Hey Hera, Discount Spirit of the Law here, one thing that is often overlooked with discount bonuses is that being able to put more units on the field affects both the total health and damage of your army. For example, the 30% discount of Mayans allows you to put 42% more archers on the field for the same cost. That army has 42% more hp and 42% more damage, compared to, for example, a Vietnamese archer army with the same resource cost, which only has 20% more hp. If the Vietnamese hp bonus were to be adjusted so that the Vietnamese archer army would match the Mayan army in this way, it would have to be nearly 100% more hp (1.42*1.42). The Mayan bonus is therefore much stronger than it looks.
I did wonder if the Vietnamese bonus wasn't strong enough, it sounds better than it is. Also I don't believe it stacks with bloodlines for CA which makes it just a touch less impactful.
@@mrskinny8555 It does stack, but the Bloodlines bonus isn't increased by an additional 20%. So it's 60*1.2 + 20 = 92 health, but not (60 + 20)*1.2 = 96 health.
The 'cheaper' bonus' are all more powerful too because they actually don't suffer from pop limitations like you would expect. Sure Mayans at 120 vills and 80 archers will have less damage coming out than Ethiopians. But to fund 80 archers Mayans won't need the same 120 vills. At extremes assuming everything else is bought, if they have a 30% discount then they would need 30% less vills and you would have something like 90 vills 110 archers vs 120 vills 80 faster firing archers. Mayans back in the better position.
Consider that early on often the primary limiting factor in how many units can be produced isn't actually unit cost itself, but is instead how many buildings you have which can produce the unit. At this point, while Mayans are still saving more resources, which they can reinvest into other things like economy upgrades, buying their way to castle, quicker farms, etc. it doesn't mean that they'll have a direct numbers advantage in a real game, especially not compared to, for example, Britons with their faster working range.
in my opinion cheaper units are better in offensive/open maps because hitting the enemy faster and crippling their eco is the best strategy in defensive/closed maps stronger units are better because booming isnt an issue, so eventually both players will have the same amount of units and the ones with the better stats will start rolling over the other one. Not to mention as far i know, all the civs with cheaper units dont get all upgrades (goths lack final armor, berbers dont get paladin, huns ca lack armor, malay elephants, etc)
Hmmm, your point about defensive maps holds true if both players are in post-imp with all techs researched and have floating resources. If both are using their resources almost as soon as they generate (as pros do), the cheaper army player should be able to replace his army faster than his opponent. And at any point in the game before post-imp, the cheaper army player should have either a larger army or enough floating resources so as to either age up, mix army compositions, or research key techs earlier than the other player, assuming both players have equal levels of micro and macro.
A pro for “cheaper” units is the visible factor. Just seeing more units on the board (even if they’re weaker) might cause your opponent to avoid some fights and give up some map control, even if the non cheap army could win an engagement.
Hey Hera, thanks for the high quality videos. Just one quick idea: I’d be really curious to learn the strategies of various types of civs on different maps!
Great video as usual. But can you add texts when talking about tech or blacksmith bonuses so that we can quickly see what that tech does. Players like me don't quickly remember the effect of tech and get lost a bit
It's worthwhile to remember that some bonuses like the Japanese atack speed can yeild a LOT more value with specialist units like the halberdier, which has so much of its utility lopsided towards the massive bonus damage in a way that being able to atack faster means a huge damage output increase when used in that role, even though it would probably die or trade very evenly if pitched aganist other "strong" versions of that unir, like a Teutonic or Burmese halberdier, which are otherwise just marginally better than a generic halb in that specialized anti-cav role. Kinda like with Hunic trebuchets being insanely good in treb wars, but otherwise almost identical compared to generic trebs when used aganist buildings or other siege.
Overall I love the video, And it’s obviously such a nuanced topic that you could cover so many angles, but I would have loved to seen you talk about the difference in value of these bonuses in one v ones versus team games. For example, with the Ethiopian versus the Mayans bonus, one of the greatest strengths of the Mayan bonus is the flexibility to tech switch. This is obviously a significant strength in one V one, but in a team game you’re not really looking to tech switch off of archers most of the time
Another thing helping quantity over quality that Spirit of the Law talks about a lot is Lanchester Square Law. So even if the numbers advantage isn't that big, it can easily snowball into a decisive victory.
We could do the "same number of resources" comparison here - get a number of units of both units which cost the same (i.e. a bit more for the cheaper ones) and see how well they do - both against each other, and also against common other units. Of course, this only applies if you actually spend the resources, not if you save the discount to go up faster, or to make a transition.
I would argue that for a unit who is meant to be retained as much as possible, usually a ball of ranged units, then power bonuses become better relative to discount bonuses. This is because regardless of whether you have a bonus or not, losing your mass of ranged units is a pretty big negative, and bonuses which increase the power of your units help you to retain them even more. For units which are meant to be traded away, such as Goth infantry or Magyar Hussars (not the UU, the discounted normal unit 11), the discount is stronger, since it helps you replace something you'd normally lose when using it anyways. You're getting more of the discount working for you while achieving the same effect as a generic civ.
Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that the cheaper cost units also give you the advantage of having the option to research blacksmith techs for the units because of the resources saved. i.e in the case of Magyars making scouts, after a certain number of scouts have been made the Magyar player can opt into armour for the scouts with the saved resources to get the edge in a fight, so even if the opponents scouts are better, you would have a tech advantage when you take the fight.
In early game, cheaper units are better because it is a flexible eco bonus and they don't need to fight to pay off the bonus In late game, population limit makes the more powerful units better. But in superlate game, the ressource limit makes the cheaper units better.
Worth pointing out with the Japanese example that their halbs end up feeling much more effective than most other civs', except for probably celts because the speed bonus. Also one thing I love about the Japanese bonus is that there are very few civs that can actually fight your feudal aggression without going archers or castle age.
I'd like to make a brief correction to your statement that Mayans can field more units. From a numbers standpoint this makes sense, but practically it does not. Unless you had a third range, Mayans are never going to have more archers than Ethiopians, and Ethiopians will win the Archer battle in Feudal age every time. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean the Ethiopian bonus is better, because you outlined a number of other ways in which the Mayan bonus is very strong, but it does not allow you to field more archers in the early game as long as your eco is properly balanced.
I'm thinking back to this one Runestones game you played against Daut, Celts vs Goths, where it seemed like Celts should be able to hold their own in the Champion war because of Supplies making the Goth discount seem less impactful, on top of Celts having the last infantry armor and slightly faster units. But in practice, even though you had the stronger Champions, your Supplies discount didn't help where it really counted, in gold expenditure, which allowed Daut to outlast you. Even in a 200 pop game, the ease of replenishing your army really starts to matter when gold gets scarce.
Thanks for the vidéo Would have loved to see the comparison with Briton's archer line instead of Ethiopians, and Tatars/Mongols instead of Magyars, seems garder to decide
Nice vid, but instead of asserting the facts that some unit are better because they are cheaper it would be nice to see a sample skirmish like mayan archers vs some others cost adjusted etc. it would bring more merit and be more convincing
Great vid. Uninstalled the game last week after a series of tilting losses and just becoming too frustrated with my lack of improvement. However, still love the vids.
in early game it isnt as clear how much stonger a cost reduction is bc you are usually capped by production speed, not res investment so cheaper units for some time dont translate into more units fielded. Goth +10 pop space and super fast production is actually the key to a) actually translate the cheaper cost to a numbers advantage and b) after you lose a fight you get back to max pop without taking prolonged fights in lower numbers which leads to consistenly bad trades.
But couldn't the argument be made, that the Ethiopian bonus also allows the Ethiopian player to save resources? Because the Ethiopian archer is stronger than the regular archer, it would be possible to produce fewer archers than with a generic civ to achieve a certain predefined goal, and spend the thus saved resources into a tech switch. I think in this particular case, the Mayan bonus is stronger, because the Ethiopians don't gain 10% more HP and the entire army dies easier than the Mayan / generic army with more crossbows. So you save more resources with Mayans than the Ethiopian player would theoretically save if they produced fewer crossbows. I think if the numbers were different (i.e., 10% more damage output, and 10% more HP) I would not see much of a difference except for late game when population efficiency becomes an issue.
That's how I think of my gold miners as a Turc main. I know that when I have 10 vills on gold I really have 12, so i can throw some vills on stone a bit earlier and still sustain my usual knight / mango comp. Sometimes castle building can be a clutch moment in the game. As you pointed out tho if you awnt to build 10 archers instead of 12 for your early raids you have to micro them real well to make full use of your advantage. Mayan bonus is simply easier to use. btw if you can save wood as mayans DO add some spears. I'm a cav main and people adding just a few more spears and less archers would have ruined most of my games, its sos easy as archer civ since the barracks is a must build you have the counter to your counter ready, such luxury ! just make a few, they can scout if you have too much. Cav civs have to make men at arms (really bad vs archers) or build an archery (feels very inefficient) to counter spearmen. Now that i think of it, a counter to archers in your base would be to pressure early (before walls are finished) with scouts using mobility advantage and for the ennemy to keep some spearmen in reserves. If I have only scouts and get raided by archers and a few spears I know its gonna be real dirty
It works both ways though, Mayans can get by on less vills because their archers are cheaper. Saving resources there and allowing them to put out more archers for the same pop space. So many flow on effects.
Hey Hera and everyone else! So I've been hearing a lot about playing to your win cons in games and I've recently started to train with mayans. Could anyone tell me or tell me where I can learn what mayans win cons is? Also the content is extremely useful! Keep it up!
So I just realized that all discounted gold units are not fully upgraded for balance reason, which for some reason doesn't apply to Mayans as they have fully upgraded Arbalesters. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be compensation for not having stable, but with the options they have, those fully upgraded discounted arbs would overwhelm normal fully upgraded arbs on top of having access to super tanky Eagles.
So Mayan bonus is better than the Ethiopian bonus (in your opinion). Where would the Briton bonus fit in? I'd assume stronger than the Mayan bonus (because extra range is just such a strong bonus) - and would fit in with the fact that Britons are considered a very strong archer civ despite missing thumb ring.
Hera values extra range greatly, he says Briton is the best arch civ for team games. Extra range is sick so they possibly best arch civ 1v1 too, but of course it depends on maps and such.
How did you not mention that Mayan Arbalest is the only discounted unit in the game that has all upgrades? (And complain about that, Post-Imp-Mayan Arbalest trade favourably resource for resource with generic fully upgraded Skirmishers)
This is why I think people sleep on Italians on land. Sure they don't have free chemistry and artillery like Turks, or the bonus' and upgrades of bohemians, etheopians and portgugese. Hell they don't even have siege engineers. But the discount on gunpowder (and chemistry and imperial age) make spamming bombards so powerful.
While most of this video are opinions, not facts, as Hera says at the end, he is correct in the idea that cheaper units are stronger 90% of the time. Because you are almost never going for mono-comps, and having cheaper units means that you can field more of them, either by keeping constant production when your opponent cannot, or by adding in additional production buildings before your opponent can. And due to lanchesters square law, the side with more numbers will beat the side with better troops the vast majority of the time. It isnt until you start hitting the population cap that the quality of troops becomes the deciding factor, and that doesnt come up in 90+% of games in AoE2
In my own opinion, cheaper will usually dominates every buffy boosted units. Simple, there's strength in numbers. However, it's not always be like that, there might be some exceptions, like Koreans Siege Onagers with plus 2 range might beats Slavs Siege Onagers for example, despite being 15% cheaper.
Woah, woah, woah, Mr H, I have to seriously disagree about the Goth bonus being better than Japanese +33% attack. You forgot to take into account Japanese have supplies and Goths do not. This is almost a 19% discount on the cost of Japanese infantry. Because of this goths only break even with Japanese in castle age when they max out their blacksmith benefits and fall behind in Imperial when Japanese have blast furnace and plate armor. Granted Goths will be able to produce more champions in the short term as the Japanese have to tech into champions and both blacksmith techs. Maxed out Goths lose to Japanese, Burmese, Aztec, and Dravidian champions.
Also found strange goth vs japan champs comparison. Japanese have best infantry in the game and their champs better by far than goths in most of scenarios.
We want a part 2 - Cav Archer : Huns vs Mongols Knight : Berbers vs Teutons Hussar (duh) : Berbers vs Tatars vs Bulgarians vs Malians Champion : Goths vs Teutons vs Bulgarians vs Vikings vs Aztecs vs Malians vs Dravidians Galley : Saracens vs Vikings vs Koreans Fire Ship : Koreans vs Byzantines Gunpowder : Italians vs Turks vs Spanish vs Burgundians vs Bohemians vs Hindustanis
@@valger3652 i mixed things up, but the point is koreans are terrible on water imo. Theoretically: not sure. +1range is a huge damage boost due to the low range of fs. Bigger numbers are hard to turn into more damage for such a clunky unit. Still, more ships always means more hp Practically: byzantines add some demos and dominate
@@derikaem8021 Well, Koreans are not bad water civ, about in top 10. They have strong late game with very cheap ships + towers,. But on early stages laking some other bonuses and lacking demos didnt make them top tier on water.
I don't disagree with the conclusions on individual cases, but I do disagree with the analysis somewhat. I don't think the Mayan bonus is better than Ethiopian bonus because it is a discount vs a buff, but because the Mayan bonus is so much larger. In Imperial an equal cost generic army has almost 43% extra health and attack (even in Feudal it is an extra 11% health and attack) while the Ethiopians gain just 18% attack. If you have a civ 40% health and attack bonus, the late game conclusion is probably a lot less clear or in favour of the bonus. Some other comments, I don't think the population impact is necessarily as big as it seems. If you want equal economies going archers, the Mayans will have fewer villagers and therefore more army so, while worse per population they have more population. In contrast I don't think the discount is as big an advantage in replenishing armies because sure, you might build more units but the other guy builds better units and can kill more units. But if you both have resource banks and similar range numbers and the bonuses were equal, he will put more combat power on the field, the unit bonus would be substantially stronger with the discount catching up once the banks are depleted. But since the Mayans bonus is actually substantially greater, they get an advantage there. And I think that is what you are getting into with Hindustanis vs Berbers, the stat bonus being as large or bigger than the discount. The Hindustani imperial camel has 36% more damage and 17% more health while Berber heavy camel have 25% extra health and damage over generic heavy camels.
[SPOILERS] . . . . . . You mentioned Goths champion being able to overwhelm Japanese in early imp, which is only possible if both players are making one and the same unit. Considering that the cost of rushing a castle and doing the tech will drastically slow down the push. And in castle age an xbow mass can clean lots of ls so the discount has little value other than for huskarls which require even more res to be spent. And those huskarls will be cleaned by samurai/knights without much effort. So in early imp you have to face japanese champs/2hs backed by arbs and any samurai to pick off huskarls(at which point champs themselves can do it). Which will make it a lot tougher for Goths. I like the general idea of comparing the units based on different civs and situations but by trying to analyse them by matching the two civs against each other and seeing how well the unit performs is a bad idea which ignores the civ combos, bonuses and playstyles.
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Hey Hera, Discount Spirit of the Law here,
one thing that is often overlooked with discount bonuses is that being able to put more units on the field affects both the total health and damage of your army. For example, the 30% discount of Mayans allows you to put 42% more archers on the field for the same cost. That army has 42% more hp and 42% more damage, compared to, for example, a Vietnamese archer army with the same resource cost, which only has 20% more hp. If the Vietnamese hp bonus were to be adjusted so that the Vietnamese archer army would match the Mayan army in this way, it would have to be nearly 100% more hp (1.42*1.42). The Mayan bonus is therefore much stronger than it looks.
I did wonder if the Vietnamese bonus wasn't strong enough, it sounds better than it is. Also I don't believe it stacks with bloodlines for CA which makes it just a touch less impactful.
@@mrskinny8555 It does stack, but the Bloodlines bonus isn't increased by an additional 20%.
So it's 60*1.2 + 20 = 92 health, but not (60 + 20)*1.2 = 96 health.
The 'cheaper' bonus' are all more powerful too because they actually don't suffer from pop limitations like you would expect. Sure Mayans at 120 vills and 80 archers will have less damage coming out than Ethiopians. But to fund 80 archers Mayans won't need the same 120 vills. At extremes assuming everything else is bought, if they have a 30% discount then they would need 30% less vills and you would have something like 90 vills 110 archers vs 120 vills 80 faster firing archers. Mayans back in the better position.
Consider that early on often the primary limiting factor in how many units can be produced isn't actually unit cost itself, but is instead how many buildings you have which can produce the unit. At this point, while Mayans are still saving more resources, which they can reinvest into other things like economy upgrades, buying their way to castle, quicker farms, etc. it doesn't mean that they'll have a direct numbers advantage in a real game, especially not compared to, for example, Britons with their faster working range.
@@rovsea-3761 You can invest the saved resources into more production buildings.
Answer is "It depends".
I just scrolled to the comments to make the same joke. T90's work is complete.
Is the Answer Always it depends?
It depends!
in my opinion cheaper units are better in offensive/open maps because hitting the enemy faster and crippling their eco is the best strategy
in defensive/closed maps stronger units are better because booming isnt an issue, so eventually both players will have the same amount of units and the ones with the better stats will start rolling over the other one. Not to mention as far i know, all the civs with cheaper units dont get all upgrades (goths lack final armor, berbers dont get paladin, huns ca lack armor, malay elephants, etc)
Mayans do not lack a SINGLE TECH despite getting 30% off on Arbs
Hmmm, your point about defensive maps holds true if both players are in post-imp with all techs researched and have floating resources. If both are using their resources almost as soon as they generate (as pros do), the cheaper army player should be able to replace his army faster than his opponent. And at any point in the game before post-imp, the cheaper army player should have either a larger army or enough floating resources so as to either age up, mix army compositions, or research key techs earlier than the other player, assuming both players have equal levels of micro and macro.
A pro for “cheaper” units is the visible factor. Just seeing more units on the board (even if they’re weaker) might cause your opponent to avoid some fights and give up some map control, even if the non cheap army could win an engagement.
I love watching Hera's analysis while I get ready for work or go out and do chores. Soo relaxing with the music that plays in the background too
First thing i heard when i saw this video title...viper saying "well, it depends"
Hey Hera, thanks for the high quality videos. Just one quick idea: I’d be really curious to learn the strategies of various types of civs on different maps!
Great video as usual. But can you add texts when talking about tech or blacksmith bonuses so that we can quickly see what that tech does. Players like me don't quickly remember the effect of tech and get lost a bit
It's worthwhile to remember that some bonuses like the Japanese atack speed can yeild a LOT more value with specialist units like the halberdier, which has so much of its utility lopsided towards the massive bonus damage in a way that being able to atack faster means a huge damage output increase when used in that role, even though it would probably die or trade very evenly if pitched aganist other "strong" versions of that unir, like a Teutonic or Burmese halberdier, which are otherwise just marginally better than a generic halb in that specialized anti-cav role. Kinda like with Hunic trebuchets being insanely good in treb wars, but otherwise almost identical compared to generic trebs when used aganist buildings or other siege.
Overall I love the video, And it’s obviously such a nuanced topic that you could cover so many angles, but I would have loved to seen you talk about the difference in value of these bonuses in one v ones versus team games. For example, with the Ethiopian versus the Mayans bonus, one of the greatest strengths of the Mayan bonus is the flexibility to tech switch. This is obviously a significant strength in one V one, but in a team game you’re not really looking to tech switch off of archers most of the time
Another thing helping quantity over quality that Spirit of the Law talks about a lot is Lanchester Square Law. So even if the numbers advantage isn't that big, it can easily snowball into a decisive victory.
We could do the "same number of resources" comparison here - get a number of units of both units which cost the same (i.e. a bit more for the cheaper ones) and see how well they do - both against each other, and also against common other units. Of course, this only applies if you actually spend the resources, not if you save the discount to go up faster, or to make a transition.
Been there. Done that.
I would argue that for a unit who is meant to be retained as much as possible, usually a ball of ranged units, then power bonuses become better relative to discount bonuses. This is because regardless of whether you have a bonus or not, losing your mass of ranged units is a pretty big negative, and bonuses which increase the power of your units help you to retain them even more. For units which are meant to be traded away, such as Goth infantry or Magyar Hussars (not the UU, the discounted normal unit 11), the discount is stronger, since it helps you replace something you'd normally lose when using it anyways. You're getting more of the discount working for you while achieving the same effect as a generic civ.
Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that the cheaper cost units also give you the advantage of having the option to research blacksmith techs for the units because of the resources saved. i.e in the case of Magyars making scouts, after a certain number of scouts have been made the Magyar player can opt into armour for the scouts with the saved resources to get the edge in a fight, so even if the opponents scouts are better, you would have a tech advantage when you take the fight.
In early game, cheaper units are better because it is a flexible eco bonus and they don't need to fight to pay off the bonus
In late game, population limit makes the more powerful units better.
But in superlate game, the ressource limit makes the cheaper units better.
Worth pointing out with the Japanese example that their halbs end up feeling much more effective than most other civs', except for probably celts because the speed bonus. Also one thing I love about the Japanese bonus is that there are very few civs that can actually fight your feudal aggression without going archers or castle age.
I'd like to make a brief correction to your statement that Mayans can field more units.
From a numbers standpoint this makes sense, but practically it does not. Unless you had a third range, Mayans are never going to have more archers than Ethiopians, and Ethiopians will win the Archer battle in Feudal age every time.
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean the Ethiopian bonus is better, because you outlined a number of other ways in which the Mayan bonus is very strong, but it does not allow you to field more archers in the early game as long as your eco is properly balanced.
I'm thinking back to this one Runestones game you played against Daut, Celts vs Goths, where it seemed like Celts should be able to hold their own in the Champion war because of Supplies making the Goth discount seem less impactful, on top of Celts having the last infantry armor and slightly faster units. But in practice, even though you had the stronger Champions, your Supplies discount didn't help where it really counted, in gold expenditure, which allowed Daut to outlast you. Even in a 200 pop game, the ease of replenishing your army really starts to matter when gold gets scarce.
spirit of the law vibes from hera, great content
Thanks for the vidéo
Would have loved to see the comparison with Briton's archer line instead of Ethiopians, and Tatars/Mongols instead of Magyars, seems garder to decide
Nice vid, but instead of asserting the facts that some unit are better because they are cheaper it would be nice to see a sample skirmish like mayan archers vs some others cost adjusted etc. it would bring more merit and be more convincing
Great vid. Uninstalled the game last week after a series of tilting losses and just becoming too frustrated with my lack of improvement. However, still love the vids.
I think the T90 quote works here: "It depends"
He just says that because is is no SOTL when it comes to math.
Viper quote*
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 With Viper It depends... on the power spikes.
I don't watch too much Viper, but I do watch all of T90 and he says it alot. But in an RTS every decision you make has trade off's
in early game it isnt as clear how much stonger a cost reduction is bc you are usually capped by production speed, not res investment so cheaper units for some time dont translate into more units fielded.
Goth +10 pop space and super fast production is actually the key to a) actually translate the cheaper cost to a numbers advantage and b) after you lose a fight you get back to max pop without taking prolonged fights in lower numbers which leads to consistenly bad trades.
But couldn't the argument be made, that the Ethiopian bonus also allows the Ethiopian player to save resources? Because the Ethiopian archer is stronger than the regular archer, it would be possible to produce fewer archers than with a generic civ to achieve a certain predefined goal, and spend the thus saved resources into a tech switch.
I think in this particular case, the Mayan bonus is stronger, because the Ethiopians don't gain 10% more HP and the entire army dies easier than the Mayan / generic army with more crossbows. So you save more resources with Mayans than the Ethiopian player would theoretically save if they produced fewer crossbows. I think if the numbers were different (i.e., 10% more damage output, and 10% more HP) I would not see much of a difference except for late game when population efficiency becomes an issue.
That's how I think of my gold miners as a Turc main.
I know that when I have 10 vills on gold I really have 12, so i can throw some vills on stone a bit earlier and still sustain my usual knight / mango comp.
Sometimes castle building can be a clutch moment in the game.
As you pointed out tho if you awnt to build 10 archers instead of 12 for your early raids you have to micro them real well to make full use of your advantage. Mayan bonus is simply easier to use. btw if you can save wood as mayans DO add some spears. I'm a cav main and people adding just a few more spears and less archers would have ruined most of my games, its sos easy as archer civ since the barracks is a must build you have the counter to your counter ready, such luxury ! just make a few, they can scout if you have too much.
Cav civs have to make men at arms (really bad vs archers) or build an archery (feels very inefficient) to counter spearmen.
Now that i think of it, a counter to archers in your base would be to pressure early (before walls are finished) with scouts using mobility advantage and for the ennemy to keep some spearmen in reserves. If I have only scouts and get raided by archers and a few spears I know its gonna be real dirty
It seemed in the video that Ethiopian bonus is really not very strong (very little hp left over in a 1v1) so not much resource savings
It works both ways though, Mayans can get by on less vills because their archers are cheaper. Saving resources there and allowing them to put out more archers for the same pop space. So many flow on effects.
@@chronographer ah yes ^^
Hey Hera and everyone else! So I've been hearing a lot about playing to your win cons in games and I've recently started to train with mayans. Could anyone tell me or tell me where I can learn what mayans win cons is? Also the content is extremely useful! Keep it up!
Watch my do you want to play mayans video to learn more about them!!
What would you say about Teamgames? I think that powerunits are mostly better in Teamgames?
So I just realized that all discounted gold units are not fully upgraded for balance reason, which for some reason doesn't apply to Mayans as they have fully upgraded Arbalesters. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be compensation for not having stable, but with the options they have, those fully upgraded discounted arbs would overwhelm normal fully upgraded arbs on top of having access to super tanky Eagles.
Why aren’t there 1000 likes guys. Already more then 1000 people have watched that. I am disappointed 😔
What do you think about persians unique dev in the castle age?
So Mayan bonus is better than the Ethiopian bonus (in your opinion). Where would the Briton bonus fit in? I'd assume stronger than the Mayan bonus (because extra range is just such a strong bonus) - and would fit in with the fact that Britons are considered a very strong archer civ despite missing thumb ring.
Hera values extra range greatly, he says Briton is the best arch civ for team games. Extra range is sick so they possibly best arch civ 1v1 too, but of course it depends on maps and such.
Doesn't the Ethiopian bonus also open up the option of making fewer archers to achieve the same task with fewer resources?
How did you not mention that Mayan Arbalest is the only discounted unit in the game that has all upgrades?
(And complain about that, Post-Imp-Mayan Arbalest trade favourably resource for resource with generic fully upgraded Skirmishers)
The age(of empires) old question
This is why I think people sleep on Italians on land. Sure they don't have free chemistry and artillery like Turks, or the bonus' and upgrades of bohemians, etheopians and portgugese. Hell they don't even have siege engineers. But the discount on gunpowder (and chemistry and imperial age) make spamming bombards so powerful.
crack
Spirit of the law, help! We need more data on that
Gurjara say: "Why not both?"
While most of this video are opinions, not facts, as Hera says at the end, he is correct in the idea that cheaper units are stronger 90% of the time. Because you are almost never going for mono-comps, and having cheaper units means that you can field more of them, either by keeping constant production when your opponent cannot, or by adding in additional production buildings before your opponent can. And due to lanchesters square law, the side with more numbers will beat the side with better troops the vast majority of the time. It isnt until you start hitting the population cap that the quality of troops becomes the deciding factor, and that doesnt come up in 90+% of games in AoE2
Powerful-Better for the micro game,
Cheaper-Better for the macro game.
In deathmatch it's the opposite , right? Better to have more powerful units
Of course
The real answer is BOTH at the same time.
Yeah i thinks it's summarized as cheaper is better when pop limit is not a factor. Otherwise go full elite war elephant 🐘
In my own opinion, cheaper will usually dominates every buffy boosted units. Simple, there's strength in numbers.
However, it's not always be like that, there might be some exceptions, like Koreans Siege Onagers with plus 2 range might beats Slavs Siege Onagers for example, despite being 15% cheaper.
What about the Celtic siege vs Slavic siege?
Woah, woah, woah, Mr H, I have to seriously disagree about the Goth bonus being better than Japanese +33% attack. You forgot to take into account Japanese have supplies and Goths do not. This is almost a 19% discount on the cost of Japanese infantry. Because of this goths only break even with Japanese in castle age when they max out their blacksmith benefits and fall behind in Imperial when Japanese have blast furnace and plate armor. Granted Goths will be able to produce more champions in the short term as the Japanese have to tech into champions and both blacksmith techs. Maxed out Goths lose to Japanese, Burmese, Aztec, and Dravidian champions.
Also found strange goth vs japan champs comparison. Japanese have best infantry in the game and their champs better by far than goths in most of scenarios.
its either more resources OR more units. not more resources AND more units. you kept saying that you get both which doesnt make sense
Cheaper is the best, Mass = Cash!
Do the Mayans get 100 good and gold when they age up? No. That’s roughly equal to free fletching and an extra archers worth of food and gold
What are those pikemen in the opening clip? That would be a good mod
what about bereber camel (rather than byz) )vs hindustians
I wouldve included berber kts vs teuton or sicilian kts
We want a part 2 -
Cav Archer : Huns vs Mongols
Knight : Berbers vs Teutons
Hussar (duh) : Berbers vs Tatars vs Bulgarians vs Malians
Champion : Goths vs Teutons vs Bulgarians vs Vikings vs Aztecs vs Malians vs Dravidians
Galley : Saracens vs Vikings vs Koreans
Fire Ship : Koreans vs Byzantines
Gunpowder : Italians vs Turks vs Spanish vs Burgundians vs Bohemians vs Hindustanis
turk hussar is best hussar imo
Koreans dont get fire ship :D
@@derikaem8021 Koreans miss demo, Vikings dont get fire ships
@@valger3652 i mixed things up, but the point is koreans are terrible on water imo.
Theoretically: not sure. +1range is a huge damage boost due to the low range of fs. Bigger numbers are hard to turn into more damage for such a clunky unit. Still, more ships always means more hp
Practically: byzantines add some demos and dominate
@@derikaem8021 Well, Koreans are not bad water civ, about in top 10. They have strong late game with very cheap ships + towers,. But on early stages laking some other bonuses and lacking demos didnt make them top tier on water.
I don't disagree with the conclusions on individual cases, but I do disagree with the analysis somewhat.
I don't think the Mayan bonus is better than Ethiopian bonus because it is a discount vs a buff, but because the Mayan bonus is so much larger. In Imperial an equal cost generic army has almost 43% extra health and attack (even in Feudal it is an extra 11% health and attack) while the Ethiopians gain just 18% attack. If you have a civ 40% health and attack bonus, the late game conclusion is probably a lot less clear or in favour of the bonus.
Some other comments, I don't think the population impact is necessarily as big as it seems. If you want equal economies going archers, the Mayans will have fewer villagers and therefore more army so, while worse per population they have more population. In contrast I don't think the discount is as big an advantage in replenishing armies because sure, you might build more units but the other guy builds better units and can kill more units. But if you both have resource banks and similar range numbers and the bonuses were equal, he will put more combat power on the field, the unit bonus would be substantially stronger with the discount catching up once the banks are depleted. But since the Mayans bonus is actually substantially greater, they get an advantage there.
And I think that is what you are getting into with Hindustanis vs Berbers, the stat bonus being as large or bigger than the discount. The Hindustani imperial camel has 36% more damage and 17% more health while Berber heavy camel have 25% extra health and damage over generic heavy camels.
Hindustani vs Spanish vills
Please Spanish translation. Theres a lot of latam followers🙏
Wey está bien fácil el inglés
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You mentioned Goths champion being able to overwhelm Japanese in early imp, which is only possible if both players are making one and the same unit. Considering that the cost of rushing a castle and doing the tech will drastically slow down the push. And in castle age an xbow mass can clean lots of ls so the discount has little value other than for huskarls which require even more res to be spent. And those huskarls will be cleaned by samurai/knights without much effort. So in early imp you have to face japanese champs/2hs backed by arbs and any samurai to pick off huskarls(at which point champs themselves can do it). Which will make it a lot tougher for Goths.
I like the general idea of comparing the units based on different civs and situations but by trying to analyse them by matching the two civs against each other and seeing how well the unit performs is a bad idea which ignores the civ combos, bonuses and playstyles.
is it just me or is your volume really low
2nd
First
Faster
Actually asnwer is as always : it depends.