@@MrTohawk Well, i wouldn't fight very well after taking a spear through my stomach. Getting my hp would certainly add extra value to my fighting power!
Also consider this: are you, as a pikeman, more likely to charge headlong into a battle with Frankish paladins knowing there is a chance your wounds will be healed?
I remember when i'd stockpile 4000 of each resource, slowly start building an army of 40-50 mangudai, 4 monks, 5 villagers and 4 trebs, all from 1 production building and heal all my units after each skirmish. I'd feel sooo bad if i let one my people die :C
I always heal up between each engagement if my forces aren’t forced to fight again! It saves me lots of gold, I feel guilty letting my guys die on purpose.
the cost of your first monk: 90 gold the cost of herbal medicine: 350 gold the knowledge that your units will be at 100% instead of only a fraction of their potential health: priceless, there are some thing gold can buy for anything else we pick teutons.
The serious weakness of his Squarespace ad ideas lately has washed it all out. "Spirit of the Cha-cha?" How in the hell do you come up with that from "Spirit of the Law?" "Spirit of the Dance Hall" was sitting right there. He should be shamed, not celebrated.
I know this focuses more on multiplayer and skirmish, and a lot of people don't even touch the campaign, but having recently played some of the campaigns (after mostly ignoring it for 20+ years), a monk's healing abilities are invaluable in scenarios where you have few resources or no base. Every unit is valuable in that situation, and monks can turn the tide of it significantly.
Looking forward to the sexy forward castle herbal medicine cavalry archer ball meta in 1v1s. Raid the enemy with the same units that generate you value by getting damaged. Hide from spears behind castle walls. It's great!
Time is the most important resourse in the game, you cant just have your units hanging in the castle WHILE the enemy ravages the contryside. Not gonna happen; sounds good, does not work.
@@ahuzel Don't forget the garrisoned units keep attacking. You don't have to sacrifice damage for healing, just have the castle in the right place and you can have both.
If you think about it... Monk is the most cost effective unit ever? They can generate infinite gold through relics and they can make an army worth many times more.
@@satyakisil9711 yes but this seems to imply that those situations, though rare, are a MASSIVE eco boost for 30 seconds. It seems very specifically good with Cav Archers - the entire group loses more value when one dies - as he says and this might be a new tactic. He seems to have discovered a gem there.
@Eric Rogers I can't figure out how to give villagers an aggressive stance via the genie editor, cause it seems to make them unable to gather resources if you change the attribute that let's them do that
actually, now that i think about it, monasteries should also heal units, and should be the highest healing rate imo, or maybe give a buff to healing rates to monks near the monasterie
And now we have Fortified Churches which do exactly that! Well, two civs have it. Maybe the rationalle is that regular monastaries are too fragile to use as a defensive building. Think of the stained glass windows!
Max population effects monks heavliy. With 100 max pop monks can be used much beter than 300 max pop. With 100 pop u can micro more and convert and heal units more:) Tho i say monks are most valuable as converters.
@@Anolaana however lower max pop means that fights are more likely to be even as both sides can reach the cap faster, which benefits monk healing in addition to conversions
affect monks yea.. but considerign only the healing aspect.. if you are 200v 200pop but one palyer has woudned and healing units sittign idle at the side.. lets say 15.. both palyers have 100eco... the palyer with monks would experience a crushign defeat sicne 85units would fight 100.. even if some of the 100units are woudned they still deal their full dmg and are replaced faster than the squad of 15 woudned and healing units will be back in action
@@Soinetwa Depends on the unit and how much gold you have. But lets say have like 5 monks behind a big group of Ballista Elephants you can save gold and keep units upp so you dont have to travel.
7:33 shouldn't the armor also be taken into consideration? The HP level becomes way more significant for highly armored units. Also, I think it's hard to judge if one if unit has more "heal-value" than other because they have different roles (e.g.: melee units always take damage from an engagement, while cavalry archers can hit and run). My point is that you could get away fighting with damaged range units, but it's almost never the case when it comes to melee units.
My thoughts while watching the video: Of course yes! Okay, I'm right. Hm, maybe I should not. Okay, first convert and then heal. Got it. Or better research Herbal Medicine and garrison inside Castles. Okay, forget everything - just heal more.
I literally never knew that multiple minks can heal the same unit, I always thought it was like a one to one function, I learn something new every video.
9:25 you can send back the 2 or 3 more damaged cataphracts to heal, so you don't lose momentum but still get your units healed. You get the best of both worlds
Thanks for posting this one. I am an on-again-off-again newbie. Played 20 years ago, and sporadically since then. Got into the HD version last year a bit and the DE recently. I have always used monks to heal my guys in battles. I always saw it as saving resources.
when I heard you mentioning micro, I wondered how those unbalanced fights would turn out if the micro nerd just focuses on healing close to dying units with the 4 monks...
I missed the effect of having a forward monastery and workshop with a pair of monks behind and send wounded knights back before they die during a knight rush without loosing momentum.
Back when I started university about two decades ago, I often played a lot of AOE2 in the dorms with my dorm mates. Me being completely new to the game at the time meant that I didn't have much time to learn the build strats or what units work best against other units. In 3 v 3 fights, one of my friends always plays as the Franks and spams hordes of paladins. My first two games against him were spent testing unit combinations and counters against him. In my third game, I played as Byzantines and went with 10 monks in a box formation of crossbows and pikes and the rest being camel units. Depending on the situation, I could bait his two control groups of paladins into either the box or the camels and the other would just swing behind his army for that hammer and anvil effect. This worked out extremely well because he was losing his paladins through both combat and conversion. In the first 2 games, his doomstacks of paladins would single-handedly crush our armies but this box and camel setup I cooked up annihilated his paladins so that my team mates could then either follow up or focus on the other players. This was such a massive shock to him that ever since then he never doomstacked paladins if I was on the opposing team.
@@SemiMono Thanks! Even in the 3rd game, the box and camel setup that I came up with was still a prototype strategy. I had literally no idea if it was going to work at all so it was super refreshing to see my army actually survive a fight with his paladin horde. I also remember one particularly bad engagement in that game where my infantry were pinned down by another player and couldn't support my camels which were solo-ing his paladins. Surprisingly, the camels performed extremely well against his paladins, taking down 2 control groups before going down to a third one and taking half of the 3rd group to the grave. IIRC, I had just upgraded them to heavy camels before I got caught in that fight. I still remember him screaming "WTF" down the hall. After the game, we all got together to talk about the match and the first question on everyone's mind was "what the hell were those camels?"
@@hentaioverwhelming haha! Yes, there are a lot of hidden stats in aoe. Camels get a ton of bonus damage against other cavalry, kinda like mounted pikemen. I didn't know this for many years.
@@SemiMono I think at that time, the in-game description said that camels did 50% more damage to other cavalry units. I saw that and went, "Welp, what have I got to lose?"
When I use healing, I use it in between fights, not during. They're too frail and too slow, so they can easily be killed, therefore they're often not worth their cost in gold. Alternatively, one could build a forward castle to retreat in between fights, which besides healing also provide suppressive fire.
It'd be cool to see a video by SOTL exploring Survivalist's Heroku app. He's a top 200 player in the aoe2 DE community that made this super cool website where you can compare units in combat and see how many villagers you need on each resource as well as other helpful implements. Love your content, SOTL!
Sometimes I have my monks heal each other as a few convert a unit or something. I had an army of 80 monks before...it was a lot of gold... besides that, this video is quite accurate 👀
I was waiting this video for ages, after hoangs made it a bit popular we do see pro doing it more often and now with this i guess we are going to see more of it.
The only time you would want to heal units with a castle in a game is 1) in a forward castle 2) in a mid-map Teuton castle (preferably with crenellations for extra arrows/range to help with map control). If you win a battle, you don't want to run your army away to heal, you want to go after your opponents Eco or gain more map control.
It's nice to have some healing when you are doing a Hoang push, where you siege is doing the work and your units protecting the siege are patroling around it instead of attacking.
I love your analysis. I would never have looked at it with the villagers-per-minute concept. Definitely reminds us all how complex this masterpiece of a game is
i love my Teutons for there healing :) even the free medicin support my early Knights quite nice. best combo is to play with Byzanz in team to double Heal and Heal range... great fun
This is one of the episodes where spirit proofs the obvious, like with the leitis and 3 month later the pro scene suddly realizes: god darn he is right, i can make this OP LUL
Especially the castle + mangudai example is very interesting and I will definitely consider healing in buildings more often. Another thing to consider, however, is opportunity costs. If you're healing your army in a castle, they're not attacking, thus not reducing the enemies capabilities. So your increase in production is in part offset by a non-decrease in the enemies. Still, causing a 100 villagers of resources of damage to the enemy with 20ish units, is a stretch. So it's probably still worth it at times, just a bit less outrageously OP as it seems.
Very informative video, but I would have also liked to see how the byzantines would have performed in those same tests, whether the 50% extra healing would have any impact at all. Also something to consider with healing units in buildings is that you can heal many at the same time. A castle can heal 20 at once, and while slower than a monk, it is something to consider
I see it as a very worth tactics for teutons and byzantines. its incredible how tanky teutons armys can be with their monks healing then from so far away. and of course you can also use them to convert enemy units that dont have heresy, and even with heresy its still worth it because your enemy lost a unit. however I dont use much monks in games outside of converting some units and stealing relics.
Everybody knows that monks say: Wololo and Ayoyoyo. After 20 years not playing Aoe1 this still feels more natural to me. You can find this as a mod in AoE 2 DE. :)
It's more like: If you train monks for converting the enemy then it's worth it to also have them heal. Otherwise, don't spend gold and a population slot for healing.
The difference in having monks vs not having monks in the army is IMO very significant. I had a lot of matches with my friend who doesn't care about monks at all. I personally keep some of them in my force. I win practically every battle. In the heat of it I tend to missclick an important unit to convert but i noticed that converting even a trash unit gives you a noticable upper hand. It also can disrupt the enemy charging at you. Just convert one unit in thei formation and they will be disrupted for a second while trying to kill it. Monks are micro intensive but it's worth practicing because the benefits are amazing!
I've only ever used monks (or priests as I mainly played AOE 1 with the expansion packs) as healing after the battles. I rarely used them during battles. It seems better in scenerios where you can restore damaged units after a battle before moving on to the next so that you don't have to invest as much into restoring the original army and keep it strong. I generally only heal the big units like the catapults and slow big HP units that are expensive to produce. I don't waste as much time on the smaller units that I can just push out with little cost. That and I use them to scout and convert some of the weaker units. It's been a long time since I've played AOE. I remember in AOE 1 with that one map you start out as Hittite and only have 2 monks at the start and have to convert villagers to start your civilization. It's tricky to pull off sometimes, but I've settled on slowly converting all the villigers of the yellow AI until they can't produce anymore and can't become a threat. I then have the entire landmass to myself since in that campaign scenario, the red AI doesn't have a navy and isn't allowed to make one so they are land locked(as long as i don't clear out the trees that cover the one part of the land that connects to two sides of the map that is). It was easier to build up my army that way as I don't have to constantly worry about yellow AI coming in to cause distractions during the early game while I gather resources and research up my tech. It's one of my fav singleplayer campaigns. I'm not as attached to AOE II though. I barely remember how to play it though at one point I did eventually get as good at that game as I was in AOE 1. The only thing I don't like about it really is how much they changed the UI compared to the original one so I put off playing it because I didn't want to learn a new UI layout. That's a cosmetic thing though. I still think AOE II is probably the best in the series. I just personally preferred AOE 1 because hat's the one I got most familiar with. :P I've always sucked with the multiplayer though. Too much strategy for me to do quickly. This was one of those games where I liked to spend my time in the singleplayer scenarios where I could easily put hours into slowly building up my civ and creating armies to go on the war path near the end. Multiplayer things just happened too quickly for me to keep up. :P
I always thought that the best use of a monk's healing was to heal raiding units when they come home. The healing can be thought as 'training time' which would have been spent on new units, but is instead spent on the saved unit. Spirit had the same thought at around 6:20 The herbal medicine thought is fun though. I'm only playing campaign and usually ignore stuff I've written off like Herbal, but I'll play with it a bit just for fun.
Also about the garrisoning to heal. If they're archers or have the one bonus where infantry shoot too. Then it increases your defence capabilities for a time/while also.
Great video! I think what would make monks way better is if they could do battle maneuvers and 2 stances like auto convert or no convert just heal. It's such a pain in the ass to micro more than 12 monks for how expensive they are after upgrades and the units upgrades to make monks even worth it. Late game for me gets so chaotic I eventually just ditch monks since I need to keep my economy going too.
After swarming my monks around the map to snatch up relics, I park them in my base where my trade carts pass to minimize losses from raiding. This video gives me concrete proof that was a smart move. Decent cost, low HP, and often targeted but fast enough to escape in many situations. I was saving so many resources all along, lol.
When I play Tuetons regicide I used to have my special "Turtle" units which were block formations with tuetonic knights on the outside, then archers, and then a couple monks. I usually sent them out in pairs and if I couldn't maintain the knight wall I would consolidate them into one. I liked it for regicide because they were very much moving fortresses that could land on a beach, accomplish the mission, and get out with very few losses. I'm very much a micro player it just feels awesome to have small unit formations that can accomplish big tasks.
Used to do the heal in castle with herbal medicine thing in games with my friends back in the original Conquerors expansion, before the Mangudai nerf. It was beautiful. You always had troops to use and backup resources for when you needed trebs or units to counter everything the Mangudai wasn't stupidly good at, which they were 9 times out of 10. Good times.
This quite important, having the mindset from other games that there is at least a minimum hp regen by default and it's absence here in aoe makes that herbal medicine a quite investment delicacy.
Nice video ! I would have loved to see knight micro involved into the debate and added to the multiple stats given. You often see high level players micro the low HP kts back to their monastery while still hitting with the other ones. I think about Viper for example who is known for doing this, wether in TG or 1v1. It would have brought a more practical and realistic aspect on healing to the overall content !
After I use them to collect relics I like parking my monks along spots where units go regularly... one under the town center, for instance, to heal up my farmers if they get hit by raiders, one by my gate to heal combat units as they come and go. Maybe hide one in a forward tower if I'm doing a tower rush, to pop out and heal up a couple units if a raiding group is beat up.
On every RTS I played always want to get a healer or some way to recover my troops in battlefield. That's why I always choose Oceano as minor god as playing Atlanteans on AoM
My nooby conclusion from this is that so long as you control a few relics to compensate getting a few monks to accompany an army close behind, it can be a viable tactic. Otherwise don't bother. So if you spawn 3 or 4 monks to hoard relics early castle age, you can give them another use - follow close behind arbalests and heal up cataphracts (I play byzantines)
Back in highschool, one of my class games of AoE 2 (8-player, random map, deathmatch, free for all with unlocked teams) started with me in the dead center of the map and everyone else around the edges. I knew I wasn't going to last long especially since I won our last game and was scouted and flared before anyone hit Feudal Age. Thankfully, I knew who the person who'd be comming after me first was; Mr. "Persian War Elephant rush"... And so I rushed to Castle Age and built an army of Teuton Monks. 40 War Elephants vs 40 Monks and my Monks, very very slowly, started dying. But not before converting more than half his army, which I threw back him with the Teuton conversion resistance (he tried making monks to convert my conversions). Even when 2 other players started beseiging my town, I didn't give in. I sold all my resources for gold until I had no economy left. Even with 20 new War Elephants bearing down on my meager force of 8 Elephants and a dozen monks around my last structure (a Monastary), I fell on my sword. I died on that meme-hill! I barely lasted 20 minutes in that game, but even to this day I've never seen a rush get stalled so hard in my life! He lost all momentum and was the second player (after me) to be eliminated in that round. And that's my best Monk story.
I’ve told this story before, but do not underestimate Herbal Medicine. No, it is not something you will always research nor is it the first tech you want to get normally. However, if you know what you are doing, it can make or break a match. I use Herbal Medicine for civs like the Saracens, Persians, Berbers, especially. This is because these civs have great units I often use as a defense force. Cycling Mamelukes into a castle while under pressure can pay dividends. I’ve won matches simply because I was able to field 30+ Paladins or Camel Archers during trash battles that were healed many times over. It also has value if you use towers either as defense for villagers or during a tower push. Your vills get healed while in protection, meaning you send them back to work at max health instead of damaged. The next raid means there aren’t a bunch of near death vills to pick off.
Some games, I like to build a castle and later research Herbal Medicine to heal my injured units for matches where monks wouldn't last long, so this makes me feel better about running this strat. Though I admit, I sometimes forget to ungarrison them long after they've healed.
Age of Empires DE used to replace the monks attack button as a convert button, as in auto convert. You literally can buff the monks' importance by adding that autocast. I'm sure with that, every match will have a monk rush.
In early game it can really help if you can afford to make monks and save wounded raider units. Its like getting free units out of a fully wounded one. And it makes you able to collect relics after healing. Most people forget about relics, but they pay off pretty quickly, just 3 minutes and the gold cost of a monk is paid back. Given there is usually 2 relics close by thats a fast payoff that will give hundreds if not thousands of gold depending on the lenght of the game.
Just personal playstyle here, but what I like to do (when I'm doing well on my micro) is keep some monks at home base and pick heavily damaged units to send back in small groups to them. The monks also serve to suppliment my base defense in a pinch, the offensive army isn't slowed down, and healed units can be either left at base ready for the enemy's counter attack or integrated into the reinforcements being sent to the front. Typically, I do the healing under the field of fire of one of my castles.
Herbal medicine is always a pick for me in long drawn out fights where I can place castles or towers in more frequency and fight near them. You can garrison injured units and continue the fight until those fighting begin to waver, then I garrison them and send out the healed ones, doing this over and over.
Coming from some one who played a lot of Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. I tend to look at monks for defensive protection. While you attack a stack of my units, I convert some of your which adds a 2 man difference, the one you lost and the one I gained.
"We're just pikemen, sir. We're meant to be expendable."
"NOT TO ME"
Me when I send ten monks in with my knight and champion rush
i love clone wars
I understood the reference.jpg
I am getting clone wars flash backs.
;______;
is healing worth it?
"no"
*wololo*
"yes"
Nailed it first try well done :)
😁
You summarized the video. Great 😁
2
30
1
@@jerryc8510
Was planning on that first
But it would go above a lot of peoples heads
Each life is worth it, so yes. Ask each soldier if they’d like to be healed :,(. Ask their families
Hey Mike
Great comment love your videos Mike.
@Solid Nate It depends whether you are playing Black Forest or not. Lmao
Solid Nate If you’re fighting the mighty Mangudai, I guess. They’ve saved my life many times.
ADITYA THOMAS Hey, man.
We should also consider the units' well-being as an extra value. Imagine how you must feel when you have to fight with almost no health.
But don't you fight the exact same when wounded as when healed to full?
@@MrTohawk Well, i wouldn't fight very well after taking a spear through my stomach. Getting my hp would certainly add extra value to my fighting power!
@@MrTohawk its a Troll Question maaaaan chill out
Also consider this: are you, as a pikeman, more likely to charge headlong into a battle with Frankish paladins knowing there is a chance your wounds will be healed?
In fact I would suggest a patch such that the more a unit falls below 50% hp the slower it moves and fights
I remember when i'd stockpile 4000 of each resource, slowly start building an army of 40-50 mangudai, 4 monks, 5 villagers and 4 trebs, all from 1 production building and heal all my units after each skirmish. I'd feel sooo bad if i let one my people die :C
That's how I still play the game
But killing men and women from other kingdoms was ok, wasn't it? You monster 😠
@@BigEdges It's like the opposite of T-West's pacifist runs lol
I always heal up between each engagement if my forces aren’t forced to fight again! It saves me lots of gold, I feel guilty letting my guys die on purpose.
@@BigEdges "Better 10 probably guilty men die than 1 get a clear shot off on me!" -Gordon Freeman
the cost of your first monk: 90 gold
the cost of herbal medicine: 350 gold
the knowledge that your units will be at 100% instead of only a fraction of their potential health: priceless,
there are some thing gold can buy for anything else we pick teutons.
monk is 100 gold o.O
Why are you monks 10 gold cheaper than mine?
Apparently he plays only Portuguese
been so long since I've seen this format
Teutons don't even have to pay for herbal medicine
"it may seem like a lot of hand-waving"
Your quips are seriously underrated.
The serious weakness of his Squarespace ad ideas lately has washed it all out.
"Spirit of the Cha-cha?" How in the hell do you come up with that from "Spirit of the Law?" "Spirit of the Dance Hall" was sitting right there.
He should be shamed, not celebrated.
I know this focuses more on multiplayer and skirmish, and a lot of people don't even touch the campaign, but having recently played some of the campaigns (after mostly ignoring it for 20+ years), a monk's healing abilities are invaluable in scenarios where you have few resources or no base. Every unit is valuable in that situation, and monks can turn the tide of it significantly.
Just to add: Healing gains value with more armor. The less HP and more defences a unit has, the more healing will have an impact.
back up some of those teutonic knights with a few monks
@@1un4cy Teuton paladins too!
Herbal medicine will be meta this year in pro games because of this video
*Laughs in Teutons*
I am seriously expecting to see some pro players utilising Herbal Medicine in some matches
Looking forward to the sexy forward castle herbal medicine cavalry archer ball meta in 1v1s.
Raid the enemy with the same units that generate you value by getting damaged. Hide from spears behind castle walls. It's great!
Time is the most important resourse in the game, you cant just have your units hanging in the castle WHILE the enemy ravages the contryside.
Not gonna happen; sounds good, does not work.
@@ahuzel Don't forget the garrisoned units keep attacking. You don't have to sacrifice damage for healing, just have the castle in the right place and you can have both.
If you think about it... Monk is the most cost effective unit ever? They can generate infinite gold through relics and they can make an army worth many times more.
it's a close one with the malay fishing ship
If you think about it more, a Monastery is more cost effective!! It can generate infinite monks and have a crazy 10 relics!!!
@@ПолОтто villager can mine the whole map and construct a new empire alone, best value
@@ПолОтто and a villager can chop trees and build 10 monasteries.
Ah, but my single swordsman has the potential to kill several monks! Infinite value * several = a lot of value
"Wololo" "Wow, that is a very compelling argument." Isn't it, though? XD
yes
"A single castle with herbal remedy can outdo 100 villagers in resource gain" What? That is insane.
Yes, but only for half a minute.
100 extra villagers can produce resources forever but healing is situational.
@@satyakisil9711 yes but this seems to imply that those situations, though rare, are a MASSIVE eco boost for 30 seconds. It seems very specifically good with Cav Archers - the entire group loses more value when one dies - as he says and this might be a new tactic. He seems to have discovered a gem there.
I've always thought herbal medicine was underrated
Think it's wrong to call it gain, it's more like resource save.
@@zacharyb2723 can't deny it is useful. But in its own way. It is not the same as having a double sized economy.
I've been waiting for this for a long time.
Same here
S A M E
...My little green friend
I was waiting for this video for 2 years, since I discovered his chanel XD. #HalbLifesMatter!
@@michalgta5397 don't take a anti racust slogan and use that here.
As a healer-centric player, this was actually very enlightening!
475G
Pls continue with aoe2 vs history I love that series
Sane here!
AI’s micro management of monks is insane. No human could convert as many as them. (But Viper isn’t human, though, is he?)
It's okay, the developers give him awful monk RNG to compensate.
Hes a snek
AI micro is equivalent of us pausing the game and giving each monk a target, and unpausing again.
Of course you can do it only when you play vs AI 11
@Eric Rogers I can't figure out how to give villagers an aggressive stance via the genie editor, cause it seems to make them unable to gather resources if you change the attribute that let's them do that
That's exactly what a Teuton would say!
actually, now that i think about it, monasteries should also heal units, and should be the highest healing rate imo, or maybe give a buff to healing rates to monks near the monasterie
Same garrison-able units as towers/TCs though!
And now we have Fortified Churches which do exactly that! Well, two civs have it.
Maybe the rationalle is that regular monastaries are too fragile to use as a defensive building. Think of the stained glass windows!
Max population effects monks heavliy.
With 100 max pop monks can be used much beter than 300 max pop.
With 100 pop u can micro more and convert and heal units more:)
Tho i say monks are most valuable as converters.
100 max pop *Laughs in Goths*
Yeah, switching a unit over to your side provides a larger % advantage with a lower max pop.
@@Anolaana however lower max pop means that fights are more likely to be even as both sides can reach the cap faster, which benefits monk healing in addition to conversions
affect monks yea.. but considerign only the healing aspect.. if you are 200v 200pop
but one palyer has woudned and healing units sittign idle at the side.. lets say 15.. both palyers have 100eco... the palyer with monks would experience a crushign defeat sicne 85units would fight 100.. even if some of the 100units are woudned they still deal their full dmg and are replaced faster than the squad of 15 woudned and healing units will be back in action
@@Soinetwa Depends on the unit and how much gold you have.
But lets say have like 5 monks behind a big group of Ballista Elephants you can save gold and keep units upp so you dont have to travel.
7:33 shouldn't the armor also be taken into consideration? The HP level becomes way more significant for highly armored units. Also, I think it's hard to judge if one if unit has more "heal-value" than other because they have different roles (e.g.: melee units always take damage from an engagement, while cavalry archers can hit and run). My point is that you could get away fighting with damaged range units, but it's almost never the case when it comes to melee units.
For me, when I have a mass ov longbows behind a wall defending on Black Forest, having a couple of monks with them saved me tons of gold and wood.
@Elliott Nahum I out-range you catapult
That's what I like about Spirit's analysis videos. They're extensively thorough, yet you can actually understand it in straightforward terms.
My thoughts while watching the video:
Of course yes!
Okay, I'm right.
Hm, maybe I should not.
Okay, first convert and then heal. Got it.
Or better research Herbal Medicine and garrison inside Castles.
Okay, forget everything - just heal more.
I literally never knew that multiple minks can heal the same unit, I always thought it was like a one to one function, I learn something new every video.
9:25 you can send back the 2 or 3 more damaged cataphracts to heal, so you don't lose momentum but still get your units healed. You get the best of both worlds
Byzantine 2x healing speed is awesome.
Monks attached to large groups of ranged units are fun, longbowmen particularly.
Oh yeah, box formation of longbow-men with monks in the center.
Thanks for posting this one. I am an on-again-off-again newbie. Played 20 years ago, and sporadically since then. Got into the HD version last year a bit and the DE recently.
I have always used monks to heal my guys in battles. I always saw it as saving resources.
i don’t know about other people, but your videos are so satisfying to watch for me at least.
Man was expecting that vulul sound when you said "conversation has that anxiety sound"
That castle healing was good value !
Mom in India: Dinner time
Spirit in Canada: It's a new video time.
Me: ah, all things are coming together now.
Yes mom, I'll come to get dinner!
*Wololo*
No mom, I need to watch this first.
The health to resource cost is a little misleading. For example 120 1hp knights will do a lot more damage than 1 120hp knight.
But a single archer would kill them all
Healing Monks are basically archers that deal negative DPS.
when I heard you mentioning micro, I wondered how those unbalanced fights would turn out if the micro nerd just focuses on healing close to dying units with the 4 monks...
Been watching this channel for 3 years at least and this is the first time I’ve watched a video on the day it was released! Boom!
I missed the effect of having a forward monastery and workshop with a pair of monks behind and send wounded knights back before they die during a knight rush without loosing momentum.
Back when I started university about two decades ago, I often played a lot of AOE2 in the dorms with my dorm mates. Me being completely new to the game at the time meant that I didn't have much time to learn the build strats or what units work best against other units. In 3 v 3 fights, one of my friends always plays as the Franks and spams hordes of paladins. My first two games against him were spent testing unit combinations and counters against him. In my third game, I played as Byzantines and went with 10 monks in a box formation of crossbows and pikes and the rest being camel units. Depending on the situation, I could bait his two control groups of paladins into either the box or the camels and the other would just swing behind his army for that hammer and anvil effect. This worked out extremely well because he was losing his paladins through both combat and conversion. In the first 2 games, his doomstacks of paladins would single-handedly crush our armies but this box and camel setup I cooked up annihilated his paladins so that my team mates could then either follow up or focus on the other players. This was such a massive shock to him that ever since then he never doomstacked paladins if I was on the opposing team.
I love seeing a good counter strategy working to perfection!
@@SemiMono
Thanks! Even in the 3rd game, the box and camel setup that I came up with was still a prototype strategy. I had literally no idea if it was going to work at all so it was super refreshing to see my army actually survive a fight with his paladin horde. I also remember one particularly bad engagement in that game where my infantry were pinned down by another player and couldn't support my camels which were solo-ing his paladins. Surprisingly, the camels performed extremely well against his paladins, taking down 2 control groups before going down to a third one and taking half of the 3rd group to the grave. IIRC, I had just upgraded them to heavy camels before I got caught in that fight. I still remember him screaming "WTF" down the hall. After the game, we all got together to talk about the match and the first question on everyone's mind was "what the hell were those camels?"
@@hentaioverwhelming haha! Yes, there are a lot of hidden stats in aoe. Camels get a ton of bonus damage against other cavalry, kinda like mounted pikemen. I didn't know this for many years.
@@SemiMono
I think at that time, the in-game description said that camels did 50% more damage to other cavalry units. I saw that and went, "Welp, what have I got to lose?"
My favorite doomstack is castle age conquistador rush with 75 population xD
I demand part 2 for this, I can't believe you didn't mention the super monks, teutons monks with byzantines ally
Now we are asking the real questions
Thanks for the great video again. This one was great.
Great comment
@@HaBBiSiFy Nice reply
I was thinking over this for over a year... finally you answered it.
Thanks
I started playing AoE2:DE with a bunch of friends and I really enjoy your content. Thnx a lot.
When I use healing, I use it in between fights, not during. They're too frail and too slow, so they can easily be killed, therefore they're often not worth their cost in gold. Alternatively, one could build a forward castle to retreat in between fights, which besides healing also provide suppressive fire.
Yay, we got a video about monks! Spirit even mentioned monk range! Now I want a video about all the other monastery upgrades :D
Spirit Of The Law: is healing worth it?
Me: Well well.... Lets find out
It'd be cool to see a video by SOTL exploring Survivalist's Heroku app. He's a top 200 player in the aoe2 DE community that made this super cool website where you can compare units in combat and see how many villagers you need on each resource as well as other helpful implements. Love your content, SOTL!
aoe2-de-tools.herokuapp.com/
In case anyone wanted to see what I was talking about, the link is above!
Sometimes I have my monks heal each other as a few convert a unit or something. I had an army of 80 monks before...it was a lot of gold... besides that, this video is quite accurate 👀
8000 gold and dies to 10 hussar 😅
@@Totaluser1 honestly--- 😂
I was waiting this video for ages, after hoangs made it a bit popular we do see pro doing it more often and now with this i guess we are going to see more of it.
now this could be a meta changing video. a thing that we missed 20 years. hehe
The only time you would want to heal units with a castle in a game is 1) in a forward castle 2) in a mid-map Teuton castle (preferably with crenellations for extra arrows/range to help with map control). If you win a battle, you don't want to run your army away to heal, you want to go after your opponents Eco or gain more map control.
Some really high quality content here!
It's nice to have some healing when you are doing a Hoang push, where you siege is doing the work and your units protecting the siege are patroling around it instead of attacking.
I love your analysis. I would never have looked at it with the villagers-per-minute concept.
Definitely reminds us all how complex this masterpiece of a game is
the intro music
I really love these types of videos! Keep up the good work
YES THE FULL INTRO IS BACK
Not full and thank god
@@dontspikemydrink9382 full enough
Cannot wait till AoE4 comes out and you take off in viewers. Love the dedication you put into every video
I didn't even know about castle and town hall healing. Thanks!
i love my Teutons for there healing :) even the free medicin support my early Knights quite nice. best combo is to play with Byzanz in team to double Heal and Heal range... great fun
This is one of the episodes where spirit proofs the obvious,
like with the leitis and 3 month later the pro scene suddly realizes:
god darn he is right, i can make this OP LUL
The Leitis was pretty obviously OP even when it was higher cost tbf
Especially the castle + mangudai example is very interesting and I will definitely consider healing in buildings more often. Another thing to consider, however, is opportunity costs. If you're healing your army in a castle, they're not attacking, thus not reducing the enemies capabilities. So your increase in production is in part offset by a non-decrease in the enemies.
Still, causing a 100 villagers of resources of damage to the enemy with 20ish units, is a stretch. So it's probably still worth it at times, just a bit less outrageously OP as it seems.
Very informative video, but I would have also liked to see how the byzantines would have performed in those same tests, whether the 50% extra healing would have any impact at all. Also something to consider with healing units in buildings is that you can heal many at the same time. A castle can heal 20 at once, and while slower than a monk, it is something to consider
I see it as a very worth tactics for teutons and byzantines. its incredible how tanky teutons armys can be with their monks healing then from so far away. and of course you can also use them to convert enemy units that dont have heresy, and even with heresy its still worth it because your enemy lost a unit. however I dont use much monks in games outside of converting some units and stealing relics.
YAY! Spirit intro is back **nods along happily**
Man you always tackle the most interesting topics! Thank you for that!
Why do I keep watching these videos? I've never played Age of Empires nor I have any interest in playing it, but I find these videos fascinating
I guess you could say monks are the *_Ki_* to win tough battles
Ok, I'll see myself out
Perfect video. Keep making these info packed ones!
I've been very excited for this video Spirit, thanks!
Everybody knows that monks say: Wololo and Ayoyoyo. After 20 years not playing Aoe1 this still feels more natural to me.
You can find this as a mod in AoE 2 DE. :)
People following this channel have no clue how aoe1 is. Very, very few do.
If you have a forward castle you can justify cycling a few smaller armies to "take a breather"
so to summarize, healing is good for leveraging a preexisting advantage. making a fight that's already uneven even more uneven.
*compliance department wants to know your location*
You will also likely have a few monks from collecting relics.
It's more like: If you train monks for converting the enemy then it's worth it to also have them heal. Otherwise, don't spend gold and a population slot for healing.
@@hammaslanka69 your face is a crappy summary.
Yes like fighting a grandma with a bat, you don't rally need the bat to win, but its still going to make things easier.
The difference in having monks vs not having monks in the army is IMO very significant. I had a lot of matches with my friend who doesn't care about monks at all. I personally keep some of them in my force. I win practically every battle. In the heat of it I tend to missclick an important unit to convert but i noticed that converting even a trash unit gives you a noticable upper hand. It also can disrupt the enemy charging at you. Just convert one unit in thei formation and they will be disrupted for a second while trying to kill it.
Monks are micro intensive but it's worth practicing because the benefits are amazing!
I'm happy, I think castle healing will be a thing from now on
Excellent analysis as always
I've only ever used monks (or priests as I mainly played AOE 1 with the expansion packs) as healing after the battles. I rarely used them during battles. It seems better in scenerios where you can restore damaged units after a battle before moving on to the next so that you don't have to invest as much into restoring the original army and keep it strong. I generally only heal the big units like the catapults and slow big HP units that are expensive to produce. I don't waste as much time on the smaller units that I can just push out with little cost.
That and I use them to scout and convert some of the weaker units. It's been a long time since I've played AOE. I remember in AOE 1 with that one map you start out as Hittite and only have 2 monks at the start and have to convert villagers to start your civilization.
It's tricky to pull off sometimes, but I've settled on slowly converting all the villigers of the yellow AI until they can't produce anymore and can't become a threat. I then have the entire landmass to myself since in that campaign scenario, the red AI doesn't have a navy and isn't allowed to make one so they are land locked(as long as i don't clear out the trees that cover the one part of the land that connects to two sides of the map that is). It was easier to build up my army that way as I don't have to constantly worry about yellow AI coming in to cause distractions during the early game while I gather resources and research up my tech. It's one of my fav singleplayer campaigns.
I'm not as attached to AOE II though. I barely remember how to play it though at one point I did eventually get as good at that game as I was in AOE 1. The only thing I don't like about it really is how much they changed the UI compared to the original one so I put off playing it because I didn't want to learn a new UI layout. That's a cosmetic thing though. I still think AOE II is probably the best in the series. I just personally preferred AOE 1 because hat's the one I got most familiar with. :P
I've always sucked with the multiplayer though. Too much strategy for me to do quickly. This was one of those games where I liked to spend my time in the singleplayer scenarios where I could easily put hours into slowly building up my civ and creating armies to go on the war path near the end. Multiplayer things just happened too quickly for me to keep up. :P
I always thought that the best use of a monk's healing was to heal raiding units when they come home. The healing can be thought as 'training time' which would have been spent on new units, but is instead spent on the saved unit. Spirit had the same thought at around 6:20
The herbal medicine thought is fun though. I'm only playing campaign and usually ignore stuff I've written off like Herbal, but I'll play with it a bit just for fun.
Also about the garrisoning to heal. If they're archers or have the one bonus where infantry shoot too. Then it increases your defence capabilities for a time/while also.
*byzantines players, berserks and camel archers reaction to the video: bruh*
i dont get it
@@nishantmiglani1952 Byzantine monks heal twice as fast and berserks and camel archers regenetate health.
@@yammoto148 oooooooooooooh
Great video! I think what would make monks way better is if they could do battle maneuvers and 2 stances like auto convert or no convert just heal. It's such a pain in the ass to micro more than 12 monks for how expensive they are after upgrades and the units upgrades to make monks even worth it. Late game for me gets so chaotic I eventually just ditch monks since I need to keep my economy going too.
After swarming my monks around the map to snatch up relics, I park them in my base where my trade carts pass to minimize losses from raiding. This video gives me concrete proof that was a smart move. Decent cost, low HP, and often targeted but fast enough to escape in many situations. I was saving so many resources all along, lol.
When I play Tuetons regicide I used to have my special "Turtle" units which were block formations with tuetonic knights on the outside, then archers, and then a couple monks. I usually sent them out in pairs and if I couldn't maintain the knight wall I would consolidate them into one. I liked it for regicide because they were very much moving fortresses that could land on a beach, accomplish the mission, and get out with very few losses. I'm very much a micro player it just feels awesome to have small unit formations that can accomplish big tasks.
Used to do the heal in castle with herbal medicine thing in games with my friends back in the original Conquerors expansion, before the Mangudai nerf. It was beautiful. You always had troops to use and backup resources for when you needed trebs or units to counter everything the Mangudai wasn't stupidly good at, which they were 9 times out of 10. Good times.
There it is! The video on the topic I proposed. Thanx Spirit! :)
This quite important, having the mindset from other games that there is at least a minimum hp regen by default and it's absence here in aoe makes that herbal medicine a quite investment delicacy.
Wow, I have definitely been overestimating the value of healing.
Nice video ! I would have loved to see knight micro involved into the debate and added to the multiple stats given.
You often see high level players micro the low HP kts back to their monastery while still hitting with the other ones. I think about Viper for example who is known for doing this, wether in TG or 1v1.
It would have brought a more practical and realistic aspect on healing to the overall content !
After I use them to collect relics I like parking my monks along spots where units go regularly... one under the town center, for instance, to heal up my farmers if they get hit by raiders, one by my gate to heal combat units as they come and go. Maybe hide one in a forward tower if I'm doing a tower rush, to pop out and heal up a couple units if a raiding group is beat up.
The amount of rss produced per min by that castle make me fall of my chair
On every RTS I played always want to get a healer or some way to recover my troops in battlefield. That's why I always choose Oceano as minor god as playing Atlanteans on AoM
Why not use Valkyries?
My nooby conclusion from this is that so long as you control a few relics to compensate getting a few monks to accompany an army close behind, it can be a viable tactic. Otherwise don't bother. So if you spawn 3 or 4 monks to hoard relics early castle age, you can give them another use - follow close behind arbalests and heal up cataphracts (I play byzantines)
Back in highschool, one of my class games of AoE 2 (8-player, random map, deathmatch, free for all with unlocked teams) started with me in the dead center of the map and everyone else around the edges. I knew I wasn't going to last long especially since I won our last game and was scouted and flared before anyone hit Feudal Age. Thankfully, I knew who the person who'd be comming after me first was; Mr. "Persian War Elephant rush"... And so I rushed to Castle Age and built an army of Teuton Monks.
40 War Elephants vs 40 Monks and my Monks, very very slowly, started dying. But not before converting more than half his army, which I threw back him with the Teuton conversion resistance (he tried making monks to convert my conversions). Even when 2 other players started beseiging my town, I didn't give in. I sold all my resources for gold until I had no economy left. Even with 20 new War Elephants bearing down on my meager force of 8 Elephants and a dozen monks around my last structure (a Monastary), I fell on my sword. I died on that meme-hill!
I barely lasted 20 minutes in that game, but even to this day I've never seen a rush get stalled so hard in my life! He lost all momentum and was the second player (after me) to be eliminated in that round.
And that's my best Monk story.
I’ve told this story before, but do not underestimate Herbal Medicine.
No, it is not something you will always research nor is it the first tech you want to get normally. However, if you know what you are doing, it can make or break a match. I use Herbal Medicine for civs like the Saracens, Persians, Berbers, especially. This is because these civs have great units I often use as a defense force. Cycling Mamelukes into a castle while under pressure can pay dividends. I’ve won matches simply because I was able to field 30+ Paladins or Camel Archers during trash battles that were healed many times over.
It also has value if you use towers either as defense for villagers or during a tower push. Your vills get healed while in protection, meaning you send them back to work at max health instead of damaged. The next raid means there aren’t a bunch of near death vills to pick off.
Some games, I like to build a castle and later research Herbal Medicine to heal my injured units for matches where monks wouldn't last long, so this makes me feel better about running this strat. Though I admit, I sometimes forget to ungarrison them long after they've healed.
Age of Empires DE used to replace the monks attack button as a convert button, as in auto convert. You literally can buff the monks' importance by adding that autocast. I'm sure with that, every match will have a monk rush.
In early game it can really help if you can afford to make monks and save wounded raider units. Its like getting free units out of a fully wounded one. And it makes you able to collect relics after healing. Most people forget about relics, but they pay off pretty quickly, just 3 minutes and the gold cost of a monk is paid back. Given there is usually 2 relics close by thats a fast payoff that will give hundreds if not thousands of gold depending on the lenght of the game.
Is healing worth it with Byzantines?
It's worth a bit more than for other civilizations
Yeah, I was waiting for knights comparison with byzantine healing to see if that made any difference. It probably doesn't, but still.
Just personal playstyle here, but what I like to do (when I'm doing well on my micro) is keep some monks at home base and pick heavily damaged units to send back in small groups to them.
The monks also serve to suppliment my base defense in a pinch, the offensive army isn't slowed down, and healed units can be either left at base ready for the enemy's counter attack or integrated into the reinforcements being sent to the front.
Typically, I do the healing under the field of fire of one of my castles.
big fan mr sotl watched every one of your video i love the civ vs history one a lot since that is my favourite subject
Herbal medicine is always a pick for me in long drawn out fights where I can place castles or towers in more frequency and fight near them. You can garrison injured units and continue the fight until those fighting begin to waver, then I garrison them and send out the healed ones, doing this over and over.
Coming from some one who played a lot of Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. I tend to look at monks for defensive protection. While you attack a stack of my units, I convert some of your which adds a 2 man difference, the one you lost and the one I gained.