The New & Improved Royal Heirs! (AoE2)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- One of the upcoming changes in the next patch I'm most interested in is the new "Royal Heirs" effect. What sounds like an innocuous -3 damage taken from mounted units may be a much bigger deal than it sounds when you start looking into it. That's exactly what we'll be doing in this video!
0:18 Previous effect
1:05 Shotel Warrior overview
1:45 Shotel Warrior in Castle Age
5:55 Shotel Warrior in Imperial Age
8:45 Camel Riders in Castle Age
11:03 Heavy Camels in Imperial Age
12:45 Final thoughts
___________________________________________________________
Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsou...
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
“dark blue” aka ROYAL blue 😉
Arrow comes from a standing guy
Gasp!
Arrow comes from guy on a horse
It's Shotiln time!
Their royal blood won't tolerate mounted archers... looking down on them.
[Rimshot]
Shotiln?
More like SotLin' time
Ahahhaha nice one! xD
Thanks for making my day ;:D
Hahaha
I think it's a really nice and strong buff for the lesser used units of the Ethiopians, what I don't like about effects like this is that they're not shown anywhere in the stats or with visual indicators or anything. I feel like there's already too much going on "behind the scenes" in AoE2 and adding to that really doesn't help.
I have actually worked a lot with aoe2 mods in the past. One of the issues with displaying such things is the high number of armor classes (armor classes are things like pierce armor, melee armor, building armor etc.). One of the main issues here is that 1 unit doesn't have 1 armor class, but multiple. And the same is true for attack class types. I remember seeing some units (and buildings) which had a total of more than 12 classes (if we count attack and defense separately) which would have taken up a lot of space. Something I can recommend: go to the aoe2 game folder, in there is a folder called "Tools" where a software called "AdvancedGenieEditor" is located. This software can be used to view the real stats of units. It's quite enlightening to see the number of attributes and stats that define a unit.
That's my concern as well. I think the hidden effect will result in players playing mind games with their opponent, by showing a few shotel warriors on the battlefield. You don't even have to research Royal Heirs to make a smart player turn around, because they are not willing to sacrifice their calvary to find out.
@@qwerty222999 to be fair
psychological warfare was used in the medieval time or even earlier
I completely agree. Especially in the bonus damage/armor department, as you are never informed of how much damage your unit deals to other units.
And AoE's interface is incredibly simple - even on laptops there's enough space to list bonus damage/resistances.
I also dont like that they get +3 defense against mounted archers, it should be only against melee units. Seems totally busted
3:25 Japanese mentioned in a positive way in a video about whole different civ ✔️
this technology should add the hero glow to the shotels
Finally! The 'Mangudais have no counter' meme is dead!
Some weird interactions I found:
1 - Royal Heirs blocks armour piercing attacks. Elite Leitis without Relics do 15 damage to Shotels, instead of the expected 18
2 - Royal Heirs does not block Cataphract trample damage. The Shotel attacking from behind takes 5 damage irrespective of the tech
3 - Royal Heirs does block Elephant type trample damage which accounts for armour. The reduction is factored into the base attack of the Elephant before the trample damage is calculated. A Shotel consistently takes -1 trample damage compared to an Ethiopian Halb for example
Well, #2 is consistent with Elite Teutonic Knights taking 5 splash damage from Slav spearmen with Druzhina and no blacksmith upgrades (so two ETKs next to each other probably perform worse than one)
Thank you
It isn't blocking armor piercing effects since it isn't armor, not the displayed armor at least, since it adds +3 to the special hidden anti-cavalry armor.
That first one should really be fixed. It definitely doesn't sound like it should work like that.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn 😅
Cav and archers dominate the game now but devs are trying to get infantry up there. I am still waiting for SotLs 6 hours long video about how last patch changes the meta. Realy looking forward to it.
Important to note that this is coming in the context of swordsmen being made into a more meta-friendly option for army composition in general. So while Shotels are getting one hell of a buff, their most obvious counter is also going to come more into relevance right alongside them.
Not to say that anything the swordsmen line is getting is going to make them better against Shotels, but rather that you're going to be more likely to be making swordsmen *anyway* for a variety of contexts, so having Shotels become stronger isn't one of those things where your hand is going to be forced into pumping out a counter unit that's not useful for anything else other than *just* countering Shotels.
I doubt that anybody will Like to Produce the Milita line against ethiopians.
I don't play AoE2 but dude the way you present the game and it's changes make me get a dopamine hit everytime I see you uploaded something new !
Watched your videos for years and for some reason that "like a good infintary civ, like japaneese" sounded so personal. 3:22
Old Sotl bias!
Love your videos as always man : ]
It would have been interesting, just for curiosity's sake, to see how this tech makes the Konnik matchup change, whether it's Mounted or Dismounted the one that is easier to deal with.
It would be interesting how the chariot would work out too
sure it's always mounted, but idk, seeing how they match up with a mixed melee/ranged unit would be interesting
Konnik remains one of the most interesting units in the game! ♥
Thanks for going over the Cataphract! That's what I was most curious about.
What is also interesting to me is how they implemented it and if it is going to be available in the scenario editor
They could manually reduce the attack against shotel warriors to -3.
every mounted unit gained a -3 bonus vs shotels/ethiopian camels, while the royal heirs tech itself just modifies the Shotel armor of shotels from -3 to 0 and the new armor of ethiopian camels from -3 to 0
@@harooooo1 Weird because normally damage contribution from an armor class can't go below 0. I wonder if they had to change the engine, or if it has always worked this way for negative damage (but too lazy to test using Advanced Genie Editor)
“Over the hump”
I see what you did there, sir
Hera is going to be pretty upset once he notices this
Edit: although, to be fair, at least this comes in pretty late in the game but also, on the other hand, Ethiopians already have good archers so idk
This is a castle age tech. This isn't late game. They have good archers and siege too. They should not have this technology.
Hera's complain was regarding only two camel civs (Hindustanis and Gurjaras) whose bonuses are quite oppressive even in early castle. This bonus comes late in castle age and only affects two units Ethiopians don't even use. I doubt the camels will see any play still since they already have free pikes. I would keep my eyes on the Shotels though, they're looking kinda scary.
@@Tpoleful Yep, that's exactly what I meant
If nothing else, Mongols/Huns/Magyars are going to face problems against Ethiopians. Tatars should be able to use hand cannoneers and Cumans have FU champs.
@@martytu20 I know that probably means "Fully upgraded" but I like the idea that Cuman infantry are just so frustratingly good as to be called "F'ed up champs".
With techs like this, do you think maybe it'd be important for the game to display an icon on the unit's card somewhere (for when you select it as an enemy) that'll show they're being affected by a specific tech? I feel like this might be an important thing to have shown for certain techs that buff a unit but aren't visible in any other way (like the unit's stats).
An argument against this would be that you can just learn the matchup, but I think that's an unreasonable expectation for most players given the sheer volume of civs and different techs in this game, made even more complex by updates changing things over time.
Yes, I think that would be very good. Somewhere under the stats so that you still have to click on them (like watching for blacksmith upgrades), requiring some skill/expertise, but not invisible until you've lost a fight. Meanwhile ballistics is right on the edge of "at least it can be detected through masterful observation"...
"Learn the match up" has been the answer since the Byzentines got Logistica.
Logistica, Druzhina, and Royal Heirs would be the techs I can think of that this would apply to.
I'd like a silver crown next to the unit icon to denote Royal Heirs being active
The unit info section in the UI is very big with today's resolutions. I think they can comfortably add three new columns, "Unit Type", "Bonus Damage", "Resistances", on the right of the existing HP/Attack/Armor/Range indicators.
I still think Ethiopians should have a unique tech that makes them not needing any food for any unit.
Spicy
Lmao 🤣
The most shocking thing is that nothing special happens when fighting with Cataphracts
cataphracts have their own armor type and probably also their own attack type, they are a very 'special' unit in the game
@@Stelphy876 cataphracts do not have their own armor type nor do they have their own attack type. They just do bonus damage to infantry and take reduced anti-cavalry damage.
@@Erik_Dz consider cats as infantry, they're weak to archers
As far as armor types (and bonus damage) go, they are cavalry, except they actually have significant non-zero cavalry armour.
@@kylew1950 Yeah, an infantry with a huuge 150 hp and they are not weak to archers because most of archers are not hitting hard.
I know you go into great detail, but is it possible to see how they match up against the top tier civs. For example, shotels vs Frank knights or Bulgarian knights with stirrups. You did this for camels and it was greatly appreciated.
Ethiopians certainly seem to be a much stronger civ than before with archers to counter strong camel civs and shotels/camels for strong cavalry civs.
I feel like they are going in a direction to have a lot more infantry battles, which is awesome because cab and archers have been DOMINANT for so long now
Cav*
What about the droid attack on the Wookie?
Faster more hp and ranged units will always dominate
I agree. It's nice if three instead of two categories of units are viable. Plus historically most armies were infantry-centric, which makes it a bit weird that infantry is so rare / bad in AoE2.
k R: historically you could probably train 20-100 guys with spears for every 1 knight or like 5 competent archers you could field. So at some point the balance is going to flip towards infantry.
Great video as always! Didn't think the impact would be this huge.
Does anyone know when the new patch will be released?
It feels nice that; as much as you'd think trying to protect your archers with a squishy melee unit is bad, i find Shotel wars are really fun to use, being that they run the gap to situations that a slower unit might not save a straggling archer, or maybe avenge it.
Seems like Shotel can single handedly counter anything Bengalis throws in.
And also Magyars, Mongols, Tatars, Gurjaras, Huns, Berbers, maybe even Turks, Burgundians, Hindustanis and Persians
@@Fenet2000 Tatars, Berbers, Burgundians, Hindustanis, Persians have HC. Turks have HC and Janissary. Gurjaras have HC and Chakram. Magyars, Mongols and Huns CA can at least hit and run.
@@mubashirulmoula1798HC against such a quick unit? They already perform poorly aginst regular infantry if they have no meat shield. Without a meat shield the HC get shredded before even attacking twice
Same thought process for janissaries and chakrams. Janissaries are even straight up worse than HC vs infantry
Check this SOTL video
ua-cam.com/video/NxHPksqFrYQ/v-deo.html
@@Fenet2000 They are not as bad as Bengalis units.
I wish Ethiopians still got free Halberdier:(
Hey there :)
What I'm often missing in your comparisons is equal resources factoring in the upgrade cost, basically analysing the break even point of "how many units do I have to create on top of the upgrade so it is worth it" instead of only taking equal res for the troops without considering the res you need for the upgrade
results are kinda what i expected. it fits in with them in that its a strong castle age tech but does fall off a bit in imperial/lategame. The weird thing is now that ethipians has 3 good counters vs calvary. They get the pike upgrade for free, along with the new camels and shotels. Ofc each have a bit of pros and cons with that.
This does seem to make them almost invincible against knight civs in mid castle age onwards. On top of already being able to fire faster than other archer civs all game plus flatten archer civs in late game with torsion engines.
Looking forward to seeing the shotel vs conq matchup.
Interesting that the castle age camels get a buff when Ethiopians already get free pikeman upgrade
Don't forget that this is in addition to Ethiopians already having some of the best archer and siege in the game. So in imp, these shotels are gonna be backed by minigun arbs and ICBM BBCs.
If shotels were meant to ge a head to head unit then this doesn't seem to bad, but the fact that they were already a really good raiding unit with their better speed now makes these guys seem really overtuned. I also don't like how visually it doesn't follow that àrmorless guys dual weilding swords are super resistant to mounted horse archers and elphants
Incan eagle warriors taking a ballista to the face and shrugging it off because they have some feathers
@@RiskyDramaUploads to be fair everyone takes ballistas to the face pretty well in AoE2
@@kinglyknight I thought Shotels (as well as Gbetos) seemed too strong when they were introduced in HD; I wasn't actually able to play them due not having the right expansion, but with buffs to other non-elite unique infantry and Supplies I'm fine with how they are, even with this new tech. Remember, they still die to crossbowmen with equal resources. And I checked, Mayan eagles also beat them. ua-cam.com/video/dXKaOQtmbVk/v-deo.html
One unit I'm curious about is how/if it will also affect the Khmer Ballista Elephant
5:37 -38%
@@vesejir ahh I'm totally blind I thought that was an elephant archer.
Crossbow/arbs and shotels will be a really strong composition in late castle and early imperial. High DPS combo and can't be countered with mass cav like before.
Enjoy it while it lasts, no way this won't get nerfed by either making it more expensive or decreasing it to 2 instead of 3
They will start to suspect something when their cavalry get stomped. Lol that was a good one.
I love this tech from a flavor sense. Before, having faster creation didn't really make sense considering they were, well, royalty. Now, their better training and resources makes them take less damage. It's perfect (although a bit underpriced XD)
Well, the faster creation thing is still there though. They just get it inherently.
@@ggg21201 the creation time is nice, it just didn't fit the name of the tech (also it was a bit cheesy in castle age XS)
Would be cool if it was historically flavoured but i guess they didnt have anything worthy...
@@SIGNOR-G oh for sure, and my logic wasn't probably what they were going for. This has been a (mostly) balancing patch, with historical relevancy applied later. I'll wait for the next expansion for more historically interesting bits 👀
@@Terry_T_ODST yes. Lets see how it goes.
Billy Mays up in heaven partying like it's $19.99
Hey Spirit, I know you're probably busy with the new patch stuff, but I have a weird specific question: what's the villager ratio you need on wood to support x number of farms?
The Scary part of Shotel is how the civ have the Economy for do the unit, still players gonna mix with pikes against mounted units for maximum damage and archer/siege support for possible counters.
seriously OP tech imho especially for a civ that does not need this kind of buff either. meanwhile you see a lot of archer civs with no love at all in the PUP
Spirit, how does it interact with units that ignore armour such as the Leitis?
I read that this effect is actually implemented as giving every mounted unit -3 bonus damage against them, while giving the Shotel Warrior -3 armor against that bonus damage until Royal Heirs bumps that up from -3 to 0, giving the net effect of 3 less damage taken. If that is the case, I would expect ignore armor to do nothing more than neuter blacksmith upgrades just as with every other unit, since treating the Shotel Warrior's -3/0 "Shotel armor" as 0 doesn't make the calculation better.
It blocks exactly 3 damage from cavalry AP attacks. Eg. No Relic Leitis does 15 damage to Royal Shotels instead of the expected 18
I wish the devs would add some optic when you click on an enemy unit that shows if they have researched these “invisible” techs. I can see whether they have got fletching etc so why not something that shows the damage reduction or in the case of Vikings the chieftains tech?
Yeah, Royal Heirs, Chieftains, Druzhina, and Logistica are all the invisible techs I can think of.
Snack time and AoE 2 video, perfect! Thanks SotL 👏👍✌️
Imagine the videos when ROR comes in may
I can't wait... I'm telling you, I just can't wait. Civ overviews, matchups, strategies...
Yesterday was Hera video about how Camel civs break the game balance for Knight civs.
Today is a SotL video about how an upcoming patch has a major buff to a camel civ vs cavalry.
Is this conspiracy or coincidence or just the nature of things?
"Have you heard about that shotel warriors?"
"They have curved swords. Curved swords."
let's take one of the most fragile units in the game and make it counter all meta units! ...except crossbow and onagers
jokes aside, i think this is too much damage reduction against ranged units, i'd personally make it -3 for melee mounted and -1 or -2 for ranged mounted, but well time will tell how good it is
I really like this new effect to be honest for an old unique tech, I hope other techs can have a similar treatment
Yeah, the move away from unique techs that merely enhance an already inherent feature in a unit is a welcome change. Shotels already train quickly, so researching a tech that makes them deploy even faster is kinda dumb. Same with Viking Berserkergang which made them regenerate faster; it’s now just inherent in the elite version of Shotels and is at least inherent in elite berserks and maybe also in regular berserks.
Now to just give Persians something better than merely Mahouts making elephants 30% faster… That should be automatic for elite war elephants.
@@jefffinkbonner9551 Persian trash bow is borderline overpowered though in some matchups though (mega random with nearly no gold for example). Imagine how OP Persians become when they have that epic eco bonuses + 2 powerhouse unique techs lol
@@stuartmacaulay5761 Persian trash-monks, maybe?
@@NewandForgiven Why not Boiling Oil, but better?
@user-ck7gy4lw1q It would
be cool to see a version of that be useful, for sure
Idk... honestly, I'm pretty excited for most of the April patch changes & the buffs that the Militia line are getting, but I _really_ am not into this one.
(1) It doesn't seem fun or fair at all that the opponent has _no_ ability to know whether he's fighting Ethiopian units with Royal Heirs, short of flat out losing an army to it first. I mean... if there's an interface which purports to tell the player "this is how much damage this unit does; this is how much damage that unit resists", then it should just do that straightforwardly... not hide things! Bonus damage is understandable, because that's at least _consistent_ which makes it predictable and fair. Imagine if you saw your opponent with a bunch of halbs, but you couldn't actually know whether they dealt bonus damage to cavalry or not, until you actually fought them! Fun? Fair? I don't think so.
(2) It doesn't really make a ton of sense to me that it applies to _all_ mounted units, whether mêlée or ranged. It's a little disappointing to me to see AoE2 increasingly just making techs with random names that do random things, instead of stuff that actually has at least _some_ immersive basis in reality. Is their awesommmmme aristocratic blood just somehow deflecting both swords _and_ arrows, or something?
(3) Last but not least, the tech just seems kinda OP. You're basically getting +3/+3 for _two_ different units, against a _huge_ array of opposing units of different damage types, and for only 300F 300G?? And moreover, _neither_ of those units is even the archer line, or even an archer at all, despite Ethiopians being an archer & siege civ? Tbh, I'm betting/hoping that this is gonna get dialed back pretty quickly, and/or increased in cost at the very least.
Shotels desperately needed this buff, well done AOE2 devs!
No they didn't. What do civs like berbers do vs them now? Archers and shotels shred anything they can do
It's a cool new tech that has a great unique effect
Oh. Oh my. I love Shotels so this is nutty. This is gonna be great
Goths with Perfusion: Finally a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary!
I guess the plan to encourage more infantry play is just to make cavalry civs unplayable these days! Not a fan of this change. I don't see how a cavalry civ is supposed to counter this when the Ethiopians will have much better archers too, and already had free pike.
2:41 I guess they will add a sound effect displayed for their enemies to make them be aware like they did with some other unique techs.
Probably not. While there’s a public notification for Flemish Revolution and First Crusade, there’s no notification for otherwise invisible stat boost techs like Logistica and Druzhina.
The Ethiopians really benefit particularly from the fact that the improvement is being given to some of their faster units. The real power-units for the Ethiopians are their archers and siege, and cavalry is an obvious counter to both. Improving your ability to intercept Cavalry and take fights helps protect those units
The king must be really busy making that army.
Not sure if this buff is nessecary.
But it is a very heavy buff
This seems too strong to me, specially since it affects both camels and shotels. I am not sure what Magyars or Tatars would do against ethiopians, or even some camel civs (considering ethiopians already have very strong archers)
The civ already got Pikemen for free (and formerly Halbs as well) while also fielding incredibly strong archers, it's good to see the Shotels get some appreciation but this might potentially be a bit overkill. At least the unique tech is made a bit more useful.
This tech affecting camels is what makes it broken. I’m fine with the shottels, but Ethiopians generally had a good matchup vs CA/Cav civs like huns and Tatars. They have one of the best halb-siege combos, have BBC w/ Tortion, fully upgraded skirm, and now top tier camels. That’s just silly.
Not top tier camel
This is a balanced update for the Shotel Warrior, well deserved for a Unique Unit. Their camels dont have bloodlines or final cav armor so no big deal.
Thanks! Nice show and tell!
I'll be honest, I'll miss watching the flood coming from a single castle push.
How does it interact with Wootz Steel?
For all the efforts they've made to make infantry better in a meta dominated by cavalry and archers, I honestly feel like this is one of the more interesting ways to do it
Some other points:
- Yes you should consider the unit to unit matchup for a lot of cheap units but it matters least for units like the Shotel that train insanely fast. 2 Castles is easily enough to produces a corresponding force of Shotels to a more expensive unique unit since you can train about 3 or more(Or twice as much for Elite Shotels) in the time most unique units take to train 1.
- Ethiopian camels will now probably struggle to make an impact as a fast cavalry counter since Shotels are acting in the same role now. They have some marginal advantages but it gets grossly overshadowed by the advantages of Shotels. Notably, Shotels were already disgusting raiding units(Being fast and eating TCs for breakfast). This is particularly bad since camels are typically used to counter the units that Shotels performed really well against in these tests like cav archers. As crazy as it might seem, to me this tech feels like a significant nerf to camels.
I wish Genoese Crossbowmen had a resistance against cavalry as well. An attack bonus is nice, but their shield should really mean sth, and I guess they're supposed to be first good against cavalry because of that shield: it would make a lot of sense if a bit of their attack bonus was replaced by a mounted units attack reduction.
True, but GCs are already pretty strong, I don't think they need a buff.
actually the shield had more a function against other archers/crossbows, which is presented in the game by the tech pavese
@@orirune3079 I would have their bonus attack be reduced in exchange.
@@MrTerapak I'd rather have the tech halved in cost, give +0/+1 armor, while GC/EGC gets 0-1/1-2 armor.
@@LightKnight_Age_Of NOOOOO absolutely not, when you're the Italian player there's nothing more satisfying than mowing through endless hussars in a late-game imperial age war
Pretty nice buff to the unique unit. This means I can consider that Shotel warriors will be useful in more battle situations.
I'd love to see this mounted armor bonus be applied to all infantry for other civs. A +1 or 2 would aid against knight rushes in castle age and make man at arms more viable.
Why ?
how do Teutonic Paladins do? Their armor bonus in this interaction isn't as big as the Shotel or Camel, but I'd imagine it'd skew the results a bit since they're taking 2 less damage either way.
yes makes the Shotel Warrior even stronger. Because it wasn't the before
It sounds like against Ethiopians you can't rely on pure cav to counter their archers, you need to use a mixed force of anti-archer cav and a steady archer/melee line to retreat behind.
Feels like a hard counter to CA and Light Cav Civs.
Yeah I like the change in general but I think Magyar or hunns are done In this matchup, it should be more like -3 vs Cavs and -1/2 vs ca
Shotel get instantly 4 sec creation time when researching elite upgrade is a massive boost for Ethiopian. Maybe a surprise fast imp castle drop.
so to counter shotels you go either infantry (who get outrun so no counter for raiding) or archers against the 2nd best archer civ? seems off.
ethiopian pocket shotel spam might become pretty good in teamgames
But how did they do it in engine? This should have required a big change to the way damage is done right, with attacks taking into account the armour types/properties of the unit the attack came from which wasn't a thing before right?
I think the devs are trying to push for more diverse and somewhat more realistic army compositions and especially highlighting some of the features that make the civs stand out uniquely against each other. I think it's cool to make some civs really shine in certain niches to maintain a sense of uniqueness and also should lead to way more strategic and thought out match ups, since it's now much more risky to send in some knights to deal with Ethiopian crossbows, when they are guarded by Shotels or Camels. That forces players to think more about the civs in general and utilize bonuses stronger.
This is actually a HORRENDOUS tech.
CHEAP, DEADLY AND CASTLE AGE
I specifically hate this as a Dravidians civ picker, THERE IS NOTHING Dravidians can do against a Shotel + Arbalester push.
Fantastic, great game balance, devs! xD
I personally would prefer this tech giving -3/-2 attack only from melee mounted units.
Can't you go infantry + siege? Dravidians now also get a discount on wood cost, and they have amazing infantry late game
@@scardy92 Maybe... Have to check after the patch, barely makes a difference in my opinion, since Mangonel micro is based on luck and enemy attention...
But Dravidian infantry can't force a fight against Shotels, and Ethiopian Onagers are a terror to Dravidian archers, the solution to this was Dravidian elephant archers, but this stupid new castle age tech DISABLES Elephant archers against Shotels.
9:44 I see what you did there
Surprised no one else has commented about this 😂
Ehat about the Byzantine unique unit (can't type in english)? Is it cost efficient? Does it change drammaticaly the results)?
Tatars are going to scream in terror whenever they have to play against them
HOW are they doing this? That really interests me.
Some hidden armour that only cavalry units check?
Damage packets including unit type now?
How would this interact with Leitis?
It might open many possibilities for the future. But then, they seem to be doing this a lot recently.
They probably just get more anti-cavalry and anti-cavalry-archer armor, similar to the cataphract which has anti-infantry armor and has been in the game for a long time now
Leitis also ignore only melee armor, not these unit/unit-class specific types of armor
Obviously it's just a guess, but it feels like the easiest way to implement such a change
@@bionetik The Cataphract has bonus armour against Anti-Cavalry attacks, no matter where they come from, as well as dealing bonus damage to infantry specifically. The armour does not need to know the source - it works against attacks from ANY source, like Camel riders and Genoese Crossbowmen.
And the way they implemented the Condottiero resistance against Hand canoneers was to create a special armour class that only this unit has, and gave all units the same attack bonuses against it as they do against regular Infantry, except for hand canoneers. So either they now changed the engine to allow attacks to confer information of its source to the target entity, or they changed the attack of all mounted units to be 3 less, with 3 bonus damage applying to everything that does not have this bonus resistance. I'm personally hoping for the former.
So what you're saying is, ironically, this will probably do as much to help push players into using the swordsman line (What you going to be a better counter to this unit than mounted troops)... Which seems to be a desire from the devs anyway.
Yeah... Sounds like a great idea against the civ with the highest damage output archers
Not necessarily. Don't forget Ethiopians specialize in both Archers and Siege. I'm guessing they gave that buff because fast cavalry units tend to trample both of them.
@@LonesomeDevil but Ethiopians already had free pikemen, so why make shotels so ridiculously strong?
@@Fenet2000 Most likely because Shotels were considered one of the worst unique units in the meta and nobody ever used Ethiopian Camels. I don't think it'll change how the civ is played that much, to be honest. Like you said, Pikemen and Halbs also have a tiny boost and are much easier to train as a cavalry counter. It's a very strong tech for sure, but I do think it'll still be a niche one to use. You're still not gonna see it researched every single game.
@@LonesomeDevil I hope you are right, but I am afraid we might get another civ that becomes almost impossible to counter
Hera dropped a video yesterday that addresses that exact problem with Hindustanis and gurjaras. And now we are giving also Ethiopians a bonus on top of their camels which I think is just not necessary. It means that it will be a lot more difficult to balance that in the future when people have figured out how ridiculous that tech is
So, what are the best unique castle techs? Yeomen? Polishzic privileges?
No info on whether this wording means that Genitours are just straight up not able to deal damage with imbalanced upgrades?
So what about the Coustillier?
How many charge attacks does it take to kill a Shotel now?
On a maybe side note, I find this tech interesting, but not so much intuitiv.
How do you imagine a unit getting less damage due to the other unit on a horse/camel/elephant?
I can imagine a unit dealing more damage to a horse/camel/elephant and in fact, thats how I viewed the spearmenline bonusdamage, but I find it odd the other way around.
Take the archer vs cavalry archer, how would one arrow hit more, but the other arrow hit less?
Ofc its not all about realism, but I prefer the more intuitive behavior.
Because they use different techniques and weapons, obviously. A foot archer and a cavalry archer may not use the same type of bow, nor arrow, and don't fire them in the same way. Same goes for melee. Different techniques and tools.
Only one I could truly argue it wouldn't make sense is maybe the elephant archer, since they're on a platform, and thus could totally use any type of bow.
It doesn't make 100% sense, of course, but there's a throughline here that's close enough for video game logic, if you ask me.
" how would one arrow hit more, but the other arrow hit less?" Logically there are many realistic reasons why the damage of one arrow hit would inflict more or less damage than another.
Different bow, and arrows/arrowheads are just the most obvious ones. Training, positioning, momentum etc are more suttle options to make solid arguements for one kind of archer to inflict more damage than another type.
"How do you imagine a unit getting less damage due to the other unit on a horse/camel/elephant?"
Welp also several ways. If you have weapons or defenses effective against these animals you should recieve less damage. One more realistic way to show the effects of a knight on horseback vs one on camel, would be to give the camel unit a fear mechanic against cav.
well then why do spearmen do so little damage to almost naked villagers?
@@GameFuMaster Villagers got them schmooves, and dance out of the way of the attempted stabs. Slashes are harder to dodge, however.
I'm being facetious, of course.
@@The_Foxymew you're right, I mean, just look at the female villager in SoTL's intro, who's twisting madly while dodging all of those javelins!
The only gripe I have with this video is that you didn’t show how their camels do against paladins, both generic and top tier ones
Btw someone know, why gurjaras mounted unit deal not correct damage to shotels (with UT) ?
infantry should never lose to cavalry cost effectively! it should be classical rock/paper/scissors between infantry/archers/cavalry. while the spear line can be a hard counter, the regular infantry should at least be a weak counter. i fully understand this is "specialized" infantry, they should at least break even with cavalry.
So Shotel, Elite Skirm, and Torsion Engine Onagers is now unstoppable.
Okay, but what if
*a l l t e c h s*
It's lovely to see civs that get some unique +2 anything instead of the regular +1 anything be able to get a +3 anything. How would Ethiopian camels fare, then, having Bloodlines + last armor upgrade + Royal Heirs?
Elephant archers are the new camels; countered by everything and good vs nothing.
Devs are stupid. [period]
How does this work mechanically? Do units gain a 'shotel' attack/armor type? What about for camels?
Konniks be like "sure dude, keep hitting my horse to see what will happen to you"
But does it have an affect on trample damage from mounted units?
Finally the game provides a way to deal with ele archers
This seems kind of a bad call. Cavalry is usually good pick against siege, and since Ethiopians have one of the best siege with the imp UT, meaning the player has a castle already, they can easily produce Shotels now to defend them. Unlike the halb line tho, the Shotels can put a fight against infantry also with the siege's support, and even destroy enemy siege fast on their own. Ethiopian siege play seems to be now really difficult to deal with.
Do you think they’re doing too much to knock down Calvary Civs or not enough? Or even just right?