I love the Goth unique tech. Back as a kid I spammed Goths vs the AI and felt so utterly superior when I got imp, had my upgrades and started pumping out Huscarls from 10 barracks. It was godly and I thought I was the smartest kid alive for coming up with this mastermind level strategy. Oh god, times were so easy.
@@mignonne_ Yes I got both the HD version and DE on Steam, but I don't want to invest the time it needs to get actually competitive so I only played campaigns and skirmish vs ai, or fun maps like Forest Nothing and Diplo games. But I haven't played in a whole now.
with my unwillingness to invest any meaningful amount of time I'd be losing games for 8 weeks or so before I'd get anywhere near where I could have fun and I don't see this being an experience that's fun nor worth it @@FriedMetroid
Your point about using Supremacy for safer forward construction (combined with faster construction time) made me realize why the Spanish have those bonuses in the first place: establishing colonies is pretty much the real world equivalent for forward bases!
Number one most useful has to be the Saracen's Madrasah to return 33% of a Monk's cost upon death: The Lion and the Demon pacifist would be that much more difficult without it.
@@darthkarl99 I had a hard time understanding it too but I found the obvious lol. About in the mittle of the screen there is a blue monk moving from right to kinda middle of the screen, coming from the siege workshop. He doesnt walk though, he is gliding or whatever.
I love these. When theres monks in a game you almost always spot one of these bad boys pulling some sick moves on their enemies. I'd convert too if I saw that.
"obsidian arrows is a meme strategy" Meanwhile 2v2 world cup losers are still horrified after seeing their buildings falling faster to arbalest than to siege
Logistica amd elite cata upgrade are cheaper now and can actually be within reasonable reach. Until then, defend with Byzantine fortified walls and maybe some champs?
@@EagleTopGaming in massed battles, FU cataphracts (without bloodlines) actually beat FU paladins from bloodlines civs, despite a single FU paladin always beating a single FU cataphract one-on-one. Logistica is very good.
@Last First Byzantines already don't get blast furnace. If Byzantines got bloodlines you'd probably see a HP nerf on the cataphract to compensate, and it'd still probably need more balance attention because 80-farm hussar is so good.
@@Orcawarrior2 yeah, it makes trebs better than cannons since can be pack/unpack so fast. Only thing cannons still have the high ground is anti siege capacity
I'd add warwolf (not for the blast damage but for the 100% accuracy it gives against other trebs), the fact that that tech makes treb wars against britons impossible is insanely strong
Supremacy also indirectly helps when you're going monks. It sort of guarantees that even if there isn't military around you can convert enemy villagers and get a quasi-military unit. (Yes, as soon as you order the villagers to do anything other than what the enemy was having them do, they'll get Supremacy. Furthermore, if the enemy converts *your* Supremacy villagers, they'll *lose* the Supremacy bonus if they order the villager to perform any task.)
I would say that Chieftains is also very defining for Vikings late game, maybe even more than Berserkergang. The fact that your berserks and champions can go toe to toe with enemy Paladins make them feel like in late game they no longer lose the edge they have in early and mid game
@@jefffinkbonner9551 Was needed. Vikings were literally 100% pick/ban in every single tournament, no matter the map/rules/setting. TBh I would nerf their eco instead of chieftains though.
One unique tech I slowly fell in love with is the Teutons' Castle Age tech, Ironclad. At a fairly cheap 400 wood and 350 gold, it grants all siege units +4 melee armor. Now suddenly, your siege takes several more hits to go down and the enemy struggles to slow down your unstoppable push with trebs, onagers and bombard cannons.
Obsidian Arrow lost the +6 to Stone Building armor-class so Mayan's Arb should do same damage against all things now, personally I'd like it to deal 8-10 damage to "Building armor-class" instead so they will be affected by Masonry and Architecture at some point, instead of +6 to Standard Building like what we have currently because that's still pretty nasty against anything else. BTW I'm surprised you didn't mention Kataparuto and Warwolf since they affected trebs in a great way and you like that unit a lot.
If you make it vs "all building armor class" then Mayan archers would do only 1 damage to castles and walls. They have base 8 base "all building" armor.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 they also do area of effect. A set of Brit trebs can snipe enemy BBC and trebs very quickly. You can also snipe villagers or groups of onagers reliably
Don't underestimate the secondary effect of the Briton's Yeoman tech. An ungarrisoned Elite Longbowman will do 4 damage to a fully upgraded Paladin. So Five of them will do 20 damage to that paladin. Now garrison them in a fully upgraded Briton tower. Each arrow is now doing 10 damage to that paladin, for a total of 30 damage just from the Longbowmen, plus an additional 10 damage from the tower itself. That's a 50% damage upgrade just for garrisoning them.
i feel like, when desiging vietnamese the civ, they tried 2 hard to go with certain images/steoretypes of vietnamese that they forgot to give an actual gameplay, or at least one worths playing.
@@aparioss1072 That's exactly what I strongly dislike about how they designed the civ. "Uhh guys we gotta fill the quota for another Battle Elephant civ in the next Asian expansion. Cheap elephants for Malay, sturdy elephants for Burmese, offensive elephants for Khmer. Next civ will have meatshield elephants! What's that? Their history and culture? Who cares!"
@@zeroomega3781 Am I missing something here or are you complaining about basically the complete opposite of Phan Anh Nguyen? He says they only got the Culture/Stereotypes in, and you say they didnt care about that and just went for what fit their gameplay-requirements?
I've played this game since I was a kid, and just recently got back into it because of definitive edition. And i must say, your videos make it all the more fun. Thank you for making these, and merry Christmas ⛄
@@soko-ban I don't know what the "standard" english pronunciation is supposed to be. But I know how the word is actually pronounced and if I hadn't seen the word written, I wouldn't even have known he said that word. So it's not just a matter of slight mispronounciation or maybe wrong intonation (all that is ok), but he straight up butchered it.
@@hebl47 By "standard english" pronunciation I mean that it's the only reasonable pronunciation in the english language if you read the word out loud, as opposed to "Pavise", where there is multiple ways you could say it using only the english language in and of itself. As far as I understand he mostly just mispronounced the zh/ż sound (which doesn't exist in english, closest thing to it would be j/dg as in judge). I guess you could also say something about the american "r" and the "i" vowel, but these're also the things I'd put under "standard english" pronunciation of other languages Am I missing something here?
@@soko-ban Yeah, the main problem is the zh/ž sound. Since it kind of forms the core of the word :) I've come immune of how english and american speakers pronounce the R their way, so I wasn't really bothered at the time. But like I said: I think the "I didn't recognise the word until I've seen it written" metric should be pretty decent one. Btw - there's more than one way to pronounce pavise? If we go by "standard english". Okay, maybe the A can be pronounced in two ways, but anything else?
for me the best unique tech is that of berberes which increases the production speed of castles by 25% because it also works on allies, it's a bit like having a 2nd team bonus.
I think the most underrated unique tech in the game is Chieftain, Viking's unique castle tech. Giving all of your infantry +5 attack vs cavalry and +4 vs camel is actually huge. It gives the chance of your pikemen to close the gap of halberdier bonus damage vs cavalry and also makes berserk a cost effective counter to even Frank paladins. Given that Viking also has bonuses to infantry, this is some good sinergy.
To recap on the numbers, A Paladin dies after 10 Berserk hits and a berserk dies after 6 hits. The Paladin attacks slightly faster. The paladin costs 135 resources and the Berserk costs 90. So it is not really a counter to Paladin, but it trades about evenly. Both units have advantages over another, however costing less gold is an advantage for the Berserk.
Crenelations I think it's a good defensive one once you hit the enemy earlier and you can avoid, at least, being attacked by bombard canons(except turkish one), being vulnerable by trebs
I think that both Aztecs technologies are great: Atlatl makes your skirms really good and Garland Wars can give you a massive power spike with the eagle spam
Hey Spirit! I think an important tech you forgot to mention is Chieftains. Although it has been nerfed lately, it makes Berserks shred cavalry civilisations - and is a castle age tech! Cheers!
? It has become quite more expensive if thats what you mean, but other then that it was buffed at some point, since the attack bonus vs cavalry is no longer just for berserks but all viking infantry.
Teutons vrs British. They Longbow your infantry: and your Skirms They catapult your Rams They Treb your Bombard towers, Castles, Towns and economy. You sit and cry because they also have Halbs against your Cav: and Longbows shred them anyway. Not that Halbs are GOOD against cav or anything: but if you try running rings: Their Crossbows take up the slack. I suppose that is why the Teutons never bothered fighting the British and left that scrap to the French.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 Well, not that anyone is trying to claim that Teutons are a top tier civ, not by a long shot, but just having a civ countered by another doesn't necessary means that it's bad.
I cannot believe you forgot to add Kasbah to the list of good unique techs: not only your castle will work faster, but your allys castle too! It will help a lot in Trebwars, to get conscription, hoardings and get uniwue units out faster. Magyars, Incas, Franks, Britons, Spanish, Malay, Italians, to name a few, can make good use to get their unique units out faster. It also increases the research speed of other unique technologies too!
I'm really thankful you mentioned the faster research of imperial knight tech from chivalry. I had been completely overlooking that. That might make me feel better about its painful 500g cost.
There needs to be a game mode where you get to steal just one unique tech from a different civ. I'm talking Persian trashbows with Obsidian Arrows, Karambit Warriors with Druzhina, or, the not at all over powered Goth champions with Forced Levy!!
It's probably the dumbest tech assignment though. The Japanese didn't use mechanical siege weapons that often, and kataparuto is literally just the Japanese pronunciation of catapult.
One that people tend to overlook is Greek Fire, from the Byzantines. When playing on watermaps, people tend to choose Italians,Vikings or Portuguese, and forget that Byzantines are actually pretty good on water too.
These are infinitely better than maghrebi camels; Sipahi. Its meta defining for turks, making them quite relevant in high level game. More armor techs like carrack abd silk armor are very impactful for the cost.
Nomad mixed with drill. is pretty cool with mongols when you use mangudai hordes/fast onager as a sort of dynamic defense. Let your enemy tear thru a multi layered house-wall with minimal if any losses to population cap, only to be recieved by range fire hell escape. Have had a lot of fun on black forest.
I am surprised you did not talk about Kataparuto, because I think the ability pack and deploy your trebuchets much faster is amazing, especially if you try to save them from an enemy cavalry gank from behind.
Malians cavalry is one of my favorites. It makes their camels and light cavalry deal 14 damage. Thats practically a cavalier while not being expensive and slow a cavalier unit. It makes both good at raiding and camels also counter enemy cavalry. The opposite is the Gurjaras, with having 7 armor camels. Its less useful in general than the Malians attack bonus but can still give them more durability on countering heavy cavalry.
Hey you are pure gold man thank you so much for all the videos and your effort! Please never stop making this wish you all the best and merry christmas!
Supremacy is powerful if it is actively used as intended. In combat, villagers fall within the category of specialist units, who may amplify the performance of other units via utilities. Just like monks, rams, or trebuchets (or honestly most siege units). If you notice, all those units bring critical changes to the fight, and often have clear and long window of vulnerability to counter/ exploit: - monk takes random time to convert, must slowly walk into range, and must stay still during conversion. - rams are slow and hit at melee range, but has negative melee armors. - trebuchet has set up times, long reload, slow projectiles, and low accuracy vs units. - villagers provide a very wide variety of supports thanks to buildings, from vision for sieges (outpost), to anchor points (castle), to faster reinforcement (production), ... in return, they are the weakest in combat, must be massed to be effective, and have the longest delay before having any effect. Take any specialist support unit, and buff up its defense, and you will get an overpowered unit. Aztec with 100 HP monk face tanking while converting, and Slav monk to a lesser degree, are great examples. Unlike combat units, who only deal more damage in its lifetime by surviving longer, support units give critical benefits more frequently and reliably by surviving pass their windows of vulnerability in more situations. And in well organized fights, it is the specialist-supportive units that decide the fight.
These kind of videos might be good as a kiund of AOE2 awards? Like AOE2 DE Awards. Best unique tech - and can nominate a few favourites. And then we could also have some fun with Best Game of the Year. Most Improved Player. Best Daut Castle. Best Meme Strategy. And so on... Spirit of the Law's 2020 AOE2 awards would be fun.
Chivalry is pretty OP in for fun mass team games like 4v4 BF. Your frontline of knights just never runs out, and you just cannon everyone into oblivion. I think it’s one of the best “dream comps”
IMO the Portuguese unique Carrack tech is a pretty nice one. +1/+1 ship armor which just cements their naval dominance with extra tough ships plus resistance to fire ships. Carrack (and Arquebus) are good like how spirit was saying Yeomen was good, they just take the civ’s best qualities and turn them up to 11
about what you opened with, i actually enjoyed winning games with almost 80% villegers building castles in the middle of enemy base in multiple locations one castle after another "but requires a couple of town centers and a lot of stone saved up to do it fast, it's ether 5-10 castles in a very short period of ti e or it's not worth it" i primarily did it with teutons cuz of the extra castle ange, and it works really well with bulgarians because of the high damage that kreposts have although less tanky 'damage is more impotant in this case anyway" but point is, spanish vils are exactly what you describe them to be.
Hey hey, first i would like to thank you for putting all your effort to make age of empires 2 more popular and get more people to play the game,, I have a small suggestion that maybe you can raise to AOE2 teams which i am sure many will appreciate it, so it would be nice if you can select any individual unit of yours and activate a button which will notify you when your unit see an enemy unit, and/or this also can be aded to the watch tower to make them more useful. ,, thanks again and good luck again
Fabric Shields from Incas +1/+2 armor for Kamayuk, Eagle Warrior and Slinger and Andean Sling to remove minimum range for Slingers and Skirmishers is pretty damn badass.
I like that he specified what range of players was targeted by this discussion (800 - 1200 ELO). I am around 1100 so I felt like this was for me! I would like a new review of Teutons.
I wish there was a setting for your villagers for them to fight as they can make decent trash units. Spanish with supremacy: 40 hp, 9 attack, 3/4 armor. The Inca are similar or even better with all of the blacksmith research: 40 hp, 7 attack, 4/6 armor. They're particularly fine vs actual trash units... but they try to run away after every single hit.
I find the Aztecs Atl Atl tech gives them a huge bonus lategame with trash wars. Combine this with their relic gold or a Vietnamese team mate it just gets insane.
iron clad is vary underestimated, first it makes catapults resident to ranged melee unites like axe thrower, which are by far one of the deadliest counters in the game to siege unites, it also makes the Germans one of the only races in the game that can keep catapults alive when dealing with fast arrow resistant unites like eagle warriors.
I have found Spanish Trade units generating +33% gold and Missionaries a great advantage in game strategy. Convert enemy buildings while getting gold from their market.
Yeomen giving 2+ attack to towers can also help with defending a base or in a trush. It's not as good as Yasuma or the Teutons castle range tech [honestly forgot the name], but it's something.
I think Lithuanians Hill Forts is an underrated tech. Can't tell you how many times people get caught out by just how much damn range the TC has. 9 range is enough to outrage Imperial Age Arbalest and still be able to hit Siege Onager with Siege Engineers.
Atheism once gave me the time for my low elo legend win. My opponent went for relic win and defensive mode, while I boomee more effecient. I pushed him slowly and gladly remembered the unique tech.^^
in certain mods with infinite tech modes You can have infinite health cav losing to infinite health and DAMAGE spanish villagers. Because you get more health and a faster tech progress on Supremacy than Bloodlines+Attack upgrade When the Spanish oneshot your castles with their villagers: you know you lost
@@glenmcgillivray4707 well u gotta do some masonry of course hehe. Then again Castle HP capped at 30K or they all insta-fall. I did once manage to beat an insane Spanish vil player in 256x tech by going Persians and just rebuilding stuff faster than he could kill it. The multitasking with the Spanish vils is quite severe.
SOTL, let me ask your opinion on something: Do you think siege onagers are overpowered? My brother and I play against the computer all the time (never against other humans), and the siege onagers don't really have a hard counter. Everyone says bombard cannons, but if the siege onager is moving, the bombard cannons always miss, then the siege onager is in range and kills the bombard cannon- or they kill each other, and the bombard cannon is a lot more expensive. You can attack terrain ahead of the siege onager, but it's easy to miss that way. Want to rush in with cavalry? That's great unless they're protected by other siege onagers or other units, like halberdiers. Next thing you know, half your cavalry is dead and all you did was kill one siege onager. I can't tell you how many times I had a huge mass of infantry or archers get killed by a single shot from a siege onager. It's like one single siege onager can stop my entire army!
I'm no pro, but I recommend practicing your micro for dodging onager shots. Also if they're protected by halbs, use your own pikes or halbs so that if you loose some in the meelee it's not a big resource loss, and the enemy's onagers would probably take a lot of their own units down with friendly fire. Practice different situations with different unit combinations in the scenario editor
Massing SO is a pretty huge investment, so I wouldn't expect an easy answer. The real answer is probably to kill the SO player with a more afforable comp before they can get there. But well-micro'd heavy cav should do well against it. It's pretty hard to avoid friendly fire with massed SO when trying to kill cav, and heavy cav aren't going to die immediately to halbs unless the army numbers are very lopsided. Light cav are also worth considering -- in late game you'd probably happily trade tens of light cav to take out two or so SO's because the gold and tempo loss are so much more significant. Just make sure not to neglect your farm eco. Some civs have good unique units for the job too. Cataphracts will mess up both the SO's and their escort of pointy bois. Huskarls and Woads should too thanks to their high movement speed. Mangudai and Arambai should do well with high-level micro, though mistakes with these units are expensive. Bombards should be pretty good if the SO's are massed, since microing *all* of the SO's in a mass around cannonball fire is pretty impractical. Add a meatshield of light cav or spears to make it difficult for the SO's to close the range.
My favourite tech is drill for those turbo charged rams.
How can this comment be posted 10 hours ago if the video was posted 4 minutes ago?
@@cristianionut2767 everyone always asks and it's Patreon early access
Drill rams with pike siege ram!
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
VVVVVVVVVV
Ram before drill: ANIKI!
Ram after drill: MY DRILL IS THE DRILL THAT WILL PIERCE THE HEAVENS!
I love the Goth unique tech. Back as a kid I spammed Goths vs the AI and felt so utterly superior when I got imp, had my upgrades and started pumping out Huscarls from 10 barracks. It was godly and I thought I was the smartest kid alive for coming up with this mastermind level strategy. Oh god, times were so easy.
Did you try the game again?
@@mignonne_ Yes I got both the HD version and DE on Steam, but I don't want to invest the time it needs to get actually competitive so I only played campaigns and skirmish vs ai, or fun maps like Forest Nothing and Diplo games. But I haven't played in a whole now.
@@Jixxor As long as you are willing to lose enough games to get a correct ELO, you can play online at any level
with my unwillingness to invest any meaningful amount of time I'd be losing games for 8 weeks or so before I'd get anywhere near where I could have fun and I don't see this being an experience that's fun nor worth it @@FriedMetroid
We all know the best tech is Inquisition, because nobody expects it.
Boo.
@@TheCandidPygmy 7 :(
Yeah I almost want to give you a slap for that, but I'll let it pass this time.
@@15OgLoc Looks like CJ didn't give you the rhymes book afterall.. FeelsBadMan
@@AgeofNoob I don't need that I'm Og Loc fool, O-G LOC.
Your point about using Supremacy for safer forward construction (combined with faster construction time) made me realize why the Spanish have those bonuses in the first place: establishing colonies is pretty much the real world equivalent for forward bases!
Number one most useful has to be the Saracen's Madrasah to return 33% of a Monk's cost upon death: The Lion and the Demon pacifist would be that much more difficult without it.
Imo this is literally the worst and least impactful, get 33 gold back? For a monk, which there are usually fewest of? That’s nothing
@@theopichalski7736 Yeah I don't even play this game and that seems horribly inefficient
@@SeisoYabai Both of you guys are clearly missing the joke. Here you go - ua-cam.com/video/r7mNhLtPNvU/v-deo.html
What I like to call the medieval insurance policy.
@@theopichalski7736 are you blind or didn't understand the joke
0:31 Are we not gonna talk about the rad hovering monk XD
He even got a conversion.
Ummm, where, i feel like i'm missing the obvious....
@@darthkarl99 I had a hard time understanding it too but I found the obvious lol.
About in the mittle of the screen there is a blue monk moving from right to kinda middle of the screen, coming from the siege workshop. He doesnt walk though, he is gliding or whatever.
I love these. When theres monks in a game you almost always spot one of these bad boys pulling some sick moves on their enemies. I'd convert too if I saw that.
Good eye!
You can be longbow man now :D
"obsidian arrows is a meme strategy"
Meanwhile 2v2 world cup losers are still horrified after seeing their buildings falling faster to arbalest than to siege
Was gonna write just that. It was definetly _not_ a joke there.
Yeah, I don't know anyone who actually thinks it's a meme strategy, it's legitimately overpowered.
@@teddyhaines6613 2v2 and 1v1 are different
Arbalests? More like bombarbalests.
Obsidian Arrows was recently nerfed so that won't happen again :(
(basically remake team is running american civs into the ground)
Logistica because who doesn't love to crush the Goth spam under the hooves of the mighty Cataphracts
Bloodlines is better then Logistica. (A bit of a troll take, but somewhat true)
How are you gonna afford it after those damn Goths killed all of your villagers?
Logistica amd elite cata upgrade are cheaper now and can actually be within reasonable reach. Until then, defend with Byzantine fortified walls and maybe some champs?
@@EagleTopGaming in massed battles, FU cataphracts (without bloodlines) actually beat FU paladins from bloodlines civs, despite a single FU paladin always beating a single FU cataphract one-on-one. Logistica is very good.
@Last First Byzantines already don't get blast furnace. If Byzantines got bloodlines you'd probably see a HP nerf on the cataphract to compensate, and it'd still probably need more balance attention because 80-farm hussar is so good.
Considering this was a video about things SotL finds underrated or just wants to talk about, it's a miracle the Japanese were only listed once.
Especially since their other tech for faster trebuchets is just such a good time
@@Orcawarrior2 yeah, it makes trebs better than cannons since can be pack/unpack so fast. Only thing cannons still have the high ground is anti siege capacity
I'd add warwolf (not for the blast damage but for the 100% accuracy it gives against other trebs), the fact that that tech makes treb wars against britons impossible is insanely strong
Mongols' Drill tech is really devastating, specially when you can send a full army of Siege Rams against your opponent's defenses
Haha I looove massing superfast siege rams
Siege tower drift
RAMMING SPEED!!!
I just saw Viper vs Hera in which Viper made nothing but Siege Rams and sent them.🔥🔥
@@kvlpnd What's the outcome?
Last time I was this early Attila didnt challenge every Bleda's decision yet
haha good one
Ne vsichni to takhle stihame. Tohle bude muj rekord a to je to porad nekolik hodin po.
Last time I was this early Joan of Arc was still Joan the maid
@@phanboichau8498 Last time I was this early the ruler of Cairo was still wondering wear Lord Saladin was going with his great army
It took me 10 seconds to get the joke.
RIP Obsidian Arrows. You will be missed.
I always hated that it did not apply to plumed archers.
Personally I like chivalry for uhhhh, personal reasons
Duh, as a cavalier farimba is better for you bro
@@oom-3262 he a pacifist, he wanna live and let live
bro you mispelled your name
@@davilg007 He was born to ride, not to spell.
You mean Stirrups?
Supremacy also indirectly helps when you're going monks. It sort of guarantees that even if there isn't military around you can convert enemy villagers and get a quasi-military unit. (Yes, as soon as you order the villagers to do anything other than what the enemy was having them do, they'll get Supremacy. Furthermore, if the enemy converts *your* Supremacy villagers, they'll *lose* the Supremacy bonus if they order the villager to perform any task.)
"Fear the power of Atheism!" -Attila, probably, while wielding his sword of Mars
They say his Hunnic Horses snorted fire, and drank blood...
Is that a FGO reference
@@jaishkhan7442 What's that?
Attila was beaten by the Pope.
@@fiddlesticks7245 Was he?
I would say that Chieftains is also very defining for Vikings late game, maybe even more than Berserkergang. The fact that your berserks and champions can go toe to toe with enemy Paladins make them feel like in late game they no longer lose the edge they have in early and mid game
It’s a crime how expensive they made chieftans now in the recent patch
@@jefffinkbonner9551 Was needed. Vikings were literally 100% pick/ban in every single tournament, no matter the map/rules/setting. TBh I would nerf their eco instead of chieftains though.
I would say that it was a mistake overall just like Mayans obsidian arrows
One unique tech I slowly fell in love with is the Teutons' Castle Age tech, Ironclad. At a fairly cheap 400 wood and 350 gold, it grants all siege units +4 melee armor. Now suddenly, your siege takes several more hits to go down and the enemy struggles to slow down your unstoppable push with trebs, onagers and bombard cannons.
This entire list was scraped up for an excuse to talk about Yasama tech
I thought so even before finding this video.
Obsidian Arrow lost the +6 to Stone Building armor-class so Mayan's Arb should do same damage against all things now, personally I'd like it to deal 8-10 damage to "Building armor-class" instead so they will be affected by Masonry and Architecture at some point, instead of +6 to Standard Building like what we have currently because that's still pretty nasty against anything else.
BTW I'm surprised you didn't mention Kataparuto and Warwolf since they affected trebs in a great way and you like that unit a lot.
That's not true. Obsidian arrows lost +12 vs stone defences and now does the correct +6 as stated by the tech.
I do Love my fast packing and Firing Trebs.
War wolf just feels so.... lacking in comparsion
If you make it vs "all building armor class" then Mayan archers would do only 1 damage to castles and walls. They have base 8 base "all building" armor.
@@KHariram well that would be amusing.
Only towers and walls block the Mayan Inquisition.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 they also do area of effect. A set of Brit trebs can snipe enemy BBC and trebs very quickly. You can also snipe villagers or groups of onagers reliably
Don't underestimate the secondary effect of the Briton's Yeoman tech.
An ungarrisoned Elite Longbowman will do 4 damage to a fully upgraded Paladin. So Five of them will do 20 damage to that paladin.
Now garrison them in a fully upgraded Briton tower. Each arrow is now doing 10 damage to that paladin, for a total of 30 damage just from the Longbowmen, plus an additional 10 damage from the tower itself. That's a 50% damage upgrade just for garrisoning them.
High ground =D
Then comes a Siege ram and your towers CRY
ungarrisoned?! :D
*Choose vietnamese
*queue for 4v4 (must be friends)
*get paper money
*tax your friends
*get 1500 gold
*lose game
*lose friends
i feel like, when desiging vietnamese the civ, they tried 2 hard to go with certain images/steoretypes of vietnamese that they forgot to give an actual gameplay, or at least one worths playing.
That is not where I thought you were going. XD
@@aparioss1072 That's exactly what I strongly dislike about how they designed the civ. "Uhh guys we gotta fill the quota for another Battle Elephant civ in the next Asian expansion. Cheap elephants for Malay, sturdy elephants for Burmese, offensive elephants for Khmer. Next civ will have meatshield elephants! What's that? Their history and culture? Who cares!"
@@zeroomega3781 Am I missing something here or are you complaining about basically the complete opposite of Phan Anh Nguyen? He says they only got the Culture/Stereotypes in, and you say they didnt care about that and just went for what fit their gameplay-requirements?
@@zeroomega3781 hmmm about the battle elephant, it is historical accurate
The Hun one is clearly the most useful
*tips fedora*
@@nessesaryschoolthing dude you just one comedy
Atheism op on standard mode
Especially on the last scenario of the Attila the Hun campaign
@@Ahmadabdal_ AoE2 came out in 1999, but it's still good. This meme is from the early 2010's, and it is not.
My favorite one is the aztec's unique tech: garland wars. +4 melee attack makes your infantry sick!
Or just play burmese and basically get garland wars for free :)
Imagine having to research for +4 lmao
Kind regards, the Burmese gang
It makes your infantry healthy, not sick!
@@georgeheppel8413 But Aztecs have Eagles for thta bonus, which makes it a strong option in my book
Talking about Spanish supremacy without Spanish villager montage? *Sad heyyyahey sound
Okay but why the hell did you stop using your intro song which is an original masterpiece banger
You talking about what Supremacy does in more depth is the final piece of your Spanish Civ overview after all this time.
I'm so happy.
Love town forts for Lithuanians. Great to prevent raiding in late game + for TC drops (especially on golden pit, etc)
From a defensive point of view I really like the Teuton's Crenellations and the Turk's Artillery
I've played this game since I was a kid, and just recently got back into it because of definitive edition. And i must say, your videos make it all the more fun. Thank you for making these, and merry Christmas ⛄
Chieftains for the Vikings and Garland Wars for Aztecs are two very important ones I feel!!
Garland Wars > Farimba. (Aztecs also have blast furnace. So the total + to attack is higher. And the tech actually works for the unique unit.)
Hey SOTL, can we expect another movie trailer similar to supremacy 2046?
My sister and I laughed for 5 minutes straight after that one.
Thanks lol. I didn't know this video exists. Bless you
You forgot Timurid Siegecraft for the Flaming Camels, smh
4:08 tactically avoiding to pronounce "Pavise"
The way he butchered Druzhina, can't blame him.
@@hebl47 Did he, though? I know it's supposed to be pronounced way differently, but I feel what he said was the standard "english" pronunciation
@@soko-ban I don't know what the "standard" english pronunciation is supposed to be. But I know how the word is actually pronounced and if I hadn't seen the word written, I wouldn't even have known he said that word. So it's not just a matter of slight mispronounciation or maybe wrong intonation (all that is ok), but he straight up butchered it.
@@hebl47 By "standard english" pronunciation I mean that it's the only reasonable pronunciation in the english language if you read the word out loud, as opposed to "Pavise", where there is multiple ways you could say it using only the english language in and of itself.
As far as I understand he mostly just mispronounced the zh/ż sound (which doesn't exist in english, closest thing to it would be j/dg as in judge). I guess you could also say something about the american "r" and the "i" vowel, but these're also the things I'd put under "standard english" pronunciation of other languages
Am I missing something here?
@@soko-ban Yeah, the main problem is the zh/ž sound. Since it kind of forms the core of the word :) I've come immune of how english and american speakers pronounce the R their way, so I wasn't really bothered at the time. But like I said: I think the "I didn't recognise the word until I've seen it written" metric should be pretty decent one.
Btw - there's more than one way to pronounce pavise? If we go by "standard english". Okay, maybe the A can be pronounced in two ways, but anything else?
for me the best unique tech is that of berberes which increases the production speed of castles by 25% because it also works on allies, it's a bit like having a 2nd team bonus.
Crenelations make Teutonic Castles the best in the game, and outrange all siege except Trebuchets.
And turks bombard cannons ;) which also have a great unique tech 11
All castles outrange siege rams.
@@kostadinpantev Don't underrange them tho
Wait, crenelation castles have 13 range, no? And artillery bombard cannons have 14 range, right?
@@jefffinkbonner9551 1
I think the most underrated unique tech in the game is Chieftain, Viking's unique castle tech. Giving all of your infantry +5 attack vs cavalry and +4 vs camel is actually huge. It gives the chance of your pikemen to close the gap of halberdier bonus damage vs cavalry and also makes berserk a cost effective counter to even Frank paladins. Given that Viking also has bonuses to infantry, this is some good sinergy.
To recap on the numbers, A Paladin dies after 10 Berserk hits and a berserk dies after 6 hits. The Paladin attacks slightly faster. The paladin costs 135 resources and the Berserk costs 90. So it is not really a counter to Paladin, but it trades about evenly. Both units have advantages over another, however costing less gold is an advantage for the Berserk.
Ethiopian's increased AoE for Siege Onagers is pretty deadly !
he did mention it but also poitned how epxnesive it isXD
Took a minute for me to understand AoE here is Area of Effect not Age of Empires. Bloody confused for a moment here
@@chingamfong I'll Boost my AoE in AoE to AoE the Enemy
Crenelations I think it's a good defensive one once you hit the enemy earlier and you can avoid, at least, being attacked by bombard canons(except turkish one), being vulnerable by trebs
I think that both Aztecs technologies are great: Atlatl makes your skirms really good and Garland Wars can give you a massive power spike with the eagle spam
Hey Spirit!
I think an important tech you forgot to mention is Chieftains. Although it has been nerfed lately, it makes Berserks shred cavalry civilisations - and is a castle age tech!
Cheers!
? It has become quite more expensive if thats what you mean, but other then that it was buffed at some point, since the attack bonus vs cavalry is no longer just for berserks but all viking infantry.
@@tilbardaga9827 yeah it's more expensive now
SOTL time to get serious... everyone knows Teutons are the ultimate civs... n crenellations vs bombard cannon is the dream
@Lo-Fi llama About to say that 11
It's also history-accurate
@Lo-Fi llama if u let turks get that far, u probably deserve everything that happens to you 11
Teutons vrs British.
They Longbow your infantry: and your Skirms
They catapult your Rams
They Treb your Bombard towers, Castles, Towns and economy.
You sit and cry because they also have Halbs against your Cav: and Longbows shred them anyway.
Not that Halbs are GOOD against cav or anything: but if you try running rings: Their Crossbows take up the slack.
I suppose that is why the Teutons never bothered fighting the British and left that scrap to the French.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 Found the briton fanboy.
Guess he needed to vent after being huskarled
@@glenmcgillivray4707 Well, not that anyone is trying to claim that Teutons are a top tier civ, not by a long shot, but just having a civ countered by another doesn't necessary means that it's bad.
I cannot believe you forgot to add Kasbah to the list of good unique techs: not only your castle will work faster, but your allys castle too! It will help a lot in Trebwars, to get conscription, hoardings and get uniwue units out faster. Magyars, Incas, Franks, Britons, Spanish, Malay, Italians, to name a few, can make good use to get their unique units out faster. It also increases the research speed of other unique technologies too!
I'm really thankful you mentioned the faster research of imperial knight tech from chivalry. I had been completely overlooking that. That might make me feel better about its painful 500g cost.
There needs to be a game mode where you get to steal just one unique tech from a different civ. I'm talking Persian trashbows with Obsidian Arrows, Karambit Warriors with Druzhina, or, the not at all over powered Goth champions with Forced Levy!!
i would lvoe this idea, although i guess it be stela from an opponent if they impl,ement it else it gets way to opXD
Or an option to share bonuses/techs with teammates. Just imagine the siege line from a Mongol-Celt-Korean alliance.
Why not Mayan arbalests with Kamandaran instead?
@@eRic-hr3yl Those too. Or Teutonic Paladins with health of Franks, Japanese Halberdiers with Garland Wars, you get the idea.
I had the idea of a combined Civs. Essentially two civs have combined access to the tech tree And bonuses. Imagine Chinese and Lithuania together!
I didn’t hear harbours for Maylay, but I love that tech
How dare you forget Japanese Kataparuto! The key to mass treb composition
It's probably the dumbest tech assignment though. The Japanese didn't use mechanical siege weapons that often, and kataparuto is literally just the Japanese pronunciation of catapult.
supremacy would be so much better if villager ai wasn't entirely lacking :(
RIP Obsidian Arrows - "Too good to be true"
One that people tend to overlook is Greek Fire, from the Byzantines. When playing on watermaps, people tend to choose Italians,Vikings or Portuguese, and forget that Byzantines are actually pretty good on water too.
Last time I was this early, I was 8 years old and used cheats against the standard AI!
These are infinitely better than maghrebi camels;
Sipahi. Its meta defining for turks, making them quite relevant in high level game.
More armor techs like carrack abd silk armor are very impactful for the cost.
I like how he changes the pronunciation of Druzhina all the time. Getting there, Spirit. Getting there. Also,great video as always.
I like Mongol's Drill because it helps rams to go faster. But my best opinion is Magyar's Mercenaries (Corvinian Army).
Nomad mixed with drill. is pretty cool with mongols when you use mangudai hordes/fast onager as a sort of dynamic defense. Let your enemy tear thru a multi layered house-wall with minimal if any losses to population cap, only to be recieved by range fire hell escape. Have had a lot of fun on black forest.
What if supremacy made villagers able to attack and keep attacking like miltary units?
That would make them S++++++ tier
That's op please nerf
I love Anarchy Tech by the Goths. Making Huskarls without having to build more castles is extremely helpful!
My favourite tech is Franks' "Spirit of the La Hire"
I am surprised you did not talk about Kataparuto, because I think the ability pack and deploy your trebuchets much faster is amazing, especially if you try to save them from an enemy cavalry gank from behind.
Atlatl, Couriers, Lithuanian Armour Bonus, Tusk Swords, Burmese Armour is one class that is awesome
Malians cavalry is one of my favorites. It makes their camels and light cavalry deal 14 damage. Thats practically a cavalier while not being expensive and slow a cavalier unit. It makes both good at raiding and camels also counter enemy cavalry. The opposite is the Gurjaras, with having 7 armor camels. Its less useful in general than the Malians attack bonus but can still give them more durability on countering heavy cavalry.
Hey you are pure gold man thank you so much for all the videos and your effort! Please never stop making this wish you all the best and merry christmas!
Supremacy is powerful if it is actively used as intended.
In combat, villagers fall within the category of specialist units, who may amplify the performance of other units via utilities. Just like monks, rams, or trebuchets (or honestly most siege units). If you notice, all those units bring critical changes to the fight, and often have clear and long window of vulnerability to counter/ exploit: - monk takes random time to convert, must slowly walk into range, and must stay still during conversion. - rams are slow and hit at melee range, but has negative melee armors. - trebuchet has set up times, long reload, slow projectiles, and low accuracy vs units. - villagers provide a very wide variety of supports thanks to buildings, from vision for sieges (outpost), to anchor points (castle), to faster reinforcement (production), ... in return, they are the weakest in combat, must be massed to be effective, and have the longest delay before having any effect.
Take any specialist support unit, and buff up its defense, and you will get an overpowered unit. Aztec with 100 HP monk face tanking while converting, and Slav monk to a lesser degree, are great examples. Unlike combat units, who only deal more damage in its lifetime by surviving longer, support units give critical benefits more frequently and reliably by surviving pass their windows of vulnerability in more situations. And in well organized fights, it is the specialist-supportive units that decide the fight.
These kind of videos might be good as a kiund of AOE2 awards? Like AOE2 DE Awards. Best unique tech - and can nominate a few favourites. And then we could also have some fun with Best Game of the Year. Most Improved Player. Best Daut Castle. Best Meme Strategy. And so on... Spirit of the Law's 2020 AOE2 awards would be fun.
Chivalry is pretty OP in for fun mass team games like 4v4 BF. Your frontline of knights just never runs out, and you just cannon everyone into oblivion. I think it’s one of the best “dream comps”
Anarchy & perfusion sounds like a good name for a band
IMO the Portuguese unique Carrack tech is a pretty nice one. +1/+1 ship armor which just cements their naval dominance with extra tough ships plus resistance to fire ships. Carrack (and Arquebus) are good like how spirit was saying Yeomen was good, they just take the civ’s best qualities and turn them up to 11
about what you opened with, i actually enjoyed winning games with almost 80% villegers building castles in the middle of enemy base in multiple locations one castle after another "but requires a couple of town centers and a lot of stone saved up to do it fast, it's ether 5-10 castles in a very short period of ti e or it's not worth it"
i primarily did it with teutons cuz of the extra castle ange, and it works really well with bulgarians because of the high damage that kreposts have although less tanky 'damage is more impotant in this case anyway"
but point is, spanish vils are exactly what you describe them to be.
Hey hey, first i would like to thank you for putting all your effort to make age of empires 2 more popular and get more people to play the game,, I have a small suggestion that maybe you can raise to AOE2 teams which i am sure many will appreciate it, so it would be nice if you can select any individual unit of yours and activate a button which will notify you when your unit see an enemy unit, and/or this also can be aded to the watch tower to make them more useful. ,, thanks again and good luck again
You missed an important game changing tech - Atheism
Now we need a ranking of the worst unique techs...according to science!! ^^ (or how to adjust their cost to make them relevant)
Madrasah is pretty shit
7:58 HOVER MONK on bottom right!
Fabric Shields from Incas +1/+2 armor for Kamayuk, Eagle Warrior and Slinger and Andean Sling to remove minimum range for Slingers and Skirmishers is pretty damn badass.
I think that Torsion Engines, Logistica, Druzhina and Forced Levy should be included in your list.
Merry Christmas SotL!
Merry Christmas SOTL.
Ty 4 the year.
I like that he specified what range of players was targeted by this discussion (800 - 1200 ELO). I am around 1100 so I felt like this was for me! I would like a new review of Teutons.
Silk Armor from the Tartars make hussar/Cav Archer so strong. Got ya my cav archers and tankie hussar for raiding.
Obsidian arrows? Nah, I would prefer the Saracens team bonus ',:1
As mayans with obsidian arrows? ;p
I wish there was a setting for your villagers for them to fight as they can make decent trash units. Spanish with supremacy: 40 hp, 9 attack, 3/4 armor. The Inca are similar or even better with all of the blacksmith research: 40 hp, 7 attack, 4/6 armor. They're particularly fine vs actual trash units... but they try to run away after every single hit.
I think you forgot about Tatars' silk armor! +1/1 for both cav archers as well as scout line is damn strong
I find the Aztecs Atl Atl tech gives them a huge bonus lategame with trash wars. Combine this with their relic gold or a Vietnamese team mate it just gets insane.
iron clad is vary underestimated, first it makes catapults resident to ranged melee unites like axe thrower, which are by far one of the deadliest counters in the game to siege unites, it also makes the Germans one of the only races in the game that can keep catapults alive when dealing with fast arrow resistant unites like eagle warriors.
I have found Spanish Trade units generating +33% gold and Missionaries a great advantage in game strategy. Convert enemy buildings while getting gold from their market.
Portuguese Arquebus makes hand cannoneers awesome
Interesting. But I would also like to see the same list of team bonuses.
Love your style, wish I could find a "you" but for AoE3 since that's the one I play...
Yeomen giving 2+ attack to towers can also help with defending a base or in a trush. It's not as good as Yasuma or the Teutons castle range tech [honestly forgot the name], but it's something.
I think Lithuanians Hill Forts is an underrated tech. Can't tell you how many times people get caught out by just how much damn range the TC has. 9 range is enough to outrage Imperial Age Arbalest and still be able to hit Siege Onager with Siege Engineers.
I love Flemmish Revolution but idk when it came out. I just came back
Burmese Manipur Cavalary is really noice unique tech to make the powerful Aambais just melt the buildings : D
My fav tech is more range for Teuton castles, it also increases the quality of Teutonic Knight's cape.)
Excellent video
Saracens with their 30+ HP to all camel units
Ever since that French campaign video I can't stop hearing "spirit of the la hire"
Great video. Can you make it for team bonus too?
Atheism once gave me the time for my low elo legend win.
My opponent went for relic win and defensive mode, while I boomee more effecient. I pushed him slowly and gladly remembered the unique tech.^^
About Supremacy: Hussars need 10 hits instead of... NO, vils turn around and kill the Hussars :)
in certain mods with infinite tech modes
You can have infinite health cav losing to infinite health and DAMAGE spanish villagers.
Because you get more health and a faster tech progress on Supremacy than Bloodlines+Attack upgrade
When the Spanish oneshot your castles with their villagers: you know you lost
@@glenmcgillivray4707 well u gotta do some masonry of course hehe. Then again Castle HP capped at 30K or they all insta-fall. I did once manage to beat an insane Spanish vil player in 256x tech by going Persians and just rebuilding stuff faster than he could kill it. The multitasking with the Spanish vils is quite severe.
@@daarom3472 I once saw a t90 game.
I dunno how they did it but the Vils hit the same cap.
It would be easier to make 15 (ish :D) most useless unique techs, and maybe discus when they can be good. May be an idea for the next video
SOTL, let me ask your opinion on something: Do you think siege onagers are overpowered? My brother and I play against the computer all the time (never against other humans), and the siege onagers don't really have a hard counter. Everyone says bombard cannons, but if the siege onager is moving, the bombard cannons always miss, then the siege onager is in range and kills the bombard cannon- or they kill each other, and the bombard cannon is a lot more expensive. You can attack terrain ahead of the siege onager, but it's easy to miss that way. Want to rush in with cavalry? That's great unless they're protected by other siege onagers or other units, like halberdiers. Next thing you know, half your cavalry is dead and all you did was kill one siege onager. I can't tell you how many times I had a huge mass of infantry or archers get killed by a single shot from a siege onager. It's like one single siege onager can stop my entire army!
I'm no pro, but I recommend practicing your micro for dodging onager shots. Also if they're protected by halbs, use your own pikes or halbs so that if you loose some in the meelee it's not a big resource loss, and the enemy's onagers would probably take a lot of their own units down with friendly fire.
Practice different situations with different unit combinations in the scenario editor
Massing SO is a pretty huge investment, so I wouldn't expect an easy answer. The real answer is probably to kill the SO player with a more afforable comp before they can get there.
But well-micro'd heavy cav should do well against it. It's pretty hard to avoid friendly fire with massed SO when trying to kill cav, and heavy cav aren't going to die immediately to halbs unless the army numbers are very lopsided. Light cav are also worth considering -- in late game you'd probably happily trade tens of light cav to take out two or so SO's because the gold and tempo loss are so much more significant. Just make sure not to neglect your farm eco.
Some civs have good unique units for the job too. Cataphracts will mess up both the SO's and their escort of pointy bois. Huskarls and Woads should too thanks to their high movement speed. Mangudai and Arambai should do well with high-level micro, though mistakes with these units are expensive.
Bombards should be pretty good if the SO's are massed, since microing *all* of the SO's in a mass around cannonball fire is pretty impractical. Add a meatshield of light cav or spears to make it difficult for the SO's to close the range.