I don't think Byzantines and celts should get the same Cavalry grade. Both miss bloodlines and get paladin, but celts are missing the last armor upgrade, whereas byzantines are missing the less important blast furnace. Further byzantine get a cavalry UU and a bonus for their camels, which celts are lacking entirely.
It is easy to understand, paladin celts are anti-infantry and paladin byzantines are anti-archer and anti-siege. This totally logical, celts do not have HC and byzantines do not have any heavy unit neither siege enginier to hold against a death ball siege+archer. So they are both very unique and hard to get grades on them.
i mean nobody ever makes celt or byzantine paladins, making the upgrade irrelevant and something you would almost never get and scorpions are a better choice for anti infantry for the celts
@@jagosvujovic2086 No, absolutly not, for example: ua-cam.com/video/WXdO48DThe8/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/l8ZsWQ9S5sk/v-deo.html they are (nearly) a must go in Arabia pocket, but for a really late game they are a bit special. And even they are better than teutons, for husbandry and gold mining upgrade. With this discussion, now I think Spiritofthelaw are way too underestimate Byzantines' cavalry, they are litteraly flawless, exellent anti-archer, anti-cavalry, anti-infantry and anti-monk, but complicate to upgrade. About Celts they are more specific, I think about Aztecs' infantry, Japanes's infantry, korean's deathball and turk's deathball. Celts' UU can't deal with these and neither scorpions. ps: deathball in aoe II= mass range UU+many long range siege.
I highhly agree the Byzantines should get blood lines they have a true historical bases for their decisive use of heavy cavalry in both the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire in multiple battles against multiple civilizations.
Just wanted to say that lately I've been rewatching most of your videos. I love how you structure and narrate everything. Also the fact that AoE has so much depth and content makes it great to refresh my knowledge on it. So thank you for putting so much effort into your videos, it doesn't go unnoticed.
Well it'll be fun to watch you re-go through some older civ overviews. I love rewatching them in my pastime. Love the work, effort, humour and enthusiasm you put in all these videos, you're amazing Spirit
yeah without a good economy you can't produce as much i kinda agree nerfing worth of navy a bit but defence worth nerf was way to much Navy 5 ECO 10 and Defense 5 would have been way more accurate for the balanced Average
If that were true, Vikings would be a popular pick on land maps. I agree that the excellent eco has been what makes the Mayans almost routinely brutal to stop by any other civ.
@Fabian MEDINA MEDINA I'm biased towards AoC: I don't believe Vikings were above average on land before the HD military buffs. I agree in the importance of eco, though: I generally see Macro as being more important than Micro.
@Fabian MEDINA MEDINA The Vikings and Slavs both have huge farming ecos, but I think it's Bloodlines that allows a civ to really exploit all the food income- Vikings are supposed to be an infantry civ: I'm glad the WK developers kept them true to their Civ's character.
I remember those early civ overviews! Thank you for putting these very entertaining and informative videos together. PS: I appreciate the economy grades and overviews too :)
Oddly enough, I've found myself finding economy bonuses more important when I started playing again recently. Then again, that's partly because I was more of a turtler back in the day and have been trying to pick up the pace since watching your vids.
I would put Byzantine cavalry a little higher just because they have the best Castle Age camels of them all. I feel like that sets off the lack of bloodlines quite a little. Same really counts for siege in which I feel like Siege Rams should be valued much more cause they are so important. I personally think Siege Ram and BBC pull Byzas up to a 6, especially considering Goths and Spanish having a 6 without having siege rams and just generic BBC.
Appreciate the ranking. We can always say the lower overall rankings just mean the civ are more specialized civs, where are the higher rankings mean they are more general. However, general could mean a better late game civ given the amount of options you have, where as specialized civs means you're more likely to be a rush civ. All in all, always appreciate your videos! :D
Fuck me, in terms of passion for AoE2 and inspiring people to play, SOTL is a genius. Wow - it's crazy to think that his civ overview vids had just 100 odd views when they were first released. Now they are through the roof! Where they belong. What a work of art
I just love the Mayans archers and maybe the best economy bonus mix. It just suits my play style and iv always stayed away from Calvary anyway so it’s never been an issue for me.
As I was going through your civ overviews the past day (since I'm just now able to start playing this DE online after months of waiting for the proper computer hardware) I was filling in a spreadsheet exactly as the one you displayed, and even changed your letter grades to numerical ones in the same fashion What I came up with as an additional metric is that if you take the pre-weighted averages and calculate their standard deviation you can come close to an estimate for how focused on a single strategy. By that I mean, if you have a civilization like the Persians (SD=2.92) or Celts (SD=2.90) it shows that they are geared more towards a specific strategy as they have a very high score in one or two categories but lower end scores in most of the others. But the more adaptable "jack-of-all-trades" civs like the Portuguese (SD=0.89) and Japanese (SD=1.07) as expected are lower. So in gameplay terms, this can be sort of used as a mathematical value of civ adaptability vs. predictability, with the lower scores being more adaptable, and the higher scores being more predictable (or specialized) For the single digit number of weirdos who are into this, the values I got for that are as follows (bearing in mind again, these were based on the scores before SoL weighted them): Portuguese:0.89 (Highest jack-of-all-trades) Malians: 0.99 Vietnamese:1.04 Saracens: 1.06 Japanese: 1.07 Chinese: 1.16 Spanish: 1.28 Incas: 1.35 Turks: 1.46 Berbers: 1.73 Britons: 1.73 Khmer: 1.77 Indians: 1.81 Byzantines: 1.85 Malay: 1.85 Ethiopians: 1.91 Italians: 1.96 Teutons: 2.07 Burmese: 2.07 Mongols: 2.19 Lithuanians: 2.36 Vikings: 2.38 Mayans: 2.44 Koreans: 2.55 Franks: 2.59 Aztecs: 2.64 Goths: 2.71 Huns: 2.77 Magyars: 2.83 Slavs: 2.88 Celts: 2.90 Persians: 2.92 (Most specialized) This is the type of thing I'm able to do during a virus quarantine
your commitment to being an excellent information provider on the topic of aoe never ceases to impress me, thx spirit. also an interesting idea for a video from my subjective opinion, top civs for cba-since there is quite a large community of cba players out there, anyway, keep up the great work and merry xmas spirit.
Wow, this video is the perfect cherry on the top for your overview series. One of the greatest assets AoE2 has is your amazing mathematical analysis of every minute detaul of the game. I would so love you to make a video sugesting fixes for AoE3 in the re-edition they promised. The game setting for that game is hands down my favorite time period, but they somehow missed the mark on gameplay and balancing. An expert numbers-oriented mind like yours is bound to have tons of sound advise to improve it. I saw a great suggestion video in 'HarvestBuildDestroy' but I'm sure yours can be even more detailed.
Spirit Of The Law, I noticed you played Lords of the Realm 2! It would be great if you could upload some videos. That is a legendary game and one of my all time favorites. I played it nonstop as a kid long ago, and still occasionally play it today. Truly a gem of a game. Another great video, as usual...
Great video. I hear you talk about how knight rushes are so important, and surely they must be in certain scenarios but I have something to say. I’ve been playing age of empires for well over 13 years and my father even longer, not one single time in my life have I Knight rushed, or played with someone who knight rushes. I’ve played hundreds of multiplayer games and hear of all these must perfect tactics, but only ever see people playing calmly, building up, and enjoying a nice game with large presented battles. Maybe I’m in the wrong crowd and don’t see it often, but...who knows?!
The biggest takeaway from this video - you can never go wrong with Spanish! xD Good solo, great on teams. Strong on land AND water. Powerful offense, capable defense. No matter how you adjusted and weighted things, you just couldn't keep the Spanish Inquisition down. :D
At 1:33 think for a moment that, we were arguing over with you of persians cavalry is A- in comment section (pers overview you can even check it was 3-4 years ago) after all those time, it turns out I was right! lol man still loving you. P.s: hope you remember the argument tho!
@@Kaarl_Mills If your rush fails you're always likely to lose regardless of the civ. But I would agree that huns are the hardest one to go off the standard strategy. On the other hand, huns are damned good for their supposed rushes
@@jacobnion2525 For Franks and Huns thats *literally* their only viable option, you knight or horse archer rush or die. Their tech trees are missing so many basic techs that they have no choice
L L What game have you been playing mate? I’ve seen those civilizations hold their own in Imperial Age fights and win. Because the player in question takes care of their economy and production. If you lose the game due to a failed rush, that has nothing to do with the civilization or its mechanics, it means you aren’t as skilled as you think you are.
Huns are lacking a lot for late game fights, if they win in imperial it is thanks to the advance they got after raiding in castle age, at least according to the SotL video. I think Franks should have no issue in imperial as long as they have gold however
Have you ever considered Age of Mythology or Age of Empires 3 overviews or even an entirely different RTS like Starcraft and Command and Conquer. I enjoy your videos and analysis style so much I would hate for it to end. Merry christmas and Happy Holidays.
He's all about AOE2 and understandably so but I'd love to see him sesh out civ overviews of AoM and AOE1...even AOE3. But one thing's for sure, I'm confident he'll be showing plenty of AOE4 when it comes out
i remember a video he answered this question, i think he said its not in his plans, and if he did, he would create a new channel because he wants this one to be aoe2 content only.
You fool. Spains Villgers are average till late game. Incan villagers are OPOP right from the feudal age. Inca villagers will wipe spain off the map before they even THINK about buffing their vills
I think cavalry archers should be considered apart from the archers since some civ are specialized in them rather than archers in general and vice versa (Huns, Mongols, Britons, Mayans)... by the way, your one of my favorite youtuber, i stopped playing AoE2 some years ago and then i discovered your channel, it brought back my love for that gave and i bought it on Steam with all the expansion, thank you for your great work!
I hope someday youll remake Huns's review. That clip tell us lots of thing we all know (how laking choices the Huns is, and how much they are reliable on Cav when go to Post-Imp) but not that we want to know about like their Unique unit, their strength and weakness, etc.
Hey, I know this video is pretty old but this seems like the place. Sometimes in your civ overview videos you show a graph for the civ showing their probability of winning on the Y axis and length of game on the X. I would be forever in your debt if you could make a video either showing them all off or maybe a series for top 5 Early Game Civs and so on for for mid and late game. I love your content SOTL, I know you probably get this a lot but you're the reason I'm competent at this game so thanks for everything man.
I think you should do an update on this particular video(after the game is out) before diving into new civ overviews... and separate ones addressing meta changes(like free tracking for everyone and the new techs)
Spirit of the Law, On voobly there are many mods that add more civ to the game and are unofficial expansions, if you want to continue the series feel free to check those mods out
A big thing to verify the accuracy of your analysis is to compare it to win ratios at 2k+ levels. If it correlates, bam you're a confirmed genius. It'll be interesting to see, and I do believe you have the math skills to do this properly, so I don't need to explain.
Still, unique cavalry unit should have been in the mix, just to see how important it may or may not be. Also, Persians _should_ have elephants. Seriously: how do they get war elephants, and not battle elephants? They should also get Heresy.
Oh man, looks like I got the Britons' and Huns' predicted grades more or less correct since some viewers were asking for them and I attempted to answer them (and disseminate them with wololo). Wooo! (Though, A- for Britons' archers is silly at best - Thumb Ring being missing is hardly a deal considering your own archers can shoot at least a couple of volleys before the others even get into their own maximum range. Should be an A. Sure, they lose to the Mayans (Plumes) and Vietnamese (Rattan), but can take down other archers without a problem. This is without even considering the availability of Longbows, mind you. Magyars for instance have no notable bonus for them aside from LOS, and the cav archer tech, and *they* got an A when they are more in the B sort of range imo) Great vid though :)
Great Video. I don't agree with the cavalry choice for the meso civs, because missing cav is the main point I don't like playing them. Their remaining techtree is of course buffed in the other cathegories to make up for that which inflates their grades. But hey, my choice is already made.
Interesting video Spirit ! Though I feel is doesn't completely factor in the impact of some techs on a civilization's grade. I'm thinking about the Turks here mostly and their Artillery tech. They bombard canons become insane when it is researched, and so do their bombard towers. In the same fashion (but to a lesser extent), their archer line is rather weak for sure but their gunpowder units on foot are among the best of any civilization in the game, and are categorized as archers. It's a very specific and late game-oriented civilization for sure, but I feel their siege and archers deserve a better grade
Usually you don´t make infantry +cavalry + archers all in the same game, usually you stick to 2 of those, most likely your best unit and a good support for it, or a counter for the enemy units. a Civ with a rank 10 archer , rank 10 infantry and rank 0 cavl should not be ranked the same as a 6 inf 6 cavl 6 arch, just like you did with mayans and aztec. Also trash unit power / cost can be game defining to the point i believe it deserves a whole category of its own .
tbh I would see those averages (both the weighted and non-weighted) more of an indication of how easy they might be to play, not really how good they are in general
What hurts the mesoamericans the most is the absence of light cav for raiding. But that's really contextual, on black forest you don't really feel the loss.
@@weston6860 Yes but they feel more like knights than light cav to me. Because of the gold cost, you're trying to keep them alive unlike light cav that you can sacrifice.
I feel like the Persian's A- is warranted for the sole reason that they lack Heresy, a tech that really starts to bite them in the ass if the enemy ever decides to invest in even a small number of them. Due to the elephants' lack of speed, Faith doesn't have as much of an impact on them as it does for the actual knight/scout line because of the knights'/scouts' ability to close distances with the extra time against monks that Faith grants. Also I'm glad Incans and Magyars are still good in your opinion. They both seem to be underrated by many from what I've seen.
In my opinion you made a little mistake: You factor in some economy bonuses and cost efficiency while comparing stuff like inf/cav/navy but you also give a separate economy rating. Thus, the different economy bonuses get a different recognition but their weight does not depend on how powerful they are, but what they affect. I think you shouldn't implement economy bonuses and unit costs into your first ratings (inf/cav/navy etc.) but you should factor in unit costs into your economy rating which then should be more influential.
@@MrAsaqe True, but there are ways of building improvised defences that don't require houses (mills, stable lines, other random buildings). To rank them the same as a civ that literally relies on building lines of giant sticks for defence is a bit of a harsh comparison.
Even at that, Huns have a severe lack of University techs, so that's not going to be a great way to go, while Goths have Architecture and their Castles are at least decent - making building walling an intriguing option, especially since you mainly rely on cheap infantry and Skirms to close the distance. Unlike the Huns, their Skirms end up with full armour in the event of an extended archer rush - not to mention their dirt-cheap spear line. So while the structures are lacking, the defensive-minded trash unit deployability kind of makes up for it. Tough call, but I'd consider the two... equally terrible at defending mid-game especially. Though, it is possible that F is a bit harsh for the Huns and it should really be a C-.
What I'd find really interesting here in 2024 could be a re-do of this entire list with the necessary patches and new insights under the years, while looking for correlations with the new statistical data that we have. I'm curious how much a "Spirit of the Law-grade" is a good predictor of online multiplayer performance. 🤔
There is one thing to consider for the naval ratings: The meta on water map has changed considerably. The early ratings were basically all determined by how fast the civ can get the first galley onto the water.
You could weight lower and higher grades a little stronger as you are far more likely to give a neutral grade (B- to B+). You could try to analyze your bias in grading to account for this. Their could probably be minor categories such as gun powder, trash and cav archers.
To be more thorough and more fair you could assign each technology and bonus a point value, allowing for more objective grades. You can also go for grades per age; dark, feudal, castle, imperial, and include post-imp for post gold/trash games. Then organize the units (like eagle warriors) by their roles (like anti-archer or anti-siege) and where they are viable (like feudal, castle, and imperial). I think that that would allow you to give fair grades without having to avoid awkward grades like cav for meso civs or indians. You could also have instead of defense split it up into counter unit availability and buildings or other map control.
Having done Consumer Behavior studies, I know that to eliminate subjectivity in such surveys, one needs to use a semantic differential scale instead of the A,B,C,D and be spread out by being liberal in giving the D grade. Qualitative opinion is captured more sharply this way. The crowded list occurs when you have only 4 grades and by not using the Grade(+) and Grade(-) often because humans inherently have a mental bias when evaluating grades. Also, I am trying to do unit match=up tests ( 1 vs 1 and groups) but my Scenario Editor's AI doesn't fight back? How do I do it? Any good tutorial that can help? How do I use triggers??? Any help from this forum will be appreciated!
I would find enjoyable an update on this list with new patches. I find it hard to predict what every Civs will play since I am new to Rank AoE2 and don't know every Civs tech Tree yet. Until now the Teuton and Vietnamese are my favorite Civilisation. Teuton for the very defensive playstyle based around castle and great economy wich are greatly show-cased on this sheets. I make me see the ''big picture'' of most match-up at a quick glance, wich is super usefull for the new player than I am. I reached platinum easily in starcraft 2, but find AoE2 super hard since the winner is more determined by the best strategical choice than a mechanical prowes.
![Beginners guide to countering every Unique Unit [AoE2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QYMr8OCdmsE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Beginners guide to countering every Unique Unit [AoE2]](/img/tr.png)
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Ayyy that elephant fact has returned! And I love that adorable elephant there
Me too, so cute!
So it _does_ make sense that a slacker and procrastinator like me really should prefer the Byzantines
Very good idea using a defensive civilization, i al most always prefer teutons
Or a coward like me.
Or a pressure counter striker brawler like me
As a Romanian, we welcome you with open arms
We need a updated version of this video for DE
I don't think Byzantines and celts should get the same Cavalry grade. Both miss bloodlines and get paladin, but celts are missing the last armor upgrade, whereas byzantines are missing the less important blast furnace. Further byzantine get a cavalry UU and a bonus for their camels, which celts are lacking entirely.
Sometimes he do this, similar to japanese, portuguese and chinese having same cav grade
It is easy to understand, paladin celts are anti-infantry and paladin byzantines are anti-archer and anti-siege.
This totally logical, celts do not have HC and byzantines do not have any heavy unit neither siege enginier to hold against a death ball siege+archer.
So they are both very unique and hard to get grades on them.
i mean nobody ever makes celt or byzantine paladins, making the upgrade irrelevant and something you would almost never get and scorpions are a better choice for anti infantry for the celts
@@jagosvujovic2086 No, absolutly not, for example:
ua-cam.com/video/WXdO48DThe8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/l8ZsWQ9S5sk/v-deo.html
they are (nearly) a must go in Arabia pocket, but for a really late game they are a bit special. And even they are better than teutons, for husbandry and gold mining upgrade.
With this discussion, now I think Spiritofthelaw are way too underestimate Byzantines' cavalry, they are litteraly flawless, exellent anti-archer, anti-cavalry, anti-infantry and anti-monk, but complicate to upgrade.
About Celts they are more specific, I think about Aztecs' infantry, Japanes's infantry, korean's deathball and turk's deathball. Celts' UU can't deal with these and neither scorpions.
ps: deathball in aoe II= mass range UU+many long range siege.
I highhly agree the Byzantines should get blood lines they have a true historical bases for their decisive use of heavy cavalry in both the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire in multiple battles against multiple civilizations.
Just wanted to say that lately I've been rewatching most of your videos. I love how you structure and narrate everything. Also the fact that AoE has so much depth and content makes it great to refresh my knowledge on it. So thank you for putting so much effort into your videos, it doesn't go unnoticed.
Well it'll be fun to watch you re-go through some older civ overviews. I love rewatching them in my pastime. Love the work, effort, humour and enthusiasm you put in all these videos, you're amazing Spirit
I'm a simple man. I see Spirit of the Law's video, I click.
Im a simple man, when i see someone say this. I think come up with your own jokes...
I'm a whamen
22
Why place less weight on economy? I think most people would say that is just as or more important than any military tech advantages.
yeah without a good economy you can't produce as much i kinda agree nerfing worth of navy a bit but defence worth nerf was way to much
Navy 5 ECO 10 and Defense 5 would have been way more accurate for the balanced Average
If that were true, Vikings would be a popular pick on land maps.
I agree that the excellent eco has been what makes the Mayans almost routinely brutal to stop by any other civ.
@Fabian MEDINA MEDINA I'm biased towards AoC: I don't believe Vikings were above average on land before the HD military buffs.
I agree in the importance of eco, though: I generally see Macro as being more important than Micro.
@Fabian MEDINA MEDINA The Vikings and Slavs both have huge farming ecos, but I think it's Bloodlines that allows a civ to really exploit all the food income-
Vikings are supposed to be an infantry civ: I'm glad the WK developers kept them true to their Civ's character.
Maybe because many of the grades he gave for military already relied on economy.
Yay now I don't have to go back and look through a bunch of 16 minute videos just for grades.
10/10 will watch again
Me: *spends days compiling Spirit's grades into a beautiful spreadsheet*
This Video: *exists*
YEARS OF ACADEMY TRAINING WASTED
SotL, you've done a lot for this game, which is my all-time favorite! Thank you!
I remember those early civ overviews! Thank you for putting these very entertaining and informative videos together. PS: I appreciate the economy grades and overviews too :)
Oddly enough, I've found myself finding economy bonuses more important when I started playing again recently. Then again, that's partly because I was more of a turtler back in the day and have been trying to pick up the pace since watching your vids.
I would put Byzantine cavalry a little higher just because they have the best Castle Age camels of them all. I feel like that sets off the lack of bloodlines quite a little. Same really counts for siege in which I feel like Siege Rams should be valued much more cause they are so important. I personally think Siege Ram and BBC pull Byzas up to a 6, especially considering Goths and Spanish having a 6 without having siege rams and just generic BBC.
I fall asleep to you talking, it's really relaxing. Your choice of music is also on point! Good job!
A man after my own heart lol, I've literally made spreadsheets like this myself!!
Same :D
I used to make upgrade flashcards for non-game days, myself.
Glad to see someone like u who is still so passionate abt AOE I just found ur channel and loving ur vids
I have been hoping you would make a video like this. Thank you for the early Christmas present!
Interesting rankings. My fave top 2 are Mongols and Japanese. Based on your latest rankings I want to try out the Persians more.
Persians are probably one of the strongest factions in the game, in my opinion
I've not played AoE in a long time but your voice is just soothing
30 sec in and I'm already enjoying, happy and liking the vid. Thanks spirit, you're an awesome helper.
Appreciate the ranking. We can always say the lower overall rankings just mean the civ are more specialized civs, where are the higher rankings mean they are more general. However, general could mean a better late game civ given the amount of options you have, where as specialized civs means you're more likely to be a rush civ. All in all, always appreciate your videos! :D
Fuck me, in terms of passion for AoE2 and inspiring people to play, SOTL is a genius. Wow - it's crazy to think that his civ overview vids had just 100 odd views when they were first released. Now they are through the roof! Where they belong. What a work of art
As always, its a great pleasure to see your videos. Thank you very much.
Merry Christmas!
Another great video - I hope that this being your total comparison video doesn’t mean your wrapping up with these!
I still think your intro music needs to be apart of all your videos. Love the intro
It's always a good day when Spirit uploads a video.
I just love the Mayans archers and maybe the best economy bonus mix. It just suits my play style and iv always stayed away from Calvary anyway so it’s never been an issue for me.
As I was going through your civ overviews the past day (since I'm just now able to start playing this DE online after months of waiting for the proper computer hardware) I was filling in a spreadsheet exactly as the one you displayed, and even changed your letter grades to numerical ones in the same fashion
What I came up with as an additional metric is that if you take the pre-weighted averages and calculate their standard deviation you can come close to an estimate for how focused on a single strategy. By that I mean, if you have a civilization like the Persians (SD=2.92) or Celts (SD=2.90) it shows that they are geared more towards a specific strategy as they have a very high score in one or two categories but lower end scores in most of the others. But the more adaptable "jack-of-all-trades" civs like the Portuguese (SD=0.89) and Japanese (SD=1.07) as expected are lower. So in gameplay terms, this can be sort of used as a mathematical value of civ adaptability vs. predictability, with the lower scores being more adaptable, and the higher scores being more predictable (or specialized)
For the single digit number of weirdos who are into this, the values I got for that are as follows (bearing in mind again, these were based on the scores before SoL weighted them):
Portuguese:0.89 (Highest jack-of-all-trades)
Malians: 0.99
Vietnamese:1.04
Saracens: 1.06
Japanese: 1.07
Chinese: 1.16
Spanish: 1.28
Incas: 1.35
Turks: 1.46
Berbers: 1.73
Britons: 1.73
Khmer: 1.77
Indians: 1.81
Byzantines: 1.85
Malay: 1.85
Ethiopians: 1.91
Italians: 1.96
Teutons: 2.07
Burmese: 2.07
Mongols: 2.19
Lithuanians: 2.36
Vikings: 2.38
Mayans: 2.44
Koreans: 2.55
Franks: 2.59
Aztecs: 2.64
Goths: 2.71
Huns: 2.77
Magyars: 2.83
Slavs: 2.88
Celts: 2.90
Persians: 2.92 (Most specialized)
This is the type of thing I'm able to do during a virus quarantine
your commitment to being an excellent information provider on the topic of aoe never ceases to impress me, thx spirit. also an interesting idea for a video from my subjective opinion, top civs for cba-since there is quite a large community of cba players out there, anyway, keep up the great work and merry xmas spirit.
Wow, this video is the perfect cherry on the top for your overview series. One of the greatest assets AoE2 has is your amazing mathematical analysis of every minute detaul of the game.
I would so love you to make a video sugesting fixes for AoE3 in the re-edition they promised. The game setting for that game is hands down my favorite time period, but they somehow missed the mark on gameplay and balancing. An expert numbers-oriented mind like yours is bound to have tons of sound advise to improve it. I saw a great suggestion video in 'HarvestBuildDestroy' but I'm sure yours can be even more detailed.
Great job cocasting with T90 today, Spirit! It was waaay better than the last time! Also, great video as always, of course
Certainly is interesting when data doesn't seem to align with results. Tells me there is something causing the discrepancy. God I love it.
You've made me go back to playing AOE2. After watching a series of your videos it's just too hard not to play this game again
Best Christmas gift ever!
Felices fiestas, Spirit and all!
Spirit Of The Law, I noticed you played Lords of the Realm 2! It would be great if you could upload some videos. That is a legendary game and one of my all time favorites. I played it nonstop as a kid long ago, and still occasionally play it today. Truly a gem of a game.
Another great video, as usual...
Great video. I hear you talk about how knight rushes are so important, and surely they must be in certain scenarios but I have something to say.
I’ve been playing age of empires for well over 13 years and my father even longer, not one single time in my life have I Knight rushed, or played with someone who knight rushes. I’ve played hundreds of multiplayer games and hear of all these must perfect tactics, but only ever see people playing calmly, building up, and enjoying a nice game with large presented battles. Maybe I’m in the wrong crowd and don’t see it often, but...who knows?!
What's your ranking on Voobly? I don't have any uniqur insights, but that might be a factor.
I've really enjoyed you talking about the faction weekesses and how to counter them or exploit them.
Hey, I'm about to watch you in the t90 stream. Thanks for your awesome videos and merry Christmas :D
great to see a new vid. go on you do great.
The biggest takeaway from this video - you can never go wrong with Spanish! xD Good solo, great on teams. Strong on land AND water. Powerful offense, capable defense. No matter how you adjusted and weighted things, you just couldn't keep the Spanish Inquisition down. :D
At 1:33 think for a moment that, we were arguing over with you of persians cavalry is A- in comment section (pers overview you can even check it was 3-4 years ago) after all those time, it turns out I was right! lol man still loving you.
P.s: hope you remember the argument tho!
It would be greatly appreciated an update of this video. BTW I'm a huge fan of your work!
With the right strategy, every civ can defeat any other. That's why this game is timeless
Not Franks or Huns, because if your rush fails you lose. Thats it
@@Kaarl_Mills If your rush fails you're always likely to lose regardless of the civ. But I would agree that huns are the hardest one to go off the standard strategy. On the other hand, huns are damned good for their supposed rushes
@@jacobnion2525
For Franks and Huns thats *literally* their only viable option, you knight or horse archer rush or die. Their tech trees are missing so many basic techs that they have no choice
L L
What game have you been playing mate?
I’ve seen those civilizations hold their own in Imperial Age fights and win. Because the player in question takes care of their economy and production.
If you lose the game due to a failed rush, that has nothing to do with the civilization or its mechanics, it means you aren’t as skilled as you think you are.
Huns are lacking a lot for late game fights, if they win in imperial it is thanks to the advance they got after raiding in castle age, at least according to the SotL video. I think Franks should have no issue in imperial as long as they have gold however
This Video is soo good. Thank you!
Anyone remember back in the good old days when Teutons had +5 Range on TC?
Excellent Choice!
We really need someone like u playing league of legends and making some of those analyses! Very nice video!
Very impressive work, well done spirit of the math*
That Japanese fast-treb bonus should count for more IMO
Have you ever considered Age of Mythology or Age of Empires 3 overviews or even an entirely different RTS like Starcraft and Command and Conquer. I enjoy your videos and analysis style so much I would hate for it to end.
Merry christmas and Happy Holidays.
Indeed. So many RTSs need this too.
@@Marcara081 Maybe it is all about his own personal passion.
Would probably be hard for him i games he dont play that much
He's all about AOE2 and understandably so but I'd love to see him sesh out civ overviews of AoM and AOE1...even AOE3. But one thing's for sure, I'm confident he'll be showing plenty of AOE4 when it comes out
i remember a video he answered this question, i think he said its not in his plans, and if he did, he would create a new channel because he wants this one to be aoe2 content only.
48 views on a SOTL video. I've entered the twilight zone...
It's a bug from UA-cam
you missed an important metrtic- the strength of the villager mob attack! Spain FTW!!!
You fool. Spains Villgers are average till late game. Incan villagers are OPOP right from the feudal age. Inca villagers will wipe spain off the map before they even THINK about buffing their vills
I think cavalry archers should be considered apart from the archers since some civ are specialized in them rather than archers in general and vice versa (Huns, Mongols, Britons, Mayans)... by the way, your one of my favorite youtuber, i stopped playing AoE2 some years ago and then i discovered your channel, it brought back my love for that gave and i bought it on Steam with all the expansion, thank you for your great work!
Never clicked on something so fast
i never saw anything other than your AoE2 videos, i didn't know you did Lords of the Realm 2 also
He's done it
Some actual statistical data and analysis
I hope someday youll remake Huns's review. That clip tell us lots of thing we all know (how laking choices the Huns is, and how much they are reliable on Cav when go to Post-Imp) but not that we want to know about like their Unique unit, their strength and weakness, etc.
Hey, I know this video is pretty old but this seems like the place. Sometimes in your civ overview videos you show a graph for the civ showing their probability of winning on the Y axis and length of game on the X. I would be forever in your debt if you could make a video either showing them all off or maybe a series for top 5 Early Game Civs and so on for for mid and late game. I love your content SOTL, I know you probably get this a lot but you're the reason I'm competent at this game so thanks for everything man.
Nice video man
This is what I've been waiting for
I think you should do an update on this particular video(after the game is out) before diving into new civ overviews... and separate ones addressing meta changes(like free tracking for everyone and the new techs)
This video is the best Christmas present for me... because the elephant facts! xD
I missed your wonderful background music yesterday in t90 24h stream ;)
Sarracens should be higher in navy
And Huns way lower
*This Game, Bmx and WC3 its what keeps early 2000's alive for me...*
Wooo Persians is A+ Cavalry now! :D
The reason you rated it an A was because of no bracer:p
What a Christmas present from SOTL
Spirit of the Law,
On voobly there are many mods that add more civ to the game and are unofficial expansions, if you want to continue the series feel free to check those mods out
A big thing to verify the accuracy of your analysis is to compare it to win ratios at 2k+ levels. If it correlates, bam you're a confirmed genius. It'll be interesting to see, and I do believe you have the math skills to do this properly, so I don't need to explain.
9:00 persians have elephants
nope
They have an elephant. That can only be built out of one expensive building.
That is not the same as the RoR civs who build them out of stables.
Still, unique cavalry unit should have been in the mix, just to see how important it may or may not be.
Also, Persians _should_ have elephants. Seriously: how do they get war elephants, and not battle elephants? They should also get Heresy.
Merry Christmas :3
Oh man, looks like I got the Britons' and Huns' predicted grades more or less correct since some viewers were asking for them and I attempted to answer them (and disseminate them with wololo). Wooo!
(Though, A- for Britons' archers is silly at best - Thumb Ring being missing is hardly a deal considering your own archers can shoot at least a couple of volleys before the others even get into their own maximum range. Should be an A. Sure, they lose to the Mayans (Plumes) and Vietnamese (Rattan), but can take down other archers without a problem. This is without even considering the availability of Longbows, mind you. Magyars for instance have no notable bonus for them aside from LOS, and the cav archer tech, and *they* got an A when they are more in the B sort of range imo)
Great vid though :)
The Khmer rating shocked me ngl, I really like that faction due to the karambit spam you can do in mid to late game and it's rly fun to play like that
Lies dir mal deinen Kommentar langsam durch und finde den Fehler
Great Video. I don't agree with the cavalry choice for the meso civs, because missing cav is the main point I don't like playing them. Their remaining techtree is of course buffed in the other cathegories to make up for that which inflates their grades. But hey, my choice is already made.
Interesting video Spirit ! Though I feel is doesn't completely factor in the impact of some techs on a civilization's grade. I'm thinking about the Turks here mostly and their Artillery tech. They bombard canons become insane when it is researched, and so do their bombard towers. In the same fashion (but to a lesser extent), their archer line is rather weak for sure but their gunpowder units on foot are among the best of any civilization in the game, and are categorized as archers. It's a very specific and late game-oriented civilization for sure, but I feel their siege and archers deserve a better grade
And there concludes an epic saga!
Sayonara!
SPIRIT OF THE LAW BEST UA-camR EVAR!!!!!111
Usually you don´t make infantry +cavalry + archers all in the same game, usually you stick to 2 of those, most likely your best unit and a good support for it, or a counter for the enemy units. a Civ with a rank 10 archer , rank 10 infantry and rank 0 cavl should not be ranked the same as a 6 inf 6 cavl 6 arch, just like you did with mayans and aztec. Also trash unit power / cost can be game defining to the point i believe it deserves a whole category of its own .
tbh I would see those averages (both the weighted and non-weighted) more of an indication of how easy they might be to play, not really how good they are in general
What hurts the mesoamericans the most is the absence of light cav for raiding. But that's really contextual, on black forest you don't really feel the loss.
@@weston6860 Yes but they feel more like knights than light cav to me. Because of the gold cost, you're trying to keep them alive unlike light cav that you can sacrifice.
Spirit we need a new version of this :)
Battle elephant is good for one particular strategy. And that is the all-in fast castle 20-elephant push.
I feel like the Persian's A- is warranted for the sole reason that they lack Heresy, a tech that really starts to bite them in the ass if the enemy ever decides to invest in even a small number of them. Due to the elephants' lack of speed, Faith doesn't have as much of an impact on them as it does for the actual knight/scout line because of the knights'/scouts' ability to close distances with the extra time against monks that Faith grants. Also I'm glad Incans and Magyars are still good in your opinion. They both seem to be underrated by many from what I've seen.
In my opinion you made a little mistake:
You factor in some economy bonuses and cost efficiency while comparing stuff like inf/cav/navy but you also give a separate economy rating.
Thus, the different economy bonuses get a different recognition but their weight does not depend on how powerful they are, but what they affect.
I think you shouldn't implement economy bonuses and unit costs into your first ratings (inf/cav/navy etc.) but you should factor in unit costs into your economy rating which then should be more influential.
First one to see the video, while eating ! That's what I call a good evening ! Kisses from belgium !
This channel is so dank bruh.
huns have same "1" defence as goths even with stone walls?
They lack houses and their university tech tree is lacking
Still with Goths. Pumping stone into anything but Castles is a waste of stone
@@MrAsaqe True, but there are ways of building improvised defences that don't require houses (mills, stable lines, other random buildings). To rank them the same as a civ that literally relies on building lines of giant sticks for defence is a bit of a harsh comparison.
Even at that, Huns have a severe lack of University techs, so that's not going to be a great way to go, while Goths have Architecture and their Castles are at least decent - making building walling an intriguing option, especially since you mainly rely on cheap infantry and Skirms to close the distance. Unlike the Huns, their Skirms end up with full armour in the event of an extended archer rush - not to mention their dirt-cheap spear line. So while the structures are lacking, the defensive-minded trash unit deployability kind of makes up for it.
Tough call, but I'd consider the two... equally terrible at defending mid-game especially. Though, it is possible that F is a bit harsh for the Huns and it should really be a C-.
still i'd say bracers helps, can't get housed helps and more accurate trebs against enemy trebs help. to get, like, "c".
Spanish stayed at or near the top on all those lists.....I'm so happy to see my favorite civ get objective verification!
What I'd find really interesting here in 2024 could be a re-do of this entire list with the necessary patches and new insights under the years, while looking for correlations with the new statistical data that we have. I'm curious how much a "Spirit of the Law-grade" is a good predictor of online multiplayer performance. 🤔
There is one thing to consider for the naval ratings:
The meta on water map has changed considerably. The early ratings were basically all determined by how fast the civ can get the first galley onto the water.
Exactly. Or Vikings should go down a lot on navy. Without fire galleys, they lose water in feudal age
You could weight lower and higher grades a little stronger as you are far more likely to give a neutral grade (B- to B+). You could try to analyze your bias in grading to account for this. Their could probably be minor categories such as gun powder, trash and cav archers.
To be more thorough and more fair you could assign each technology and bonus a point value, allowing for more objective grades. You can also go for grades per age; dark, feudal, castle, imperial, and include post-imp for post gold/trash games. Then organize the units (like eagle warriors) by their roles (like anti-archer or anti-siege) and where they are viable (like feudal, castle, and imperial). I think that that would allow you to give fair grades without having to avoid awkward grades like cav for meso civs or indians. You could also have instead of defense split it up into counter unit availability and buildings or other map control.
Having done Consumer Behavior studies, I know that to eliminate subjectivity in such surveys, one needs to use a semantic differential scale instead of the A,B,C,D and be spread out by being liberal in giving the D grade. Qualitative opinion is captured more sharply this way. The crowded list occurs when you have only 4 grades and by not using the Grade(+) and Grade(-) often because humans inherently have a mental bias when evaluating grades.
Also, I am trying to do unit match=up tests ( 1 vs 1 and groups) but my Scenario Editor's AI doesn't fight back? How do I do it? Any good tutorial that can help? How do I use triggers??? Any help from this forum will be appreciated!
You have to manually set their relationships with one another.
I know there are tweaks but setting them as enemy doesn't work. This has to do be done with triggers but I don't know how to use it
@@chirantans2162 hmmm look up T90's tutorials? Or was it the other guy....
I did. And several others. I'm afraid they are not very helpful for this purpose. I want to do it the way SOTL has done it in his videos!
@@chirantans2162 give your enemy bot a tc and vills somewhere on the map. Hope it helps
I would like to see you cover AOE I and III as well. If you really don't like AOE III then maybe a video explaining why.
I would find enjoyable an update on this list with new patches.
I find it hard to predict what every Civs will play since I am new to Rank AoE2 and don't know every Civs tech Tree yet.
Until now the Teuton and Vietnamese are my favorite Civilisation. Teuton for the very defensive playstyle based around castle and great economy wich are greatly show-cased on this sheets.
I make me see the ''big picture'' of most match-up at a quick glance, wich is super usefull for the new player than I am.
I reached platinum easily in starcraft 2, but find AoE2 super hard since the winner is more determined by the best strategical choice than a mechanical prowes.
Great work
Go Teutons, Japanese, and Mongols! They are my top three civilizations to play.
saracens buff ideas:
[Team bonus]
Trading fee -5%, Market costs -75 wood.
[Civ bonus]
Archery range units move +10% faster.
Transport ships 2x hit points, +5 carry capacity.
All warships fire 25% faster.
Camels, mamelukes +15/20% hit points in castle/imperial age.
Market trade cost only 10%.
[Castle age tech]
Monks cost -33%.
[Imperial age tech]
Scout cavalry, light cavalry, hussar, Camels, Mamelukes +1/+1 armor.
Love the video but there is a glaring problem here: the Saracen team bonus elicits at least an 11/10 for its Archers