@@theBeT95 because if I were pro, I also would be trying to disguise myself as noobtard so that no matter who my opponent is they are underestimating me. A trick so old you can find it in Sun Tzus Art of War, a book I've never read because I'm a noob.
Every time I play a Raj Civ: "Big bonuses for elephants, guess I'll invest in those." -meet enemy monk- "Yep those bonuses were supper effective in helping my elephant army trash my base."
Burmese get cheap monastery techs, my favorite. Khmer though I just have some anti AI fun with. Especially on defend the wonder arena combo for movement. Correction, no heresy damnit. Time for teuton ally again. Cannon the hell out of those enemy monks.
I think being less popular probably directly affects the win rate here, because civs that are rarely picked you won't have experience with so if you roll them on random you won't be as clear on what to do. That being said: buff vietnamese pls
@@brunohenriqueazevedoborges5490 They do not have weaknesses. It does not matter what path you take, is it always at least good. Your opponent might be better in a certain area, but it is never by any huge margin. You are free to explore the game, explore your style. They have simple bonuses like building more stuff with the same resources. It is always active, you always benefit. Stronger walls are always handy.
I reckon its because these civs are new and they havent been explored enough, not because they are necessarily bad. Other civs have had some 20 years more experience
@@Mietchannel And yet Saracens show up here, while the last Raja civ is one of the strongest in the game. Khmer are better in team games as I understand it, so there's that.
Yeah, they’re all kinda bad for 1v1 Arabia, but Khmer are okay on Arena and Malay are freaken OP there, too. Viets though... yeah, it’s not pretty for them on any map...
The more useful kind of metric for determining who is weakest is plotting overall win rate/ELO vs win rate with a particular faction. That way you can see if civilizations are truly underpowered or just hard to use.
It's easy. Whenever you watch Spirit of the law videos, he always tends to focus on the early and mid game, assuming that the game rarely if ever even goes to imperial/lost imperial age.
@@ayush885 That's also influenced by the Arabia map, which is very open and encourages rushing over walling and booming your economy. It'd be interesting to see the rates for other maps like Black Forest, Gold Rush, and Mediterranean.
@@blazefangaming2678 yeah, maps change a lot of things. If you only look at Arabia 1 Vs 1, you're only looking at 1 aspect of the game. The meta is different for land maps, water maps, team games, etc.
It's not clear to me that win-rates increasing with game-time are a sign that a civ. is actually strong in the late-game. Perhaps players who are skilled enough to survive the early game with a weak civ. are going to win in the end anyway, but it just takes them longer because the civ. is weak.
Just out of interest, how else would you measure it? You use the word “inherent”, but the goal of the game is to win. Any trait a civ has that, in a vacuum, might seem powerful, yet does not translate into a higher winrate given how the game is played, is therefore not that useful. Take the Huns’ Atheism tech. I think we can agree it’s a joke, but it isn’t inherently bad. In a meta where wonder/relic wins were common, it would be great. However, wonder/relic wins are not even close to a viable strat in the vast majority of cases, so atheism sucks big time.
@@rofljohn23 you are right, but I guess there are a few things one could add. First, patches and especially experience can change the winrate over time. We only got a few years with the new civs and over 20 with the old, so some metas and strategies might develop that change win percentage. Second, if for example beginning players pick byzantines most of the time, then byzantines will have a worse winrate when they play against better players with other, maybe "worse" civs. A way around that would be to only take the stats from a certain skill level and higher. So while you are right that there is not really a better alternative for measurement, there are a lot of factors which need to be taken note of to declare if one civ is better then the other in certain situations
@takeonyee thx for the response! :) you made good points and I’ll try to respond in kind. 1) Patches: That’s, for lack of a better term, kinda a bit cheaty don’t you think? :P Like, how would you give an accurate picture if you also try to factor in future fundamental changes like that? A) we dunno if they will make major changes and would those would then be; and B) changing fundamental parameters makes the data we currently have less reliable, as it was gathered under the former rules. I guess it could be done, but it sounds very messy/error prone. Imo, the most honest thing to do is to present things as is and then change your rankings if a future patch majorly impacts stuff. 2) Experience: That is correct. Still, “a few years” is quite a long time for mapping out civ balance. I guess AOE2 is a special case because the base game is so old. Imagine saying we’ve only had a few years to evaluate race balance in the last Starcraft 2 expansion lol :D 3) Beginner’s bias: Totally fair point! A remedy to this could be adding an ELO cutoff point so that the data isn’t skewed by newbies. Might be a good thing regardless. The cut data probably isn’t that high quality anyway. I mean, at the risk of sounding elitist, why would you care about what works against ppl that don’t know what they’re doing? :P However, as a terminally pedantic asshat, I would also point out that to effectively argue that beginner’s bias is significantly muddying our view, you would also have to show that A) it exists; and B) the difference in a civ’s noob/pro winratio is significantly larger than the average of all civs. As an example, both you and SOTL mention Byzantines as a noob magnet, yet its current avg winrate(49,54%) is 8,26 pp higher than the fifth worst civ(Saracens at 41.28%) and a whopping 13,33 pp higher than Khmers(36.21%). :) I hope my response makes sense and isn’t too rambling :D Do tell me if I made a dumbdumb somewhere. Have a nice day! :D
In regard to the Khmer im kinda sceptical about their ranking.. I cannot really See reasons in the mechanics of the civ that make them lose so often. Maybe people just fail it playing them properly?
I just wanted to tell that I haven't played AoE 2 for around 5-6 years now but I love your videos. The intro, your voice and the nostalgia I feel while watching AoE really helps me anxiety. Thank you for creating them.
The effort you put into this channel is phenomenal. I have truly been amazed at how complex this game from my childhood actually is. Thanks to your channel I actually get to realize why this game is considered as one of the best strategy games ever. My god, I feel so insignificant when I think back on how I used to play this as a kid. What a joke xD
I've pretty much only been playing the Malay lately. I love the infinite fish traps which saves a LOT on wood, and also the castle tech that makes militia line cost no gold. They struggle a lot on land only maps, but I think they're pretty powerful if you use them properly. Especially those elephants.
I'm not playing AoE 2 currently, but for curiosity, I've watched the video. As far as my knowledge of strategy games are, I think rating civs based on their statistics isboth good and bad. Statistics are truly a good way to mesure a civ in general, but they reflect more of how 'conventional', easy to use a civ is and not how good it is. Also, you've pointed out at start with bizantines, they're a naval civ and they fall behind 50% mostly because of random map random civ matchups, where there is no water. Specialized and unconventional civs statistics, especially in a short few months term are not reliable enough, because their statistics might have been weakened by 'tryout' plays and there are probably civs, that clearly requires unconventional and maybe even extremely specialized strategies to work, which ofthen requires a lot of experience and practice. Not to mention, playstyle, if a civ is required to play in a certain way, even if someone tries hard, but not suited to play in a certain way, they won't be able to fully perfect a certain specialized civ's strengths.
@@Desh282 Search Independent Architecture for Patch 5.7 on Steam workshop,and then search for [IA] Catbarf's Byzantine Buildings V2. It's probably one of the best looking buildings mod for AoE2.
@@dizzyheads I know right!? :)) I once made my cousin pissed off when he and I played Full Random 1 vs 1, I got my favorite Byzantines and he got Goths. He sent Knights, I countered by Pikemen and Camels, he sent Infantry, I countered by Cataphract, and lastly, he sent hand cannoneer to counter my Cataphracts and Halberdies, I made skirmishers. He rage quitted eventually after failing to pierce through my walls. I'm just good at defense though, if he's a bit more patient, I think he'd have got me.
Music is a bit loud around 6:00, also careful with the graphs, the scale keeps changing. Viewers are only able to memorize the shape of the curve (since we're only presented 1 dataset at a time) but changing scales messes with that.
Keep in mind that some civs are just played less in general, which means being assigned by random to people who don't main them makes up a higher percentage of their losses.
Turks and turks and turks and turks and turks. Unless you have berber or viet allies to make up for the shitty trash units, in which case turks actually beat the shit out stuff.
I can not believe Khmer are the worst. I consider them a very strong civ. You can hit pretty fast castle times with them. Skipping the barracks to get the stable right away is nice because I feel like a battle elephant rush is the way to go with them. I really enjoy this stradegy and highly recommend trying this for your selves. So, stay khmery friends :)
I think that the reason why a lot of the new civs got a bad win ration is because they are actually NEW civs. Less people play them and less people have found ways to make them shine like the other who had like 15 years to know how to use them properly
I'm not sure that's the case because some older civs had drastic playstyle change with the newer balancing patches. Franks for example, used to struggle during feudals and basically have to use Archers to put pressure on their enemies. Now you can go from scout to knight relatively easy and thus eliminating the needs of going into Archers.
Hey SotL! Thanks for the amazing content on a game that i didn't know interested me as much as you've proven it to do. You've really re-ignited this game for me. I was wondering if you're still planning to expand your road to 1800-series? It's been a long time since your last episode, and i really enjoyed those as well.
I love your channel, but for the love of God please use fixed ranges when using percentage charts. The charts used are not comparable visually, because they're weirdly presented. And that's all the negative I have to say, you have one of my favorite channels tbh.
Hey sotl, always enjoy your videos, keep up the amazing work! I was wondering, could you make a video about the importance of last-armour-upgrades and how they influence late game match-ups? The other day I saw a streamed match where one guy lost because his champions did not have the last armour upgrade and took double the damage from skirms than they would have taken with it. This seemed a pretty interesting thing to investigate with maths!
Very good video! I really like the way you explain your ideas about the winrates, which provide me (as a beginner) a lot of context. Some statistical things to consider: - an upwards trend in the later game might not show an improvement later on. It might also mean, that games against equal or stronger opponents are already lost. Therefore, the later games might disproportionally include games against weaker players. The opposite trend might show on some other civs. - the winrate might be dependent on rating, with stronger players playing different strategies and performing better on difficult strategies - the winrates are likely also subject to the following effects: a) some civs are played more than others, with several related effects. The more a civ is played, the more accurate the estimation of its strength will be, and the less likely it is to be an outlier. Also more played civs will also have better developed strategies. b) current meta (maybe some strategy that is meta just crushes one of the civs specifically) c) ease of play (e.g. some units are easier to control than others, some civ strengths require less apm/multitasking than others) c) civ preference, with strong players likely having a stronger tendency towards certain civs d) quality of guides and strategies available for each civ so all in all the topic of win rate might be quite the interesting task to analyze deeply. Also: win rates in team games would interest me a lot, especially considering synergy between some civs. After all, the most enjoyable games are often the ones where each member of the group contributes in his own way and everything just clicks together.
pretty surprised to see Koreans making the dishonorable mentions. When I was small and people play AOE2 original version, the rule was always "No Koreans, no Water Area".
Man that's the one everybody plays. Farms and farms and farms and farms and then knights. Everybody does that every time. But if you really wanna master the Franks, hold off on the knights, make a mixbag army as usual (pikes, skirms, scouts) then get some throwing axemen because they will kill the trash of the enemy fast. Then you get the paladins towards the end, and then you just rape and pillage everything.
Ah I gotcha. I started on AoE2 back in the 90s, then stopped for years cause I lost the cd, then when I got steam got it again, been on it for about 2 years now. What I call the mixbag is a combo of Trash units. Trash units are pikemen, skirmishers, and scouts. Trash are the backbone of every army, cheap weak fodder units that you will use most of the game. A lot of new players neglect making Trash and want to mass the special units, and that's a big fucking mistake. You'll want to make Trash units first, and then later work up to special units, and that's how you build an effective army in AoE2.
Dude, I join games that say "noobs only" and shit and people are using tactics and build patterns from Spirit of the Law or T90. That's not being a "noob," that's "intermediate player that hasn't quite mastered the nitty gritty yet." Multiplayer is super noob-unfriendly. I've been called a cunt so many times over by teammates that I just play campaigns now. I wish it had ranked like StarCraft 2 honestly, but I understand that'd be a huuuuuge investment from the developers for a relatively puny active fanbase.
Kig V2 I title my game as “1v1 noob” then 10 mins in I’m getting trushed by a player with what seems to be an uncapped economy. I call them out on it and they proceed to say it’s a noob tactic...
Some civilizations simply work only on specific types of maps. Especially Naval civilizations like the Vikings. In the vanilla game they are rather difficult to play with. Especially against Celts and Teutons who both have Bombard Towers and have really strong defensive buildings, especially castles. Let's not forget Teutons are the only civilization that has Murder Holes free.
It shows the 5 that perform worst in 1v1. Some just take a long time to get going, some are too specialized to something that almost every faction can hard-counter, some are just hard to use. Although, having played against Khmer, they do need a buff of some sort. Of course, in team games a lot of that goes out the window, especially if you play with allies who can cover your weaknesses so you can properly bring your strengths to bear.
one could argue that being difficult to play is a weakness, but I made a similar comment to yours under the top 5 best civs. If you would look at higher rated players then you'd say Malay much higher for example, not so much saracens. I think also the differences in winrates becomes more pronounced the better the players, since if you minimize other factors, you inherently maximizes civ differences.
The graphs are only concerned with 1v1s, so they value good rushing civs more and late-game powers less. Like, in a team game the Italians or Portuguese could use the protection of their more early-game-ready allies to sling into Imperial quickly and use their flashy expensive units to great effect, but without such help they will be set back by raids in Feudal or Castle and limp into Imperial too late and unprepared - if at all! - and that's half their bonuses gone. And the Italians in particular lose the other half of their bonuses on land maps.
Hey Spirit, Great vid! Could you make a video about the mod Age of Chivalry: Hegemony? Its an almost complete visual change, a lot of new units, technologies, civs. I've played a couple of games and it's incredible. There are also some gameplay changes in ai, with a lot of one-missions-campaings. Hope you're doing well. Cheers!
It would be cool if you re-did this using only numbers from top level players to see if you get the same results for both best and worst civs. Maybe some civs cater more to higher ability players.
@SpiritOfTheLaw Might have some selection bias where the bad civilizations are only selected by players who are not experienced and don't know to not select them, leading to even worse stats for that civ on average. While experienced players select better civs.
I’m surprised. The Malay are one of my favorite new civilizations. I guess if you don’t have any water to profit off of the OP fishing ship bonus, they’re not too great, but swarming your enemy with cheap infantry and relatively cheap elephants is so great
6:30 in the video is an absolute WTF moment for my grandpa ass. Recalling my AOE II days on "the Zone" makes me feel like a goddamn fossil considering that was like 18 years ago. Back then one of the most common strategies was to go balls to the wall with Heavy Scorpions behind at least 3-4 Trebuchets, then the expansion pack absolutely neutered them by taking away black smith upgrades from them. I still can't wrap my head around the idea that NO one uses heavy scorpions anymore!
The TNTsheep the saracens may be ranked as weak here, but they have a ton of options in terms of strategy at least, if they can get far enough. Mamelukes are just so beast and they have good monks and siege.
All these stats are collected in a very specific type of game. You start in dark age with few resources. Basically most of the info we have on civs is how good of a scarcity-type civ they are.
There were over 150k games played in the first few months of the year? Wow, AoE2 is still crazy popular. I knew people still played it, but that's just amazing
If possible, you should look at the elo-winrate distribution when comparing civs. A "bad" civilization may actually be just bad for the general population, skewing the mean, while it could still provide an advantage for a higher elo player (obviously, in comparison with other civs).
Yea well, Im sure that they spent hours testing and balancing those civilizations over and over, just for users to still find weak points and exploits that they can use, I think that that happens to every game on the long run.
An additional reason why bad civs seem to get more competitive in long games is that against these teams with exploitable early games, failure to produce a victory early often means the player is either inferior or screwed up.
Hey Spirit. I played the original AOE2 with conquerors back in the old days, and it was a great time. I'm tempted to try out the HD edition, but I'm nervous I'll be far behind, since I'd be using Conquerors strategy against a whole revamped game system. Any advice for us "old timers" to get back in?
What do you think of a unique technology for the Vietnamese that makes enemy skirmishers have 0 or very reduced counter to the rattan archer starting in castle age (could stagger it over castle and imperial)? That way you would be more likely to use them instead of crossbowman and arbalests and they can be competitive but not OP since by castle age there are more units to counter them. This civ never gets picked even in team games so I see the team bonus unique technology paper money as being basically worthless. Thoughts?
This is overall stats! Includes tons of noobs. In moderately competitive games, Turks have the lowest win rate. Turks have been waiting for an urgent buff for 3 years!
Partially agree. Turks are very strong in a specific game time. When i play as Turks (especially as pocket), and if i could kept my ass safe until building a castle, janiss + mangos are one of the most dangerous combo in the game. "Almost" devastates all kind of armies. HCA is very dangerous too after Sipahi tech. I think onager upgrade or artillery affecting mangos (+2 range) solves "some" issues. Or maybe if Sipahi tech affects hussars? But the buff should not be both pike or e.skirm upgrade. Maybe just one of them or none of them.
@@gastonhitw720 dude, if you meant by pro team games then well yes no shit everything in this video is invalid since this is all about 1v1 voobly matches. But if you meant the 2k+ rating, unfortunately Portuguese and Khmer are still on the bottom 5
Hey spirit. Suggestion: only include match-ups with random civs. If we assume that good players have a distinct preference for "good" civs, the chance of "good" civs being played by good players and "bad" civs by bad players are should be higher than the reverse, which skews the graphs.
I don't think you can tell from recs whether the civ pick was random or not. Random is the most common setting though. You could also filter by Elo if wanted, these civs are still the worst at 2000+
It's been a long time I played AOE II, but I remember my favourite civs were the Mongols, Huns and Saracens. But I'm not surprised about the Saracens being one of 5 'worst' civs, as you need to learn how to play with them, and once you've "mastered" them, it's a great civ to play with.
The worst civs? That's all of them when I play them.
1v1 pro. I guarantee that I'll eat your dust.
How pro are you?
Even TheViper stands no chance against you.
@@theBeT95 because if I were pro, I also would be trying to disguise myself as noobtard so that no matter who my opponent is they are underestimating me.
A trick so old you can find it in Sun Tzus Art of War, a book I've never read because I'm a noob.
Me too
@@xotl2780 Thanks pro, very cool 👌
The vietnamese are really great on maps with a lot of trees, my granddad'll tell you that anyday.
So your granddad fought in Nam? What a comment lol
Mine would also agree but he didn't make it home
just kill all the tree by dropping napalm lol, ez
@@QuanNguyen-me8tc pham tuan, nguyen bay is just make america planes dropping in napalm lol
Vietnamese are the worst civil than others at gold mining .
All civs are balanced and equal
But some civs are more equal than others
Khmer were number 1. Khmer went communist for a bit.
OHSHI-
Truth has been spoken
-Napoleon
Nice reference lol
But its true all people are not equal not all societies are equal.
You got it all wrong. Every civ is actually the worst civ.
Gaia masterrace.
#facts
Gaia isn't a civ. You can make your Gaia Saracens, which are actually the best civ.
@@yonokhanman654 the joke whiffed over ur head
@@yahyagannour8486 natural wonders I guess.
lets see how those filthy human scrubs real with WOLVES RUSH!!!
I wonder if we'll be seeing "Top 5 Averagest Civilizations in AoE2" next.
Top 5 civs that didn't make the top 5 civs that i forgot to put in my top 5 civs left out from the top 5 civs list
Yes
East Rome and China are in your list
The five civs with the most 50% win rate? :)
i would guess Persians, Teutons, Ethiopians, mongols, chinese or sth
Every time I play a Raj Civ: "Big bonuses for elephants, guess I'll invest in those."
-meet enemy monk-
"Yep those bonuses were supper effective in helping my elephant army trash my base."
Malay get Heresy though soooo
Said every possible long term elephant using warring state in reality
Burmese get cheap monastery techs, my favorite. Khmer though I just have some anti AI fun with. Especially on defend the wonder arena combo for movement. Correction, no heresy damnit. Time for teuton ally again.
Cannon the hell out of those enemy monks.
Yeah we were playing tennis with monks
@@sandhyadevade3719
** *Wololoing intensifies* **
I think being less popular probably directly affects the win rate here, because civs that are rarely picked you won't have experience with so if you roll them on random you won't be as clear on what to do.
That being said: buff vietnamese pls
That joke about new players assuming the Byzantine are best... Thanks for calling out my 12 year old self.
@@aleksandarjankovic39 Also the cool factor with theirs unique unit .
But Byzantines are the best.
Byzantines are pretty good regardless, but they're also very newbie friendly. Oh and they're fun to play.
I think I never played them. Why are they so newbie friendly?
@@brunohenriqueazevedoborges5490 They do not have weaknesses. It does not matter what path you take, is it always at least good. Your opponent might be better in a certain area, but it is never by any huge margin. You are free to explore the game, explore your style.
They have simple bonuses like building more stuff with the same resources. It is always active, you always benefit. Stronger walls are always handy.
Dude... I was laughing like a madman with that winner music on the #1 and I dont know why
I was searching for a comment like that xd
but it's not even a funny music o.O
should have put “we are the champions” song))
Василий Калинкин
If that were the Malay, putting „We are the two-handed swordsmen“ would be appropiate
Laughing like a mad man to yourself on a computer with a video about AoE2 all alone... wtf
3 out of 4 Rajas civs show up. Yikes!
I reckon its because these civs are new and they havent been explored enough, not because they are necessarily bad. Other civs have had some 20 years more experience
@@Mietchannel And yet Saracens show up here, while the last Raja civ is one of the strongest in the game. Khmer are better in team games as I understand it, so there's that.
Yeah, they’re all kinda bad for 1v1 Arabia, but Khmer are okay on Arena and Malay are freaken OP there, too.
Viets though... yeah, it’s not pretty for them on any map...
Better than the rajas civs being way op and pay2win.
The nerfs were to strong :v
The more useful kind of metric for determining who is weakest is plotting overall win rate/ELO vs win rate with a particular faction.
That way you can see if civilizations are truly underpowered or just hard to use.
the 36% Win Rate of Khmers are only TheViper's Games lol
#Clearly
“The Koreans have a below-average win rate” I never thought I would hear that string of words in my lifetime.
It's easy. Whenever you watch Spirit of the law videos, he always tends to focus on the early and mid game, assuming that the game rarely if ever even goes to imperial/lost imperial age.
@@ayush885 That's also influenced by the Arabia map, which is very open and encourages rushing over walling and booming your economy. It'd be interesting to see the rates for other maps like Black Forest, Gold Rush, and Mediterranean.
@@blazefangaming2678 yeah, maps change a lot of things. If you only look at Arabia 1 Vs 1, you're only looking at 1 aspect of the game. The meta is different for land maps, water maps, team games, etc.
@@blazefangaming2678 nowadays, I see even top 20 players walling up with palisades many times, wonder why that is.
You're beeing pretty active now arent you. Thank you.
It's not clear to me that win-rates increasing with game-time are a sign that a civ. is actually strong in the late-game. Perhaps players who are skilled enough to survive the early game with a weak civ. are going to win in the end anyway, but it just takes them longer because the civ. is weak.
*January 21st patch hits for DE*
Khmer: who's laughing now?
It really give me pleasure to see my childhood is not forgotten .....
Welcome home.
lol the number of players is increasing each month. was a 6 thousand 2 years ago, now it's at around 12 thousand.
Nowdays aoe2 is more popular than ever
@@Nico-kd7uz yes it is, and it's awesome!
Yeah Viper once said that he thinks Khmer are pretty balanced, but we all just don't know how to play them yet.
According to the stats he was right.
As SotL says, its a relative measurement, but the fact that civs that win the least =/= inherently worst civ still bothers me.
Stil a great vid! :D
Just out of interest, how else would you measure it? You use the word “inherent”, but the goal of the game is to win. Any trait a civ has that, in a vacuum, might seem powerful, yet does not translate into a higher winrate given how the game is played, is therefore not that useful. Take the Huns’ Atheism tech. I think we can agree it’s a joke, but it isn’t inherently bad. In a meta where wonder/relic wins were common, it would be great. However, wonder/relic wins are not even close to a viable strat in the vast majority of cases, so atheism sucks big time.
@@rofljohn23 you are right, but I guess there are a few things one could add. First, patches and especially experience can change the winrate over time. We only got a few years with the new civs and over 20 with the old, so some metas and strategies might develop that change win percentage.
Second, if for example beginning players pick byzantines most of the time, then byzantines will have a worse winrate when they play against better players with other, maybe "worse" civs. A way around that would be to only take the stats from a certain skill level and higher.
So while you are right that there is not really a better alternative for measurement, there are a lot of factors which need to be taken note of to declare if one civ is better then the other in certain situations
@@GameFail96 That could be true if khmers did litte bit better at higher elo which is not the case,
@takeonyee thx for the response! :) you made good points and I’ll try to respond in kind.
1) Patches: That’s, for lack of a better term, kinda a bit cheaty don’t you think? :P Like, how would you give an accurate picture if you also try to factor in future fundamental changes like that? A) we dunno if they will make major changes and would those would then be; and B) changing fundamental parameters makes the data we currently have less reliable, as it was gathered under the former rules. I guess it could be done, but it sounds very messy/error prone. Imo, the most honest thing to do is to present things as is and then change your rankings if a future patch majorly impacts stuff.
2) Experience: That is correct. Still, “a few years” is quite a long time for mapping out civ balance. I guess AOE2 is a special case because the base game is so old. Imagine saying we’ve only had a few years to evaluate race balance in the last Starcraft 2 expansion lol :D
3) Beginner’s bias: Totally fair point! A remedy to this could be adding an ELO cutoff point so that the data isn’t skewed by newbies. Might be a good thing regardless. The cut data probably isn’t that high quality anyway. I mean, at the risk of sounding elitist, why would you care about what works against ppl that don’t know what they’re doing? :P However, as a terminally pedantic asshat, I would also point out that to effectively argue that beginner’s bias is significantly muddying our view, you would also have to show that A) it exists; and B) the difference in a civ’s noob/pro winratio is significantly larger than the average of all civs. As an example, both you and SOTL mention Byzantines as a noob magnet, yet its current avg winrate(49,54%) is 8,26 pp higher than the fifth worst civ(Saracens at 41.28%) and a whopping 13,33 pp higher than Khmers(36.21%). :)
I hope my response makes sense and isn’t too rambling :D Do tell me if I made a dumbdumb somewhere. Have a nice day! :D
In regard to the Khmer im kinda sceptical about their ranking.. I cannot really See reasons in the mechanics of the civ that make them lose so often. Maybe people just fail it playing them properly?
I just wanted to tell that I haven't played AoE 2 for around 5-6 years now but I love your videos. The intro, your voice and the nostalgia I feel while watching AoE really helps me anxiety.
Thank you for creating them.
Spirit Of The Law: Khmer worst civ
TheViper: *hold my beer*
Hold my skøll
Even Viper lost as the Khmer.
@@NolDragon how do u type that :/ and whats the pronounciation :/
TheViper: hold min ostehøvel
Viper likes to troll by combining their team bonus with a Celts team mate.
The effort you put into this channel is phenomenal. I have truly been amazed at how complex this game from my childhood actually is. Thanks to your channel I actually get to realize why this game is considered as one of the best strategy games ever. My god, I feel so insignificant when I think back on how I used to play this as a kid. What a joke xD
I've pretty much only been playing the Malay lately. I love the infinite fish traps which saves a LOT on wood, and also the castle tech that makes militia line cost no gold. They struggle a lot on land only maps, but I think they're pretty powerful if you use them properly. Especially those elephants.
Strengthier is my new favorite word
When did he said it?
@@danchmelar7111 The very end, right before shout outs.
Weaknessly
Sorry aboot that
I'm not playing AoE 2 currently, but for curiosity, I've watched the video.
As far as my knowledge of strategy games are, I think rating civs based on their statistics isboth good and bad.
Statistics are truly a good way to mesure a civ in general, but they reflect more of how 'conventional', easy to use a civ is and not how good it is.
Also, you've pointed out at start with bizantines, they're a naval civ and they fall behind 50% mostly because of random map random civ matchups, where there is no water.
Specialized and unconventional civs statistics, especially in a short few months term are not reliable enough, because their statistics might have been weakened by 'tryout' plays and there are probably civs, that clearly requires unconventional and maybe even extremely specialized strategies to work, which ofthen requires a lot of experience and practice.
Not to mention, playstyle, if a civ is required to play in a certain way, even if someone tries hard, but not suited to play in a certain way, they won't be able to fully perfect a certain specialized civ's strengths.
At least my favorite civ Byzantines can certainly hold their on in 1 vs 1. :))
Jewel Man DLN-069 do you have the middetearanean building mod for them?
@@Desh282 Too bad that I don't, yeah... I feel somewhat off when the devs gave the Byzantines Middle Eastern architecture style. :((
@@Desh282 Search Independent Architecture for Patch 5.7 on Steam workshop,and then search for [IA] Catbarf's Byzantine Buildings V2. It's probably one of the best looking buildings mod for AoE2.
Byzantines just sounded cool to me
@@dizzyheads I know right!? :))
I once made my cousin pissed off when he and I played Full Random 1 vs 1, I got my favorite Byzantines and he got Goths. He sent Knights, I countered by Pikemen and Camels, he sent Infantry, I countered by Cataphract, and lastly, he sent hand cannoneer to counter my Cataphracts and Halberdies, I made skirmishers. He rage quitted eventually after failing to pierce through my walls. I'm just good at defense though, if he's a bit more patient, I think he'd have got me.
Music is a bit loud around 6:00, also careful with the graphs, the scale keeps changing. Viewers are only able to memorize the shape of the curve (since we're only presented 1 dataset at a time) but changing scales messes with that.
Actually you should rename your title: The 5 Worst *1VS1* Civilizations in AoE2
and #1 best is Franc, who surrender 1st. XD
Yes the stats were from 1v1 games --- good to know when picking a 1v1 matchup but not for analyzing how the game is best played: team games
Nobody writes like that. If anything it would be 1v1 or 1vs1 or 1 Vs 1... just saying
Keep in mind that some civs are just played less in general, which means being assigned by random to people who don't main them makes up a higher percentage of their losses.
Now please make Top 5 Best/Worst Civs for 4v4 games
Spanish,Berbers,Magyars,Franks for mee...But only arabia and max 150pop playing
Turks and turks and turks and turks and turks. Unless you have berber or viet allies to make up for the shitty trash units, in which case turks actually beat the shit out stuff.
I think it should be "top 5 worst civs for 1vs1" some of those civs do really well in team games
I haven't played AoE2 in years but the UA-cam algorithm thought I should watch this
I can not believe Khmer are the worst. I consider them a very strong civ. You can hit pretty fast castle times with them. Skipping the barracks to get the stable right away is nice because I feel like a battle elephant rush is the way to go with them. I really enjoy this stradegy and highly recommend trying this for your selves. So, stay khmery friends :)
In 1 vs 1 you can’t stand too long without barracks
Rip Italians, they are my favorite civ in AoE2.
I think that the reason why a lot of the new civs got a bad win ration is because they are actually NEW civs. Less people play them and less people have found ways to make them shine like the other who had like 15 years to know how to use them properly
I'm not sure that's the case because some older civs had drastic playstyle change with the newer balancing patches. Franks for example, used to struggle during feudals and basically have to use Archers to put pressure on their enemies. Now you can go from scout to knight relatively easy and thus eliminating the needs of going into Archers.
Hey SotL!
Thanks for the amazing content on a game that i didn't know interested me as much as you've proven it to do. You've really re-ignited this game for me. I was wondering if you're still planning to expand your road to 1800-series? It's been a long time since your last episode, and i really enjoyed those as well.
I love your channel, but for the love of God please use fixed ranges when using percentage charts. The charts used are not comparable visually, because they're weirdly presented. And that's all the negative I have to say, you have one of my favorite channels tbh.
Hey sotl, always enjoy your videos, keep up the amazing work! I was wondering, could you make a video about the importance of last-armour-upgrades and how they influence late game match-ups? The other day I saw a streamed match where one guy lost because his champions did not have the last armour upgrade and took double the damage from skirms than they would have taken with it. This seemed a pretty interesting thing to investigate with maths!
Got a sotl video notification while watching sotl,
I think I'm watching too much
Very good video! I really like the way you explain your ideas about the winrates, which provide me (as a beginner) a lot of context.
Some statistical things to consider:
- an upwards trend in the later game might not show an improvement later on. It might also mean, that games against equal or stronger opponents are already lost. Therefore, the later games might disproportionally include games against weaker players. The opposite trend might show on some other civs.
- the winrate might be dependent on rating, with stronger players playing different strategies and performing better on difficult strategies
- the winrates are likely also subject to the following effects: a) some civs are played more than others, with several related effects. The more a civ is played, the more accurate the estimation of its strength will be, and the less likely it is to be an outlier. Also more played civs will also have better developed strategies. b) current meta (maybe some strategy that is meta just crushes one of the civs specifically) c) ease of play (e.g. some units are easier to control than others, some civ strengths require less apm/multitasking than others) c) civ preference, with strong players likely having a stronger tendency towards certain civs d) quality of guides and strategies available for each civ
so all in all the topic of win rate might be quite the interesting task to analyze deeply.
Also: win rates in team games would interest me a lot, especially considering synergy between some civs. After all, the most enjoyable games are often the ones where each member of the group contributes in his own way and everything just clicks together.
"Some are just strengthier than others."
Malay are the least picked? Geez... I should play multiplayer more, gonna surprise people.
I like them
pretty surprised to see Koreans making the dishonorable mentions. When I was small and people play AOE2 original version, the rule was always "No Koreans, no Water Area".
I am REALLY surprised that the playrate is more or less balanced! What a great community giving love to all the civs!
Random civs is by far the most common setting.
If you look at Steam achievements, less then 0.1% of people have won with the Khmer 50 games.
Woot I am in 0.1%!
@@ViewerUSA Congrats, I'm still trying to get to know the Franks lol
Man that's the one everybody plays. Farms and farms and farms and farms and then knights. Everybody does that every time. But if you really wanna master the Franks, hold off on the knights, make a mixbag army as usual (pikes, skirms, scouts) then get some throwing axemen because they will kill the trash of the enemy fast. Then you get the paladins towards the end, and then you just rape and pillage everything.
I only began playing a few eeks ago, and I don't know what most of these means lol
Ah I gotcha. I started on AoE2 back in the 90s, then stopped for years cause I lost the cd, then when I got steam got it again, been on it for about 2 years now. What I call the mixbag is a combo of Trash units. Trash units are pikemen, skirmishers, and scouts. Trash are the backbone of every army, cheap weak fodder units that you will use most of the game. A lot of new players neglect making Trash and want to mass the special units, and that's a big fucking mistake. You'll want to make Trash units first, and then later work up to special units, and that's how you build an effective army in AoE2.
I wonder how Khmer have shifted now that their Villagers have invisible pack mules when farming.
As of 2021, Khmer have 48.63% win rate, so that was a BIG change
I guess Khmer is really come mere as a civilization that have house villagers can use as house :P
Good video! And thank you so much for the #1 result song!
Any Civilization I play with, I'm bad in multiplayer. hehehehehe
I know the feelin'
Dude, I join games that say "noobs only" and shit and people are using tactics and build patterns from Spirit of the Law or T90.
That's not being a "noob," that's "intermediate player that hasn't quite mastered the nitty gritty yet."
Multiplayer is super noob-unfriendly. I've been called a cunt so many times over by teammates that I just play campaigns now. I wish it had ranked like StarCraft 2 honestly, but I understand that'd be a huuuuuge investment from the developers for a relatively puny active fanbase.
Kig V2 I title my game as “1v1 noob” then 10 mins in I’m getting trushed by a player with what seems to be an uncapped economy. I call them out on it and they proceed to say it’s a noob tactic...
Some civilizations simply work only on specific types of maps. Especially Naval civilizations like the Vikings. In the vanilla game they are rather difficult to play with. Especially against Celts and Teutons who both have Bombard Towers and have really strong defensive buildings, especially castles. Let's not forget Teutons are the only civilization that has Murder Holes free.
as i said in the other video.... NOW A TEAM BASED WIN/LOSS RATES!!
That would be extremely complicated. So many factors.
That upbeat music unveiling the Khumer is gold
Do the graphs really show the five worst civilisations or the five civilisations most difficult to play? Or a mishmash of both?
It shows the 5 that perform worst in 1v1. Some just take a long time to get going, some are too specialized to something that almost every faction can hard-counter, some are just hard to use. Although, having played against Khmer, they do need a buff of some sort. Of course, in team games a lot of that goes out the window, especially if you play with allies who can cover your weaknesses so you can properly bring your strengths to bear.
one could argue that being difficult to play is a weakness, but I made a similar comment to yours under the top 5 best civs. If you would look at higher rated players then you'd say Malay much higher for example, not so much saracens. I think also the differences in winrates becomes more pronounced the better the players, since if you minimize other factors, you inherently maximizes civ differences.
The graphs are only concerned with 1v1s, so they value good rushing civs more and late-game powers less. Like, in a team game the Italians or Portuguese could use the protection of their more early-game-ready allies to sling into Imperial quickly and use their flashy expensive units to great effect, but without such help they will be set back by raids in Feudal or Castle and limp into Imperial too late and unprepared - if at all! - and that's half their bonuses gone. And the Italians in particular lose the other half of their bonuses on land maps.
Solidarity to you, Bulkhakas 🤘
The Saracens real strength is the Mameluke, but if you never make it to the castle age, that doesn’t help much.
Hey Spirit, Great vid!
Could you make a video about the mod Age of Chivalry: Hegemony?
Its an almost complete visual change, a lot of new units, technologies, civs. I've played a couple of games and it's incredible. There are also some gameplay changes in ai, with a lot of one-missions-campaings.
Hope you're doing well. Cheers!
do they make it for HD edition? last time i check the mod only available for classic edition
@@randomanon8781 I'm playing it on the 1.5
It would be really great if the mod features other countries like Lorraine, Moscow, Ottoman, Portugal, Aragon, Castile, Navarre alike
I'm not sure if most people who play the game say "Condottieri", but either way, I appreciate that. It didn't go unnoticed.
3:38 Tell that to America.
The trees are talking~
I love the song that you put when you present the #1 in your videos
I will continue to play Khmers
It would be cool if you re-did this using only numbers from top level players to see if you get the same results for both best and worst civs. Maybe some civs cater more to higher ability players.
Saracens is one of the best civilizations in AoE II..
You should try at some point Top 5 convenience bonuses. I know it’s a subjective topic but there should be some “science” to back it up.
could it be the bonus that affects the most of a game and turn the tides probably?
WOW Vietnamese and Khmer is my fav civ in whole AOE it is tottaly my type of state
I'm very surprised that verdict
This list is only for 1v1 games that start in dark age with few resources.
@SpiritOfTheLaw
Might have some selection bias where the bad civilizations are only selected by players who are not experienced and don't know to not select them, leading to even worse stats for that civ on average. While experienced players select better civs.
Why the happy music on the #1
This makes me wanna install AoE2 again after 20 years
We want t90 vs Spirit Of The Law best of 7. common guyz !
lol that would be the easiest 4-0 ever for t90
I’m surprised. The Malay are one of my favorite new civilizations. I guess if you don’t have any water to profit off of the OP fishing ship bonus, they’re not too great, but swarming your enemy with cheap infantry and relatively cheap elephants is so great
Saracen Teambonus > Obsidian Arrows
Change my mind
Why not both?
@@sirjmo I'm rock hard
6:30 in the video is an absolute WTF moment for my grandpa ass. Recalling my AOE II days on "the Zone" makes me feel like a goddamn fossil considering that was like 18 years ago. Back then one of the most common strategies was to go balls to the wall with Heavy Scorpions behind at least 3-4 Trebuchets, then the expansion pack absolutely neutered them by taking away black smith upgrades from them. I still can't wrap my head around the idea that NO one uses heavy scorpions anymore!
3 of my favourite me civs are in this bottom 5 list.
It's obvious I play diplomacy too much 😂
The TNTsheep the saracens may be ranked as weak here, but they have a ton of options in terms of strategy at least, if they can get far enough. Mamelukes are just so beast and they have good monks and siege.
Do keep in mind that these are only taken from 1v1 matches. In teams, the dynamics will likely shift pretty dramatically.
finally been waiting for this for ages
Shout out to the Khmer for going from #1 worst civ in AOE 2 to top tier. What a glow up.
They're all winners with the Cobra.
All these stats are collected in a very specific type of game. You start in dark age with few resources. Basically most of the info we have on civs is how good of a scarcity-type civ they are.
but that is the standard setting. Even more so now with Definitive Edition's official ranked mode.
Wow, the memes were actually wrong. The teutons and the turks aren't the worst civs.
I believe since no one picks them, they don't even appear on the list :D
This ain't 2011.
The meta has evolved.
@@yasinemirmenekse9020 they both have average picks, they are really just not as bad as people make them to be.
@@yasinemirmenekse9020 Turks are strong as long as you have gold and know how to use their bonuses. Teutons are a good defensive civilization.
And the Franks...
There were over 150k games played in the first few months of the year?
Wow, AoE2 is still crazy popular. I knew people still played it, but that's just amazing
I glad britons are not in least 5 and dishonorable mention because this civ is your very first civ
If possible, you should look at the elo-winrate distribution when comparing civs. A "bad" civilization may actually be just bad for the general population, skewing the mean, while it could still provide an advantage for a higher elo player (obviously, in comparison with other civs).
I see spirit video, hit like, then proceed to watch
Yea well, Im sure that they spent hours testing and balancing those civilizations over and over, just for users to still find weak points and exploits that they can use, I think that that happens to every game on the long run.
I won with khmers against 7 comp aliance on the hardest 😄
An additional reason why bad civs seem to get more competitive in long games is that against these teams with exploitable early games, failure to produce a victory early often means the player is either inferior or screwed up.
Why is your audio volume always low? It's really hard even on max volume on my phone
Well done video and great content. :) I liked the plots.
I love you
Hey Spirit. I played the original AOE2 with conquerors back in the old days, and it was a great time.
I'm tempted to try out the HD edition, but I'm nervous I'll be far behind, since I'd be using Conquerors strategy against a whole revamped game system. Any advice for us "old timers" to get back in?
Who else was worried about their fav civ making an appearance??
My fear came true. I main Khmers :(
What do you think of a unique technology for the Vietnamese that makes enemy skirmishers have 0 or very reduced counter to the rattan archer starting in castle age (could stagger it over castle and imperial)? That way you would be more likely to use them instead of crossbowman and arbalests and they can be competitive but not OP since by castle age there are more units to counter them. This civ never gets picked even in team games so I see the team bonus unique technology paper money as being basically worthless. Thoughts?
This is overall stats! Includes tons of noobs. In moderately competitive games, Turks have the lowest win rate. Turks have been waiting for an urgent buff for 3 years!
Partially agree. Turks are very strong in a specific game time. When i play as Turks (especially as pocket), and if i could kept my ass safe until building a castle, janiss + mangos are one of the most dangerous combo in the game. "Almost" devastates all kind of armies. HCA is very dangerous too after Sipahi tech.
I think onager upgrade or artillery affecting mangos (+2 range) solves "some" issues. Or maybe if Sipahi tech affects hussars? But the buff should not be both pike or e.skirm upgrade. Maybe just one of them or none of them.
Nice music:) These video's are so underrated. Lol, I've been following you for over a year and I still don't play this game hahaha
This makes me happy bc my ex is Cambodian (Khmer). And also, its pronounced “kh-mai”.
Como son los kmers? Me refiero a su personalidad
Strawberry alarm clock the royal concept Solo esto familia es mala y racist. tienen muy bien comida tambien lol
You should have a separate poll to team games winrate. Some civs are for special maps like starting with walls etc
tell portuguese to the pro players man, portuguese are op and with khmer i always do super fast castle and full scorps attack sometimes it works
My name has been taken biper is op
He uses himself in the game ( considering his name is ORJAN = ORGAN guns)
I think you misunderstood the video, it's not opinion based
@@aniketkulkarni6341 im gonna correct the comment, not only viper, pro players too
@@michabaron4129 peoplr don't even know how to use them
@@gastonhitw720 dude, if you meant by pro team games then well yes no shit everything in this video is invalid since this is all about 1v1 voobly matches. But if you meant the 2k+ rating, unfortunately Portuguese and Khmer are still on the bottom 5
Why do I love watching these so much?
Dishonorable mentions, good one Spirit!
“Our troops are running Sir, this is a shameful display.”
Hey spirit. Suggestion: only include match-ups with random civs. If we assume that good players have a distinct preference for "good" civs, the chance of "good" civs being played by good players and "bad" civs by bad players are should be higher than the reverse, which skews the graphs.
I don't think you can tell from recs whether the civ pick was random or not. Random is the most common setting though. You could also filter by Elo if wanted, these civs are still the worst at 2000+
It's been a long time I played AOE II, but I remember my favourite civs were the Mongols, Huns and Saracens. But I'm not surprised about the Saracens being one of 5 'worst' civs, as you need to learn how to play with them, and once you've "mastered" them, it's a great civ to play with.
I am pleasently surprised to see that there is still alot of interest in this game.