I would like to give "Heated Shot" an F for misleading me for years as a kid into thinking that it was the tech that made my Archers shoot cool fire arrows. >:(
Even description is missleading. It literally says +125% tower damage; +4 castle damage vs ships like tower just get damage boost vs everything and castle just dmg vs ships
It was originally a "must research" tech when your opponent had a Camel civ. After devs fixed the Camels Ships, Heated Shot became the #1 useless tech.
@@Pinnster One of my biggest complaints towards Definitive Edition is that they've done nothing to solve those cases of misleading descriptions or hidden attributes. It shouldn't be the case in any game to have to search on the internet to see how something actually works.
I would like to think of it more as an accuracy thing, though there's also thumb ring for that. But you can argue that a ballistic arrow always lands on target (given an experienced archer), while a non ballistic arrow has a more unpredictable trajectory. In the game, this is modelled as archers missing the target "on purpose".
Honestly, both should have that effect. Setting arrows on fire and having them stay burning once fired DOES require special chemicals though, so it checks out. Heated Shot should honestly cause ships to get animation that they're on fire. Just to really differentiate the two techs.
Left out that Spanish cannon galleons are affected by ballistics too, essentially making them a third unique unit that can down other ships with the increased projectile speed.
Honestly, this is what makes a Spanish navy so potent. You just mix a bunch of cannon galleons in with your regular ships and the enemy navy becomes splinters with a simple attack move command.
0:10 top left corner, how the archer misses perfectly so that the arrows land on the same 3 spots every single time. I looked at it for hours. It's beautiful!
Heated shot has an even bigger effect when the castle is filled with archers. Castles become chokepoints by which ships cannot pass. Transports will also die really fast and have not chance to drop units.
Its crazy to think how crazy strong towers of all variations used to be compared to now. I have a feeling this list would've been a bit different a few years ago.
I THOUGHT something was up when, coming back to AoE2 years later, Bombard Towers weren't as good as they used to be. When they still struggled against rams I was like "Wait, what?" and it's taken until this video for it to make sense. Great vid, and thank you for all the videos you make; every single on them is useful, helpful and/or fun in one way or another!
the main purpose of heated shot is when the glowing iron ball landed on the enemy ship it'll slowly burning the ship while also making them harder to remove
I'd like to credit Heated Shot for its supremacy in those classic team games against the AI where you turned your team island into an impregnable fortress with a simple network of towers.
Slightly unrelated to the topics, but the existence of Romans in AOE2 with their double infantry armor effect has open such new possibility for future civ bonuses. Imagine having double the effect of every other blacksmith techs, or maybe even other techs like double the effect of thumb ring, double effect of bloodlines, double loom, wheelbarrow, chemistry, etc. Just imagine the possibilities, please take notes dear Krakenmeister AOE2 Civ Builder
Malians would have been a good candidate for boni from uni techs! Since that civ IA established and quire balanced now, what new or existing civ would have a practical and historical justification for it? That said, I am impressed by how innovative the devs have been with offering mostly unique boni for expansion civs.
@@elliotkamper Cavalry receiving double effect for attack and armor sounds very wild tho, it feels like suddenly my entire cavalry line having the mix of Boyar and Huskarl flavor to it, in addition of having Malians cavalry by just researching your regular blacksmith techs
@@BryanLikesCandy Nah, that's the photon man upgrade, double ballistics makes every archer lead twice as much to guarantee missing non-stationary targets. :P
I usually click masonry first and only then ballistics even when I´m going for archers and I always go for architecture if I can. They are super helpful and they only cost a pathetic amount of wood and food
@@lolwhale6283 The only reason i think you're objectively wrong about this is the research time. It's not like your buildings will be in any game losing danger when you both hit castle, but your archers sure are. Ballistic is a technology you can win games from getting. While i would agree with masonry second is a really smart choice, you seriously have to consider what gives you the most benefits the second you hit castle. He still has to build a siege workshop before he can threathen your buildings and if he is going infantry, ballistic is a way better solution to keeping your buildings alive against infantry than masonry. If he can't reach your buildings to begin with, why spend time getting masonry first?
Man, I hope they release a civ with ballistics as an free and instant tech in castle age, so I can get my masonry in peace Or I could just play byzantines....!
Chemistry and Ballistics being number 2 and 1 is no surprise to me. They are always a must have for any civ who gets them. And Siege Engineers will always be hilarious because Tatars get them alongside Timurid Siegecraft giving Trebs +3 range giving Trebs 19 total range, the highest of any non-hero unit in the game and behind the hero Treb "Warwolf" by only 2 range. It's always been something I found funny to me. Great ranking video, and I hope to see more in the future.
I always thought that instead of Chemistry giving +1 attack, it should instead give more ranged unit bonus damage to buildings and ships. Just makes more sense with flaming projectiles, but it also would be interesting to see ranged units like archers more easily able to take down buildings.
"If you told me a game ends in Castle age and only one Tech from the University was researched, it's almost certainly this one" - or some other tech was researched, leading to a loss very soon due to not having ballistics.
The notes about Heated Shot make sense but it makes me wonder if they would ever give the Mesoamerican civs something like the Dromon. Probably not, but it's funny to consider Goths and Huns used to have access to the Cannon Galleon at one point.
I couldn't help but notice you favoured techs that are used offensively vs defensively. Granted, they can be passed of as more flexible... But the keep upgrades should be ranked a bit higher IMO. Love your vids and the the research you put into it. The economic cost of treadmill cranes was quite interesting.
By the time you get keeps, they won't really be there to help you any. Towers are only useful in feudal to castle age and after that, your opponent can just ignore the towers. The only real use for keeps is if you use them aggressively which only certain civs can do, and those games rarely last to imperial, but when they do being able to get keeps is useful. Towers defensively fall off super hard the later in the game you get. Towers against scouts is alright, towers against light cavalry could work too, towers against paladins is just a waste of stone.
@@starcraft2own Agreed. I always found it weird how towers don't keep up with unit upgrades at all in castle/imp. Enemy units can sit in the one little area of the map your expensive tower is able to hit, and they still take almost no damage, plus they can destroy it pretty easily if they really want to. Sad that such iconic medieval buildings are useless ingame.
I think that your investigation of the "economic argument" for Treadmill Crane is probably the most decisive "no" I've ever seen in a video of yours. It may make Villagers faster at building, but you certainly tore that argument down.
I want to point out a benefit of treadmill crane, which is the convenience of redistributing resource allocation (and seeing Villagers as a resource). While it may mathematically take a long time to recoup the cost itself, that's not really the value I see in the technology. I see it more as a form of insurance, where you spend resources early upfront from villagers that can gather where you know the resources are located - to then obtain a future benefit of being able to quickly adapt to changing situations even if you at that point in time do not have a lot of villagers present at the required location. Let's say you have a flank economy that is susceptible to raids, you may not have enough villagers present at that side of the map to wall off every area, but with crane you have a higher chance of successfully adapting to an unexpected situation that calls for a sudden restructuring of your building plan. Resources are predictable, they do not move, they can be planned for ahead of time. Knowing where fights will happen on the map in later stages of the game, which fronts will need reinforcement, which parts of your eco will need urgent defences - all of this is something you can not plan for. I find it highly beneficial for this reason, even if the outright math says the cost is tough to overcome from the time saved for villagers to return quickly to gathering resources again. That latter part, to me, is entirely besides the point of the tech. Please excuse my poor attempt at explaining my point concisely and efficiently. It is late and my last braincell is working overtime.
@ 2:44 "The minor up-tick in score it provides to intimidate your opponent..." Lovely little bit of sarcasm there, SoTL! Very nice. 😋👍 Seems the overall nerfing of the Tower Line has had a major effect on University techs. Another excellent analysis, sir! 🤗 M 🦘🏏😎
As a kid I didn't know any English and I remember being confused for the whole evening when I researched ballistics on AoC and yet didn't get access to bombard cannons. I knew that I previously had to do the bbc tech in AoK.
2:42 Fun fact: if you stack Heated Shot enough times with Going Above And Beyond or any 256*Tech mod, eventually the 'bonus' damage for Towers will override all land units' innate 10,000 resist to such, and they'll start doing insanely-high damage to everything around them, even through Armor. The only downside is that Heated Shot isn't available to the Byzantines for their Bombard Towers or the Georgians for their Keeps, so you're limited to Celts' faster firing speed and Portuguese's increased projectile speed.
12:30 😂 LOL that one is a great meme lol. Portuguese Bombard towers and gunpowder units have balistics tech in the Castle, thats why Portuguese bombard towers are brutal!
I think the main advantage to Heated Shot is that it saves you gold when defending on water maps. It forces the enemy's hand, making them prioritize cannon galleons, and all you need to defend against that are 20 or so fast fire ships. You don't need a full navy to defend, so the enemy has to throw gold at your wood and stone. Personally, on Island maps, I use heated shot towers to guard the islands in the center that I quickly take over. This gives me even more of a gold edge on the enemy (less so for stone, as I'm building so many towers with it, but still an advantage). I essentially make the center of the map a bramble patch the enemy suffers for passing through, and I put a dock or two on each island (lots of fish and I can then reactively defend with ships no matter what area they're sieging. I make the center of the map my forward naval base that's impenetrable. Sure, they could go around, but it's still a central staging area for my own navy to get to any front where they're needed. And again, I don't need as big or diverse of a navy to make it work with that many towers. This plays into my common strategy of using cheaper units to bleed my enemy of gold until they have to resort to the same cheap units, then I can rush out a serious army when they can no longer afford to stop me. I still agree that Heated Shot is probably the weakest University tech, being completely situational and map dependent, but the bonus it provides is actually pretty solid. Once you have it, the enemy has to change their tactics and invest resources just to respond. It completely changes naval warfare when implemented well.
Honestly if they were to change heated shot to causing ships and siege to catch on fire after taking damage from buildings and take 1 damage for the next 10 seconds that would be a welcomed change and make it well worth researching.
Maybe they'll have a patch where Heated Shot now applies to ebemy siege units as well? Remember back in the day when Bombard Towers actually demolished rams? It could be like that.
Heated Shot's value comes from how it allows your towers and castles to become utter death zones for enemy ships. There was one game between TheViper (Vikings) and Hera (Koreans) where TheViper's Longboats got utterly shredded when he tried to dive several Bombard Cannons under a Castle and several Keeps. Here's the match in question: th-cam.com/video/vX6NJ7ZRX5Q/w-d-xo.html The real value of Heated Shot is that it's an area-denial tech for ships. Situational, but very powerful in said situation.
I don't disagree with the treadmill crane position. But I think it's main advantage is in pushing late game. Rebuilding military buildings both to replenish output or to reduce travel distance for reinforcements. Suddenly finding yourself down 3 barracks will swing the momentum even more in an opponents favour. Being able to add 3 more near the front line, keeps the pressure on.
Great video! It would be cool, in future videos, to have the ressource appear in symbols rather than F or W. That would be more beginner friendly. Cheers!
Towers and castle should fire galleon's projectile to ships and siege, it is hilarious when few arrows sink ships. Also devs should release patch to enlarge defensive buildings like towers donjons castles etc by 1 tile. So basically Towers would be the size of house and not single stone brick. But when it comes to walls I'd love to see another upgrade for stone walls in imperial age and fortified palisade upgrade.
I'm not quite sure you know what you're asking for. If you change projectiles to galleons then they'd be so big you'd have to reduce the number fired, and that makes the castle quite a bit weaker against high pierce armored targets like ships, siege and certain units as a lot of their power comes from multiple attacks. And if you increase the size of defensive buildings, donjons would be the size of a barracks and a castle would be the size of a wonder. The sheer level of space two castles would take would make them extremely more vulnerable and clunky to use. And fortified walls are already indestructible to anything but siege rams. Making them any stronger would turn 4 hour long games to 7 hour long games. We've had fortified palisade but it just made early game a nightmare. Again, you wouldn't like the state the game would be in with all of these changes. Not to mention you'd have to redo like 90% of all the campaign maps with the way too large castles not fitting into any of the maps anymore.
Imagine instead of destroying castles there was a mechanic for actually sieging castle wher you have to reduce the castle HP before sending units like knights, pikemen, longsword, etc to capture it. It would add a nice dynamic but it would also be very difficult to implement because most players are just used to smashing everything down.
Heated shot is usefull in maps with small rivers that require the enemy to use ship for transport. In that scenario heated shot will work very well. Another comment: which tech is best ultimately depends on the situation.
I feel like towers should get the "cannot-construct-buildings-if-it's-too-far-from-your-base" treatment like how it is in some RTS games. In Red Alert 2 for example, you can't construct buildings if it's too far from your base. I think the same should be applied to Towers, but not Castles, Kreposts, and Donjons, since those 3 are more expensive and can produce units. This is the only way I could think of right now that discourages Trush AND still maintain the old strength that towers used to have. The way to do this is, let's say, Towers can only be constructed 20 or 30 tiles away from a Town Center. Of course the amount can be tweaked for balance purposes. This way, it limits forward towers to Castle and Imperial Age since most civs can only create additional TCs during that time, and even then, a decent player wouldn't probably think of spending resources or time to build a TC first, and then 1 or 2 towers later on to justify the strat. All in all, this leaves towers primarily as a defensive structure like how they were probably intended.
In my opinion guard tower is severely misplaced, they see a lot of use as defence against one TC mangonel pushes. Certainly it should be high than treadmill crane?
Heated shot should give bonus damage vs siege, still wouldn't be great, but I think a fair bit better. I've used heated shot in a few games with friends where there are heavy navy but a few choke points that I can tower/ castle. Made a huge difference since they would occasionally chase my retreating army into the trap, though I have no idea how much heated shot contributed vs. castle's already being good.
The point of a 1v1 ladder game is to win, not to be economically efficient. If reducing build time by 20% is what will win you the game, you shouldn't care if you'll recoup the cost in 10 minutes or 10,000. You get that upgrade all day every day.
I keep thinking I don't need an university. Then I hear swordclashes where they should be or my dock is on fire. Aesthetically I quite like it for being a distinctly non-military building, and always quite nice looking.
Would have been interesting to hear if you had any recommendations to functionality change to any of the techs to make them more broadly applicable, but may have been out of the scope of the video
Byzantines can take heated shoot technology in future as bow their bombard tower have bonus aoe dps and fire look and also as a defence civilization is bot so op technology…….even if they have good warships , they can take that as a bonus even
12:25 Really alot of the icons dont' make any sense. Example: the hoardings icon just shows a tower but in actuality a hoarding is a wooden shed-like construction on the exterior of a castle that improved the defender's field of fire during a siege.
I think I agreed with you like 5/10 on the Monk techs, mostly just swapping the order of a couple. On this one, I don't know why, but it's so much fun watching the list unfold number by number and having every single one (except for Murder Holes, which is my #4), be identical to my list.
I thought for sure Chemistry was going to be #1 on this list with Ballistics second but I guess many matches are one/lost in castle age thus making Chemistry less useful by default.
Ballistics is #1 Tech for Britons due to the lack of Thumb ring. I lost once a massive blob of blacksmith upgraded Crossbows in Castle Age, only because they couldn't hit a barn door a feet away. 😢
Heated shot do seems valuable in tournament? Watching TCI recently, and certain map like Golden Swamp or Cup with Korean being played will certainly see lots of tower in mid to late game for countering ships
You can't reach anyway canon galeons anyway. Teutons and Koreans: hold my beer. Try onagers with siege engineers against buildings and you will see the result. Of course it's not a ram but it can put down buildings pretty quickly.
Murderholes can have a negativ effect because castle tend to shoot rams. Without murderholes the castle can't shoot the ram direkt in front and kills the protective knights or crossbow. Then you can garrison out of the castle and kill the ram.
Is Masonry and Architecture worth more than 20% HP? The description makes it sound like compounding interest, whereas Hoardings is just flat 20%? Or is it coded not to work that way?
Arrow Slits, Guard Tower, and Keep feel a little criminal. 5 fully upgraded keeps are actually slightly better defenders than castles, but castles get their high attack power entirely for free with no expensive research, unlocks important research, trains units, and even has bonus damage against other structures. Heaven help you if your civ doesn't have Arrow Slits, because then your towers can't ever reach the power of a castle.
I find it disappointing how nerfed towers and structures are in general. I understand the reasoning behind it, but the vast majority of players are not top level players nor even know how to abuse towers to an insane degree. For example, bombard towers not dealing melee damage has made them fundamentally useless AND illogical at the same time. Why WOULDN'T a cannon do melee damage? Also, I think tower upgrades were meant to incentivize enemies to use more trebuchets. Instead of buffing artillery, they decided to nerf towers.
I would like to give "Heated Shot" an F for misleading me for years as a kid into thinking that it was the tech that made my Archers shoot cool fire arrows. >:(
Even description is missleading. It literally says +125% tower damage; +4 castle damage vs ships like tower just get damage boost vs everything and castle just dmg vs ships
@@Pinnster all % descriptions shoulnt be trusted and are worth looking into
It was originally a "must research" tech when your opponent had a Camel civ.
After devs fixed the Camels Ships, Heated Shot became the #1 useless tech.
@@Pinnster One of my biggest complaints towards Definitive Edition is that they've done nothing to solve those cases of misleading descriptions or hidden attributes.
It shouldn't be the case in any game to have to search on the internet to see how something actually works.
F for fire arrrows
Now I can finally get a degree!
tfw your academic advisor won't let you double major in Ballistics and Murder Holes
Degree in masonry/architecture? Or chemistry? Siege engineering? 😂
I bet there's actually a phd major in murder holes and arrow slits
Bah dum tsssss
With SOTL as your professor, your education will be top notch
To think, back in the medieval era archers had to take a degree to shoot ahead of their opponent
I would like to think of it more as an accuracy thing, though there's also thumb ring for that. But you can argue that a ballistic arrow always lands on target (given an experienced archer), while a non ballistic arrow has a more unpredictable trajectory. In the game, this is modelled as archers missing the target "on purpose".
It's always been weird that it's chemistry, and not heated shots, that make arrows look flaming.
Easy, they only knew how to heat the balls up and chemistry taught them how to set them on fire
Honestly, both should have that effect. Setting arrows on fire and having them stay burning once fired DOES require special chemicals though, so it checks out. Heated Shot should honestly cause ships to get animation that they're on fire. Just to really differentiate the two techs.
Heated shot should increase damage VS wooden items aka siege and non stone buildings
You research chemistry and get napalm
@@DowaHawkiin Greek fire, round 2.
Left out that Spanish cannon galleons are affected by ballistics too, essentially making them a third unique unit that can down other ships with the increased projectile speed.
Then you forgot to mention that ballistics affect roman scorpions.
Honestly, this is what makes a Spanish navy so potent. You just mix a bunch of cannon galleons in with your regular ships and the enemy navy becomes splinters with a simple attack move command.
Spanish Cannon Galleons don't actually need Ballistics to fire ballistically. The bonus is independent of you researching the tech
0:10 top left corner, how the archer misses perfectly so that the arrows land on the same 3 spots every single time. I looked at it for hours. It's beautiful!
Heated shot has an even bigger effect when the castle is filled with archers. Castles become chokepoints by which ships cannot pass. Transports will also die really fast and have not chance to drop units.
Its crazy to think how crazy strong towers of all variations used to be compared to now. I have a feeling this list would've been a bit different a few years ago.
totally. aggressive play is the only way to play .. there is absolutely no chance of turtling anymore.
Devs keep pandering to rush play because that's how pros play.
**cries in Korean**
@@raptorhacker599and it's more interesting
Atleast Modders can make Defensive play stronger, I like to whenever I mod my game, Towers got...a rather large improvement too
I THOUGHT something was up when, coming back to AoE2 years later, Bombard Towers weren't as good as they used to be. When they still struggled against rams I was like "Wait, what?" and it's taken until this video for it to make sense.
Great vid, and thank you for all the videos you make; every single on them is useful, helpful and/or fun in one way or another!
the main purpose of heated shot is when the glowing iron ball landed on the enemy ship it'll slowly burning the ship while also making them harder to remove
I'd like to credit Heated Shot for its supremacy in those classic team games against the AI where you turned your team island into an impregnable fortress with a simple network of towers.
Slightly unrelated to the topics, but the existence of Romans in AOE2 with their double infantry armor effect has open such new possibility for future civ bonuses. Imagine having double the effect of every other blacksmith techs, or maybe even other techs like double the effect of thumb ring, double effect of bloodlines, double loom, wheelbarrow, chemistry, etc. Just imagine the possibilities, please take notes dear Krakenmeister AOE2 Civ Builder
Malians would have been a good candidate for boni from uni techs! Since that civ IA established and quire balanced now, what new or existing civ would have a practical and historical justification for it?
That said, I am impressed by how innovative the devs have been with offering mostly unique boni for expansion civs.
@@elliotkamper Cavalry receiving double effect for attack and armor sounds very wild tho, it feels like suddenly my entire cavalry line having the mix of Boyar and Huskarl flavor to it, in addition of having Malians cavalry by just researching your regular blacksmith techs
Double Ballistics: all missiles hit their targets without fail, regardless of micro and other evasion tactics.
Sicilians already have it for Farming upgrades... But then that's just long term efficiency vs a massive increase in something directly useful
@@BryanLikesCandy
Nah, that's the photon man upgrade, double ballistics makes every archer lead twice as much to guarantee missing non-stationary targets. :P
Heated shot should add bonus damage vs siege. That would spice things up. Also in your Chemistry affected crowd rattan archer is missing :)
Many players still underestimate the effect of Masonry; it's incredible the amout of castles I have saved for that single tech.
I usually click masonry first and only then ballistics even when I´m going for archers and I always go for architecture if I can.
They are super helpful and they only cost a pathetic amount of wood and food
@@lolwhale6283 The only reason i think you're objectively wrong about this is the research time. It's not like your buildings will be in any game losing danger when you both hit castle, but your archers sure are. Ballistic is a technology you can win games from getting. While i would agree with masonry second is a really smart choice, you seriously have to consider what gives you the most benefits the second you hit castle. He still has to build a siege workshop before he can threathen your buildings and if he is going infantry, ballistic is a way better solution to keeping your buildings alive against infantry than masonry. If he can't reach your buildings to begin with, why spend time getting masonry first?
Man, I hope they release a civ with ballistics as an free and instant tech in castle age, so I can get my masonry in peace
Or I could just play byzantines....!
12:17 The arrow knows where it is at all times. It knows this, because it knows where it isn't.
Chemistry and Ballistics being number 2 and 1 is no surprise to me. They are always a must have for any civ who gets them.
And Siege Engineers will always be hilarious because Tatars get them alongside Timurid Siegecraft giving Trebs +3 range giving Trebs 19 total range, the highest of any non-hero unit in the game and behind the hero Treb "Warwolf" by only 2 range. It's always been something I found funny to me.
Great ranking video, and I hope to see more in the future.
I always thought that instead of Chemistry giving +1 attack, it should instead give more ranged unit bonus damage to buildings and ships. Just makes more sense with flaming projectiles, but it also would be interesting to see ranged units like archers more easily able to take down buildings.
Another great great video, SOTL. Thank you!
Consider giving us an updated Saracens civ video and/or a Through The Ages Saracens video next?
"If you told me a game ends in Castle age and only one Tech from the University was researched, it's almost certainly this one" - or some other tech was researched, leading to a loss very soon due to not having ballistics.
The notes about Heated Shot make sense but it makes me wonder if they would ever give the Mesoamerican civs something like the Dromon. Probably not, but it's funny to consider Goths and Huns used to have access to the Cannon Galleon at one point.
2:45 "Useless besides the minor uptick in score it provides to intimidate your opponent."
Oh no! He's found out my master strategy!
I am a simple man, I see a new SoTL video, I like and watch immediately
I think that main takeaway is that we need to MAKE TOWERS GREAT AGAIN!!!
DEUS VULT my Teutonic brethren !
Yes!
Build the Tower Wall!
And by towers you are obviously referring to siege towers I hope! Not that they were ever great...
No thanks towers suck and will keep doing that
I couldn't help but notice you favoured techs that are used offensively vs defensively. Granted, they can be passed of as more flexible... But the keep upgrades should be ranked a bit higher IMO. Love your vids and the the research you put into it. The economic cost of treadmill cranes was quite interesting.
By the time you get keeps, they won't really be there to help you any. Towers are only useful in feudal to castle age and after that, your opponent can just ignore the towers. The only real use for keeps is if you use them aggressively which only certain civs can do, and those games rarely last to imperial, but when they do being able to get keeps is useful. Towers defensively fall off super hard the later in the game you get. Towers against scouts is alright, towers against light cavalry could work too, towers against paladins is just a waste of stone.
@@starcraft2own Agreed. I always found it weird how towers don't keep up with unit upgrades at all in castle/imp. Enemy units can sit in the one little area of the map your expensive tower is able to hit, and they still take almost no damage, plus they can destroy it pretty easily if they really want to. Sad that such iconic medieval buildings are useless ingame.
The archer that just can't hit the patrolling man-at-arms in the background... great intro, very thematic haha
Spirit of the Law videos will never be the same after watching Masmorra's interview.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate that little diorama at the beginning.
I think that your investigation of the "economic argument" for Treadmill Crane is probably the most decisive "no" I've ever seen in a video of yours. It may make Villagers faster at building, but you certainly tore that argument down.
I want to point out a benefit of treadmill crane, which is the convenience of redistributing resource allocation (and seeing Villagers as a resource). While it may mathematically take a long time to recoup the cost itself, that's not really the value I see in the technology. I see it more as a form of insurance, where you spend resources early upfront from villagers that can gather where you know the resources are located - to then obtain a future benefit of being able to quickly adapt to changing situations even if you at that point in time do not have a lot of villagers present at the required location. Let's say you have a flank economy that is susceptible to raids, you may not have enough villagers present at that side of the map to wall off every area, but with crane you have a higher chance of successfully adapting to an unexpected situation that calls for a sudden restructuring of your building plan.
Resources are predictable, they do not move, they can be planned for ahead of time. Knowing where fights will happen on the map in later stages of the game, which fronts will need reinforcement, which parts of your eco will need urgent defences - all of this is something you can not plan for. I find it highly beneficial for this reason, even if the outright math says the cost is tough to overcome from the time saved for villagers to return quickly to gathering resources again. That latter part, to me, is entirely besides the point of the tech.
Please excuse my poor attempt at explaining my point concisely and efficiently. It is late and my last braincell is working overtime.
@ 2:44 "The minor up-tick in score it provides to intimidate your opponent..." Lovely little bit of sarcasm there, SoTL! Very nice. 😋👍
Seems the overall nerfing of the Tower Line has had a major effect on University techs.
Another excellent analysis, sir! 🤗
M 🦘🏏😎
Heated shot on fireship makes sense since the ship is full of flammable.
I've loving the rapid fire videos~ You're making me wanna get back into the game now that I'm learning so much, so fast~
As a kid I didn't know any English and I remember being confused for the whole evening when I researched ballistics on AoC and yet didn't get access to bombard cannons. I knew that I previously had to do the bbc tech in AoK.
Thanks SOTL, you always have helpful and insightful video ideas
Back in the day sometimes it was better to skip chemistry as it made scorpions and onagers projectiles slower than regular ones
2:42 Fun fact: if you stack Heated Shot enough times with Going Above And Beyond or any 256*Tech mod, eventually the 'bonus' damage for Towers will override all land units' innate 10,000 resist to such, and they'll start doing insanely-high damage to everything around them, even through Armor. The only downside is that Heated Shot isn't available to the Byzantines for their Bombard Towers or the Georgians for their Keeps, so you're limited to Celts' faster firing speed and Portuguese's increased projectile speed.
Another incredible breakdown. Thanks again SotL, the community appreciates all your hard work!
12:30 😂 LOL that one is a great meme lol. Portuguese Bombard towers and gunpowder units have balistics tech in the Castle, thats why Portuguese bombard towers are brutal!
I think the main advantage to Heated Shot is that it saves you gold when defending on water maps. It forces the enemy's hand, making them prioritize cannon galleons, and all you need to defend against that are 20 or so fast fire ships. You don't need a full navy to defend, so the enemy has to throw gold at your wood and stone.
Personally, on Island maps, I use heated shot towers to guard the islands in the center that I quickly take over. This gives me even more of a gold edge on the enemy (less so for stone, as I'm building so many towers with it, but still an advantage). I essentially make the center of the map a bramble patch the enemy suffers for passing through, and I put a dock or two on each island (lots of fish and I can then reactively defend with ships no matter what area they're sieging. I make the center of the map my forward naval base that's impenetrable. Sure, they could go around, but it's still a central staging area for my own navy to get to any front where they're needed. And again, I don't need as big or diverse of a navy to make it work with that many towers.
This plays into my common strategy of using cheaper units to bleed my enemy of gold until they have to resort to the same cheap units, then I can rush out a serious army when they can no longer afford to stop me. I still agree that Heated Shot is probably the weakest University tech, being completely situational and map dependent, but the bonus it provides is actually pretty solid. Once you have it, the enemy has to change their tactics and invest resources just to respond. It completely changes naval warfare when implemented well.
13:13 "Class Dismissed" lol but overall great video
It pains me how under used stone walls are in higher level competitive games, hopefully this video will start the change! :)
The whole thing about ballistics needing to be researched reminds me of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise
Me bingewatching SotL while not having played this game for 15 years:
That's good to know
Honestly if they were to change heated shot to causing ships and siege to catch on fire after taking damage from buildings and take 1 damage for the next 10 seconds that would be a welcomed change and make it well worth researching.
Arson needs that effect too
The idea is so cool! But I think the system of Age of Empire II is too old to handle this calculation
@@__lim494 Thing is arson has practical use as is and is not questionable worth it on water maps and worthless on land maps.
Love the start- and end-scene. Quaint.
Maybe they'll have a patch where Heated Shot now applies to ebemy siege units as well? Remember back in the day when Bombard Towers actually demolished rams? It could be like that.
not a day goes by where i dont think about that comment that said "it sounds like hes saying spirit of the la hire" for the intro
Heated Shot's value comes from how it allows your towers and castles to become utter death zones for enemy ships. There was one game between TheViper (Vikings) and Hera (Koreans) where TheViper's Longboats got utterly shredded when he tried to dive several Bombard Cannons under a Castle and several Keeps.
Here's the match in question: th-cam.com/video/vX6NJ7ZRX5Q/w-d-xo.html
The real value of Heated Shot is that it's an area-denial tech for ships. Situational, but very powerful in said situation.
Just saw a match in NAC5 where one of the players researched it to deny fishing ships more effectively in a small pond while tower rushing
I don't disagree with the treadmill crane position. But I think it's main advantage is in pushing late game. Rebuilding military buildings both to replenish output or to reduce travel distance for reinforcements. Suddenly finding yourself down 3 barracks will swing the momentum even more in an opponents favour. Being able to add 3 more near the front line, keeps the pressure on.
Great video! It would be cool, in future videos, to have the ressource appear in symbols rather than F or W. That would be more beginner friendly. Cheers!
Ranking the techs by how strong the icon looks would bring heated shot way up in the rankings lol
Towers and castle should fire galleon's projectile to ships and siege, it is hilarious when few arrows sink ships. Also devs should release patch to enlarge defensive buildings like towers donjons castles etc by 1 tile. So basically Towers would be the size of house and not single stone brick. But when it comes to walls I'd love to see another upgrade for stone walls in imperial age and fortified palisade upgrade.
I'm not quite sure you know what you're asking for. If you change projectiles to galleons then they'd be so big you'd have to reduce the number fired, and that makes the castle quite a bit weaker against high pierce armored targets like ships, siege and certain units as a lot of their power comes from multiple attacks. And if you increase the size of defensive buildings, donjons would be the size of a barracks and a castle would be the size of a wonder. The sheer level of space two castles would take would make them extremely more vulnerable and clunky to use. And fortified walls are already indestructible to anything but siege rams. Making them any stronger would turn 4 hour long games to 7 hour long games.
We've had fortified palisade but it just made early game a nightmare. Again, you wouldn't like the state the game would be in with all of these changes. Not to mention you'd have to redo like 90% of all the campaign maps with the way too large castles not fitting into any of the maps anymore.
I didn't have to watch to know that ballistics would be number one, its just that good.
Spanish cannon galleons are fun to use when created in small ponds.
Imagine instead of destroying castles there was a mechanic for actually sieging castle wher you have to reduce the castle HP before sending units like knights, pikemen, longsword, etc to capture it. It would add a nice dynamic but it would also be very difficult to implement because most players are just used to smashing everything down.
I would've put ballistics first for sure, good pick
Heated shot is usefull in maps with small rivers that require the enemy to use ship for transport. In that scenario heated shot will work very well.
Another comment: which tech is best ultimately depends on the situation.
(Heated) Shots fired.
I feel like towers should get the "cannot-construct-buildings-if-it's-too-far-from-your-base" treatment like how it is in some RTS games.
In Red Alert 2 for example, you can't construct buildings if it's too far from your base. I think the same should be applied to Towers, but not Castles, Kreposts, and Donjons, since those 3 are more expensive and can produce units.
This is the only way I could think of right now that discourages Trush AND still maintain the old strength that towers used to have.
The way to do this is, let's say, Towers can only be constructed 20 or 30 tiles away from a Town Center. Of course the amount can be tweaked for balance purposes. This way, it limits forward towers to Castle and Imperial Age since most civs can only create additional TCs during that time, and even then, a decent player wouldn't probably think of spending resources or time to build a TC first, and then 1 or 2 towers later on to justify the strat.
All in all, this leaves towers primarily as a defensive structure like how they were probably intended.
Wow, I totally misses that camels aren't ships anymore. Good to know
In my opinion guard tower is severely misplaced, they see a lot of use as defence against one TC mangonel pushes. Certainly it should be high than treadmill crane?
Heated shot should give bonus damage vs siege, still wouldn't be great, but I think a fair bit better.
I've used heated shot in a few games with friends where there are heavy navy but a few choke points that I can tower/ castle. Made a huge difference since they would occasionally chase my retreating army into the trap, though I have no idea how much heated shot contributed vs. castle's already being good.
The point of a 1v1 ladder game is to win, not to be economically efficient. If reducing build time by 20% is what will win you the game, you shouldn't care if you'll recoup the cost in 10 minutes or 10,000. You get that upgrade all day every day.
All my homies love heated shot.
Treadmill should definitely have a repair boost
i want to advertise heated shot in the recent hera vs viper bo21. it was koreans vs. vikings. korean towers shredded the longboats.
Nothing worse then protecting the coast and you realize your civ doesn’t have heated shot.
I use treadmill crane often in 4v4, especially with goth or roman spam
It's cool that the best tech has no effect on stats
I keep thinking I don't need an university. Then I hear swordclashes where they should be or my dock is on fire.
Aesthetically I quite like it for being a distinctly non-military building, and always quite nice looking.
what
The problem with bombard tower is that their projectiles are slower than normal tower shots and quite easy to dodge :-/
Hands down, the ballistic is the best one, no competition here
Heated shot is objectively the best course at the university, because it gives you the most degrees
Would have been interesting to hear if you had any recommendations to functionality change to any of the techs to make them more broadly applicable, but may have been out of the scope of the video
Byzantines can take heated shoot technology in future as bow their bombard tower have bonus aoe dps and fire look and also as a defence civilization is bot so op technology…….even if they have good warships , they can take that as a bonus even
I thought chemistry would be #1.
Turns out ballistic is more important.
Especially for Spanish on water map.
I 100% assumed treadmill crane also affected repair speed
12:25 Really alot of the icons dont' make any sense. Example: the hoardings icon just shows a tower but in actuality a hoarding is a wooden shed-like construction on the exterior of a castle that improved the defender's field of fire during a siege.
Although British has Ballistics, their longbowman still lost to an Italian Genoese crossbowman in the Olympics
I love stone walls. There, I said it.
I think you can just look at the techs that every civ has, and those are probably bound to be the best ones
Me building university just to get ballistics when i don't even have crossbows because my fking castles won't hit ANYTHING ! 😂😂😂
I think I agreed with you like 5/10 on the Monk techs, mostly just swapping the order of a couple.
On this one, I don't know why, but it's so much fun watching the list unfold number by number and having every single one (except for Murder Holes, which is my #4), be identical to my list.
Heated shot should deal more damage to siege weapons. Not a lot more though, so that rams would still be effective against towers and castles.
I thought for sure Chemistry was going to be #1 on this list with Ballistics second but I guess many matches are one/lost in castle age thus making Chemistry less useful by default.
About the heated shot, unless you are teutons and enemy dont have siege engeeneres (idk how to spell it XD)
Ballistics is #1 Tech for Britons due to the lack of Thumb ring.
I lost once a massive blob of blacksmith upgraded Crossbows in Castle Age, only because they couldn't hit a barn door a feet away. 😢
Heated shot do seems valuable in tournament? Watching TCI recently, and certain map like Golden Swamp or Cup with Korean being played will certainly see lots of tower in mid to late game for countering ships
I hate that bombard towers don't to meelee damage. They should obliterate rams. Balance would still be fine because every civ has trebs.
You can't reach anyway canon galeons anyway.
Teutons and Koreans: hold my beer.
Try onagers with siege engineers against buildings and you will see the result. Of course it's not a ram but it can put down buildings pretty quickly.
Murderholes can have a negativ effect because castle tend to shoot rams. Without murderholes the castle can't shoot the ram direkt in front and kills the protective knights or crossbow. Then you can garrison out of the castle and kill the ram.
Murder holes is mainly a thing for playing against AI - as humans wont charge a castle to senselessly lose units
I thought that Treadmill Crane effects repair speed.
Well TIL
The only time I agree with SOTL 100%. Excellent video.
Is Masonry and Architecture worth more than 20% HP? The description makes it sound like compounding interest, whereas Hoardings is just flat 20%? Or is it coded not to work that way?
Arrow Slits, Guard Tower, and Keep feel a little criminal. 5 fully upgraded keeps are actually slightly better defenders than castles, but castles get their high attack power entirely for free with no expensive research, unlocks important research, trains units, and even has bonus damage against other structures. Heaven help you if your civ doesn't have Arrow Slits, because then your towers can't ever reach the power of a castle.
very well analyzed. ty
In hindsight heated shot should have given bonus damage against siege weapons. You're literally shooting heated arrows at wooden structures
yo!! u didnt give full explanation on seiege engineers. petards and flaming camels also benefit from it right?
seiege
1:09 They help Daut!? 😮🤯
I find it disappointing how nerfed towers and structures are in general. I understand the reasoning behind it, but the vast majority of players are not top level players nor even know how to abuse towers to an insane degree.
For example, bombard towers not dealing melee damage has made them fundamentally useless AND illogical at the same time. Why WOULDN'T a cannon do melee damage?
Also, I think tower upgrades were meant to incentivize enemies to use more trebuchets. Instead of buffing artillery, they decided to nerf towers.