Aha, I actually do know something on this! He's right that the towers don't reload until all arrows have been launched. You can confirm this by modding in a crazy high garrison cap to a tower, and adding like 100 archers. The tower shoots a super long barrage of arrows, then waits a short moment before it restarts again. If there was no wait, it would never stop shooting.
The behavior is based on the *class* of the unit. Units of siege weapon class shoot all of their projectiles in one frame. All other classes shoot projectiles one by one, and the speed can be affected by the attribute *attack delay frames* too. Onagers: shoot[reload]shoot[reload] Castles: sssss[reload]sssss[reload] Elite Chu-ko-nus: s-----s-----s-----s-----s-----[reload]s-----s-----s-----s-----s-----[reload] (5 attack delay frames) Khmer Scorpion: s-------s-------[reload]s-------s-------[reload] (class ballista, 7 attack delay frames) The delay between firing has some randomness to it.
try this with the Celt's Stronghold tech with the x256 mod. Laser towers & castles is a sight to see (Note towers fire a single straight line of arrows rather than the "spread" from garrisoned archers so the laser is 100% accurate
I just started playing aoe2 and i am amazed with how complex this game is. Game from 1999 you would think that it would be so limited in every aspect of gameplay yet it is mindblowing how much work has been put into it, putting new gen rts to shame.
Good overview but a very IMPORTANT point is missing! Extra arrows (not the first one) has a +5 bonus damage against stone defense. Which is critical in tower versus tower fights, 5 ungarrisoned (and unupgraded) towers will deal 5 damages total (5x1) each 2 seconds to another watch tower (7 pierce armor), while a fully villager-garrisoned (and unupgraded) tower will deal 21 damages (1+5x4) each 2 seconds to another watch tower. In short, garrison your towers (with vils or archers) if you go into a tower versus tower fight. EDIT: In my original post I thought tower's arrows were ignoring pierce armour (which would have led to the same numbers and conclusion in the example I choosed) but is technically wrong! Thanks to Jineapple for pointing it out.
It's actually not that it "ignores" pierce armor per se, but the secondary arrows have 5 bonus damage against stone defense (Stone walls and Towers). It does not work against houses for example. Otherwise you're absolutely correct, getting the maximum amount of extra arrows in a tower fight can be crucial.
You forgot perhaps the most important aspect; Towers have substantially more raw damage, meaning they do far more damage to high armor units. Against fully upgraded paladins, for example, 3 arbalests will do 12 damage, but garrisoned, they will do 16.
@@muhammadawan8919 i know you can get 3 if you put 10 elite jannisaries in never heard about the genose crossbow thing but based on the numbers it should be impossible
Bombard Towers can fire up to 4 cannon balls at once, but Genoese Crossbowmen don't have enough dps for that. 10 Elite Janissaries are enough for 3. To get 4, you need a unit with boosted attack in the scenario editor.
I feel like it's intentional. Imagine the early tower rushes with a civ like the Chinese. Regarding the ChoKoNu, I'm not surprised, the Chinese civ is the most nerfed civ vis-a-vis its history in the game. For a game, it makes sense because of game balance.
you should actually use crossbowmen/hand cannons to get the extra arrow faster, use infantry only if you don't have anything else or for the healing effect. Teutons should rely on foward castles and towers to cover their slow infantry/cavalry. Also, remember you don't always need to put 10 crossbows/HC inside a tower or 20 inside a castle. Check the plus arrow number "(+1)" when it reach the max nomber like 6 for tower you're done, HC are specially good for this if you want to have that extra punch.
@@ScudForEver I disagree on using archers, because they don't have to and really shouldn't. Teutons have relatively terrible archers, and even hand Cannoneers aren't actually that great when against anything but infantry; they have high damage, sure, but they're not effected by blacksmith upgrades and they fire almost half as fast as regular archers, so in reality, the arrows they add isn't that good. A FU Arbalest does 5.9 DPS vs a HC's 4.9, for example. So if you invest in them, you've got frail and expensive infantry counters, when you already have the most durable infantry in the game. Only a fool would use massed infantry against a Teuton player. The true power comes when you realize Teuton Infantry can do something no other civ can; be both an infantry and an archer depending on the situation. Fighting enemy cavalry and spam them with Halbs, only for them to switch to archers? Garrison them and suddenly a single Keep can hit as hard as a castle, and heal your units at the same time. They send in rams to take out the keep? Just ungarrison, kill the rams, and garrison again. By the time they try again, your units will be full health, since in DE they heal 6 health every 8 seconds. Archers wont trade efficiently with a garrisoned tower. Cav wont trade efficiently, they'll just ungarrison. Rams definitely wont trade efficiently. Basically the only way to take that Keep out is with BBC or Trebs, and at that point 1 tower and 10 halbs are forcing them to focus their entire economy on a fraction of yours. You basically have a unit that is both anti-cavalry AND anti-infantry AND anti-archer. Even anti-siege to a certain extent, as a FU Keep garrisoned with halbs can kill 3 siege onagers easily before dying.
@@demiserofd I'm not saying you need to use archers all the time, but usually when the pop cap is relative low or the map is too big, is a good idea to have a few hand cannoneers or archers to make your insane castles and tower extra powerfull, remember that 10 hand cannoneers gives the bombard tower a second projectile, something TK can't do. You should usually use your castles to provide fire support to TKs while some monks with their extra healing range heals them from the safe distance of a castle. The real problem, obviously, is all the strategies with Teutons you can thing of implies larges quatities of gold and stone, they lack a cheap and powerful trash units or economic bonus to their gold generation, in 1 vs 1 you would have to rely on having lots of farm to exchange food for gold. Lastly, the Crenellations tech, not only makes you infantry shot extra arrow from your own buildings, it also work inside allies buildings, so it is like a hidden team bonus where you can make -if you have the spare of resources/pop cap- cheap pikeman/halbs to make all your allies castles stronger.
I love the concept of advancing through the ages , the look of the farms , the sounds of the wood chopping and rock mining....... My 1st love of computer games was the AOE series. And yes I still have nightmares of those red monks chanting on the cliff from the SP campaign even 25 years later
@@christopherg2347 Rightwing propoganda? Those discount store commies create propoganda against themselves every time their mouths open xD You'd know, if you would simply take the time to look..
I've always wondered why the game treats garrisoned units differently - skirmishers and cav. archers for example. And I always assumed that it's because skirms are a trash unit. Either that or their cost. So cool of you to explain how it actually works, thanks!
Another little detail is that Towers/Castles shoot individual units all at one time, rather than potentially dispersed across different enemy units when the archers are on the own not garrisoned. When busy doing something else on the map, this could help a lot as automatically the garrisoned units will try to eliminate enemy units one by one, without us having to click and direct them to do so.
@@sejfzlrrhman Video hosting sites existed as early as 1997. Also, an analysis doesn't require a video in order to be presented. People used to buy gaming magazines like Nintendo Power and whatnot.
Hey Spirit, are we ever going to get a new road to 1800 video? The last one was from over a year ago, and you promised the next one won't be so late xD
its amazing, there are less people playing aoe2 than viewers on your videos which consist of competitive level aoe2 things. I don't play either. Good job!
It is amazing how much thought went into this. Especially when I remember as a kid thinking just build a bunch of fortresses and cramming a ton of guy in would equal a win.
I think you can split the arrows into different directions (especially with castles when fully garrisoned with archers) when you click on to another enemy unit halfway through the castle's firing.
After watching your videos for a few months, I'm realizing that AOE2 is one of the greatest games ever made hands down. There was a whole universe on that disc back in '99, unreal.
Was this a feature in the original game? I didn't know you could do it, apart from putting villagers in the town center. Or is it a feature in the new HD version that seems to change a lot of stats
Its because Spirit is so good at explaining the niches of inarguably the hardest RTS to ever exist. Some say its Starcraft 2 but with only 3 races to keep track of? get out of here.
Against units - probably not, given that 10 janissaries cost as much as 5 bombard towers while only adding 2 cannons, and bombard projectiles travel so slow. Against buildings, on the other hand - much better.
There should be a mod that translates the extra shot potential of a bombard tower into increased rate of fire. So the Teutonic bombard tower filled with EJans would fire 3x as fast instead of 2 extra shots. Then all bombard towers would benefit, and it wouldn't be so niche. Besides: most the time those extra shots completely miss.
@@martinspelunker2994 In WoW he mained a frost mage who can root you in ice and slow you with frost spells. Almost no melee class could really fight them. Druids can shapeshift around their animal forms to get out of both roots and slows so he nerfed us so we couldn't shapeshift out of roots anymore. Slows we still could but the ice root defensive spells were the ones with long cooldowns. Almost every other spell they had could apply a cold slow so us retaining our removal of slows wasn't really a big deal. GC was a scrub.
Ghostcrawler! That guy has been part of my gaming life since I started playing Rise of Rome as a kid. Between that and WoW... been sneakily in the background, that guy has.
The blacksmith upgrade question was actually quite interesting and never really noticed such behavior before due to focusing super hard on military rather than falling back on villager defense
You sacrifice damage output and mobility for more range and durability for your archers when you garrison them into a tower. The question should not be "should i garrison them?" but "When should i garrison them?". Its a tactical choice.
Spirit here answering the questions that kept 9 year old me up at night. Now I'm 27 and I'm still amazed at just how much attention to detail went into AoE2. Still one of the best RTS games of all time.
Yah, when you were playing back in the day huh wonder how this works. Oh kind of like that ( an idea ) but not really definitively knowing. 2021: huh that is pretty cool :)
You can also read up on it here: www.aoe2sheet.info/knowledge_base.html#multiple-arrows There's a couple of additional points to mention: - It's explained in the video, but the formula is not expliciately mentioned: It's (total unit dps) / (building dps), rounded down. And dps is the ranged attack divided by the reload time (The theoretical one in data, the delay for extra arrows is not taken into account). Just to clarify how exactly that works. - Attack bonuses are not considered for this calculation. If you have genoese crossbowmen vs. cavalry, garrisoning means you lose out on their anti-cavalry bonus. Same for Skirms vs. Archers etc. - However, the extra arrows of towers have a bonus vs. stone defense (stone walls, towers). Against those, garrisoning thus results in more total damage - Accuracy is not taken into account. As a result, units with low accuracy but high attack are great for garrisoning (Arambai and Janissaries are the best units for this). - Only the first arrow is affected by hills/cliffs. That's why in a tower vs. tower war, elevation does not matter. - Chu Ko Nu's doing so badly is a bug (probably). It only counts their secondary arrow (which does 3 damage). As they have a base fire rate of 3 (not counting the delay that the extra arrows cause) that results in a measly 1 dps, obviously lower than what they actually do. - Bombard Towers can also fire multiple shots (theoretical maximum of 3 extra), though you can only notice this with Teutons in-game. Due to a difference in the data, you actually need to add dps for 2 extra shots for the first extra cannonball to appear. After that the increase is linear again.
Easy Response Is Targer far away? (behind a wall or on the other side of the river? Tower Are they atacked? (there is a threat like knights nearby) Tower Are they fine? Leave them be Rams? Keep them outside Obsidian Arrows? Leave them be outside Teutons? Depends of the unit/how many of them Chu ko nu? Never let them in Mele units as teutons? Depends what are they atacking, if is a building that is defende with range units that cannot reach ur tower? Inside
Lmao I sent this to my niece just to be random and to test if she would watch it and she goes "is this for a game? I don't play this game" but then like 20 minutes later she texts me back like "sounds like it's better to garrison" guess your videos are irresistible 😂
Damn that dev explained it so clearly, all I ever saw about it were those damned charts with units and shit that you're supposed to learn by heart. Just learning how it works is so much simpler
This makes me want to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If I'm not mistaken, you're the first subscription I had to TH-cam. Still can't get enough. Hope you continue this with AOE4 since we're running out of content with AOE2.
The range increase is usually way more important. The only reason not to get fletching is if you're currently in a tower fight already and only have 4 vills to garrison.
In a pure tower rush yes. Assuming the trush is scouted, it actually favors the defender and not the attacker. In a trush defense, you can wait to build a tower or build your tower outside of range, to avoid taking the tower duel and wait to see what the attacker does and punish them for it. As the attacker, it's very important that you outplay them in some way because you will lose the tower duel. You need the tower to deny a resource, or outplay them using the +range in some other way.
Finally after months of waiting im glad you made this video and included the teutons tech becose i rly wanted to know becose when playing got overhaul i usally play as p4 and i always wonder should i garisson archers or mele units i decided on mele units since they have more uses and i cant compere to the p3s archers anyway thx alot
I really like this feature in age of empires 2. It lets you put your villagers and other units inside buildings while the healthy army fights the tough battles and when they need healing especially in feudal age, the town center and any towers become handy in this situation. Then the monk comes in castle age but still good to prevent an army of knights from taking out archery range units easily. In multiplayer fights this feature is used less often, but you will find it very useful in campaigns. archery range units are great in towers when they get upgrades, sometimes just 4 and a villager (to repair the tower as needed). Then there is the amazing but glitchy moving buildings mod where you can move any building and this makes the town center able to move anywhere on the map including on water and through forests and to get full map explored with just the town center that can go through cliffs and mountains and rocks and anything that is blocking your path in the game.
Great video as always!!! I'd love a episode about relics. At what point should you focus on them for example. Anyways please keep on creating fantastic AoE content!
for games that do a volley of projectiles, there's usually a code for "delay between each projectile of the volley", which should be the cause for delay in this case. a lot of it is for animation purposes, so a chukonu doesn't shoot one thicc arrow, and instead shoots a volley.
Oh hey this was released today! So used to old Spirit of the Law vids appearing in my recommendations I didn't even notice lol. Also one thing you failed you mention is if all the arrows have the same accuracy.
It's also worth pointing out that the extra arrows that towers fire as a result of garrisoned units have their own attack stat separate from the tower's attack. The same is true for castles, TCs, Chu Ko Nu, and Longboats. The additional arrows from towers have an attack of 5 pierce damage. Guard towers and Keeps have only 5 damage on their arrows despite their higher attack stat.
Much better than looking up tables to figure out how much an archer added to a tower! The amount of research you put in was extensive and well worth it. I'm guessing Chu Ko Nu's are bugged and their second arrow is being counted for their tower damage. Hand cannons also count as archers and a lot of us have heard how teutonic bombard towers can fire 2 shots with hand cannons which is sick. One point not touched on is accuracy. We all know that when a tower fires, many of the shots will miss. This is true of archers too but not to the same degree (I think). So against units like scouts I think archers have more dps outside the tower. This should still be true post ballistics.
Bit off topic, just wondering if you or any other subscribers may want to pitch their thoughts on a particular game style my friend and I have decided to try out. It’s a simple home brew, but takes a while to explain so I apologize for that. Basically, we will be playing on an even map with nine sections of land connected to one another by bridges. We will have identical defensive structures on our own plots of land at opposite sides, and a fixed amount of resources to build defenses on the other three plots of land we each own. Then, on a separate island, we will each have a fixed number of villagers (unless Chinese, who we will allow an extra villager but less first-turn building resources.) The villagers can be assigned to whichever resource we believe we should divide them to, and after 15 minutes we call the villagers off and spend our new resources however we please on upgrades or troops. Then, we fight over the middle plot. Whoever wins will now hold 5/9 of the plots. The loser will try to assault that plot to take it from the defender after another 8 minutes of both sides getting to put their villagers back to work. Then, use the new resources to buy/build as they please, then the fight ensues. Regardless of who wins, the other player (after a 6-minute resource gathering time, which will be the gathering time for every turn from then on) will be on the attack next. The attacker and defender will go back and forth indefinitely until one player has control of all 9 plots of land. There are more minute rules, like one-castle limits, but they’re not super important for the sake of the explanation. So, now that I’ve explained the homebrew game a bit, I’m curious what people think the best civs will be? I think Britons would be good when you’re on a defending turn, since you could build walls with longbows behind them. But they might be a bit weak for attacks. (Trebuchets are turned off.) Celts would probably be great for when it’s your attacking turn, but when it’s time to defend what you took over they might not do so well. Byzantines, maybe? What do you think?
The tower firing slower thing is explained by this: The tower fires one arrow every 2.00 seconds. However if it has to fire extra arrows, they take an additional 0.05 seconds to fire them. So a filled up tower with 4 extra arrows fires every 2.20 seconds. This effect is more profound in Town Centers and Castles. A filled town center fires every 2.45 seconds.
they should've designed the tower to be able to be built both embedded on walls and stand alone. they should've also added the detail that archers be able to patrol on top of the walls. that detail was added in AOE4.
The "More arrows - slower firing rate" anomaly is (IMO) caused by firing an arrow not being instant but taking a little time. This is most noticeable on castles full with archers. Visual example: 1 arrow: Fire-RELOAD-Fire-RELOAD 3 arrows: Fire-Fire-Fire-RELOAD-Fire-Fire-Fire-RELOAD
One strategy that I like to go for is teutonic infantry + siege. Like, you cant push it. They send infantry, they die to arrows. They send rams, you send out your cape bois and the rams go flat. They send archers, they die to siege and arrow fire. They make trebs, you also make trebs and win because of cheaper farms. Effectively you stall out your opponent and then strike when they are weak
Don't forget that you keep the dmg up our dmg only gets down, if the tower is destroyed, but the enemy looses constant dmg as the single units die you may start with less dmg, but after the first enemy dies, you deal more dmg way longer and extra is: you can release the units at the end, before the tower is destroyed so they don't die in the building
Many people here don't even play aoe2 but still watch your videos...it's amazing
I play a game like it and am trying to get good for when I buy AoE2
Me about 10 years ago
I don't play AOE but I love how he delves into mechanics of the game, I love listening to stuff like that.
I reinstalled the game ( this time DE). Thanks to him
@@Neethinify ✌🏻👍🏻
Aha, I actually do know something on this!
He's right that the towers don't reload until all arrows have been launched. You can confirm this by modding in a crazy high garrison cap to a tower, and adding like 100 archers. The tower shoots a super long barrage of arrows, then waits a short moment before it restarts again. If there was no wait, it would never stop shooting.
I need to do this now. Like, machine gun tower. Sounds amazing.
I did this with the Ethiopian silver tech. TC shoots like a machine gun!
The behavior is based on the *class* of the unit. Units of siege weapon class shoot all of their projectiles in one frame. All other classes shoot projectiles one by one, and the speed can be affected by the attribute *attack delay frames* too.
Onagers: shoot[reload]shoot[reload]
Castles: sssss[reload]sssss[reload]
Elite Chu-ko-nus: s-----s-----s-----s-----s-----[reload]s-----s-----s-----s-----s-----[reload] (5 attack delay frames)
Khmer Scorpion: s-------s-------[reload]s-------s-------[reload] (class ballista, 7 attack delay frames)
The delay between firing has some randomness to it.
@@kevintrang3007 Wait, don't you mean the *Malian* tech Tigui?
Edit: Sorry I forgot this was a 6 month old comment haha
try this with the Celt's Stronghold tech with the x256 mod. Laser towers & castles is a sight to see (Note towers fire a single straight line of arrows rather than the "spread" from garrisoned archers so the laser is 100% accurate
The effort, the math, the intro. I love these videos.
I just started playing aoe2 and i am amazed with how complex this game is. Game from 1999 you would think that it would be so limited in every aspect of gameplay yet it is mindblowing how much work has been put into it, putting new gen rts to shame.
People are Stupid today, look back .. a Lot of tecnology, creativy, etc. The chess game, computer, space,
Good overview but a very IMPORTANT point is missing!
Extra arrows (not the first one) has a +5 bonus damage against stone defense.
Which is critical in tower versus tower fights, 5 ungarrisoned (and unupgraded) towers will deal 5 damages total (5x1) each 2 seconds to another watch tower (7 pierce armor), while a fully villager-garrisoned (and unupgraded) tower will deal 21 damages (1+5x4) each 2 seconds to another watch tower.
In short, garrison your towers (with vils or archers) if you go into a tower versus tower fight.
EDIT: In my original post I thought tower's arrows were ignoring pierce armour (which would have led to the same numbers and conclusion in the example I choosed) but is technically wrong! Thanks to Jineapple for pointing it out.
It's actually not that it "ignores" pierce armor per se, but the secondary arrows have 5 bonus damage against stone defense (Stone walls and Towers). It does not work against houses for example. Otherwise you're absolutely correct, getting the maximum amount of extra arrows in a tower fight can be crucial.
@@freefallintoflames Oops, thanks a lot for the precision, sorry for the intox, I'll edit that.
Jineapple are castles labeled as stone defense?
@@sharktrap267 Apparently not:
ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Armor_class:_Stone_defense
(This website is a gold mine btw =) )
@@sharktrap267 No, they have a seperate armor class.
You forgot perhaps the most important aspect; Towers have substantially more raw damage, meaning they do far more damage to high armor units. Against fully upgraded paladins, for example, 3 arbalests will do 12 damage, but garrisoned, they will do 16.
I love the logic here
Your tenacity to keep going with this theme is fantastic. I keep finding myself going back to this channel
I love how you explore the game in depth in a very scientific way, asking questions, testing and working with actual numbers and stuff! Cheers!
Missed opportunity to mention teutonic bombard towers.
1 Tower full of Elite Genonese Corssbows fires 4 canon balls at once! :D
zerto111 really? I thought it was you could get 2 cannons from a bbt with the teuton if you garrison 10 hand cannons!
@@muhammadawan8919 i know you can get 3 if you put 10 elite jannisaries in
never heard about the genose crossbow thing but based on the numbers it should be impossible
Zerto is just kidding. 10 GXbows only give one extra shot.
Bombard Towers can fire up to 4 cannon balls at once, but Genoese Crossbowmen don't have enough dps for that. 10 Elite Janissaries are enough for 3. To get 4, you need a unit with boosted attack in the scenario editor.
@@freefallintoflames Apparently in the latest HD edition patch bombard towers don't ever get extra cannon balls regardless of your unit stats. Bummer!
Can you rework the Teuton civiliation overview ?
maybe he should do it in AoE2DE
Seems very fitting to redo the overview of a civilization with garrison bonuses after a video about garrison mechanics.
Worst civilization in the game😝
@@salildeshpande7 That is the Vietnamese.
@@KaiserFranzGaming khmer
The fact that tower with villagers gets weaker as you upgrade its attack feels like an oversight, same for the Chu Ko Nus.
I feel like it's intentional. Imagine the early tower rushes with a civ like the Chinese. Regarding the ChoKoNu, I'm not surprised, the Chinese civ is the most nerfed civ vis-a-vis its history in the game. For a game, it makes sense because of game balance.
I always loved playing as the Teutons and using their garrisoned infantry gimmick. Now I finally understand how they work.
Teutons renake please?
you should actually use crossbowmen/hand cannons to get the extra arrow faster, use infantry only if you don't have anything else or for the healing effect. Teutons should rely on foward castles and towers to cover their slow infantry/cavalry. Also, remember you don't always need to put 10 crossbows/HC inside a tower or 20 inside a castle. Check the plus arrow number "(+1)" when it reach the max nomber like 6 for tower you're done, HC are specially good for this if you want to have that extra punch.
@@ScudForEver I disagree on using archers, because they don't have to and really shouldn't. Teutons have relatively terrible archers, and even hand Cannoneers aren't actually that great when against anything but infantry; they have high damage, sure, but they're not effected by blacksmith upgrades and they fire almost half as fast as regular archers, so in reality, the arrows they add isn't that good. A FU Arbalest does 5.9 DPS vs a HC's 4.9, for example.
So if you invest in them, you've got frail and expensive infantry counters, when you already have the most durable infantry in the game. Only a fool would use massed infantry against a Teuton player.
The true power comes when you realize Teuton Infantry can do something no other civ can; be both an infantry and an archer depending on the situation. Fighting enemy cavalry and spam them with Halbs, only for them to switch to archers? Garrison them and suddenly a single Keep can hit as hard as a castle, and heal your units at the same time. They send in rams to take out the keep? Just ungarrison, kill the rams, and garrison again. By the time they try again, your units will be full health, since in DE they heal 6 health every 8 seconds.
Archers wont trade efficiently with a garrisoned tower. Cav wont trade efficiently, they'll just ungarrison. Rams definitely wont trade efficiently. Basically the only way to take that Keep out is with BBC or Trebs, and at that point 1 tower and 10 halbs are forcing them to focus their entire economy on a fraction of yours. You basically have a unit that is both anti-cavalry AND anti-infantry AND anti-archer. Even anti-siege to a certain extent, as a FU Keep garrisoned with halbs can kill 3 siege onagers easily before dying.
@@demiserofd I'm not saying you need to use archers all the time, but usually when the pop cap is relative low or the map is too big, is a good idea to have a few hand cannoneers or archers to make your insane castles and tower extra powerfull, remember that 10 hand cannoneers gives the bombard tower a second projectile, something TK can't do. You should usually use your castles to provide fire support to TKs while some monks with their extra healing range heals them from the safe distance of a castle.
The real problem, obviously, is all the strategies with Teutons you can thing of implies larges quatities of gold and stone, they lack a cheap and powerful trash units or economic bonus to their gold generation, in 1 vs 1 you would have to rely on having lots of farm to exchange food for gold.
Lastly, the Crenellations tech, not only makes you infantry shot extra arrow from your own buildings, it also work inside allies buildings, so it is like a hidden team bonus where you can make -if you have the spare of resources/pop cap- cheap pikeman/halbs to make all your allies castles stronger.
Whoa, some really good in depth information even from the comment section
:0
I love the concept of advancing through the ages , the look of the farms , the sounds of the wood chopping and rock mining.......
My 1st love of computer games was the AOE series.
And yes I still have nightmares of those red monks chanting on the cliff from the SP campaign even 25 years later
SP?
@@Nunos645cgh single player?
There is one thing you forgot to mention:
Bombard towers
Yasama too
@@kirimaruisao4094 Yasama?
@@RokeJulianLockhart.s4eb2q Japanese thing
garrison elite jannisaries in bombard tower
*TWO CANNONBALLS*
galliman123 yup it’s op against the ai
Just 27 years left until Supremacy movie
*a lot* can happen in 27 years these days...
I still expect someone somewhere will be asking about the Supremacy movie.
What if after 27 years the SJWs make the movie woke?
@@satyakisil4289 Could you stop throwing your rightwing propganda around for this discussion? Thanks.
@@christopherg2347 No I can't kappa
@@christopherg2347
Rightwing propoganda? Those discount store commies create propoganda against themselves every time their mouths open xD
You'd know, if you would simply take the time to look..
I've always wondered why the game treats garrisoned units differently - skirmishers and cav. archers for example. And I always assumed that it's because skirms are a trash unit. Either that or their cost. So cool of you to explain how it actually works, thanks!
Another little detail is that Towers/Castles shoot individual units all at one time, rather than potentially dispersed across different enemy units when the archers are on the own not garrisoned. When busy doing something else on the map, this could help a lot as automatically the garrisoned units will try to eliminate enemy units one by one, without us having to click and direct them to do so.
The fact that I'm still learning new stuff I had never even considered before about a game that's been out for two decades blows me away
Nice mathy video which i love. You could consider about hand cannoneers as they are archers and interaction with bombard towers as well.
What about a video about Civilizations voices?
this
Sounds good.
*Samsung intensifies*
das eht zoel
I’m always amazed with how you think of new interesting topics to talk about, hats off to you sir
I really could've used this analysis 20 years ago!
Before the era of TH-cam?
@@sejfzlrrhman Video hosting sites existed as early as 1997. Also, an analysis doesn't require a video in order to be presented. People used to buy gaming magazines like Nintendo Power and whatnot.
HOLY SH*T :D i never even thought about how much work has been put into this mechanic. I just sorta assumed it worked... somehow :D
I used to skip your intro because it was so long. But now I love the song and always watch the whole thing ❤️
Hey Spirit, are we ever going to get a new road to 1800 video? The last one was from over a year ago, and you promised the next one won't be so late xD
I believe he realized that he doesn't like playing for ELO. Just for fun.
Data Mining would be a better focus tbh
its amazing, there are less people playing aoe2 than viewers on your videos which consist of competitive level aoe2 things.
I don't play either. Good job!
It is amazing how much thought went into this. Especially when I remember as a kid thinking just build a bunch of fortresses and cramming a ton of guy in would equal a win.
Speaking about Teutons, we need top 5 Defensive Civs!
The moonwalking elephant at 1:18 xD
Wow, a new video. Binge watched all your Civ comparison videos in the last few days, finally I get more of that good stuff.
So, what about the elevation bonus?
It's not added.
I think the bonus is applied to first arrow only
I love your intro video/song. It's literally the only intro on YT that I never skip!
I think you can split the arrows into different directions (especially with castles when fully garrisoned with archers) when you click on to another enemy unit halfway through the castle's firing.
After watching your videos for a few months, I'm realizing that AOE2 is one of the greatest games ever made hands down. There was a whole universe on that disc back in '99, unreal.
i dont know why i'm watching this. i havent played this game in 17 years....
Never too late to pick it up again! :) It's even grown since, with three new expansions.
Was this a feature in the original game? I didn't know you could do it, apart from putting villagers in the town center. Or is it a feature in the new HD version that seems to change a lot of stats
@@johnhackney6466 I think this is feature from the original game
i never even play this game
Its because Spirit is so good at explaining the niches of inarguably the hardest RTS to ever exist.
Some say its Starcraft 2 but with only 3 races to keep track of? get out of here.
> Greg Street
> AoE2 Game Designer
TF. You learn something new every day.
I wondered this question about 2 decades ago, and today I chanced upon this awesomely curious explanation. Thanks! XD
Spirit of the law, the channel whose videos nobody asked for, but are needed anyway
I have no idea why I enjoy those so much, I mean, I would never be good enough to actually be using this knowledge.
Always love it when one of your videos pops up in my feed
This is quite insightful. I often tend to turtle myself with Koreans, but the Teuton's 8 arrows are quite tempting. 👀
I noticed that towers fire rate is slower when garrisoned too. I thought that was intentional, great research and methodology as always!
Good to know towers are still dissapointing, thanks Spirit!
Those siege onagers sweet shot on those cavalry on the intro still gives me a awesome feeling of satisfaction.
Hey guys spirit of the regular uploads here xd
next video, "is it worth to put 10 jennisar on a teuton tower and have 3 canon balls instead of 1?" :D
Against units - probably not, given that 10 janissaries cost as much as 5 bombard towers while only adding 2 cannons, and bombard projectiles travel so slow.
Against buildings, on the other hand - much better.
There should be a mod that translates the extra shot potential of a bombard tower into increased rate of fire. So the Teutonic bombard tower filled with EJans would fire 3x as fast instead of 2 extra shots. Then all bombard towers would benefit, and it wouldn't be so niche. Besides: most the time those extra shots completely miss.
Wow I was just the other day thinking about this topic and you made a video on it almost the exact same day. Great!
I just wanted to rewatch one of your vids, perfect timing for a new one.
If I'm not mistaken didn't the intro song go away for a few videos? Glad its back if thats the case.
The intro didn't show if the video is short
Tom Easton As he said in a video of “Answering comments”, the intro won’t appear in “top five” type videos
Wait, Greg Street worked on AoE2!?!?! The Blizzard / Riot guy!? Wth cool!
Yes, the same guy who said ranged unit / champion are more skilled than melee unit, because they have range
Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street. The one and only.
Not all that cool. Guy was completely biased to his own characters and would nerf counters to what he played. Total tool.
Yikes, didn't know about that... Don't know if I am too hyped over the fact that he worked on AoE2 anymore :/
@@martinspelunker2994 In WoW he mained a frost mage who can root you in ice and slow you with frost spells. Almost no melee class could really fight them. Druids can shapeshift around their animal forms to get out of both roots and slows so he nerfed us so we couldn't shapeshift out of roots anymore. Slows we still could but the ice root defensive spells were the ones with long cooldowns. Almost every other spell they had could apply a cold slow so us retaining our removal of slows wasn't really a big deal. GC was a scrub.
Ghostcrawler! That guy has been part of my gaming life since I started playing Rise of Rome as a kid. Between that and WoW... been sneakily in the background, that guy has.
The blacksmith upgrade question was actually quite interesting and never really noticed such behavior before due to focusing super hard on military rather than falling back on villager defense
You sacrifice damage output and mobility for more range and durability for your archers when you garrison them into a tower. The question should not be "should i garrison them?" but "When should i garrison them?". Its a tactical choice.
You sir demonstrate profoundly the difference between "knowing, understanding, and comprehending." Kudos.
Oh I have never been so quick to watch before.
I was chomping on the bit to write, "hey what about the Teutons?" But you were on your A Game. Good show! :)
Always looking forward to your videos. Great work, man. You're very attentive :))
Spirit here answering the questions that kept 9 year old me up at night. Now I'm 27 and I'm still amazed at just how much attention to detail went into AoE2. Still one of the best RTS games of all time.
Yah, when you were playing back in the day huh wonder how this works.
Oh kind of like that ( an idea ) but not really definitively knowing.
2021: huh that is pretty cool :)
Excellent Choice!
You can also read up on it here: www.aoe2sheet.info/knowledge_base.html#multiple-arrows
There's a couple of additional points to mention:
- It's explained in the video, but the formula is not expliciately mentioned: It's (total unit dps) / (building dps), rounded down. And dps is the ranged attack divided by the reload time (The theoretical one in data, the delay for extra arrows is not taken into account). Just to clarify how exactly that works.
- Attack bonuses are not considered for this calculation. If you have genoese crossbowmen vs. cavalry, garrisoning means you lose out on their anti-cavalry bonus. Same for Skirms vs. Archers etc.
- However, the extra arrows of towers have a bonus vs. stone defense (stone walls, towers). Against those, garrisoning thus results in more total damage
- Accuracy is not taken into account. As a result, units with low accuracy but high attack are great for garrisoning (Arambai and Janissaries are the best units for this).
- Only the first arrow is affected by hills/cliffs. That's why in a tower vs. tower war, elevation does not matter.
- Chu Ko Nu's doing so badly is a bug (probably). It only counts their secondary arrow (which does 3 damage). As they have a base fire rate of 3 (not counting the delay that the extra arrows cause) that results in a measly 1 dps, obviously lower than what they actually do.
- Bombard Towers can also fire multiple shots (theoretical maximum of 3 extra), though you can only notice this with Teutons in-game. Due to a difference in the data, you actually need to add dps for 2 extra shots for the first extra cannonball to appear. After that the increase is linear again.
Easy Response
Is Targer far away? (behind a wall or on the other side of the river? Tower
Are they atacked? (there is a threat like knights nearby) Tower
Are they fine? Leave them be
Rams? Keep them outside
Obsidian Arrows? Leave them be outside
Teutons? Depends of the unit/how many of them
Chu ko nu? Never let them in
Mele units as teutons? Depends what are they atacking, if is a building that is defende with range units that cannot reach ur tower? Inside
Lmao I sent this to my niece just to be random and to test if she would watch it and she goes "is this for a game? I don't play this game" but then like 20 minutes later she texts me back like "sounds like it's better to garrison" guess your videos are irresistible 😂
LOL
Damn that dev explained it so clearly, all I ever saw about it were those damned charts with units and shit that you're supposed to learn by heart. Just learning how it works is so much simpler
This makes me want to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If I'm not mistaken, you're the first subscription I had to TH-cam. Still can't get enough. Hope you continue this with AOE4 since we're running out of content with AOE2.
So, basically, if you're going for a tower rush, there's absolutely no reason to get fletching unless you're also going for archers.
The range increase is usually way more important. The only reason not to get fletching is if you're currently in a tower fight already and only have 4 vills to garrison.
In a pure tower rush yes. Assuming the trush is scouted, it actually favors the defender and not the attacker. In a trush defense, you can wait to build a tower or build your tower outside of range, to avoid taking the tower duel and wait to see what the attacker does and punish them for it. As the attacker, it's very important that you outplay them in some way because you will lose the tower duel. You need the tower to deny a resource, or outplay them using the +range in some other way.
I'm from Brazil and I'm just on a huge LOL with the meme at 2:06. (it's from here). Nice video, btw!
Finally after months of waiting im glad you made this video and included the teutons tech becose i rly wanted to know becose when playing got overhaul i usally play as p4 and i always wonder should i garisson archers or mele units i decided on mele units since they have more uses and i cant compere to the p3s archers anyway thx alot
Man alive. This game has a lot of depth.
I wonder how elevation damage factors in. Seemingly not at all.
Was wondering about this for soo long!!! Thanks my man 👍
Deepish mathematical insight into the technicalities of a great video game, what a fantastic channel.
I really like this feature in age of empires 2. It lets you put your villagers and other units inside buildings while the healthy army fights the tough battles and when they need healing especially in feudal age, the town center and any towers become handy in this situation. Then the monk comes in castle age but still good to prevent an army of knights from taking out archery range units easily. In multiplayer fights this feature is used less often, but you will find it very useful in campaigns. archery range units are great in towers when they get upgrades, sometimes just 4 and a villager (to repair the tower as needed). Then there is the amazing but glitchy moving buildings mod where you can move any building and this makes the town center able to move anywhere on the map including on water and through forests and to get full map explored with just the town center that can go through cliffs and mountains and rocks and anything that is blocking your path in the game.
Great video as always!!!
I'd love a episode about relics.
At what point should you focus on them for example.
Anyways please keep on creating fantastic AoE content!
I think he already did
for games that do a volley of projectiles, there's usually a code for "delay between each projectile of the volley", which should be the cause for delay in this case. a lot of it is for animation purposes, so a chukonu doesn't shoot one thicc arrow, and instead shoots a volley.
Oh hey this was released today! So used to old Spirit of the Law vids appearing in my recommendations I didn't even notice lol.
Also one thing you failed you mention is if all the arrows have the same accuracy.
I feel dumb. I never noticed that putting them in the towers will shoot more.
It's also worth pointing out that the extra arrows that towers fire as a result of garrisoned units have their own attack stat separate from the tower's attack. The same is true for castles, TCs, Chu Ko Nu, and Longboats. The additional arrows from towers have an attack of 5 pierce damage. Guard towers and Keeps have only 5 damage on their arrows despite their higher attack stat.
I haven't played Age of Empires in twenty years and don't even own a copy yet I find myself watching your videos all the time haha.
Finally, a tower topic! Great video, Spirit!
Much better than looking up tables to figure out how much an archer added to a tower! The amount of research you put in was extensive and well worth it. I'm guessing Chu Ko Nu's are bugged and their second arrow is being counted for their tower damage. Hand cannons also count as archers and a lot of us have heard how teutonic bombard towers can fire 2 shots with hand cannons which is sick.
One point not touched on is accuracy. We all know that when a tower fires, many of the shots will miss. This is true of archers too but not to the same degree (I think). So against units like scouts I think archers have more dps outside the tower. This should still be true post ballistics.
Bit off topic, just wondering if you or any other subscribers may want to pitch their thoughts on a particular game style my friend and I have decided to try out. It’s a simple home brew, but takes a while to explain so I apologize for that.
Basically, we will be playing on an even map with nine sections of land connected to one another by bridges.
We will have identical defensive structures on our own plots of land at opposite sides, and a fixed amount of resources to build defenses on the other three plots of land we each own.
Then, on a separate island, we will each have a fixed number of villagers (unless Chinese, who we will allow an extra villager but less first-turn building resources.)
The villagers can be assigned to whichever resource we believe we should divide them to, and after 15 minutes we call the villagers off and spend our new resources however we please on upgrades or troops. Then, we fight over the middle plot. Whoever wins will now hold 5/9 of the plots.
The loser will try to assault that plot to take it from the defender after another 8 minutes of both sides getting to put their villagers back to work. Then, use the new resources to buy/build as they please, then the fight ensues.
Regardless of who wins, the other player (after a 6-minute resource gathering time, which will be the gathering time for every turn from then on) will be on the attack next. The attacker and defender will go back and forth indefinitely until one player has control of all 9 plots of land.
There are more minute rules, like one-castle limits, but they’re not super important for the sake of the explanation. So, now that I’ve explained the homebrew game a bit, I’m curious what people think the best civs will be?
I think Britons would be good when you’re on a defending turn, since you could build walls with longbows behind them. But they might be a bit weak for attacks. (Trebuchets are turned off.)
Celts would probably be great for when it’s your attacking turn, but when it’s time to defend what you took over they might not do so well.
Byzantines, maybe? What do you think?
2019, now we know. Thanks SotL!
Great video. You did forget to touch on Bombard towers and the interactions of different ranged units, e.g. hand cannoneers and janissaries.
The tower firing slower thing is explained by this:
The tower fires one arrow every 2.00 seconds. However if it has to fire extra arrows, they take an additional 0.05 seconds to fire them. So a filled up tower with 4 extra arrows fires every 2.20 seconds. This effect is more profound in Town Centers and Castles. A filled town center fires every 2.45 seconds.
Can you please list all the background music(s) you use in your videos pls pls pls
Love the video-- extremely user friendly and lots to see!
I wondered this for years. Thanks for making this video.
Awesome video mate! (Again) Best AOE II TH-cam channel ever!
I wish youtube and this sort of breakdown existed 20 years ago when AOEII came out.
And the Abel prize goes to... Mr. Spirit of the Law!
Waited for this topic for a year, finally addressed :D
they should've designed the tower to be able to be built both embedded on walls and stand alone. they should've also added the detail that archers be able to patrol on top of the walls. that detail was added in AOE4.
I was hoping you'd go deeper in how the extra base attack of a tower would help against Pierce armor (e.g. against pallisade walls)
Perfect weekend with a Spirit of the Law video -w-
The "More arrows - slower firing rate" anomaly is (IMO) caused by firing an arrow not being instant but taking a little time. This is most noticeable on castles full with archers. Visual example:
1 arrow:
Fire-RELOAD-Fire-RELOAD
3 arrows:
Fire-Fire-Fire-RELOAD-Fire-Fire-Fire-RELOAD
One strategy that I like to go for is teutonic infantry + siege. Like, you cant push it.
They send infantry, they die to arrows.
They send rams, you send out your cape bois and the rams go flat.
They send archers, they die to siege and arrow fire.
They make trebs, you also make trebs and win because of cheaper farms.
Effectively you stall out your opponent and then strike when they are weak
No way! I was debating about this! Thank you for making this vid
I wish aoe4 mechanics are more realistic so that you can garrison on walls (can be balanced by adding ammunition mechanic)
Warlords Battlecry had an interesting tower mechanic
Don't forget that you keep the dmg up
our dmg only gets down, if the tower is destroyed, but the enemy looses constant dmg as the single units die
you may start with less dmg, but after the first enemy dies, you deal more dmg way longer and extra is: you can release the units at the end, before the tower is destroyed so they don't die in the building
god damn im gonna enjoy watching your vids on the definitive editions!! I sure do hope you'll make vids on them!