Ty for the video very intresting! I think a good way to prove ur point is to watch the relative value of the upgrade: if I have 10 attack and I get +1 is a 10% increase where if I have 1 armour and I get +1 armour I get double the armor from the upgrade! P. S. An hotkey video would be super useful thx from Italy! :D
This is a question I’ve asked a ton! Your TH-cam content has been top notch lately Your content a few months ago wasn’t bad but I didn’t really watch it much. Maybe it’s bc I’ve grown to enjoy your commentary via streams but I think you’ve really been putting more effort into TH-cam. Point is good job & keep it up heraLove :)
You could really benefit from a small amount of scripting for generally smoother and more easily absorbed diction, but other than that you are giving extremely helpful information with a very positive, upbeat attitude and the tests help people who learn visually and practically understand better. Keep up the great work!!
It might be worth adding that the time taken to research the technology can vary considerably: by the Imperial Age Bracer is researched in 30 seconds, Plate Barding Armour in 75 and Blast Furnace in 100s. In Feudal and Castle these differences are less extreme. Thanks for the videos!
First of all, you need to set your Hotkeys so you can access it really easy. And you need Map Awarenes, so you notice, when you are under attack And you have to practice... Like 100 Games min... Thats about it
The only thing you need to know to quickwall is first the hotkeys and the most important thing, try this Click (or use hotkeys) to make a wall and at the same time press shift, you won't have to press the hotkeys again and this in online games helps a lot as the ping doesn't matter
Thank you for the informatives! :)) Your willingness to go above and beyond to educate and inform our community is much appreciated! You excel as answering tricky questions so the lay can understand, Hera.
I really didnt like your explanation here. The devil is in the details. In the Pikemen vs Knights fight its about specific breaking points. Pikemen have 22 Bonus dmg vs Cavalry. so they deal 24 dmg per attack before upgrades. thats exactly a 5 hit on 120 HP knights. if the Knights have 1 defense upgrade more than the Pikemen have attack upgrades Knights win this fight bc they survive 1 more hit. Without Bloodlines Pikemen that have 1 more attack upgrade than Knights have defense upgrades they kill in 1 less hit and this is also huge. On the other hand Pikes have 55 HP so Knights with 1 more attack upgrade than defense upgrade on the other side kill in 1 less hit as well. 1 more defense for the pikemen than attack upgrade on the other side has the reverse effect. The Knights vs Crossbow fight is also a quick explanation: Crossbows have 7 attack and Knights between 2 and 4 defense. that means Crossbowmen deal between 5 and 3 dmg with every shot. thats a diffrence of 40%. That is HUGE that why the defense upgrades are so important. On the other side Knights need 4 hits to kill a Crossbowmen unless the Knights are 2 attack upgrades ahead (3 hits) or 2 upgrades behind vs the Crossbowmens defense upgrades (5 hits). And this Ladies and Gentlemen is the value of the Persian Teambonus. against every other civ Crossbows are fine with 1 armor upgrade whatever the Knight player does. Takeaway: The diffrence in what dmg melee units deal isnt that big bc they attacks are already huge. +1 or +2 doesnt matter that much except a few specific breakpoints. +1 or +2 dmg on effectivly 3 attack of the Crossbowmen is HUGE.
I love ur explanation more. And that's what i am always thinking of. It's more important to look how many hit to kill and resist before and after upgrade.
@@hallo918 please this isnt even math. that's just counting. a real Math question would be: how many more Numbers would you need for which amount of upgrades. also tiny advantages steamroll heavily so what looks like small advantages on 10 knights could be huge on 30 knights with equal ratios. Lancesters laws are a bitch.
@@hansoskar1911 True! Same as why I think one damage upgrade for knights is pretty important if you want to raid with them cause they will kill vills in 4 hits instead of 5 making your raids a lot more deadly.
I mean "the devil is in the details"... Plz. The conclusion is the same you simply wrote off the exact numbers. Ok cool but in order to get good at the game you don't need to know every bonus in exact numbers and do calculations to know if you are going to win or less a fight. Hera's video is not to make happy the stat nerds is for helping beginners understand which upgrade to take first.
It’s most easy to think about the percent increase or decrease of dps. For knight vs crossbow, the cross bow has 2 melee armor, so +2 attack increases dps by 25%. While +2 pierced armor decreases crossbow’s dps by 40%
It would be really interesting to see more effective attack upgrades as a civ bonus. Imagine a civ that doesn't have the final armor upgrades, but all attack upgrades give double their usual damage bonus (possibly also for archer upgrades) This would make for quite a different way to play the game as that civ, but also change up how other civs play against it.
You get: +4 Attack for Infantry and cavalry +2 Attack and +2 range for Archer Units And you lose: -1 Melee armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers -2 Pierce Armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers
The cleanest way to write this down is #of hits needed for kill and then % difference each upgrade makes. You did it well in the villager example, but for all other examples it would make it MUCH more clear and exact.
Another great video Hera! Your videos improve my understanding of the game and also help me introduce my friends to AoE2 DE thank you very much :-) P.S can't wait for more!
Well structured and planned video that gets your points across to a point where even a lowly AI only scrub like me can get a practical use out of it. The knight vs. ranged unit armor in particular is brutal if the enemy tries countering your crossbows with a couple of skirms and two knights can basically murder an entire platoon of them to keep said crossbows safe with armor upgrades, even if the skirms are fully upgraded. (Then again, you wouldn't usually prioritize the damage anyway to counter crossbows, so it's another situational awareness thing.) Finally, on one hand I kind of agree with Hans Oskar about the factual, mathematical proof behind it. On the other, the people these videos are probably made for aren't good enough at the game yet. A friend of mine still tried to argue with me that pikes don't counter knights because they don't stomp them in equal numbers. Also that skirms don't counter archers because Feudal age, no upgrade skirms couldn't beat Castle age, full upgrade crossbows. For him, knowing specific breakpoints is probably less useful than "in general, this is better than that". Keep up the good work, have been enjoying your civ showcases and team games a lot. The tutorials and overall tips & tricks videos aren't bad either.
Thanks much for the video. I have a feeling -but not hard data to back it up currently - that in AOE2 units have less HP, they’re more fragile lets say compared to Age of Mythology whose units have more HP, they last longer in fights. This dynamic results in, making your units more durable would make a better investment percentage-wise. Again thanks much for bringing out this dynamic visual. Keep up the good work.
You always know percentage wise what is the better upgrade. For example, first knight armor upgrade reduces crossbow damage with bodkin by 25% (from 5 to 4) while the attack upgrade gives knights only roughly 10% more damage.
Melee units always go with armor first. It's the benefits of simultaneously taking damages from more than one sources, so each armor point gets multiplied. E.g. 1 Knight vs 3 archers, upgrading armor by 1 reduces 3 damages in 1 round of attack, and the benefits increase per the scale. While upgrading attack has a fixed benefit, of which +1 attack point on each attack regardless of the scale.
There's just a variation you didn't talk about - and it's kind of implied if you think about it, but still: for the same reason it's good to get armor for pikes when fighting knights (possibly surviving an extra hit), it's equally important to get attack upgrades for knights when fighting pikes (doesn't happen as often in most games nowadays, but when it does it's quite relevant). Ie: if (knight's attack) - (pike's defense) >= 11, then it takes 5 hits to kill pike (55hp), otherwise that's 6 or even 7 hits.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Well if the attack of a Pikeman minus the armor of a knight was roughly equal to the attack of a knight minus the armor of a pikeman, it wouldn't matter that much which Blacksmith upgrades to get, would it?
Martijn Bouman That makes it even better. 2 Atk increase from 12 to 14 is more effective than from 24 to 26, which means it’s even more worthless to go for Atk upgrade.
Martijn Bouman No, the armor upgrade is always better. The surviving units make a huge diff. A unit dishing out n hits with +2 atk is worse than doing extra 1-2 hit with original atk (for the case of Pikemen, the effect is even bigger due to their sky high atk vs cav).
it feels like the effect of +10 dmg bc the pikemen attackrate is 3 vs knights 1.8 so if they attacked at the same rate +10 would be be in the right ballpark.
according to Spirit of the Law, Spears, Pikes and Halbs do +15, +22, +32 respectively against cavalry, so has you said, getting +2attack means going from 26 to 28 damage (minus the armor of the knight), while +2 armor means a chance to deal another 26 damage
10:00 maybe a better way to express that is that +2 damage for pikes is only a ~7.5% increase due to the +22 bonus damage. +2 attack gets a 20% increase in damage for the knights. However a -2 damage for the crossbows due to +2 armour is 29% damage reduction reduction.
Great video, I thought of two more exceptions as well : ). If you want to kill pikemen with your knights for some odd reason, attack is better. Also if you outnumber the enemy, say with 20 longswords vs 10 knights, or 20 eagles vs 10 knights the attack is better there as well. Also Karambits need attack above all else imo.
Great video! Hera can you make a video about all the "hidden" and "bonus" damages or armors in the game? I know most pro players don't like to get into the math (except maybe tatoh or max) but I think many pros DO NOT know about certain hidden armors unless explicitly popularized in the pro scene. Like I know recently in an AM TG you guys couldn't find a counter to cataphracts because catas have an +12/16 hidden armor against bonus cav damage. This means the genoese xbows +7 bonus cav damage is negated (similarly camels don't counter catas cause heavy and imp camels have +18 bonus but deal only +2 due to the hidden armor) Another surprising hidden armor is the -3 melee armor of rams. It's crazy because a negative armor means every melee units does + 3 damage to rams inherently (like a knight would do 10 + 3 damage with any upgrades). Things get even crazier when you learn chu ko nus not only have a Pierce damage, but a 0 melee damage. Thus they also cause extra 3 damage to rams. I think such kind of a video, from a pro player will be very impactful because people expect such hidden bonuses to be used by a pro in a tournament to actually see how amazing they are rather than some noob(like me) making a video using scenario editor giving units -50 melee armor and +0 melee damage to see the unit causing 50 damage or such dumb things 😂
PianoDome I know that's where I got all of this knowledge from😂 that and from aoe2 fandom Wikia. But I would LOVE LOVE if the pros become aware of such hidden bonuses because it can be game changing for an important tournament match
There's a specific breakpoint with pikemen going against bloodlines'd knights, where you should maybe match each of their armor upgrade with attack upgrade for the pikemen, otherwise you'll need a whole extra attack. Obviously unless you wanna learn every specific matchup, it's best to just go by the advice in the video.
@9:50 clearer to express as a percentage difference, otherwise you're just reiterating what the upgrade tooltip states (i.e. there's +2 dif). Factoring in the +10 hidden bonus (it's actually +22 vs cavalry for pikes lel) so factoring in the +22, +2 from upgrades is a 7.7% damage increase in this scenario (2/(4+22))[upgrades/(base atk+vs cav bonus)], whereas if there was no hidden bonus the two blacksmith upgrades would provide a 50% damage increase (2/4)[upgrades/base atk]. TLDR: because the magnitude of the vs cavalry atk bonus is so much greater than the blacksmith upgrades to atk, the atk upgrades are near inconsequential to the result of the fight, as can be best seen when the difference is expressed as a percentage.
btw @hera , are you a Scarborough mans? I feel like it's that or Brampton -- just a suspicion based on some of your team-game argot ;) #6ixhype #drakeshighkeyabitch
I wish you also would have talked about the unconventional ones. Like scouts vs spear in feudal. There is actually better to take forging over scale barding armor, because the bonus damage is so high that taking 1 less damage basically don't change anything, while killing the spear 1 hit before is much better. Also forging is better for scouts to raid. Usually when using cavalry vs pikes (not a suggested encounter but still in feudal it happens to have to micro 1 or 2 spears down) it's better to have attack on the cavalry and defense on the spear than the other way around
Something to note, the difference between non-upgraded knights and +2 attack knights vs these crossbows. The added damage helped them kill 5 more crossbows which is quite nice. The team bonus of Persians gives Knights +2 attack against archers right off the bat. Seems like this bonus is quite strong !
Great serie Hera. Thanks for that! I come back to this game after more than 10 years and firstly it overwhelm me. THanks to you and T90 I better understand the game mechanics what helps me to have more fun while playing. And about the question! I have always a problem when some players mass some special units (for example Wag Wagon from Koreans) - what to do in those situations? I figured out (but to late) that combining pikes and bombard canon could help me to beat him. Maybe you have some universal advices about dealing with enemy in those kind of situations?
Hey, I think I am a bit late. But in my opinion you have to think about the investments you both make. A castle cost 650 stone (for most civs) This is a huge investent if you compare it to a situation where you invest your viltime into getting food/gold/wood for more tc's or other militairy buildings. You did not specify if the person makes the castle in early castle age or later on (late castle age when he already has 3 tc's or imp). And the map you are playing so I will try to describe most of the situations. Arena 1. The person is getting his castle right away in castle age. (this can be 1 castle or double castle) This is a common strategy for civs like Burmese and Spanish. You took Koreans for an axample but Warwagons simply cost to much for a 1tc eco unit. You will be investing everything you have in that unit where it can easely be countered by things like knights and monks, or knights and skirms. This is the best example of a big investment to get a big reward. Where you are making another 2 towncenters you will be having the better eco. He has got to do damage in this is something you have to remember. The problem in Arena is that you can't really use mobility that well. You have to get inside his base to do damage but this does not mean that there is nothing you can do. You will have the better economy and you can use this to your advantage. When he is pushing you try to use monks. Specially when he has low numbers there is not a lot he can do against that. Besides that monks have more range than most Unique Units. This will hold him back for atleast 5min game time. Just make sure you get sanctity (this gives you +15 hp which means monks can take a little more hits fighting against small numbers). After the 5min of defending him while you will be having atleast +20 vils by now, He will come with siege. This can easely be countered by using your own siege. It might be smart to get townwatch at this point. Also get handcart if you can affort it. With some basic economy macro you should be able to affort that and this should boost your economy. At this point there are two things you could do. 1.1 Go full castle age play and kinda powerplay him out to his own base This is something I recommend when you have a heavy knight civ like franks, slavs, khmer etc. This is also something I would recomment if you really want to improve, because it really practises your economy balance and production. Keep in mind to NOT overmicro your units since this will disbalance your economy and will give him a change to get back into the game. Either just patrol in or in case he has a treb or bbc snipe the bbc/treb and gb. Keep working on your economy. At some point you really want to go up and ones you click up you want to get like 7-8 vils on to stone for your 4th towncenter and to make a castle right away. (if you can effort it do this earlier but keep in mind that at this point taking out his army is (imo) more important than building that castle. 1.2 the second thing you could do at this point is go up to imp. You should be imp at probably the same time as him if he stays one tc. This is something I would recomment if your a civ with BBC and arbalest. You can effort this because the upgrades and units are rather cheap and besically counters everything he could use. 2. The person is going FI with a castle This is done with civs like Turks or Maya. This is not that common anymore since I believe they nerfed plums a lot and I heard that jans suck now. But if you happen to face this strat it is rather easy to counter. Basically what you have to do is going 3 tc like always and the moment he is imp and will be pushing you make a lot of knights and siege to push him back (He would even have a worse eco than someone who is going castle age play). 3. Miniboom into multiple castles in imp. Seeing that you talked about Warwagons I believe this is the situation you were talking about. Your right, it is really hard to face War Wagons. Specially when they are combined with siege. But you have to remember that they need to get to that point of the game. We are talking about late game here. 3.1 The best way to counter this is simply be faster than him. Doing your own Fast Imperial (using trebs or bbc and a support unit) and making sure that even if they have castles, that you take them down right away. He has to mass his unit anyways and if you can prefend that than that would be awesome! 3.2 Just powerplay in Imperial. Even if you kind of do the same boom as him (taking in count your civs have the same economy). You should be able to be slightly faster in imp than him. Against WarWagons simply get heavy cav or some other powerunit with some siege. and make sure he can not expand to the other golds and stones and make sure you get the same or more relics than him. Now I will talk a bit about other maps. Since I have basically talked about the way you should approach. However in every map this plays out a bit differently. In the situations above I took Arena for an example and Arena is kind of a closed map. But what if you have an open map like Arabia?
Arabia In my opinion it should be harder to go for the Unique Unit aproach than in a closed map like Arena. You need to spent time walling and this will delay your push. But on the other hand you got the same problem while you have to defend. Also, you most likely won't stone wall in Arabia. In Arabia you have the advantage that you can scout what he is doing. And you are able to pressure him before he got his castle up. This can be done by a simple drush or flush build where you make sure he does not have the change to get to stone. If he happen to have both his stonepiles in the back you still delay him. I know that in practise this is a lot harder than in theory since you need to defend well and your uptimes and eco management has to be on point. Since this is the comment section of Hera I will start with saying that if you really want to learn a perfect buildorder to stop these kind of pushes I would recomment subscribing to Hera's Twitch stream (www.twitch.tv/hera). Because if you are a subscriber there, you get acces to his Build Orders in his discord. Apart from that I will talk a bit about some other things to improve your game play Eco management I cant stress enough how important this is. Specially now with all those Build Orders and all the fancy micro happening nowadays people tend to forget how important eco management is. A build order is not enough. It sure helps a lot (specially Hera's Build Order guides for subscribers) but it does not tell the whole story. I would recomment watching this video (th-cam.com/video/zI2-TN3K3Dg/w-d-xo.html) Its a video from Daut talking about how and where you should focus on while improving on what level. The video is from two years ago on voobly. But in my opinion its even more relevant today. Also Hera has a lot of video's where he talks about tips for improving your economy th-cam.com/video/mJfFhVSuyRE/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/6cIa00ft-PM/w-d-xo.html Important is to note what you want to make and bace your economy around that. I give you an axample. Lets say I am castle age at around 23min. I made scouts and I did more damage than I took. My opponent is now fully walled and I know I have the economy advantage. However I found it risky to do a 1tc all in push since I don't want to screw it up and give away my advantage. I am Lithuanians and I know I have the better army combo aslong as I get relics. and map control. So I want to do a miniboom into full knights. In that case you will spent a lot of food, wood and gold in the near future. So after you placed your two extra towncenters while scouting what he is doing, you should do upgrades that will help you with getting to the point of getting 5 stable knight production. In this case heavy plow, handcart and gold shaft mining upgrade might be a great idea before you add all those stables since handcart boosts your food production by a lot so you need less farms to keep your stable and tc production going while still looking towards Imperial at some point. Heavy plow helps safe you a lot of wood while you are making new farms. This helps you expand when you get to late game (you safe a lot more wood wich helps you later in the game) and goldshaft mining since you will be spending a lot of gold. The point I want to make clear with this axample is that you need to look into why you do upgrades instead of simply blindly doing them because experts do them. Scouting Scouting is also a big helping key in countering strats like these. Scouting does not stop after dark age! I mentioned in my example above that you should scout what your opponent is doing. If you don't do that you will get suprised and will be losing a lot of vils. Lets say your adding two extra tc's without scouting what your opponent is doing. He is going double stable with a forward siege workshop and you haven't scouted it. You will not be prepaired for his push and will most likely lose because of this. That is why you should always keep scouting. It is even worth it making an extra unit (preferably a scout) to know what your opponent is up to. Xbows are easely countered by some siege and walls and is a big investment. And you can counter Knights with your own knights and monks. Some even use towers and monks. This is basically how to counter the Hoang rush in theory. Try to raid his side golds. He most likely has walled his main gold but at some point he has to get to his side golds since his main gold will dry out fast. If you can raid him at those so called key positions you can slow down his push or even stop it all together. A good axample of good scouting is this video (th-cam.com/video/SPlwyeTpmC0/w-d-xo.html) I hope this helps somewhat. I hope you are still playing and improving! I just want to add that I am not an expert. I have reached 2k on Voobly pre-DE so I know the basics of the game. If someone like @Hera - Age of Empires 2 or any other person got some critisism or comment about what I have said above. Feel free to reply.
you'd have even more knights left if u manage to get foraging only. attack= 10+1 - 2 archer armor= 9 attack per strike on archer with 35hp. It will take 4 strikes to each archer (9x4=36 attack) rather than 5 strikes with just the armor.
Hello Hera, I really like your teaching videos, they are very clear and I learned a lot. Especially Beginner To 2k Guide. However I almost don't play 1v1, rather 2v2 with a friend and I wonder what would be the differencies from your proffesional point of view. I feel that they are much more aggresive (rewarding) than 1v1 games. Would you consider to make a video(s) about this topic?
spirit of the hera, brilliant vid and learning so much, noob wuestion, but when hitting feudal age, is it better to just save to go to castle or is there any eco techs you would get first before clicking up????
Please Hera, would you mind making a video on the best unit stance (defensive, stand ground etc.) in what situation and what is ideal for pathing; using attack move or patrol?
Here's my question. Is there an economical difference to infantry vs. cavalry(in feudal age) Specifically, is there an attack or defensive cost advantage with regard to choosing infantry or cavalry? Is there more BANG for eco spent one way vs. the other? Please disregard speed and manueverability in this scenario.
Hi Hera. With that in mind, should you do the second armor uprade for the knights before doing the first attack upgrade? Same question for the second attack upgrade for archers vs defense upgrade. Thank you. I love your videos!
If you're going archers then you get fletching first. If you have a lot of skirms then you get fletching first too but it's also recommended to get armour on them.
Classic math teacher Hera making me solve for the knight numbers myself: [ 150F (Forging) + 220F 120G (iron casting) ] / 60F 75G (knight cost) = 1 knight + 310F 45G 1knight =/= 6 knights What are you Canadians learning at school? Over estimation? ;)
Well, the the villager time needed to buy these upgrades is about the same as the time needed to buy ~3.5 knights. Still not 6 of course, but not a bad guess I would say. And I think it's true that 3 or 4 extra knights would be much better than the upgrades in a fight like this.
Hi Hera I'm new to your channel and been learning alot from you on playing AOE2 DE. Could you do this video on arches as well? And could you do a video on economy upgrades. Like is getting the wood upgrade on frugal worth it or better to do later game?
Interesting video! Keep it up. I have to say if you aspire to get more professional, you have to do your research in advance. It's quite easy to find (watch any SotL video) how much bonus damage pikes get vs cavalry, but its bugging me that you could not say how much while it was something you were talking about.
Maybe a video on "looks weak, but actually strong" civ bonuses ? For example, the vietnamese bonus of showing enemy location at start looks useless to my noob self, but is pretty valued by better players.
Hey Hera! Nice video, very clear indeed! I'm a 1400 elo player and I usually struggle with feudal aggression. When would be a good point to get the offensive upgrades? I try to get the defensive ones (for melee) as soon as I can get my hands on them but I'm always not sure when to get the offensive. thanks for the good content on here and twitch!
Can you do a similar topic but focus on when the get the techs? For example I often get the techs too soon without enough military and get steamrolled before I can produce enough of the higher quality units. I would like to know if common scenarios, like crossbow on crossbow no kiting, how many extra archers are worth one upgrade. Thanks!
I've seen you researching wheelbarrow very early, while Spirit of the Law calculated it is theoretically only cost-effective after about 34 farms. What's your practical view about that? Edit: Correction: the correct number is 22 farms.
Against fully upgraded castle age Knights (120 HP, 2+2 melee armor), a Pikeman with NO upgrades deals 22 damage per hit, killing the Knight in 5 hits. If you give the Pikeman both the Forging and Iron Casting upgrades, they are dealing 24 damage per hit, and therefore kill the Knight in only 4 hits instead. Simply put, you should’ve done the test with Bloodlines on the Knights, as without it you’re basically just misinforming your audience. The attack upgrades are only redundant against Knights _without Bloodlines._
I think Pikemen actually have +22 bonus damage vs Cavalry (not 10), which is why they win the fight so convincingly. +10 only wouldn't make them win so hard Spearman should have +15 vs Cavalry ; and Halbardier should have +32 vs Cavalry Source : Age of Empires Series Wiki
if you know that your cav line will be against pikes, what's better? armor or attack? since they have that hidden bonus and you will get less hits if you have more attack.
Hera, i like your content, but this kind of content is really the domain of SOTL - he does it way better. If you wanna give us some additional insight, talk about your experience as a pro - something that was mostly missing from this video.
I dunno. Yes, these are low-effort compared to SotL's videos, but I always appreciate some additional perspective on things when it comes from a pro instead of a single source that might forget sth. or take sth. for granted.
Hi Hera can we have a video about market on the team gameplay? Me and my freinds had a team game where the OP have 70K Gold income when we only had 20K
Good question! In most cases one blacksmith should be enough. However lets say you are playing some Blackforest teamgame and you did a standard boom. Now you want to get all blacksmith upgrades as fast as possible. In that case (since a blacksmith is only 150) wood it might be worth making two blacksmiths to get the upgrades slightly faster. This also applies if you want to make a quick unit switch and you have the resorses for it. Apart from that its better to just stick with one since it still is an investment you could avoid most of the times.
Hi Hera! I'm an audio engineer and a huge fan of Age of Empires and its the community! I wanna give you guys, FOR FREE an masterclass of audio in order to improove the audio of all you guys of the AM team, the Secret team and the Chinese as well. These will involve the recording gear, loudness statements for every platform and signal processing with OBS, using very light processing plugins. Talk to the guys and tell me what you guys think! Thanks for your great content! I'm learning a lot!
![[UNCUT] “บอสณวัฒน์” ลากไส้!! ใครหนุนหลัง "แม่ตั๊ก ป๋าเบียร์" I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 30 ก.ย. 67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QlD7mU2KKRk/mqdefault.jpg)
Day 18 of 30! Let me know if you enjoy these kinds of videos, and if so which question do you want me to answer next? Road to 25k is on!
Another great video covering a topic that I've felt I needed to know more about. The audio seems a bit quiet, but no big deal
Sth on water. Balancing different types of ships
Ty for the video very intresting! I think a good way to prove ur point is to watch the relative value of the upgrade: if I have 10 attack and I get +1 is a 10% increase where if I have 1 armour and I get +1 armour I get double the armor from the upgrade! P. S. An hotkey video would be super useful thx from Italy! :D
I'd like to know if mining upgrades, especially stone mining should be researched.
Show this with persians and possible other civs bonuses
"Hey guys spirit of the Hera here"
Underrated comment!!!
Black smiths matter
This is a question I’ve asked a ton! Your TH-cam content has been top notch lately
Your content a few months ago wasn’t bad but I didn’t really watch it much. Maybe it’s bc I’ve grown to enjoy your commentary via streams but I think you’ve really been putting more effort into TH-cam. Point is good job & keep it up heraLove :)
yeah i randomly came here because youtube algorithm and i stayed because of this awesome work
You could really benefit from a small amount of scripting for generally smoother and more easily absorbed diction, but other than that you are giving extremely helpful information with a very positive, upbeat attitude and the tests help people who learn visually and practically understand better. Keep up the great work!!
magyar player: attack upgrade? what's an attack upgrade?
Melee units: armor first
Range units: attack first
Except with conqus 11
dont forget forging before raiding your opponent with knights. Killing vills in 4 attacks instead of 5 is juicy
It might be worth adding that the time taken to research the technology can vary considerably: by the Imperial Age Bracer is researched in 30 seconds, Plate Barding Armour in 75 and Blast Furnace in 100s. In Feudal and Castle these differences are less extreme.
Thanks for the videos!
Could you explain in detail with keyboard camera and onscreen example how to quickwall? I tried it several times, and I don't quite get it still.
First of all, you need to set your Hotkeys so you can access it really easy.
And you need Map Awarenes, so you notice, when you are under attack
And you have to practice... Like 100 Games min...
Thats about it
The only thing you need to know to quickwall is first the hotkeys and the most important thing, try this
Click (or use hotkeys) to make a wall and at the same time press shift, you won't have to press the hotkeys again and this in online games helps a lot as the ping doesn't matter
I dont recommend beginners to try to quickwall, much better to focus on other things. That said i might make a video on it
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Right! I hope to see you in the red bul wololo tournament. best of luck there, man!
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 I'm not a beginner. I'm 15x DE rated and can't quick wall in DE. It was easier in Voobly. I'd like a video too
Thank you for the informatives! :))
Your willingness to go above and beyond to educate and inform our community is much appreciated!
You excel as answering tricky questions so the lay can understand, Hera.
I really didnt like your explanation here. The devil is in the details.
In the Pikemen vs Knights fight its about specific breaking points. Pikemen have 22 Bonus dmg vs Cavalry. so they deal 24 dmg per attack before upgrades. thats exactly a 5 hit on 120 HP knights. if the Knights have 1 defense upgrade more than the Pikemen have attack upgrades Knights win this fight bc they survive 1 more hit.
Without Bloodlines Pikemen that have 1 more attack upgrade than Knights have defense upgrades they kill in 1 less hit and this is also huge.
On the other hand Pikes have 55 HP so Knights with 1 more attack upgrade than defense upgrade on the other side kill in 1 less hit as well. 1 more defense for the pikemen than attack upgrade on the other side has the reverse effect.
The Knights vs Crossbow fight is also a quick explanation: Crossbows have 7 attack and Knights between 2 and 4 defense. that means Crossbowmen deal between 5 and 3 dmg with every shot. thats a diffrence of 40%. That is HUGE that why the defense upgrades are so important.
On the other side Knights need 4 hits to kill a Crossbowmen unless the Knights are 2 attack upgrades ahead (3 hits) or 2 upgrades behind vs the Crossbowmens defense upgrades (5 hits).
And this Ladies and Gentlemen is the value of the Persian Teambonus. against every other civ Crossbows are fine with 1 armor upgrade whatever the Knight player does.
Takeaway: The diffrence in what dmg melee units deal isnt that big bc they attacks are already huge. +1 or +2 doesnt matter that much except a few specific breakpoints.
+1 or +2 dmg on effectivly 3 attack of the Crossbowmen is HUGE.
I love ur explanation more. And that's what i am always thinking of. It's more important to look how many hit to kill and resist before and after upgrade.
Spirit of the law, that's your second account?^^
@@hallo918 please this isnt even math. that's just counting. a real Math question would be: how many more Numbers would you need for which amount of upgrades.
also tiny advantages steamroll heavily so what looks like small advantages on 10 knights could be huge on 30 knights with equal ratios. Lancesters laws are a bitch.
@@hansoskar1911 True! Same as why I think one damage upgrade for knights is pretty important if you want to raid with them cause they will kill vills in 4 hits instead of 5 making your raids a lot more deadly.
I mean "the devil is in the details"... Plz.
The conclusion is the same you simply wrote off the exact numbers. Ok cool but in order to get good at the game you don't need to know every bonus in exact numbers and do calculations to know if you are going to win or less a fight.
Hera's video is not to make happy the stat nerds is for helping beginners understand which upgrade to take first.
It’s most easy to think about the percent increase or decrease of dps. For knight vs crossbow, the cross bow has 2 melee armor, so +2 attack increases dps by 25%. While +2 pierced armor decreases crossbow’s dps by 40%
It would be really interesting to see more effective attack upgrades as a civ bonus. Imagine a civ that doesn't have the final armor upgrades, but all attack upgrades give double their usual damage bonus (possibly also for archer upgrades)
This would make for quite a different way to play the game as that civ, but also change up how other civs play against it.
You get:
+4 Attack for Infantry and cavalry
+2 Attack and +2 range for Archer Units
And you lose:
-1 Melee armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers
-2 Pierce Armor for Infantry/Cavalry/Archers
The cleanest way to write this down is #of hits needed for kill and then % difference each upgrade makes. You did it well in the villager example, but for all other examples it would make it MUCH more clear and exact.
Another great video Hera! Your videos improve my understanding of the game and also help me introduce my friends to AoE2 DE thank you very much :-) P.S can't wait for more!
The knights running at the crossbows is like the LOTR 3 when Faramirs knights charge at osgilitath. lol.
You've been putting a lot of work into these educational videos. You've earned a comment, thumbs up and subscription
Well structured and planned video that gets your points across to a point where even a lowly AI only scrub like me can get a practical use out of it.
The knight vs. ranged unit armor in particular is brutal if the enemy tries countering your crossbows with a couple of skirms and two knights can basically murder an entire platoon of them to keep said crossbows safe with armor upgrades, even if the skirms are fully upgraded. (Then again, you wouldn't usually prioritize the damage anyway to counter crossbows, so it's another situational awareness thing.)
Finally, on one hand I kind of agree with Hans Oskar about the factual, mathematical proof behind it. On the other, the people these videos are probably made for aren't good enough at the game yet. A friend of mine still tried to argue with me that pikes don't counter knights because they don't stomp them in equal numbers. Also that skirms don't counter archers because Feudal age, no upgrade skirms couldn't beat Castle age, full upgrade crossbows. For him, knowing specific breakpoints is probably less useful than "in general, this is better than that".
Keep up the good work, have been enjoying your civ showcases and team games a lot. The tutorials and overall tips & tricks videos aren't bad either.
Thanks for the video Hera! I never thought the armour upgrades were THAT effective before this. Subbed.
Thanks much for the video. I have a feeling -but not hard data to back it up currently - that in AOE2 units have less HP, they’re more fragile lets say compared to Age of Mythology whose units have more HP, they last longer in fights. This dynamic results in, making your units more durable would make a better investment percentage-wise. Again thanks much for bringing out this dynamic visual. Keep up the good work.
You always know percentage wise what is the better upgrade. For example, first knight armor upgrade reduces crossbow damage with bodkin by 25% (from 5 to 4) while the attack upgrade gives knights only roughly 10% more damage.
So clear and extremly useful! Thanks a lot
Melee units always go with armor first.
It's the benefits of simultaneously taking damages from more than one sources, so each armor point gets multiplied.
E.g. 1 Knight vs 3 archers, upgrading armor by 1 reduces 3 damages in 1 round of attack, and the benefits increase per the scale.
While upgrading attack has a fixed benefit, of which +1 attack point on each attack regardless of the scale.
Loving the commitment to the month and the quality content; keep it up!
There's just a variation you didn't talk about - and it's kind of implied if you think about it, but still: for the same reason it's good to get armor for pikes when fighting knights (possibly surviving an extra hit), it's equally important to get attack upgrades for knights when fighting pikes (doesn't happen as often in most games nowadays, but when it does it's quite relevant). Ie: if (knight's attack) - (pike's defense) >= 11, then it takes 5 hits to kill pike (55hp), otherwise that's 6 or even 7 hits.
6:33 10:22 11:52 Knights at the front pondering the space-time continuum for a second before attacking xd
You are the best!! Hera, keep on helping people and sharing your 2k knowledges :)
Gotta say, hera is finally explaining things many players ask. Thanks broski.
Now I fell like a smart boy for already knowing this.
Nice video
I mean yes but have you considered the imperial age militia rush? Kappa
You are too dangerous to be kept alive
About knights vs crossbows, crossbows also get a few shots off before knights can attack, which adds more to the benfit of armour
bottomline, armor first then attack. best aoe channel nowadays. do your homework and beat viper at the next tournament champ.
Thanks to yt videos the skill lever have much improved in everry way of the community
Pikemen have an attack bonus of +22 vs cavalry. That is nowhere close to +10. :P
Perfect thanks 11, well I just used 10 as an example and I hope it was enough to answer the question in the vid
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 Well if the attack of a Pikeman minus the armor of a knight was roughly equal to the attack of a knight minus the armor of a pikeman, it wouldn't matter that much which Blacksmith upgrades to get, would it?
Martijn Bouman That makes it even better. 2 Atk increase from 12 to 14 is more effective than from 24 to 26, which means it’s even more worthless to go for Atk upgrade.
Martijn Bouman No, the armor upgrade is always better. The surviving units make a huge diff. A unit dishing out n hits with +2 atk is worse than doing extra 1-2 hit with original atk (for the case of Pikemen, the effect is even bigger due to their sky high atk vs cav).
it feels like the effect of +10 dmg bc the pikemen attackrate is 3 vs knights 1.8 so if they attacked at the same rate +10 would be be in the right ballpark.
according to Spirit of the Law, Spears, Pikes and Halbs do +15, +22, +32 respectively against cavalry, so has you said, getting +2attack means going from 26 to 28 damage (minus the armor of the knight), while +2 armor means a chance to deal another 26 damage
10:00 maybe a better way to express that is that +2 damage for pikes is only a ~7.5% increase due to the +22 bonus damage. +2 attack gets a 20% increase in damage for the knights. However a -2 damage for the crossbows due to +2 armour is 29% damage reduction reduction.
This is such an important video. Improved my game right away
Spirit of the Hera
Great video, I thought of two more exceptions as well : ). If you want to kill pikemen with your knights for some odd reason, attack is better. Also if you outnumber the enemy, say with 20 longswords vs 10 knights, or 20 eagles vs 10 knights the attack is better there as well. Also Karambits need attack above all else imo.
@hera, okay, this was very extensive and informative! Thanks a lot! Appreciated! :)
Great video! Hera can you make a video about all the "hidden" and "bonus" damages or armors in the game? I know most pro players don't like to get into the math (except maybe tatoh or max) but I think many pros DO NOT know about certain hidden armors unless explicitly popularized in the pro scene. Like I know recently in an AM TG you guys couldn't find a counter to cataphracts because catas have an +12/16 hidden armor against bonus cav damage. This means the genoese xbows +7 bonus cav damage is negated (similarly camels don't counter catas cause heavy and imp camels have +18 bonus but deal only +2 due to the hidden armor) Another surprising hidden armor is the -3 melee armor of rams. It's crazy because a negative armor means every melee units does + 3 damage to rams inherently (like a knight would do 10 + 3 damage with any upgrades). Things get even crazier when you learn chu ko nus not only have a Pierce damage, but a 0 melee damage. Thus they also cause extra 3 damage to rams. I think such kind of a video, from a pro player will be very impactful because people expect such hidden bonuses to be used by a pro in a tournament to actually see how amazing they are rather than some noob(like me) making a video using scenario editor giving units -50 melee armor and +0 melee damage to see the unit causing 50 damage or such dumb things 😂
You can find all this stuff on Spirit of the Law's channel. He does the maths and everything around the hidden bonuses.
PianoDome I know that's where I got all of this knowledge from😂 that and from aoe2 fandom Wikia. But I would LOVE LOVE if the pros become aware of such hidden bonuses because it can be game changing for an important tournament match
There's a specific breakpoint with pikemen going against bloodlines'd knights, where you should maybe match each of their armor upgrade with attack upgrade for the pikemen, otherwise you'll need a whole extra attack. Obviously unless you wanna learn every specific matchup, it's best to just go by the advice in the video.
@9:50 clearer to express as a percentage difference, otherwise you're just reiterating what the upgrade tooltip states (i.e. there's +2 dif). Factoring in the +10 hidden bonus (it's actually +22 vs cavalry for pikes lel) so factoring in the +22, +2 from upgrades is a 7.7% damage increase in this scenario (2/(4+22))[upgrades/(base atk+vs cav bonus)], whereas if there was no hidden bonus the two blacksmith upgrades would provide a 50% damage increase (2/4)[upgrades/base atk]. TLDR: because the magnitude of the vs cavalry atk bonus is so much greater than the blacksmith upgrades to atk, the atk upgrades are near inconsequential to the result of the fight, as can be best seen when the difference is expressed as a percentage.
btw @hera , are you a Scarborough mans? I feel like it's that or Brampton -- just a suspicion based on some of your team-game argot ;) #6ixhype #drakeshighkeyabitch
I wish you also would have talked about the unconventional ones. Like scouts vs spear in feudal. There is actually better to take forging over scale barding armor, because the bonus damage is so high that taking 1 less damage basically don't change anything, while killing the spear 1 hit before is much better. Also forging is better for scouts to raid.
Usually when using cavalry vs pikes (not a suggested encounter but still in feudal it happens to have to micro 1 or 2 spears down) it's better to have attack on the cavalry and defense on the spear than the other way around
Something to note, the difference between non-upgraded knights and +2 attack knights vs these crossbows. The added damage helped them kill 5 more crossbows which is quite nice.
The team bonus of Persians gives Knights +2 attack against archers right off the bat. Seems like this bonus is quite strong !
Life changing video
You are doing a great work ! Please keep it up my boi. You are very helpful
I'm so glad i sat through that, u am succeeding at improving
great info explained clear and easily cheers man
My brother and I were just talking about this topic, thanks for the video!
HeraHype - Super strong video as usual, keep getting after it!! - HeraHype
Great serie Hera. Thanks for that!
I come back to this game after more than 10 years and firstly it overwhelm me. THanks to you and T90 I better understand the game mechanics what helps me to have more fun while playing.
And about the question!
I have always a problem when some players mass some special units (for example Wag Wagon from Koreans) - what to do in those situations? I figured out (but to late) that combining pikes and bombard canon could help me to beat him. Maybe you have some universal advices about dealing with enemy in those kind of situations?
War wagons can't deal with massed skirms. As long as you're not playing turks just spam skirms until the korean player runs out of gold.
Hey, I think I am a bit late. But in my opinion you have to think about the investments you both make. A castle cost 650 stone (for most civs) This is a huge investent if you compare it to a situation where you invest your viltime into getting food/gold/wood for more tc's or other militairy buildings.
You did not specify if the person makes the castle in early castle age or later on (late castle age when he already has 3 tc's or imp). And the map you are playing so I will try to describe most of the situations.
Arena
1. The person is getting his castle right away in castle age. (this can be 1 castle or double castle)
This is a common strategy for civs like Burmese and Spanish. You took Koreans for an axample but Warwagons simply cost to much for a 1tc eco unit. You will be investing everything you have in that unit where it can easely be countered by things like knights and monks, or knights and skirms.
This is the best example of a big investment to get a big reward. Where you are making another 2 towncenters you will be having the better eco. He has got to do damage in this is something you have to remember.
The problem in Arena is that you can't really use mobility that well. You have to get inside his base to do damage but this does not mean that there is nothing you can do. You will have the better economy and you can use this to your advantage. When he is pushing you try to use monks. Specially when he has low numbers there is not a lot he can do against that. Besides that monks have more range than most Unique Units. This will hold him back for atleast 5min game time. Just make sure you get sanctity (this gives you +15 hp which means monks can take a little more hits fighting against small numbers). After the 5min of defending him while you will be having atleast +20 vils by now, He will come with siege. This can easely be countered by using your own siege. It might be smart to get townwatch at this point. Also get handcart if you can affort it. With some basic economy macro you should be able to affort that and this should boost your economy.
At this point there are two things you could do. 1.1 Go full castle age play and kinda powerplay him out to his own base This is something I recommend when you have a heavy knight civ like franks, slavs, khmer etc. This is also something I would recomment if you really want to improve, because it really practises your economy balance and production. Keep in mind to NOT overmicro your units since this will disbalance your economy and will give him a change to get back into the game. Either just patrol in or in case he has a treb or bbc snipe the bbc/treb and gb. Keep working on your economy. At some point you really want to go up and ones you click up you want to get like 7-8 vils on to stone for your 4th towncenter and to make a castle right away. (if you can effort it do this earlier but keep in mind that at this point taking out his army is (imo) more important than building that castle.
1.2 the second thing you could do at this point is go up to imp. You should be imp at probably the same time as him if he stays one tc. This is something I would recomment if your a civ with BBC and arbalest. You can effort this because the upgrades and units are rather cheap and besically counters everything he could use.
2. The person is going FI with a castle This is done with civs like Turks or Maya.
This is not that common anymore since I believe they nerfed plums a lot and I heard that jans suck now. But if you happen to face this strat it is rather easy to counter. Basically what you have to do is going 3 tc like always and the moment he is imp and will be pushing you make a lot of knights and siege to push him back (He would even have a worse eco than someone who is going castle age play).
3. Miniboom into multiple castles in imp.
Seeing that you talked about Warwagons I believe this is the situation you were talking about. Your right, it is really hard to face War Wagons. Specially when they are combined with siege. But you have to remember that they need to get to that point of the game. We are talking about late game here. 3.1 The best way to counter this is simply be faster than him. Doing your own Fast Imperial (using trebs or bbc and a support unit) and making sure that even if they have castles, that you take them down right away. He has to mass his unit anyways and if you can prefend that than that would be awesome! 3.2 Just powerplay in Imperial. Even if you kind of do the same boom as him (taking in count your civs have the same economy). You should be able to be slightly faster in imp than him. Against WarWagons simply get heavy cav or some other powerunit with some siege. and make sure he can not expand to the other golds and stones and make sure you get the same or more relics than him.
Now I will talk a bit about other maps. Since I have basically talked about the way you should approach. However in every map this plays out a bit differently. In the situations above I took Arena for an example and Arena is kind of a closed map. But what if you have an open map like Arabia?
Arabia
In my opinion it should be harder to go for the Unique Unit aproach than in a closed map like Arena. You need to spent time walling and this will delay your push. But on the other hand you got the same problem while you have to defend. Also, you most likely won't stone wall in Arabia. In Arabia you have the advantage that you can scout what he is doing. And you are able to pressure him before he got his castle up. This can be done by a simple drush or flush build where you make sure he does not have the change to get to stone. If he happen to have both his stonepiles in the back you still delay him. I know that in practise this is a lot harder than in theory since you need to defend well and your uptimes and eco management has to be on point.
Since this is the comment section of Hera I will start with saying that if you really want to learn a perfect buildorder to stop these kind of pushes I would recomment subscribing to Hera's Twitch stream (www.twitch.tv/hera). Because if you are a subscriber there, you get acces to his Build Orders in his discord. Apart from that I will talk a bit about some other things to improve your game play
Eco management
I cant stress enough how important this is. Specially now with all those Build Orders and all the fancy micro happening nowadays people tend to forget how important eco management is. A build order is not enough. It sure helps a lot (specially Hera's Build Order guides for subscribers) but it does not tell the whole story. I would recomment watching this video (th-cam.com/video/zI2-TN3K3Dg/w-d-xo.html) Its a video from Daut talking about how and where you should focus on while improving on what level. The video is from two years ago on voobly. But in my opinion its even more relevant today. Also Hera has a lot of video's where he talks about tips for improving your economy th-cam.com/video/mJfFhVSuyRE/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/6cIa00ft-PM/w-d-xo.html
Important is to note what you want to make and bace your economy around that. I give you an axample. Lets say I am castle age at around 23min. I made scouts and I did more damage than I took. My opponent is now fully walled and I know I have the economy advantage. However I found it risky to do a 1tc all in push since I don't want to screw it up and give away my advantage. I am Lithuanians and I know I have the better army combo aslong as I get relics. and map control. So I want to do a miniboom into full knights. In that case you will spent a lot of food, wood and gold in the near future. So after you placed your two extra towncenters while scouting what he is doing, you should do upgrades that will help you with getting to the point of getting 5 stable knight production. In this case heavy plow, handcart and gold shaft mining upgrade might be a great idea before you add all those stables since handcart boosts your food production by a lot so you need less farms to keep your stable and tc production going while still looking towards Imperial at some point. Heavy plow helps safe you a lot of wood while you are making new farms. This helps you expand when you get to late game (you safe a lot more wood wich helps you later in the game) and goldshaft mining since you will be spending a lot of gold.
The point I want to make clear with this axample is that you need to look into why you do upgrades instead of simply blindly doing them because experts do them.
Scouting
Scouting is also a big helping key in countering strats like these. Scouting does not stop after dark age! I mentioned in my example above that you should scout what your opponent is doing. If you don't do that you will get suprised and will be losing a lot of vils. Lets say your adding two extra tc's without scouting what your opponent is doing. He is going double stable with a forward siege workshop and you haven't scouted it. You will not be prepaired for his push and will most likely lose because of this. That is why you should always keep scouting. It is even worth it making an extra unit (preferably a scout) to know what your opponent is up to. Xbows are easely countered by some siege and walls and is a big investment. And you can counter Knights with your own knights and monks. Some even use towers and monks. This is basically how to counter the Hoang rush in theory.
Try to raid his side golds. He most likely has walled his main gold but at some point he has to get to his side golds since his main gold will dry out fast. If you can raid him at those so called key positions you can slow down his push or even stop it all together. A good axample of good scouting is this video (th-cam.com/video/SPlwyeTpmC0/w-d-xo.html)
I hope this helps somewhat. I hope you are still playing and improving! I just want to add that I am not an expert. I have reached 2k on Voobly pre-DE so I know the basics of the game. If someone like @Hera - Age of Empires 2 or any other person got some critisism or comment about what I have said above. Feel free to reply.
Hera of the Law
you'd have even more knights left if u manage to get foraging only.
attack= 10+1 - 2 archer armor= 9 attack per strike on archer with 35hp. It will take 4 strikes to each archer (9x4=36 attack) rather than 5 strikes with just the armor.
Thanks to youtube videos i started playing aoe2 again
Havent played 10 years. Somebody ask me if i plyed the new aoe
I say which ,the conquers? 🤣🤣🤣
Great video. I guess it helps beginner and even intermediate players a lot
VIDEO STANDARD : GOLD
CONTENT STANDARD : PLATINUM
Hello Hera, I really like your teaching videos, they are very clear and I learned a lot. Especially Beginner To 2k Guide. However I almost don't play 1v1, rather 2v2 with a friend and I wonder what would be the differencies from your proffesional point of view. I feel that they are much more aggresive (rewarding) than 1v1 games. Would you consider to make a video(s) about this topic?
spirit of the hera, brilliant vid and learning so much, noob wuestion, but when hitting feudal age, is it better to just save to go to castle or is there any eco techs you would get first before clicking up????
This is great content lad thanks heaps
Please Hera, would you mind making a video on the best unit stance (defensive, stand ground etc.) in what situation and what is ideal for pathing; using attack move or patrol?
Great vid! Much more digestible that SotL vids.
Here's my question. Is there an economical difference to infantry vs. cavalry(in feudal age) Specifically, is there an attack or defensive cost advantage with regard to choosing infantry or cavalry? Is there more BANG for eco spent one way vs. the other? Please disregard speed and manueverability in this scenario.
Hi Hera. With that in mind, should you do the second armor uprade for the knights before doing the first attack upgrade? Same question for the second attack upgrade for archers vs defense upgrade. Thank you. I love your videos!
great vid
does the other counters, skirm and camel would also be better with armor first , for the same reason as pike hidden bonus?
Ranged units have to go fetching first for the extra range
If you're going archers then you get fletching first. If you have a lot of skirms then you get fletching first too but it's also recommended to get armour on them.
Hey Hera! Great video. Why do you use patrol instead of attack move? Is it more effective when attacking?
Classic math teacher Hera making me solve for the knight numbers myself:
[ 150F (Forging) + 220F 120G (iron casting) ] / 60F 75G (knight cost) = 1 knight + 310F 45G
1knight =/= 6 knights
What are you Canadians learning at school? Over estimation? ;)
Well, the the villager time needed to buy these upgrades is about the same as the time needed to buy ~3.5 knights.
Still not 6 of course, but not a bad guess I would say.
And I think it's true that 3 or 4 extra knights would be much better than the upgrades in a fight like this.
Spirit of the@@corvo1068
Now the real question: at what number it's better to make more unit vs. Getting the upgrade?
In general I got that armor upgrades are best for cav. Fetching is best for archers right off the bat.
good informative vid, thank you
Hi Hera I'm new to your channel and been learning alot from you on playing AOE2 DE.
Could you do this video on arches as well?
And could you do a video on economy upgrades. Like is getting the wood upgrade on frugal worth it or better to do later game?
The upgrade on La Hire's sword is almost done
perfect video, tell us everything you know! Thanks!
Interesting video! Keep it up.
I have to say if you aspire to get more professional, you have to do your research in advance. It's quite easy to find (watch any SotL video) how much bonus damage pikes get vs cavalry, but its bugging me that you could not say how much while it was something you were talking about.
Maybe a video on "looks weak, but actually strong" civ bonuses ?
For example, the vietnamese bonus of showing enemy location at start looks useless to my noob self, but is pretty valued by better players.
that was useful thanks Hera !
Hey Hera! Nice video, very clear indeed! I'm a 1400 elo player and I usually struggle with feudal aggression. When would be a good point to get the offensive upgrades? I try to get the defensive ones (for melee) as soon as I can get my hands on them but I'm always not sure when to get the offensive. thanks for the good content on here and twitch!
Thank you for the explanation
Pikemen has +22 bonus damage against cavalry according to Spirit of the Law videos, so that +2 to attack is even more pitiful.
But if u are knight rushing is important to get +1 damage upgrade so can kill villagers in 1 less hit. Which is super important
Can you do a similar topic but focus on when the get the techs? For example I often get the techs too soon without enough military and get steamrolled before I can produce enough of the higher quality units. I would like to know if common scenarios, like crossbow on crossbow no kiting, how many extra archers are worth one upgrade. Thanks!
I've seen you researching wheelbarrow very early, while Spirit of the Law calculated it is theoretically only cost-effective after about 34 farms.
What's your practical view about that? Edit: Correction: the correct number is 22 farms.
It's about having a stronger eco while castle age is researching.
thanks you are a god
keep up the good work Hera!
thank you it was so useful!
Against fully upgraded castle age Knights (120 HP, 2+2 melee armor), a Pikeman with NO upgrades deals 22 damage per hit, killing the Knight in 5 hits. If you give the Pikeman both the Forging and Iron Casting upgrades, they are dealing 24 damage per hit, and therefore kill the Knight in only 4 hits instead.
Simply put, you should’ve done the test with Bloodlines on the Knights, as without it you’re basically just misinforming your audience. The attack upgrades are only redundant against Knights _without Bloodlines._
I think Pikemen actually have +22 bonus damage vs Cavalry (not 10), which is why they win the fight so convincingly. +10 only wouldn't make them win so hard
Spearman should have +15 vs Cavalry ; and Halbardier should have +32 vs Cavalry
Source : Age of Empires Series Wiki
U MY BOY
This... helps a lot! :o
You're the best Hera!
if you know that your cav line will be against pikes, what's better? armor or attack? since they have that hidden bonus and you will get less hits if you have more attack.
Run away, don't get your Knights In a fight with pikes if you can avoid it. Skirms are a good counter
Bro I'm new here n thanks for helping me out
Hera, i like your content, but this kind of content is really the domain of SOTL - he does it way better. If you wanna give us some additional insight, talk about your experience as a pro - something that was mostly missing from this video.
I dunno. Yes, these are low-effort compared to SotL's videos, but I always appreciate some additional perspective on things when it comes from a pro instead of a single source that might forget sth. or take sth. for granted.
When I create a scenario, the AI units start wondering off. How do I stop that? Anyone knows?
you can put a very narrow cliff around them so they can only walk into each other. Or make a script to make them move towards each other.
Set the AI personality to "None"
what about a knight (attack bonus) vs Knight (defense bonus)?
If I'm raiding with scouts should I get forging first?
Hi Hera can we have a video about market on the team gameplay? Me and my freinds had a team game where the OP have 70K Gold income when we only had 20K
Would you sometimes build more than one blacksmith?
Good question! In most cases one blacksmith should be enough. However lets say you are playing some Blackforest teamgame and you did a standard boom. Now you want to get all blacksmith upgrades as fast as possible. In that case (since a blacksmith is only 150) wood it might be worth making two blacksmiths to get the upgrades slightly faster. This also applies if you want to make a quick unit switch and you have the resorses for it. Apart from that its better to just stick with one since it still is an investment you could avoid most of the times.
hera gets notification on phone 'SOTL wants to know your location'
Hi Hera! I'm an audio engineer and a huge fan of Age of Empires and its the community! I wanna give you guys, FOR FREE an masterclass of audio in order to improove the audio of all you guys of the AM team, the Secret team and the Chinese as well. These will involve the recording gear, loudness statements for every platform and signal processing with OBS, using very light processing plugins. Talk to the guys and tell me what you guys think! Thanks for your great content! I'm learning a lot!
I saw that thumbnail as
144p vs 1080p