Especially considering Bombard Tower and Yasama having a better 'DPM per resource spent' and 'HP per resource spent' than the Krepost and Castle. The Bombard tower still will have the overkill issue ofc.
From my experience: bombard tower is the coolest and the weakest of them all. Even AI dodges those slow moving cannonballs between attacks. What's more those towers have no splash damage (or its incredibly small), which makes them useless vs an army.
My guess is either fully loaded archer tower or just a castle
If only you had seen the horror of the original AoC bombard towers which dealt MELEEE DAMAGE.
Either you had trebuchets and an army to defend them or there was no way to take those beasts out
@@diegeigergarnele7975 in all honesty i only played aoe2 long before that change. What was it.... 16 years ago? Havent touched it since. So yea, i remember them at their prime. They weren't as godly as you remember :P
@@diegeigergarnele7975 It should. Otherwise, why bother to build them? All this time I thought bombard tower have area damage and good against ram. But with what shown in this video, they are useless.
@@saberswordsmen1 i dont think they changed the rate of fire of bbts, idk maybe i missed smth
it's semi-good against slower units, especially elephants due to their size
Dude you are awesome. Such detailed statistics on towers. This is superb.
idk why not include other civs special buildings (Franks, Teutons, and maybe even Koreans since they save all the techs)
Teuton calculation is easy, +150 DPM per garrisoned infantry, or up to +1500 to all values except bombard towers, and +3000 to castles with 20 garrisoned. About double that for Hand Cannoneers. Trouble is you start running into issues of overkill there as well, for example garrisoning 20 units in castles actually reduces their DPM because it ends up shooting arrows that hit the ground after the target dies.
Frank castles do 33% more damage per resource than standard castles, again, easy.
For koreans, tech costs weren't included so not relevant to the comparison.
Well, you could technically fire multiple cannonballs. But might get a bit too complicated for this overview.
Though while franks, kelts, etc. would modify the list a little (chinese, too, probably), koreans might actually have an interesting variable here, in the extreme range. More coverage if resources are scarce, and they are extremely good against seaborne attacks.
Then again, don't we all know that teutons build castles and koreans build towers?
Can you like make an updated video of this? I wonder if this all stayed the same after 3 years of patches, also can you include some more unique techs like Britons with their +2 tower attack due to yeomen, teutons +33% castle/tower atttack speed (stronghold), and maybe even considering garrisoned units?
Ive heared that Chi Ko Nus give towers way less boost than expected while giving bombard towers a huge boost
What about Briton towers and Celtic castles and towers?
Also Turks BBTs Teutons castles and Korean towers only have extra range so the damage output should be he same, but they could be more usefull in some situations like against bombard cannons.
Yeah I wondering why he would include japanese tech but not any other defensive upgrade tech? You could even include up upgrades like Byzantines or Chinese.
They also save significant resources on researching techs and, in the case of Koreans, have all of your towers instantly upgrade upon hitting Castle/Imp is very nice.
I think people are really missing out with Briton towers. Against Elite Skirmishers, for example, longbows only do 3 damage per shot, but a tower does 8. That means a longbow loses 72% of its damage, and garrisoning in a tower means they lose 47% instead. Similar results against Knights. That's a 35% increase in damage!
"Hi im spirit of the law, i am not biased. Here are the defensives, one of them being a keep with a unique ability, even though there are others who also have a unique effect to them that might change gameplay, im just going to ignore them. Conveniently, this unique keep is from my favourite civ, the japanese in case you did not know." - Age of Empires weeb propably. Still like his videos.
@@91rumpnisse To be fair, most of those bonuses are relatively small compared to the different options he showed here. For example, in the test he provided, a Briton tower would only end up doing about 480 dps vs 420, which isn't really a big difference compared to Yasama at nearly a thousand. For the most part, they can be considered comparable to standard towers, while Yasama towers cannot.
What about Teutonic towers and castles?
I think the Turkish Bombard tower is my fav defense building.
Teutonic towers advantages are only when you garrison units inside, meaning their bonus isn't consistent
@@RoulicisThe garrisoning as such is also a big factor when considering anti-raiding, where double garrisoning comes in handy as well and beefs them up.
@@matt_9112 Yep, but as far as Dps goes, Teutons towers starts getting an advantage the moment they garrison enough people inside.
Which means that from 0 to 5 units garrisoned, their towers are completely generic
@@RoulicisThe I'm not arguing that they are the best, but they should be included, eapecially garrisoning even was a separate point in the analysis.
Solid video.
By normal person standards, but for Spirit of the Law? I am concerned about his wellbeing and hope he's hanging in there.
Where's the comparison to town centers?
Where's the factoring of outstanding civilization buffs for defensive buildings?
Where's the care to stipulate about the civ bonuses inherent to the Krepost and Yamasa towers compared to generic civs? If I'm playing the Japanese does this comparison hold wholly true, or do generic civs have better/worse castles?
Where's the in-depth situational analysis for best use and placement of the structures relative to factors like opposing civilizations, map style, the current age, your army composition, or construction time?
In defensive play, how does using defensive structures compare to not using them? Is a stone wall with archers a better choice??
What about specific unit type countering effectiveness?
No talk about the implications of research buffs?!
And not even a mention of relevance for naval defense??
Something's not right, I tell you what... 👉
I think he missed those for brevity. Factoring in hoardings, Byzantine bonus, range and chemistry upgrades, types of units you'll be going up against etc. would make this easily a 20-30 minute video
Maybe a part II is coming
4:40 I love how that bombard tower is just dumping boulders on the ambitious ram.
Instant click when I see UA-cam email.
Best content creator ever.
So glad the intro is back 🙌🏼
I definitely see either best defensive civ, Bulgarian overview, or a remake of the byzantine overview.
Place your bets
All in rapid succession
not sure if i missed it, but the tower also takes less space to build so it gives you higher resource concetration in a given area, unlike krepost or castle
Why wouldn’t the bombard tower destroy the battering rams the easiest? I mean those things are supposed to protect from arrows not heavy stones
In older Versions bombard towers do ragular damage.
I think it's worth a mention that you could transition from regular towers into Yasama towers quite easily via 1 tech if you're Japanese. most other civs have a bit more trouble with the transition though.
It would be nice to see with equal resources how do they perform against hussars rushes (let's say, in a couple of minutes) defending the same area with villagers and farms
If you ever re-do this video, would love to see the Malian Tigui TCs compared.
When it comes to the bombard tower, would prefer the time in the early history of the game where it did its full damage vs rams...
Also if you are willing to spend population you can make archery range units and put those in the tower for extra arrows.
We need an update on this, after Sicilian donjons and Slavic Detinec
hi sotl, i dont think measuring dmg output vs 1 pa targets makes much sense since late imp raiding partys will almost always consist of high pierce armor units.
And measuring damage against rams is equally facile since even villagers would be more effective than resorting to Yasama fire.
Yeah, should check damage vs 6 to 8 pierce armor units (hussar, pala, elite eagle)
i like to out keeps on the backside of the castle that is harder to target. it also makes the castles appear to have towers in the back
SotL “The last consideration is the garrison space”
Me “laughs in tectonic”
Double cannoned bombards anyone?
I think you mean "Teutonic." Tectonic is what causes earthquakes.
@@punbug4721 that's pretty good at knocking down buildings too
Another important effect not considered is population room. Kreposts cost 350 but give the same pop space as a castle, or 4 houses. Subtracting that cost gives you a real cost of 250S, and a real Damage per Resources of 7.34.
What about TCs? Like Malian,Persian or Teuton TC’s? Love the vid btw
I think any of the Cannon based units and buildings should totally destroy any wood based seige weapon, including rams. Seems unrealistic not to be that way especially given the cost and long game required to unlock gunpowder units.
I think you should run the tests again, but this time with moving cavalry on patrol, instead of stationary units, as per the spirit of raiding, like with 10 paladins. I think the bombard tower would perform the worst here, and castles would kill the paladins the fastest. Prove me wrong SOTL :)
Confirmation Bias: The Video =P
Joking aside, great video, love your stuff SotL, keep up the awesome work, cheers.
3:56 i see what u did there :D
I dont
@@Coolbreeze8893 japanese are his favorite civ to begin with. And i like those kind of jokes:D
@@The_Oferredo Yeah im dumb!!! I should have probably thought about it for a second lol
Since you already mentioned that the range is measured from the buildings edges, I think its important to consider that the castle covers an area with a diameter of 10 while the other buildings only cover an area with a diameter of 8.5.
4:10 error. Krepost has smaller footprint so its range "diameter" is 17 tiles versus the 20 of the castle. 18% more coverage for the castle. This decreases to 13% with bracer.
I think he meant relative to towers. Having -1 range but 3x3 footprint instead of the towers 1x1 will result in exactly the same area. But yes, much less than castles that are 4x4 and also +1 range.
@@chronographer Oh, good point.
6:07 Love how the projectile from the Bombard Tower just bounces off the Champion as he walks away totally unfazed. 😅😂🤣
I just can't get used to the shortened intro, please bring the old one back :(
Best are Yasama towers, use arbalesters inside
Bombard towers with infantry inside also avoids ram risk
You forgot to analyze the most important thing: tile-efficiency.
I made a pretty good fortification that takes up a 3x3 tile space.
Arranged in any way, there are 3 bombard towers and 6 keeps with units garrisoned in. Teutons for their 2x garrison amount can simply go all keeps and Koreans for their increased range are the best for these. They can average 1260 damage per volley (1350 for Teutons if they go keeps only). They are very resource-heavy and if you want to increase the firepower by adding garrisoned units it is even worse, taking up population limit. However if you're only concerned with fortifying your team it's a pretty good fortification. It can shred rams and elephants and is only countered with Trebuchets, which can then be taken out by hit-and-run cavalry. Paired with castles, it is pretty much unstoppable and is also pretty intimidating.
ofc it had to be japanese, right, sotl of the law? totally unbiased
Spirit of the law of the law
if Japanese specific towers were included, I would have liked to see Malian Tigui town centers as well
Needs a Donjon update!!
I wonder if an up to date version of this video is warranted given all the changes we’ve seen since it came out!
Should have done the damage test against units with 6, 7 and 8 pierce armor, since those are the values of the primary late game raiding units of hussars, paladins and elite eagles.
Fact: In Age of Kings and the early days of the conquerors expansion, bombard towers did MELEE damage making them much more effective against rams.
I was shocked when I played HD. I thought it was a bug. That change was crap
It feels like you should have discussed about range more
That’s only going to account for one extra attack. Half the time units fight towers, they’re at Melee range anyway.
@@Salnax You're looking at only half the picture. The video was about raiding protection in part. A tower with a larger range protects a larger area against attacks requiring fewer for full coverage, raids generally don't try to take down towers. Also extra range allows static fortifications to hit units that would sometimes outrange them as well.
The new intro looks sick!
I have a slight suspicion that the author might be a bit biased towards Japanese.
The nerf of bombard towers was and is ridiculous. It's a super expensive tower that needs two super expensive techs to unlock and they are hard countered by trebs anyway. Un-nerf the bombard tower!
Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here. - Spirit of the Law 2055
spirit of the la hire 1443
@@meifray I wish he would start saying this again
I would put towers all over the map.If I ever get to play with us again I’m going to upgrade that strategy by adding more castles into the mix.
If your find to talk about the Japanese unique towers why not others like Tuetons (garrisons) or byzantines (hp)?
Because he lives Japanese and Yasama makes a bigger difference than the others
The damage per minute for bombard tower doesn’t account for the tech Arquebus so the number is slightly off. Though it’s barely noticeable so overall the DPM still stands
"I'm starting to think japanese are pretty good"
Teutons: HOLD MY +3 RANGE CASTLES AND ARROW SHOOTING INFANTRY
French castles: Allow us to introduce ourselves!
Trouble is, garrisoned infantry are only about as good as FU elite skirms, so not really a great investment.
@@demiserofd more garrison space for villagers and +3 range is still a good investment. Also it works when you create teutonic knights and garrison them instead of sending them one by one to a barrage of arrows or onager shots, until you have enough to effectively attack. Although i respect your opinion, i still think teutonic castles are a competitive choice
Nice to take a break from the Corona and watch some AoE
Best Defensive building is one with a 50% decrease of corona virus
Really wanted to see how tc stacks up, cause its important def building aswell.
you forgot the celts, teuton's bonuses, shame on you spirit. Also, please add closed captions
Thanks for the intro, I really love it!
An entire video for all the cowards out there!
"Walls walls, no balls." -- silverboi
Nice analysis, very helpful! Can you do a video on defensive strategies maybe? Just a suggestion
I think this video can now get an update. I always wonder what to build around the farms.
Wondering how arrow slits impact this. I would love a comparison against the different raiding units like, knights/chevalier, light cav/hussar, step lancers and cav archers. 1 castle vs 5 keeps?
Some other things up for consideration are blacksmith upgrades, I believe they also add range and damage to castles and towers. I think a very good defensive civ would be the Teutons on account of increased garrison space in towers and their unique upgrade for the castle, increasing its range.
with the tower bombard there is a big impact at the beginning of an attack because it's releasing a lot for damage in one hit, it's useful if the ennemy go back juste after
There are additional ways in which size matters. For smaller buildings:
+ Concentrated firepower
+ Harder to hit with trebuchets and onagers
+ Fewer enemy melee units fit around their circumference
+ Fewer wall blocks are needed to give extra static protection from melee units
- Fewer villagers can repair at once.
- Repairing villagers are more exposed, particularly to onager fire against a tower.
- Less "teleportation" advantage.
- Less walling effect.
- Less area coverage at same range, but
+ enemy units also need longer range or shorter distance to hit the smaller building. This can be significant in some cases.
The building icons still have the Windows XP wallpaper in DE?
This really needs to be updated due to the addition of the Donjon