I think ranged units work this way because they are programmed to use the shortest distance between the shooting unit and the target unit. This means very little for archers shooting at stuff (since they have no blast damage) or for infantry/archers taking hits (since they're significantly smaller than siege units), but means that mangonels and bombards are "wasting" damage by aiming at the edge of the target's hitbox, rather than the center.
They should just get away with all this random BS. We already have monks which is random AF. Let the siege just do it's normal damage and that is that.
Interresting how this also applies when attacking building (a mangonel hits the closer side, even damaging our own units), but not to farms that are targetet alwas on the middle
@@drakZes no, noooo, NOOOOOOO, stop ruining the game, who said this is random BS this is random gold, these details give substance and substance gives complexity and complexity gives...FUN
I think units still shoot at the center of the target---there's a trick to gain extra range on a Mangonel shot by attacking a Farm to hit the center. Rather the hitbox for most units and buildings has a height, and the collision occurs at the front-top of this collision area.
I think the reason there is more damage done to the "front" of the target is because units and buildings have a "height." When the Mangonel shot lands, it uses a 3d collision that hits the "top" of the collision box more towards the front. You can see this if you look closely at Scorpions, but it's more noticeable if you right-click a large building, such as a Siege Workshop. The Mangonel shoots at the "center" of the building, but the primary projectile impacts more towards the front at the top of the collision box, and this is where the splash damage is calculated.
@@leetcoding1 It's used for collision detection. Every unit has an "accuracy" percentage, and when the game determines there's a "miss," then collisions are turned on for the projectile so it can collide with any enemy unit. The height lets "missed arrows" still shoot over other units and land near their target. You can see something similar with how Battering Rams absorb arrows so that repairing Villagers don't get hit by TC or Castle file.
@@leetcoding1 There's also that wagon that deliberately takes advantage of the 3D aspect of projectiles in order to block shots for the units behind it. Although that came much later with the release of DE rather than being in a few expansions pre-DE.
That's really interesting, I've always wondered about proyectiles landing at different heights. However what seems a bit off with that explanation is that the center of impact would then be on the very edge of the hitbox's proyection on the ground, assuming the latter is a prism that is uniform in the vertical axis. I guess the missing info is how the game decides how much damage a unit takes when its hitbox includes areas with different splash damage values
It is indeed. In fact, 3d projectile and damage simulation is present since 1997 and the first AoE. I noticed that long time ago, playing the original as a kid - if you place a building and a bombard (or a catapult in aoe1 case) and put another building on a cliff/hill in between, or even just a steep hill with enough height, the middle building/terrain will catch projectiles and take some/full damage, while shielding the one behind it. The closer the buildings are, the less elevation is needed to spot that effect. If targets are next to each other and the bombard fires at maximum range you can observe that as well - the front building will most likely catch the projectile, taking more damage than the target. Also, the higher the target is, the closer your siege unit has to move towards it in order to reach it - catapults/onagers/bombard/trebuchets basically fire a physical projectile on a ballistic trajectory and the range is affected by the launch height, while area damage is calculated based on a radius in a 3d space. This mechanic has all sorts of creative applications - I used it to create "perfect cities" back then. Walls placed on highly elevated terrain prevented catapults from attacking the interior without destroying the fortifications first. Or used extremely high cliffs can completely disable any ability to attack anything inside.
I think it has something to do with the fact that the projectile in considered that it hits the chosen target when it touches it`s hitbox and deals damage around the front of the hitbox, and in the case of attack ground it only registers the damage when it touhes the ground, this can be observed even at the lastb bombard cannon test.
Thars my thought too. Hitting the unit means the projectile hits ever so slightly sooner then when hitting the ground, due to the fire arch being interrupted by the body of the unit sooner then the ground. Thays why it favors tiles closer to the mangonel/cannon. Propably, if the unit was flat, like a carpet or piece of paper (or a farm perhaps) the attack ground dmg and direct attack damage, is the same.
@@ethribin4188 It would be interesting to see if the units gets hit from the back if the units in the upper side gets more damage, this could test the consitency of this
Good luck on your masters! Also Spirit, can you investigate what is the longest range you can make a projectile fly in AOE2? I know that units with balistics can have projectiles that fly further than their range if they're targeting a fast unit.
I think there's a limit for that because even with balistics a tower, bombard tower, castle cannot hit a light cavalry or hussar with husbandry while it's just running by it.
That wouldn't be hard to test at all. Just go into the editor, put an arb with ballistics for the enemy, and place a fully upgraded hussar right at the edge of its range. Then set up triggers that instantly tell the arb to shoot the hussar and the hussar to run away from the arb as soon as the game starts. Turn on grid, and then just watch and see. If the hussar gets hit, close the game and then edit the hussar to have slightly more speed. I'd recommend 5% increments so you can get a very precise number. Rinse and repeat til you notice that the hussar doesn't take the damage from the arb. Then note the exact tile distance they are when they do take damage. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so. No need to bug Spirit with this one, let the poor guy do his homework 😂
A really cool thing with scorpions is that they really have around double the range that they say they do. If you make them attack a unit at its maximum range, the projectiles can go much farther and potientially damage many more units. This can win you games if someone sends in a trash unit to lure in your scorpions.
@@IndexInvestingWithCole No, he is saying that if you attack a unit at his maximum range, the projectile will keep going further, so they technically have more range than their maximum
@@IndexInvestingWithCole I don't know if he is right or not (haven't played in like 10 years), I'm just saying that he is saying that you can make it shoot further than his maximum range. I guess someone should test it
A few people have mentioned hitboxes but I think that's only half the story. Because in theory as long as they are making full contact they should be doing full damage. I think the real discrepancy may (and this is literally a guess) be a difference between the scorpion's footprint and its hitbox, if that makes sense. So the bombard cannon is firing at where the scorpion "is" but the part of the scorpion that takes damage is a ways further into the tile.
It has been the case since since AoE1 catapults. Villager repairing wall (one tile building) behind the wall survive catapult hitting the wall. Villager repairing wall in front of (in between wall and catapult) wall dies when catapult hits the wall.
@@ethribin4188 You think is not intentional in this case? Coincidece? Very similar units in different games and different engines having same oddity? I would guess it had same reason behind it.
I used to think that units in AOE2 have also a certain height added to them, which is why a fire ship can't hit a villager behind a dock, canons hitting a wall instead of the tower behind it or a tower can't hit a villager behind a mangonel repairing it, and they will always hit what is directly in front of the target. The hussite waggon kinda utilised this as well. Here, this would maybe explain why the scorpion in front dies, as it gets hit by the full impact while blocking some damage for the scorpion behind it. Maybe this mechanic of "being in the way" could also make an interesting video.
They do have a height. That's why you can use farms to get extra range on your onagers, cos the 'face' they're aiming at has nothing there and so the stones continue on to hit the ground slightly beyond the onagers' max range.
Considering Scorpions love to group together to be most effective, it sounds like targeting the row behind the front is possibly optimal micro play even if it puts the Mangonels a little closer to the danger.
even more dangerous against teutons, the mangonel not only won't kill the scorp but the scorp will have more hp left over. iron clad is fun, teuton siege onagers are tanky af in onager wars
@@Weldedhodag As long as it's a direct hit, it will easily one shot. SO does 88 damage + extra projectiles (SO only has 70 hp and ironclad only reduces damage by 4). Bombards have 10 more hp and +2 armor, they still get one shot. Even houfnice gets one shot if about half of the extra projectiles land. The +4 armor does help tank a hit in a mangonel or onager duel (depending on how many extra projectiles land), but SO upgrade gives a 50% damage increase so 4 armor won't cut it. Only the Celt version with 40% more hp tech can tank a direct hit.
My takeaway is that if you're aiming at a group of units with a mangonel or bombard, target slightly rearward of the center mass to take advantage of missing a bit short
I always wondered why they never split up the "advertised" attack amongst the multiple projectiles like in the case of the mangonel splitting the 40+12 damage to 5 projectiles (10.4 damage each) but that's just a what if. Great video spirit.
@@loganfong2911 It's pretty bad, but not having good UI designs for units is pretty common. CnC just doesn't tell you anything in both RA and Tiber 1. Starcraft has damage types that don't appear on the unit card. Warcraft 3 is the first one I played that had decent unit stat reporting.
I think they're not aiming the wrong place. It because of the hit box. When ordered to attack scorpion the projectiles explode when they just touched scorpion. Not exploded inside the Scorpion. And if you use attack ground, the projectiles will hit the ground, right under the scorpion.
I think it's something like this too. Since even with the mangonel almost every time all the projectiles would hit the scorpion, but they wouldn't all do damage, however when moving closer the projectiles seemed to hit closer to the scorpion's center
Congrats on nearly crossing the finish line on the masters! Master Spirt o' t' Law has a nice ring to it when you get there. I'm curious about this "managol aiming in the wrong spot" thing. Does the direction that the scorpion/target is facing have any impact on where the blast damage lands (as though it is trying in a minor way to mimic balistics)? Or is the blast damage fixed relative to the mangonel?
Great to see another analysis video on the deeper hidden statistics of units in AoE2. I don't really use Scorpions much, but this was very interesting to watch nonetheless.
Do you think that maybe this is something that the devs originally implemented 100% intentionally with the goal of it helping these units be a little more consistent against at least some enemies that are trying to engage? Perhaps otherwise the projectiles would always just completely overshoot and they figured that fudging the projectile placement slightly towards the cannon/mangonel would help make things feel a bit less frustrating/ineffective? This also would reward opposing players who micro their units to pull back at just the right time instead of just charging forward. This just feels like one of those things that must've been intentional at some point (and perhaps continues to be?) and this is the best reason I can come up with.
I think exactly the same. With the bombard cannon you feel that if it shoots exactly where the unit is you shouldnt have kill it cuz it moved forward a little since the shot was made, this has been like this for more than 20 years so i dont think is an mechanic otherwise it would have been fixed long ago. Overall with portuguese after chemistry you feel the ballistic doesnt affect the shoots if the objective is moving forward to the bombard cannon cuz this kind of "ballistics" are already implemented, and with the spanish cannon galeon that shoot faster you see it always fails by a little inch. And if you watch the pro-players you see that with the bombard cannon they always attack ground even when attacking buildings, so its something that is already inside the mind of the aoe2 player, and i guess is 100% intentionally as you said.
No, it's must certainly a "bug" caused by the projectile hiting the hit box. But it's so situationnal, barely noticable and not a problem it can be considered a feature, because nobody will ever correct it.
When targetting buildings, units will move until the corner of the building is in range, then the projectile will fly into the center. Maybe when targetting units, the first part happens the same but the second part doesn't, so they fire from a greater range than if they aimed at the center, but with the cost that the projectile won't actually hit the center
It seems to me that the siege is aiming at the centre of the target, but hitting the front of it. Also that splash damage is calculated based on the distance from the centre of the unit. With these two together we can explain why a large target like a scorpion or mangonel would take reduced damage. The centre of the blast is always separated from the centre of the unit by the radius of the hitbox. That is unless the projectile hits the top, in which case it's closer. I'm pretty sure that the height a projectile hits is irrelevant for calculating damage based on the behaviour of shooting a castle with a mangonel and hurting units at its base
That the projectile explodes way beforehand can be easily observed when you look at the shadow of the projectile. You will however notice that to look nicely it is always offset too much horizontally (to give the illusion of more height) so don't get thrown off by that because vertically it is accurate to the projectiles position. The shadow is basically the actual projectile position minus a few pixels horizontally to give the illusion of more height. This makes it much easier to follow than then visual projectile because the shadow doesn't arc and is a straight line to the target.
My impression is as follow: the bombard cannon deal (small) AOE damages and has some damage dropoff away from the center. When you target directly the scorpion, as soon as the hitbox of the projectile hits the hitbox of the scorpion, the projectile "explode" and deal its AOE damage from its current position. But the damage dropoff probably consider the distance between the center of the explosion and the center of the unit it deals damage to. So upon explosion, it checks the distance between the center of both and adjust the damage dropoff. If you aim ground though, the projectile does NOT explode on contact with hitbox, it instead hits the ground itself on the same place as the scorpion. Without distance, no damage dropoff.
Also i think as a good "bomb" it does the damage some metters above the ground and not where it is eventually going to hit the terrain, and the bombard cannon aims to the "foot" of the unit, so if it moves forward you hit it on the chest and if it move backwards you dont hit it entirely, this makes the different of damage they receive.
SOTL, Id love to see a series about when it's better to get the elet upgrade and when it's better to just make more unites (for any/all of the unique unites)
spirit of the law please do additional tests from different angles. The things i wonder are these: Is the hitbox of the scorpion off? Does mangonels and bombard cannons aim for the closest tile edge rather than units directly? Does mangonels and bombards have a specific X or Y axis tile edge preference? Did the devs just make mangonels and bombards always aim a little ahead against all units? Does the damage spread have a X or Y axis preference when rounding?
Would be interesting to see if this effect is found among other "rock" projectile units: bombard towers, cannon galleons, hussite wagons, turtle ships, etc.
looking at the bombard cannon, it reminds me of Farmer villagers but in reverse. Farmers look for the centre of the building not the edge when calculating distance -I think been a while since I saw the video- While the cannons seeom to be targeting for the edge of the tile. because when you tell it to aim for the centre of a tile with aim ground the cannon actually hits the centre of the tile, while aiming at something it hits just infront of it, which happens to line up right with the tile edge
Hi SOTL, your videos are, this goes without saying, a goldmine of information and analysis. I was wondering if you would permit stills from your video being uploaded for quick access to specific info, like on the aoe fandom wiki.
I think what's happening is that when the unit is struck the AoE is calculated based on where the projectile is, not the center of the unit struck. This essentially puts the target slightly off-center of it's own blast.
i guess it makes sense in a way; you go for a "greedy" shot; you might win; but also a big chance of losing too. i'm starting to understand artillery units going for "close enough" then "danger close"
Goodluck on your masters Spirit. I wonder if the mis aligned aim was a mistake they didn't have a super clear testcase for identifing or if it was intentional figured most targets the onager would shoot at would be moving forward in the first place, scorpions have 1 less range and melee units would be charging anyway.
That's the issue of an very old game, despite having over 20 years to patch there are still problems and weird interactions left. It's great that Microsoft let Relic made AoE4 so there is a great modern alternative which is great fun
The conclusion of bombard cannon make me wonder if it could be the effect of ballistics, which might cause firing units to aim a little bit more towards the direction the target is facing?
I always loved the scorpion as kind of the underdog of the siege workshop, so it's great seeing them buffed like this. Always love to see more scorpions in play Anyways, good luck on your paper! Master's studies ain't easy
Ok i hear everyones theories (i didnt read a single one actually) but my theory is that because siege has a unit height of 1, which is why you cannot hit the repair ville behind it, the damage is hitting in front of the siege unit and not on top of it. this causes the damage to be slightly split unevenly. You see this when you have two walls together aim for the back wall, the front wall takes almost as much damage if not more. Now when you manually target the tile, especially with a bbc, you do very little damage to the surrounding tiles unless your are hitting their intersecting points. Units dont have height (at least none that i know of) so they take full damage when it straight on cause the ball is landing in their hit box completely, and not hitting the front of it.
Extra question about the mangonels and bombards btw : are the damage calculated from the position the shots emanate or from the current position of the mangonels/bombards ? I wouldn't expect it to be the latter but if it is, it means you could influence the damage output through careful micro (and i have seen weirder design decisions/oversight). Btw : good luck for your paper !
I think this might be intentionally programmed in. It little drawback against buildings, but can help massively against units, since most dangerous things are moving TOWARDS the siege. Thus getting some extra damage in against them might make or break the siege. So arguably this is something most players might want.
I haven't played this game since AOE:TC but I remember being frustrated that attacking the AI directly with Mangonels or Onagers NEVER WORKED! Do they still react instantly?
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I think ranged units work this way because they are programmed to use the shortest distance between the shooting unit and the target unit. This means very little for archers shooting at stuff (since they have no blast damage) or for infantry/archers taking hits (since they're significantly smaller than siege units), but means that mangonels and bombards are "wasting" damage by aiming at the edge of the target's hitbox, rather than the center.
great observation, should be looked at more definitely
They should just get away with all this random BS. We already have monks which is random AF. Let the siege just do it's normal damage and that is that.
Interresting how this also applies when attacking building (a mangonel hits the closer side, even damaging our own units), but not to farms that are targetet alwas on the middle
@@drakZes no, noooo, NOOOOOOO, stop ruining the game, who said this is random BS this is random gold, these details give substance and substance gives complexity and complexity gives...FUN
I think units still shoot at the center of the target---there's a trick to gain extra range on a Mangonel shot by attacking a Farm to hit the center. Rather the hitbox for most units and buildings has a height, and the collision occurs at the front-top of this collision area.
I think the reason there is more damage done to the "front" of the target is because units and buildings have a "height." When the Mangonel shot lands, it uses a 3d collision that hits the "top" of the collision box more towards the front. You can see this if you look closely at Scorpions, but it's more noticeable if you right-click a large building, such as a Siege Workshop. The Mangonel shoots at the "center" of the building, but the primary projectile impacts more towards the front at the top of the collision box, and this is where the splash damage is calculated.
Interesting. Why would a 2D game have a height dimension? Is it used anywhere else in the game?
@@leetcoding1 It's used for collision detection. Every unit has an "accuracy" percentage, and when the game determines there's a "miss," then collisions are turned on for the projectile so it can collide with any enemy unit. The height lets "missed arrows" still shoot over other units and land near their target. You can see something similar with how Battering Rams absorb arrows so that repairing Villagers don't get hit by TC or Castle file.
@@leetcoding1
There's also that wagon that deliberately takes advantage of the 3D aspect of projectiles in order to block shots for the units behind it. Although that came much later with the release of DE rather than being in a few expansions pre-DE.
That's really interesting, I've always wondered about proyectiles landing at different heights. However what seems a bit off with that explanation is that the center of impact would then be on the very edge of the hitbox's proyection on the ground, assuming the latter is a prism that is uniform in the vertical axis. I guess the missing info is how the game decides how much damage a unit takes when its hitbox includes areas with different splash damage values
It is indeed.
In fact, 3d projectile and damage simulation is present since 1997 and the first AoE. I noticed that long time ago, playing the original as a kid - if you place a building and a bombard (or a catapult in aoe1 case) and put another building on a cliff/hill in between, or even just a steep hill with enough height, the middle building/terrain will catch projectiles and take some/full damage, while shielding the one behind it. The closer the buildings are, the less elevation is needed to spot that effect. If targets are next to each other and the bombard fires at maximum range you can observe that as well - the front building will most likely catch the projectile, taking more damage than the target.
Also, the higher the target is, the closer your siege unit has to move towards it in order to reach it - catapults/onagers/bombard/trebuchets basically fire a physical projectile on a ballistic trajectory and the range is affected by the launch height, while area damage is calculated based on a radius in a 3d space.
This mechanic has all sorts of creative applications - I used it to create "perfect cities" back then. Walls placed on highly elevated terrain prevented catapults from attacking the interior without destroying the fortifications first. Or used extremely high cliffs can completely disable any ability to attack anything inside.
Good luck with the Master's Paper, I'm sure you will nail it like you do all your videos
I think it has something to do with the fact that the projectile in considered that it hits the chosen target when it touches it`s hitbox and deals damage around the front of the hitbox, and in the case of attack ground it only registers the damage when it touhes the ground, this can be observed even at the lastb bombard cannon test.
Thars my thought too.
Hitting the unit means the projectile hits ever so slightly sooner then when hitting the ground, due to the fire arch being interrupted by the body of the unit sooner then the ground.
Thays why it favors tiles closer to the mangonel/cannon.
Propably, if the unit was flat, like a carpet or piece of paper (or a farm perhaps) the attack ground dmg and direct attack damage, is the same.
@@ethribin4188 It would be interesting to see if the units gets hit from the back if the units in the upper side gets more damage, this could test the consitency of this
Good luck on your masters! Also Spirit, can you investigate what is the longest range you can make a projectile fly in AOE2? I know that units with balistics can have projectiles that fly further than their range if they're targeting a fast unit.
Yea, imagine a very fast unit, like a cheat car, or something, on the edge of the maxed trebouchet range, and start to go away just before it shoots.
I think there's a limit for that because even with balistics a tower, bombard tower, castle cannot hit a light cavalry or hussar with husbandry while it's just running by it.
I think he found out in an earlier video (in the ethiopian one because of max vision range)... its 21 for range and 20 for vision
That wouldn't be hard to test at all. Just go into the editor, put an arb with ballistics for the enemy, and place a fully upgraded hussar right at the edge of its range. Then set up triggers that instantly tell the arb to shoot the hussar and the hussar to run away from the arb as soon as the game starts. Turn on grid, and then just watch and see. If the hussar gets hit, close the game and then edit the hussar to have slightly more speed. I'd recommend 5% increments so you can get a very precise number. Rinse and repeat til you notice that the hussar doesn't take the damage from the arb. Then note the exact tile distance they are when they do take damage. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so. No need to bug Spirit with this one, let the poor guy do his homework 😂
@@a.nonimus6705 You don't need to, just search for the 365x tech video GLs played 😄
These analyses as becoming more sophisticated as time goes by, awesome work!
I finally make my debut appearance in a Spirit Of The Law video!
Your name suggests that you play RA2? Am I right?
@@melvillefletcher4332 You are! That said it's been quite a while since I last played.
Congrats 👏
Bro, you're the fact that you sorted this out shows how intuitive and intelligent you are. It's wild some of the stuff you uncover. Good work.
A really cool thing with scorpions is that they really have around double the range that they say they do. If you make them attack a unit at its maximum range, the projectiles can go much farther and potientially damage many more units. This can win you games if someone sends in a trash unit to lure in your scorpions.
Very effective with balistia eles vs bbc.
You just explained how they have exactly the range they say they do
@@IndexInvestingWithCole No, he is saying that if you attack a unit at his maximum range, the projectile will keep going further, so they technically have more range than their maximum
@@burt591 well I guess now castles are useless since scorpions will out range them
@@IndexInvestingWithCole I don't know if he is right or not (haven't played in like 10 years), I'm just saying that he is saying that you can make it shoot further than his maximum range.
I guess someone should test it
A few people have mentioned hitboxes but I think that's only half the story. Because in theory as long as they are making full contact they should be doing full damage. I think the real discrepancy may (and this is literally a guess) be a difference between the scorpion's footprint and its hitbox, if that makes sense. So the bombard cannon is firing at where the scorpion "is" but the part of the scorpion that takes damage is a ways further into the tile.
It has been the case since since AoE1 catapults. Villager repairing wall (one tile building) behind the wall survive catapult hitting the wall. Villager repairing wall in front of (in between wall and catapult) wall dies when catapult hits the wall.
Good point.
Though i think in that case its intentional
@@ethribin4188 You think is not intentional in this case? Coincidece? Very similar units in different games and different engines having same oddity? I would guess it had same reason behind it.
@@grammaton3773most likely a quirk of the engine or an unintented effect of how the game was coded.
I used to think that units in AOE2 have also a certain height added to them, which is why a fire ship can't hit a villager behind a dock, canons hitting a wall instead of the tower behind it or a tower can't hit a villager behind a mangonel repairing it, and they will always hit what is directly in front of the target. The hussite waggon kinda utilised this as well. Here, this would maybe explain why the scorpion in front dies, as it gets hit by the full impact while blocking some damage for the scorpion behind it.
Maybe this mechanic of "being in the way" could also make an interesting video.
They do have a height. That's why you can use farms to get extra range on your onagers, cos the 'face' they're aiming at has nothing there and so the stones continue on to hit the ground slightly beyond the onagers' max range.
Considering Scorpions love to group together to be most effective, it sounds like targeting the row behind the front is possibly optimal micro play even if it puts the Mangonels a little closer to the danger.
even more dangerous against teutons, the mangonel not only won't kill the scorp but the scorp will have more hp left over.
iron clad is fun, teuton siege onagers are tanky af in onager wars
@@Weldedhodag Doesn't teuton siege onager still get one shot by generic siege onagers?
@@romero9274 sometimes, but ironclad provides enough extra def to leave it with like 4 or 5 hp
@@Weldedhodag As long as it's a direct hit, it will easily one shot. SO does 88 damage + extra projectiles (SO only has 70 hp and ironclad only reduces damage by 4). Bombards have 10 more hp and +2 armor, they still get one shot. Even houfnice gets one shot if about half of the extra projectiles land.
The +4 armor does help tank a hit in a mangonel or onager duel (depending on how many extra projectiles land), but SO upgrade gives a 50% damage increase so 4 armor won't cut it.
Only the Celt version with 40% more hp tech can tank a direct hit.
Best documented bug report😅
Its not a bug, its feature.
Good luck finishing up your master's degree!
And thanks for creating so much great content for us while you're doing so much in your own life 🥳🥳
As someone who's favourite civ is the Khmer, I can confirm that this change is excellent.
Best of luck with your paper SOTL! And thank you for finding time to post videos despite uni taking so much of your time
My takeaway is that if you're aiming at a group of units with a mangonel or bombard, target slightly rearward of the center mass to take advantage of missing a bit short
I always wondered why they never split up the "advertised" attack amongst the multiple projectiles like in the case of the mangonel splitting the 40+12 damage to 5 projectiles (10.4 damage each) but that's just a what if.
Great video spirit.
same for Dromon and Thirisadai....
probably to allow them to punch through the melee armor of buildings... and building class armor as well.
Armor and bonus damage make that tricky.
TBH at this point the stats are pointless if not outright misleading. It bugs me so much.
@@loganfong2911
It's pretty bad, but not having good UI designs for units is pretty common.
CnC just doesn't tell you anything in both RA and Tiber 1.
Starcraft has damage types that don't appear on the unit card.
Warcraft 3 is the first one I played that had decent unit stat reporting.
Amazing research, SOTL! Thank you.
Didn't realise you were doing your masters thank you for taking your time out of that to do this
This is why I subscribed to Spirit of the Law all those years back
I think they're not aiming the wrong place. It because of the hit box. When ordered to attack scorpion the projectiles explode when they just touched scorpion. Not exploded inside the Scorpion. And if you use attack ground, the projectiles will hit the ground, right under the scorpion.
I think it's something like this too. Since even with the mangonel almost every time all the projectiles would hit the scorpion, but they wouldn't all do damage, however when moving closer the projectiles seemed to hit closer to the scorpion's center
Congrats on nearly crossing the finish line on the masters! Master Spirt o' t' Law has a nice ring to it when you get there. I'm curious about this "managol aiming in the wrong spot" thing. Does the direction that the scorpion/target is facing have any impact on where the blast damage lands (as though it is trying in a minor way to mimic balistics)? Or is the blast damage fixed relative to the mangonel?
That's a crazy quirk. I hope you are able to look into blast damage more in the future, because that's wild.
Neat video m'dude.
best of luck with the masters!
Hope your master's goes well spirit!! 🙏💪
Good luck for your masters and thanks a lot for doing this
Congrats on your Master's, SOTL. I've also been watching this from my high school to my Masters'!
I love the googly eyes in the thumb nail. Makes the units so cute.
It also reminds me of Oversimplified’s nation eyes too.
Love how in depth this goes.
Good luck on your master's! I've just finished it, it was a big weight off my shoulders.
This is just a lovely classic simply explained SOTL video
thank you for the detailed explanation and good luck with your master's !
I'm cheering for you, you have excellent presentation, so I bet you'll get your masters. 😄
I can only imagine what your final paper for your Master's Degree in Age of Empires is going to be like.
Great to see another analysis video on the deeper hidden statistics of units in AoE2. I don't really use Scorpions much, but this was very interesting to watch nonetheless.
Interesting stuff. Good luck on your final paper!
Masters degree on AOE2? I did not know it existed! 😮
Good luck on your masters!
Very cool! Good luck on your paper!
Such small things make me love this game even more! Thanks a lot :)
Do you think that maybe this is something that the devs originally implemented 100% intentionally with the goal of it helping these units be a little more consistent against at least some enemies that are trying to engage? Perhaps otherwise the projectiles would always just completely overshoot and they figured that fudging the projectile placement slightly towards the cannon/mangonel would help make things feel a bit less frustrating/ineffective? This also would reward opposing players who micro their units to pull back at just the right time instead of just charging forward.
This just feels like one of those things that must've been intentional at some point (and perhaps continues to be?) and this is the best reason I can come up with.
I think exactly the same. With the bombard cannon you feel that if it shoots exactly where the unit is you shouldnt have kill it cuz it moved forward a little since the shot was made, this has been like this for more than 20 years so i dont think is an mechanic otherwise it would have been fixed long ago. Overall with portuguese after chemistry you feel the ballistic doesnt affect the shoots if the objective is moving forward to the bombard cannon cuz this kind of "ballistics" are already implemented, and with the spanish cannon galeon that shoot faster you see it always fails by a little inch.
And if you watch the pro-players you see that with the bombard cannon they always attack ground even when attacking buildings, so its something that is already inside the mind of the aoe2 player, and i guess is 100% intentionally as you said.
No, it's must certainly a "bug" caused by the projectile hiting the hit box. But it's so situationnal, barely noticable and not a problem it can be considered a feature, because nobody will ever correct it.
When targetting buildings, units will move until the corner of the building is in range, then the projectile will fly into the center. Maybe when targetting units, the first part happens the same but the second part doesn't, so they fire from a greater range than if they aimed at the center, but with the cost that the projectile won't actually hit the center
If you know how to modify a unit to have a massive hitbox spanning multiple tiles, you might be able to confirm this
It seems to me that the siege is aiming at the centre of the target, but hitting the front of it. Also that splash damage is calculated based on the distance from the centre of the unit.
With these two together we can explain why a large target like a scorpion or mangonel would take reduced damage. The centre of the blast is always separated from the centre of the unit by the radius of the hitbox. That is unless the projectile hits the top, in which case it's closer.
I'm pretty sure that the height a projectile hits is irrelevant for calculating damage based on the behaviour of shooting a castle with a mangonel and hurting units at its base
That said, attack-grounding a building will produce results inconsistent with this explanation.
That the projectile explodes way beforehand can be easily observed when you look at the shadow of the projectile. You will however notice that to look nicely it is always offset too much horizontally (to give the illusion of more height) so don't get thrown off by that because vertically it is accurate to the projectiles position.
The shadow is basically the actual projectile position minus a few pixels horizontally to give the illusion of more height. This makes it much easier to follow than then visual projectile because the shadow doesn't arc and is a straight line to the target.
My impression is as follow: the bombard cannon deal (small) AOE damages and has some damage dropoff away from the center. When you target directly the scorpion, as soon as the hitbox of the projectile hits the hitbox of the scorpion, the projectile "explode" and deal its AOE damage from its current position. But the damage dropoff probably consider the distance between the center of the explosion and the center of the unit it deals damage to. So upon explosion, it checks the distance between the center of both and adjust the damage dropoff.
If you aim ground though, the projectile does NOT explode on contact with hitbox, it instead hits the ground itself on the same place as the scorpion. Without distance, no damage dropoff.
At this point i feel like attending a PHD lecture on AOE2 when watching these videos. And i regret nothing.
SOTL, as an undergraduate student, I admire how you can upload so frequently yet have time to finish your Master's. Truly a W there :3
good luck in all of your classes!
good luck on your masters mate
Detective SotL at your service! Nice job man! 🥳🥳
Also i think as a good "bomb" it does the damage some metters above the ground and not where it is eventually going to hit the terrain, and the bombard cannon aims to the "foot" of the unit, so if it moves forward you hit it on the chest and if it move backwards you dont hit it entirely, this makes the different of damage they receive.
Congrats on (almost) getting your Masters!
SOTL, Id love to see a series about when it's better to get the elet upgrade and when it's better to just make more unites (for any/all of the unique unites)
congrats on your masters!!
Hope all's going well for your Masters program!
Good luck on your Masters
Good luck with your Master's!!!!
Right there with you on the masters thesis :')
You're doing a master's? Damn impressive. Good luck!
Good luck on your Masters paper!
Good luck on your masters.
i assume your masters is in AoEology?
Great job as always SotL! 👍
4:39 It looks like moving the scorpions forward hurts them and increased their chance of dying.
spirit of the law please do additional tests from different angles. The things i wonder are these:
Is the hitbox of the scorpion off?
Does mangonels and bombard cannons aim for the closest tile edge rather than units directly?
Does mangonels and bombards have a specific X or Y axis tile edge preference?
Did the devs just make mangonels and bombards always aim a little ahead against all units?
Does the damage spread have a X or Y axis preference when rounding?
Great video SotL ! Very pedagogic
Would be interesting to see if this effect is found among other "rock" projectile units: bombard towers, cannon galleons, hussite wagons, turtle ships, etc.
good luck on your masters
looking at the bombard cannon, it reminds me of Farmer villagers but in reverse.
Farmers look for the centre of the building not the edge when calculating distance -I think been a while since I saw the video-
While the cannons seeom to be targeting for the edge of the tile. because when you tell it to aim for the centre of a tile with aim ground the cannon actually hits the centre of the tile, while aiming at something it hits just infront of it, which happens to line up right with the tile edge
AoE2 and confusing hidden mechanics, name a more iconic duo
Indirect buff to the Bohemians as they can reliably oneshot them with their houfnice.
Good luck on your master's finals dude
Hi SOTL, your videos are, this goes without saying, a goldmine of information and analysis. I was wondering if you would permit stills from your video being uploaded for quick access to specific info, like on the aoe fandom wiki.
Good luck on your paper 📝! Also cool video!
you are too late
It is not the aim that's off, it is the unit Tallness that's effecting the damage calculation
I think what's happening is that when the unit is struck the AoE is calculated based on where the projectile is, not the center of the unit struck. This essentially puts the target slightly off-center of it's own blast.
Update since it may not be clear: I mean where the projectile is on the X-Z plane(so ignoring height)
i guess it makes sense in a way; you go for a "greedy" shot; you might win; but also a big chance of losing too. i'm starting to understand artillery units going for "close enough" then "danger close"
Huh, just like Advance Wars luck rolls. Those have a chance to add 1-9% damage, which may be the key to killing or being killed.
Goodluck on your masters Spirit. I wonder if the mis aligned aim was a mistake they didn't have a super clear testcase for identifing or if it was intentional figured most targets the onager would shoot at would be moving forward in the first place, scorpions have 1 less range and melee units would be charging anyway.
That's the issue of an very old game, despite having over 20 years to patch there are still problems and weird interactions left. It's great that Microsoft let Relic made AoE4 so there is a great modern alternative which is great fun
The conclusion of bombard cannon make me wonder if it could be the effect of ballistics, which might cause firing units to aim a little bit more towards the direction the target is facing?
Does ballistics make any difference while shooting stationary targets?
Good luck with your thesis, sotl!
I've known about the Onagers, but the Bombard cannon is surprising. Curious.
I wish you all the success on your masters paper ^.^
I always loved the scorpion as kind of the underdog of the siege workshop, so it's great seeing them buffed like this. Always love to see more scorpions in play
Anyways, good luck on your paper! Master's studies ain't easy
good luck for ur masters SOTL :o
I so do hope your master is about quirky game mechanics of AOE2!
Thank you for doing the hard math for us
Talking about the Mangonel's extra projectiles makes me miss the old Organ Gun.
Ok i hear everyones theories (i didnt read a single one actually) but my theory is that because siege has a unit height of 1, which is why you cannot hit the repair ville behind it, the damage is hitting in front of the siege unit and not on top of it. this causes the damage to be slightly split unevenly. You see this when you have two walls together aim for the back wall, the front wall takes almost as much damage if not more. Now when you manually target the tile, especially with a bbc, you do very little damage to the surrounding tiles unless your are hitting their intersecting points. Units dont have height (at least none that i know of) so they take full damage when it straight on cause the ball is landing in their hit box completely, and not hitting the front of it.
It makes no sense that bombard cannon can one shot onagers (60hp), but not heavy scorpions (55hp).
They're just shooting the closest side of the scorp rather than the middle. Makes sense for archers, not so much for units with splash
Extra question about the mangonels and bombards btw : are the damage calculated from the position the shots emanate or from the current position of the mangonels/bombards ?
I wouldn't expect it to be the latter but if it is, it means you could influence the damage output through careful micro (and i have seen weirder design decisions/oversight).
Btw : good luck for your paper !
I love the quirks of this game
That's kind of a hilarious and meme interaction.
Thanks for the insight! Just out of curiosity, what are you mastering in? (it was probably said in some earlier video, but I just don't remember)
I think this might be intentionally programmed in. It little drawback against buildings, but can help massively against units, since most dangerous things are moving TOWARDS the siege. Thus getting some extra damage in against them might make or break the siege. So arguably this is something most players might want.
I haven't played this game since AOE:TC but I remember being frustrated that attacking the AI directly with Mangonels or Onagers NEVER WORKED! Do they still react instantly?
One question I have is how do Spanish and Portugese bonuses affect the BBC test if at all.