Plainly the Ballista Elephant Itself is the siege engineer. Probably uses the research cost to go to a trade school and learn how to demo buildings. Probably has his certificate up on the wall in the castle
I'm reminded of this comic I saw on reddit years ago where a konnik is bearing down on a monk and the monk desperately tries to convert them. The monk succeeds, but realizes only the horse got converted and runs away while the horse looks back at its rider who is charging up his swing
Does this mean that when you convert other cavalry units it's only the horse switching sides, and the rider is like "welp, what can you do, he's the boss"?
The samurai strides forward across the marsh. The warship ahead of him fires a ballista bolt, which he deflects with ease. With one decisive blow, the ship is cut down, just like all those that came before it
7:20 The "totally different and less distinct knife" seems to be a Kukri, which ironically may be one of the most iconic knives ever. They are used by the Nepalese Gurkhas, so I have no idea why they decided to put them on the Gbeto. 🤓
1:38: In Boromir's defense, orc arrows are also poisoned, so him switching to Huskarl parameters also wouldn't have helped. Guess the Flemish Militia bit needs a patch that makes them randomly variable again. The Karambit Warrior bit though...
Which is funny because teuton knights totally loved their mares and wouldn't bother to show up in fight without it, well, as well as Slav Boyars or any other aristocratic warriors when horses is present to buy; but Slavs loved fight on foot much more (especially because you don't have much use of cavalry in the forest, so only south Rus has to use it massively) whatever, i just love that badass combination of shield and big (but not nearly as jarring as with French axe thrower) axe, not very usual
@@AtticusKarpenter "but Slavs loved fight on foot much more (especially because you don't have much use of cavalry in the forest, so only south Rus has to use it massively)" that's actually common misconception. While Slavs switched to mass cavalry later then western europeans, by 12 century slavic armies was just as cavalry heavy as in the rest of Europe. Even urban militia from wealthier cities was made from patrician based heavy cavalry.
A fun fact about janissary - originally they were meant to wear their disting ottoman/janissary hats, which you can still see in the original demos or concept art - but the devs decided against this due them seemingly resembling members of the Ku Klux Klan. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
Urumi, Teutonic Knight, Samurai, Monaspa, Woad Raider, Plumbed Archer, Axe thrower, Persian war elephant, Corean wagoon, are missing too (they will be on the second part)
@@robertoaguilar5896 Yes, but this video is for units that start with A-K and that should include Coustiller. Unless maybe the fun fact is "Actually in another language, Coustillier is spelled differently"
Interestingly enough, Hand Cannon and Janissary used to have identical dispersions and accuracies when the Janissary is upgraded to Elite. But an update happened in DE that buffed hand cannons to make them more reliable, but didn't change the janissaries, making them less accurate
Yeah This just should have been unique units instead of *castle* unique units. We'll miss interesting facts about missionaries, srivamsha riders, xolotl warriors and slingers too 😕
Elephant Fact: No elephant has been known to get get a university degree... in real life, that is. Balista Elephants in AoE2 clearly are engineering majors.
I eagerly await when the Centurion quirk will be abused in a diplomacy game. Play as Japanese, have a Roman ally. The Roman ally sends in a centurion or two for you to convert (by briefly setting you as neutral and then back to ally), upgrades, and then sends an elite one. This can lead to an incredible deathball near the end of an hour-long game, where the final battle is often decided by population efficiency.
Gbeto's knife is the picture is kukri: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri They're mostly assosiated with Nepal and India, although they've been popular all over the place for a long time. Even Roman soldiers sometimes used it instead of their short swords (I can look for evidence if you want).
The composite bowmen shooting straight is actually a biff because approaching enemies will get hit by their arrows even without ballistics where archibg shits would land behind the enemy
Actually is makes total sense to convert the Horse over the Rider. If you didn't, then the Horse would just take the traitor back to base for execution. Horses are Loyal, Don'Cha no!
Did you... did you... did you really pronounce "Chakram" correctly? You just earned my massive respect, my friend! Incidentally, this pronunciation of the "a" applies to a lot of the words around the Indian subcontent, including Hindustanis, Ratha, Bengalis, etc. :) While on the topic of pronunciation, Ghulam is pronounced with a shorter "u" rather than "Ghoolam".
Can you do an optimal mining camp placement video? You could test the efficiency of different mining camp placements based off mine shapes, villagers on the mine, etc (:
The siege engineers trained the elephants to move their head forward just a smidge, because they have a bit in their mouth which is actually the release for the ballista. They're off researching ways to further improve the tech, without risking human life. Medievel automated warfare.
"we should appreciate the fact that an Elite Samurai can take down a boat by singlehandedly while under fire" thats because that one Samurai was the storm that was approaching.
You're assuming the Ballista elephants aren't the actual siege engineers themselves. They spent 4 long years at elephant college to earn that degree, and deserve to be treated as such!
I'm totally picturing the konnik rider answering the door and the horse in the living room behind them, sitting crosslegged on the couch peering over its newspaper. 😂
What’s pretty cool with the “oda” campaign in the new DLC, if you play the cavalry clan and do the bonus objective you get stirrups. So now your special charge bonus cavalry are now also 60ish%+ attack speed of a normal cavalier. Probobly my favorite thing with converting centurions. (If that would have been a side thing for jokes, just imagine attack animations actually doing damage on que.
The monk finished chanting. The Konnic doesn't feel any different. The Horse looks at the Konnic. Horse: "Actually, I don't believe Christ is King" *Horse get executed for Heresy*
I wonder if some infamous high ladder or just in general hussite spam was being to much a problem without a elegant solution that would hurt the bohemeans over all.
The ballista ele firing down at close range is actually super critical in CBA. Before I knew that I thought it was kind of garbage 11 Also I had no idea about the flemish militia! That’s pretty cool.
Could you do an episode on the cosmetic look of all UUnits, including the icon vs unit and any small tweaks upgrades make, maybe comparisons vs the HD edition unit & icon etc.
Can you please do a video on Japanese champions with both a Centurion and an elite Centurion backing them up? This makes me wonder just how high the militia attack line can go from stacking buffs. Also, I could see the very, very minor arc of the composite bowman's arrows at that range. It's incredibly subtle but it's there.
16th time of asking Spirit of the Law to review Romae ad Bellum civilizations like he did with Romans. Thank you for another interesting video and keep up the awesome work. :D
Hussite Wagons have that thing where they absorb half damage from projectiles that target other units but pass through their collision box. Are arrows fired from a Composite Bowman easier to "block" with a Hussite Wagon than other projectiles because of the flatter trajectory?
Very entertaining video. Would have been nice if you added a comparison for the generated gold. Like that is the equivalent of x villagers mining gold, y tradecarts or z relics doing their job.
"If someone can tell me where the siege engineers are on the elephant" The same place as the servants of the onagre? I've never seen a catapult move by itself :p
Does the Composite Bowman's anti-gravity arrows affect how it interacts with the Hussite Wagons projectile-blocking properties? If I remember correctly, archers can hit their intended target if their shots arc over the wagon.
@@jasonsmith1950 ahh shit, would have been fun and op 🤣 that i'd still enjoy champskarls with centoriun cuz they would be fast enough to become actual huskarls 🤣
Missed an opportunity to reference the Acolyte when talking about the Kamayuk. SOTL focused of the power of one more range. I expected him to say, "the power of many."
Fun fact. For the Cuman Mercenaries tech it isn't that it applies to all new castles. The AoE II devs solved backwards causality and know how many castles a player will have built by the end of the game, so it just appears like it gives it to all new castles. If you ended up building one more castle than you actually built, then that castle would not yield them.
@@maxwallace9491I tried it and it didn’t work. The castle still counted and worked. I’m thinking it’s impossible to complete the said scenario of building a castle without building one
Plainly the Ballista Elephant Itself is the siege engineer. Probably uses the research cost to go to a trade school and learn how to demo buildings. Probably has his certificate up on the wall in the castle
This is the only correct answer.
Elephants have great intelligence, so it's pretty obvious.
An elephant never forgets the arc of fire needed to get that extra range.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Apes really underestimate the damage elephants can cause when we want to 🐘🐘🐘
No
Konnic: Gets converted
Rider: *Angry John Wick noises*
Monk: have you heard the good news?
Horse: *dies*
@@Progeusz- this is wly i love this game hahahha some traductions are a perfect meme
I'm reminded of this comic I saw on reddit years ago where a konnik is bearing down on a monk and the monk desperately tries to convert them. The monk succeeds, but realizes only the horse got converted and runs away while the horse looks back at its rider who is charging up his swing
@@Progeusz-no - it doesnt. Why spreading bs?
Does this mean that when you convert other cavalry units it's only the horse switching sides, and the rider is like "welp, what can you do, he's the boss"?
Ah. There's only one option when your horse starts whispering blasphemous words, apparently.
10:45 not even a mother would love that face bruh.
This got me rolling
Imagine if the monk otherwise converts the rider and leaving you with a horse to scout😂
@nicholase2868 ...wow. Horses are built different in Bulgaria eh?
@@jordanlimantara1814 Everything is built different in Bulgaria.
woLOLo
The samurai strides forward across the marsh. The warship ahead of him fires a ballista bolt, which he deflects with ease. With one decisive blow, the ship is cut down, just like all those that came before it
you forgot the dramatic pause where nothing happens, and the ship gets shredded only after the samurai sheathed his sword while striking a pose.
omae wa mou shindeiru
"Once again, I cut a worthless object."
One Piece basically.
"I can't slice the shit out of you without getting closer"
7:20 The "totally different and less distinct knife" seems to be a Kukri, which ironically may be one of the most iconic knives ever. They are used by the Nepalese Gurkhas, so I have no idea why they decided to put them on the Gbeto. 🤓
1:38: In Boromir's defense, orc arrows are also poisoned, so him switching to Huskarl parameters also wouldn't have helped.
Guess the Flemish Militia bit needs a patch that makes them randomly variable again.
The Karambit Warrior bit though...
1 fact for the AoE2 Community : We are so blessed to have a top tier content creator like Spirit of the Law in our midst !
Fun fact: The Spirit of the law channel had an op intro song that was patched off sadly
He still uses it for entire civ reviews. He just doesn't use it in non-civ review videos.
boyars is just teutonic knight on horse, they are so damn tanky vs meele
Which is funny because teuton knights totally loved their mares and wouldn't bother to show up in fight without it, well, as well as Slav Boyars or any other aristocratic warriors when horses is present to buy; but Slavs loved fight on foot much more (especially because you don't have much use of cavalry in the forest, so only south Rus has to use it massively)
whatever, i just love that badass combination of shield and big (but not nearly as jarring as with French axe thrower) axe, not very usual
And both got countered by Pole and Lithuanian units
@@AtticusKarpenter German knights were known to fight on foot very often
@@user-vo1sb3bo1s no...
@@AtticusKarpenter "but Slavs loved fight on foot much more (especially because you don't have much use of cavalry in the forest, so only south Rus has to use it massively)" that's actually common misconception. While Slavs switched to mass cavalry later then western europeans, by 12 century slavic armies was just as cavalry heavy as in the rest of Europe. Even urban militia from wealthier cities was made from patrician based heavy cavalry.
The Karambit Warrior glow-up is my absolute favourite part of the video, thanks for the laughter. 😂
A fun fact about janissary - originally they were meant to wear their disting ottoman/janissary hats, which you can still see in the original demos or concept art - but the devs decided against this due them seemingly resembling members of the Ku Klux Klan. Which is, of course, ridiculous.
I always thought they looked dumb without their hats
I thought they did this because they looked like the pope? I read about it somewhere.
Could be easily fixed by making their hats the team colour and in DE plenty of detail can be added to make it clear it is the distinct Janissary hat.
The model was brought back in the scenario editor since Forgotten.
@@JP_Wu but its still dumb that in DE they kept the old design. At this point they are either lazy or want too much to stick to the original design.
I think u forgot to put in the Coustillier my friend
He did Flemish militia. Maybe there are no interesting facts about Coustilliers?
@@jorgea5426 Maybe. He mentioned castle unique units at the start tho
Urumi, Teutonic Knight, Samurai, Monaspa, Woad Raider, Plumbed Archer, Axe thrower, Persian war elephant, Corean wagoon, are missing too (they will be on the second part)
@@robertoaguilar5896 bruh...
@@robertoaguilar5896 Yes, but this video is for units that start with A-K and that should include Coustiller. Unless maybe the fun fact is "Actually in another language, Coustillier is spelled differently"
Armbi are the gods of *"I meant to do that"*
12:08 Horses are known to be very religious. Just look at missionaries and try to tell me that the horse isn't the key element in conversion.
Hate to be that person but they ride mules
@@LeicaFleury11 amazing
6:00 "The arrow knows its way."
Interestingly enough, Hand Cannon and Janissary used to have identical dispersions and accuracies when the Janissary is upgraded to Elite.
But an update happened in DE that buffed hand cannons to make them more reliable, but didn't change the janissaries, making them less accurate
funny enough Magyar hassar still do bonus damage to ballista elephants
12:00 The Konnik rider is a very very distant ancestor of Warhammer's commissars. The horse betrayed the god emperor!
The Konnic one was hilarious
Should've made one for *D*ismounted Konniks!
Yeah
This just should have been unique units instead of *castle* unique units. We'll miss interesting facts about missionaries, srivamsha riders, xolotl warriors and slingers too 😕
@@girishkamath642 Also Longboats and Turtle ships
@@punbug4721it's only until K, locate L and T on alphabeth.
My fav fact here is centurion and keshik ones. Thank you for all the videos, sotl, it's always a treat when something new pops out on my feed
Part 2 will be "from L to W"
I see.
Part 2 will follow the path of the karambit warrior.
You got it all wrong: The ELEPHANT iteslf is taught some siege engeneering!
Or you could argue that elephants have to be trained not to destroy buildings 😜
Elephant Fact: No elephant has been known to get get a university degree... in real life, that is. Balista Elephants in AoE2 clearly are engineering majors.
I remember that elite jaguar change very well from your Aztec overview
A samurai taking out a caravel is pretty metal!
Both Boromir AND Lurtz: was I a joke to you?
I eagerly await when the Centurion quirk will be abused in a diplomacy game. Play as Japanese, have a Roman ally. The Roman ally sends in a centurion or two for you to convert (by briefly setting you as neutral and then back to ally), upgrades, and then sends an elite one. This can lead to an incredible deathball near the end of an hour-long game, where the final battle is often decided by population efficiency.
The gbeto are holding khukuri in the profile icon. The more you know!
They were having a cultural exchange program with the Nepalese
When I wake up to a new SoTL upload, it's the first thing on my to do list after a cup of coffee.
Nahhhh, that Boromir reference was a foul 🤣
I love facts!
Even if I'm not good enough at the game to utilize any of them!
I absolutely love the mamelukes' secret scimitar throwing arc. It's like an art form throwing those swords like boomerangs
There is a reason why I think Bulgarians should have more monk bonuses and techs.
Look! Even the konnik's horse is religious!
"What happened to your horse? Did it get sick? Did it get injured?"
"No. It got religion."
@@Jondiceful
Some heretic told him that Jesus was not Bulgarian, and it could not take it. XD
Clearly the siege engineers for the Ballista Elephants are the elephants themselves, having done so much studying they deserve recognition.
Of course we know where the engineers are! The Elefants themselves are the Engineers you are searching for.
Gbeto's knife is the picture is kukri:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri
They're mostly assosiated with Nepal and India, although they've been popular all over the place for a long time. Even Roman soldiers sometimes used it instead of their short swords (I can look for evidence if you want).
1:38
but he was shot with arrows not javelins.
Phosphoru definitely influenced the Hussit wagon change 😂 8:51
Awesome vid!
The composite bowmen shooting straight is actually a biff because approaching enemies will get hit by their arrows even without ballistics where archibg shits would land behind the enemy
Historically chukonu rarely used in military
Karambit warriors had fun with mewing
That chakram pronounciation was on point! I was taken aback.
Actually is makes total sense to convert the Horse over the Rider. If you didn't, then the Horse would just take the traitor back to base for execution. Horses are Loyal, Don'Cha no!
10:44
LOVE IT!!!
Thanks for the hearty laugh! :D
I thought the vils have "heavy siege" damage that applies to both the hussite wagon and ballista elephant. Did that get changed?
Did you... did you... did you really pronounce "Chakram" correctly? You just earned my massive respect, my friend! Incidentally, this pronunciation of the "a" applies to a lot of the words around the Indian subcontent, including Hindustanis, Ratha, Bengalis, etc. :)
While on the topic of pronunciation, Ghulam is pronounced with a shorter "u" rather than "Ghoolam".
I was not expecting to become an Elite Boyar enthusiast when I clicked this video, but here I am. Thanks SotL. Also RIP Boromir
From L to W nice
Horse fact, similar to the elephant, there hasn't been any document recording a horse being converted to another religion.
I hate playing against the Hussite Wagon, thanks for the tip now! 😉
I suspect the usual attack of 10 wagons would vaporize the civs before reaching, though (but dunno, never tried)
There's a comic somewhere of a Konnik's horse getting converted and then looking up at his rider, preparing to kill him.
Can you do an optimal mining camp placement video? You could test the efficiency of different mining camp placements based off mine shapes, villagers on the mine, etc (:
Hi Spirit, great series, look forward to part 2, 👍🇦🇺
The siege engineers trained the elephants to move their head forward just a smidge, because they have a bit in their mouth which is actually the release for the ballista. They're off researching ways to further improve the tech, without risking human life. Medievel automated warfare.
"we should appreciate the fact that an Elite Samurai can take down a boat by singlehandedly while under fire"
thats because that one Samurai was the storm that was approaching.
Spirit of the Law throwing blows at the HD edition Karambit Warrior and I'm here for it.
A Karambit Coin reference for especially all the long-time SoTL fans.
You're assuming the Ballista elephants aren't the actual siege engineers themselves. They spent 4 long years at elephant college to earn that degree, and deserve to be treated as such!
That boromir bit caught me completely off guard hahaha
Would your horse like to hear about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
I'm totally picturing the konnik rider answering the door and the horse in the living room behind them, sitting crosslegged on the couch peering over its newspaper. 😂
Neigh
I had hoped for real life facts about these units 😄 Maybe an idea for another vid?
The Ballista Elephant is really just the imperial age Trojan Horse. So many people crammed inside to work the auto reloading ballista.
What’s pretty cool with the “oda” campaign in the new DLC, if you play the cavalry clan and do the bonus objective you get stirrups. So now your special charge bonus cavalry are now also 60ish%+ attack speed of a normal cavalier. Probobly my favorite thing with converting centurions. (If that would have been a side thing for jokes, just imagine attack animations actually doing damage on que.
*Double Ballista Elephant mowing down enemy withdouble crossbow
Siege Engineer and Mahout, standing proud shoulder by shoulder, holding back tears
Frickin' awesome!
Thank you for pronouncing Chakram correctly
The monk finished chanting.
The Konnic doesn't feel any different.
The Horse looks at the Konnic.
Horse: "Actually, I don't believe Christ is King"
*Horse get executed for Heresy*
The horse: "Hail Hydra"
I wonder if some infamous high ladder or just in general hussite spam was being to much a problem without a elegant solution that would hurt the bohemeans over all.
I dont know you guys, but I LOVE this guy's voice
The ballista ele firing down at close range is actually super critical in CBA. Before I knew that I thought it was kind of garbage 11
Also I had no idea about the flemish militia! That’s pretty cool.
Could you do an episode on the cosmetic look of all UUnits, including the icon vs unit and any small tweaks upgrades make, maybe comparisons vs the HD edition unit & icon etc.
"These equines ain't loyal." - A Konnik commander
The siege engineers are hiding in the arrow-quiver, surely.
It's the elephant getting an engineering degree
Can you please do a video on Japanese champions with both a Centurion and an elite Centurion backing them up? This makes me wonder just how high the militia attack line can go from stacking buffs.
Also, I could see the very, very minor arc of the composite bowman's arrows at that range. It's incredibly subtle but it's there.
16th time of asking Spirit of the Law to review Romae ad Bellum civilizations like he did with Romans. Thank you for another interesting video and keep up the awesome work. :D
Hussite Wagons have that thing where they absorb half damage from projectiles that target other units but pass through their collision box. Are arrows fired from a Composite Bowman easier to "block" with a Hussite Wagon than other projectiles because of the flatter trajectory?
7:40 those are differwnt knifes indeed, but are named Kukri, which are from India so it doesnt make sence why it is on the picture
Very entertaining video. Would have been nice if you added a comparison for the generated gold. Like that is the equivalent of x villagers mining gold, y tradecarts or z relics doing their job.
"If someone can tell me where the siege engineers are on the elephant"
The same place as the servants of the onagre? I've never seen a catapult move by itself :p
1111 laughed so hard at the karambit warrior bit!
Does the Composite Bowman's anti-gravity arrows affect how it interacts with the Hussite Wagons projectile-blocking properties? If I remember correctly, archers can hit their intended target if their shots arc over the wagon.
"+1 range is the hardest counter against ao2 pathing" This truly speaks why new players have problem with managing units.
Vils deleting the Hussite Wagon is funny and potentially useful!
obviously the ballista elephant IS the siege engineer. it goes to engineering school before getting its ballista
Fun question, does centurion affect a
ANY infatry?
Just militia line. They don't affect the spear line or any infantry UU (except Legionaries).
@@jasonsmith1950 ahh shit, would have been fun and op 🤣 that i'd still enjoy champskarls with centoriun cuz they would be fast enough to become actual huskarls 🤣
What if the monks always convert the horses and the riders just play along? XD
That Keshik bit should be fixed by devs. There's no way that's intended.
I humbly request the condottiero to be added to the part 2. If the caravel goes, the condottiero too.
A-K? You forgot the Knights that are Teutonic.
Those are the Koolest!
...did the Hussite Wagon get +villager bonus damage specifically because of Phosphoru's shenanigans?
Boromir did look like a Bersek in that old animated LotR movie. But it didn‘t save him…
9:03 also bonus vs balista eles i think
Missed an opportunity to reference the Acolyte when talking about the Kamayuk. SOTL focused of the power of one more range. I expected him to say, "the power of many."
When did you stop with the intro :(
Spirit Of The Law previously said that he only adds the intro to videos he thinks that it fits.
An example, all civ overviews@@horakhty2217
So does the Konnik rider have the same stats as when he still has his horse? Just slower movement speed? That's such a whacky interaction. lol
Fun fact. For the Cuman Mercenaries tech it isn't that it applies to all new castles. The AoE II devs solved backwards causality and know how many castles a player will have built by the end of the game, so it just appears like it gives it to all new castles. If you ended up building one more castle than you actually built, then that castle would not yield them.
But isn’t it impossible to build a castle without ‘actually building a castle’ as you’re saying?
Maybe in a fortress game?
@@maxwallace9491 oooo interesting, that could work actually
@@maxwallace9491 I tried it and it doesn’t work, so I’m thinking the said scenario probably isn’t possible
@@maxwallace9491I tried it and it didn’t work. The castle still counted and worked. I’m thinking it’s impossible to complete the said scenario of building a castle without building one