“The champion takes 14 shots vs the Serjeant’s 43.” Makes sense. The Serjeant has a shield while the champion had traded in his shield back when he was just a two-handed swordsman.
Sort of, yes... But then you remember that shields were phased out because armor got so good that arrows and bolts was a non-issue altogether. Shields was mostly used with pre-plate armor. It's time travel, and a not very correct one :D Then again, Age is not that time-accurate :D
@@gtheavyy8543 How many units actually wore plate armor in an army though? Nobles, sure, elite retinues sure but the common foot soldier/levy? No way. I'd say mail and gamberson would have been the most common armor wear for the average joe and that's only for a decent army.
@@pickleinspector5948 True, though by what Age upgrades imply, militia line also rises in rank as it upgrades with each age. It is not called a "champion" with no reason. The same could be applied to militia; no matter where you put the dark age, common soldiers had way better equipment. I would consider Champions to represent early gothic/white armored infantry, somewhere in early 1400s. Armies at that time started shifting towards pike and shot formations, with cavalry for shock, and heavy infantry to break pike lines. If these champions are indeed the pike-breaking, zweihander-wielding tanks, noone in any mail could even wink at them the wrong way. The only solution was firearms, warhammers, or even more (MORE) pikes. Regardless; aoe2 is anachronistic. Serjeants clearly represent something around 10th-11th century. It is just visually strange for them to slaughter gothic knights, or even any properly armed modern man-at-arms
I know that Donjons were not a topic of this video, but it is something you have to give to the Serjeants. While the Serjeants are building the Donjons, they continue building them even under attack/fire, where your villagers would just run amok and you would need to constantly click on the building foundation. Which only supports their symbiosis further :-).
You've reminded me of something that came up in a recent video, and that's Herbal Medicine. Serjeants can create Donjons, which can hold 10 units, and will heal a near-1hp Serjeant in (I think) 2 minutes. We don't usually see towers built as part of offense, so we don't think of the idea of a nearby source of healing. It's probably still too micro-intensive to back off individual hurt infantry and keep track of which Donjon has hurt units, but the thought is there.
Yeah also feel the unit is designed for pushing bases, attack bonus vs buildings, pressuring with Donjons to get more troops and resistance to castles and TCs pretty brutal
I still think the Serjeant should have the ability of reapiring siege weapons, I mean if they can build Donjons, and they still have their niche of building or reapiring things related with weapons
@Robert Rowe In a way, they can be considered combat engineers given that they're a unit that can fight AND build. Being able to build a Donjon and repair siege weapons would make some sense. They could make it so they can repair siege but half the rate (making it better to have villagers do it if they've retreated back from fighting, and Serjeant's could just help with maintenance in a way). Tbf though, they wouldn't do it, but it's a neat idea :o
Can build their own towers, resistant to arrows and attack bonus to buildings... That's all I need to hear. It's always fun to build too many towers pooping out units that auto attack buildings and don't care about enemy towers. You just let that go on autopilot while you focus on your eco and let the enemy try and clean it all up.
@@karonteazt3286 donjons arent weaker then Towers just a bit more expensive. The best thing that can Happen to your donjon rush ist that a tower fight breaks out Just hit Castle age, the bonus damage against Towers kicks in and you won
Donjons take a lot of stone to build. They're good as an overwhelming maneuver but if your opponent knows what he's doing he'll cut you off from the stone supply early and that's that.
Serjon vs TC is an important but overlooked point. All the pierce armour plus arson makes them eat tc if you have a big mass from fuedal. The power spike is massive
It is worth it. I'm not really a campaign guy but the multi-player content is worth the money alone. Sicilians and Burgundians both have a pretty novel play style that is really fun and interesting
don’t buy it it’s not worth it really Sicilians and Burgundians are fun niche civs but outside of that they are just not worth it even for the basic and common strategies their are much better civs than these 2 i’ve bought the dlc mainly for the campaigns tbh and if that’s your goal then go for it but don’t expect them to perform competitively
From a design perspective, I think they are really interesting, They have their strengths and weaknesses, but are viable at different stages of the game. And the unique techs can give immediate power spikes, but are a one-shot, if not timed well, it will have no effect. Which leads to interesting decisions for the player.
1:50 This is the biggest flaw that make Serjeants useless. The fact that infantry are the first unit you can produce is *VERY* important to their viability, as no one would ever make infantry otherwise. The entire point is that you can get infantry out faster than everything else and mass them enough so that even against a superior unit (such as Knights), you still might win and trade cost-effectively because you already had a healthy sum of them before your opponent even began making units. Serjeants unfortunately surrender this highly critical component to making infantry and thus feel underwhelming: it is NOT worth delaying your rush to be tankier, especially when you consider that the entire point of a Feudal push is to try and pick off vils; you 100% prefer the unit with the extra attack at this stage in the game, only welcoming Serjeants if you plan on facing archers. (which even then, the Malians have a more elegant and effective solution to) By the time it's castle, it's unlikely you have such a mass of them that they're worth making over Knights, whereas with Longswords it's *possible* to have had enough of a mass left over from Feudal that it's worth going Longswords/Pikes vs. Knights. (not common, but feasible) By Imperial, now the problem is that the necessary building to make them is incredibly vulnerable to Trebs...or any enemy, really. Enemies scale up better than Donjons do, so Donjons become fragile. Suddenly, whilst they're far more viable for Imperial, you'll have a much harder time making them simply because Donjons get torn through like paper. Remaking them just to make Serjeants is also a highly expensive investment for what's still a modest unit. And again: Malians look at this civ and say "WTF are you doing?" Malians effectively *have* this unit in the form of their Champskarls. The #1 most attractive aspect of the Serjeant is the pierce armor, but Malians get this on a generic unit. This means Malians also get a unique unit. Likewise, the Champskarls are essentially Mali's only tanky unit late-game, as the rest of their composition are glass cannons. The Champskarls are just there to tank, hold the line and buy time. The *real* focus of their army are things like Farimba Cav or Gbeto, which are phenomenal raiding units. .....And then we have Sicilians, who lack a Gbeto unique unit to do the raiding, lack a unique tech like Farimba to make their units more viable, and instead one of their "best" units is suddenly the Serjeant, which is still very modest in what it can accomplish. Honestly, Sicilians have perhaps the worst lategame composition in the game, and when you look at how Mali gets an equivalent unit (Champskarls vs. Serjeants), a solid unique unit in Gbeto, and a solid lategame tech via Farimba, you have to wonder why exactly Sicily gets absolutely nothing for it's lategame. Mali is arguably stronger start to finish, so what gives? Isn't Sicily just straight-up underpowered? So yeah, to me, all these tests don't matter. The meaningful part is at 1:50, and that singlehandedly makes Serjeants a garbage unit. It's like if a civ got War Elephants but only collected food at half the normal gather rate: theoretically a fine unit, but god awful for the situation it's provided in. IF they want to significantly improve the Serjeant, let it be constructed from Barracks as well and starting in Dark Age. (but with god awful stats obviously; probably equivalent to the Militia but with -1 attack and +1 defense) This would solve both it's issue with being too slow to make in Feudal whilst simultaneously making them more viable for Imperial, since you'd no longer NEED a Donjon to make them.
Yes, knight do counter Sarjes with simmilar numbers, but you theoreticly could start massing Sarjes from feudal age, giving you the edge in early castle anyway. Easier to say than do, especially given its not hard to slap down few stables, but since you brought up amassing Militia line since dark age, it seems fair to point out! :)
What the fuck? I came for the intro dude! The intro! How long has this been going on? This is inconceivable! Outrageous! I want the intro back right now! We demand the intro that made your channel famous back! ... durum du du dum ♫durum du du dum ♫ du du du dum ♫ duriruriruiruri dum dum♫ (no, seriously, put it back)
recently I am winning many 1 on 1 match with serjeants well I am enjoying them and also thanks for many info which I don't know still now and as always a good video
Always enjoy your detail-oriented analysis! It would benefit me greatly if you would do a recent "Best black forest civs" video. I love playing that map but have no idea how some of the new civs factor in.
Next Video : "How Good is The Berserk?". I want to know if I'm playing as Vikings, can I just make them as a bulk of my army or should I go for my already quite good Champion?
I think Spirit went over that a bit in the (tbf pretty old) Vikings civ overview. IMO the Berserk's speed advantage alone makes it a better infantry unit, everything else stat-wise is pretty close and/or a trade-off; more attack and armor in exchange for a few HP (which the regen can make up for if if isn't killed in the first 10-20 seconds after first taking damage). Their main issue at the moment is that, as with many other champion-like unique units, the Supplies tech has skewed unit costs in the Champion's favor and there haven't been any buffs to counteract this.
If you just look at the raw stats and the cost, Champion seems better, but the Berserk's regeneration practically give them the edge in almost every situation and if you get Berserkergang, it isn't even a contest anymore.
@@nlb137 Yeah but the video is really old. 5 years and since then there were some balancing updates especially for the chieftan tech, which now also buffs the champion. So an update would be welcome. ^^
Good analysis. I'm definitely curious how First Crusade plays into cost effectiveness of Serjeants. Sicilians are my current go to on Arena, and I just FC, 5 TC, and then First Crusade when I need units. Last game I pushed with Serjeants into enemy Cataphracts, and while I lost, I felt like it was honestly a pretty cost efficient exchange for me. Also, in Post Imp, if you're using Serjeants to push into an enemy town, and they have arbalest...just ignore the units and tear down the buildings. It's hilarious how little you have to care about them.
Spanish villagers when they see Serjeants : *"Finally, a worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!!"* 4:09 *"Knights are harder, better, faster, stronger."* Wait, is that Daft Punk reference?? xD
I just picked up the expansions pack yesterday, and I think that Sicilians are my new favourite civ. You can tell the devs put more effort into the premium civs than the other ones. Great vid as aways Spirit!
Premium civs? Dafuq mate... It's just civs created later some time that were given something unique, how can you compare nowadays made civs to the AoK civs lmao, such a difference on how aoe was played back then and now. Every civ made after AoK got something special that made them stand out when they released, but after the next batch of civs people got used to em. Look at AoC & FE civs. Plus Premium civs? It's an expansion, you call AoC etc also premium civs?
1:46 the serjeant should take 23 arrows from the archer, not 15, it's like the archer has the offensive upgrade but the serjeant does not have the defensive one.
Hey Spirit. Great video as usual! Though in the end I missed a comparison, in Imperial Age, with the both the Cavalier and the Paladin. It's fair considering in Castle the Serjeant was compared to the Knight.
I think serjeants have such a fun and interesting play style!! After building the initial donjon, villagers can go back to work while serjeants take over construction of additional donjons. They're great for point control, and can choose to fight underneath the donjon for an additional advantage. Weak serjeants can garrison, while being replaced with a stream of full health serjeants, and once the weak serjeants aren't in immediate danger, they can be tasked to repair donjons to apply additional pressure to the opponent. It's like a hybrid between tower rushing and forward barracks, but without the need to invest as much villager idle time. So fun!!
The First Crusade tech is honestly quite awesome. Not only it gives you extra units, but it also provides the same efect as technology Faith, while being cheaper (300F and 600G vs. 750F and 1000G) and is available one age sooner. Not to mention you can still reasearch Faith as Sicilians. Yeah, they might lack a Heresy, but good luck succesfully convert more than few of their units (and if they are allied with Teutons, ouch!)
Here's a video idea - when is the best time to build a castle in economic terms? How much resources do you lose out on, or how much do you slow your boom, for each additional villager sent to build?
Sicilians have been one of my favourite civs to play since the expansion and all the fun considerations that the Serjeant brings are a large factor. I think one of their really strong aspects is that big power spike from feudal to castle. They're decent units to pressure your opponent in feudal, then ideally you have a good mass of them, you hit castle and suddenly you have a nasty army in your opponent's base for no extra cost, while massing up knights would only just start at the beginning of castle. I kind of think of it as the advanced version of the Bulgarian free militia line upgrade where you send your militia over in dark age and they become men at arms for free.
Fascinating versatile unit, you can use it to tower rush, or to gain a power spike by insta-spawning 35 units, or save that tech as an emergency to protect from a severe raid, or wait until post imperial and trash wars, save the gold, and spawn the sarjeants and then use the secondtech, gain more gold, and recruit knights on top of that while your enemy is using trash.
I think an important distinction here is that the Serjeants only have one upgrade you need to pay for, as opposed to the four unit upgrades the swordsman line needs to get to champion. Factor in the total amount saved by sticking with Serjeants instead of getting those Swordsman upgrades and translate that into units and I think that makes a good argument against the Swordsman line, at least investment wise. (The saved resources can also be used for villagers, tech switch into knights or archers, etc. etc.)
Hey man , great work on your videos! Love em! I have an idea for you ... you can try to to find out what happens when scouts 1v1 , on dark and feudal. Who will win , does it matter if you click or patrol or attack move ? Or if you turn and attack before enemy scout chasing reaches you? You will put an end to that dispute once and for all with your test's 11. Keep up the great work!
I start using Donjons to encroach on enemy resources at Feudal, by the time they reach castle and start producing knights you typically have enough of a numbers advantage that you can beat them back and maintain the pressure.
I don't think players should choose between knights and serjeants in castle. Go for a mixed force of skirms, serjeants and knights. Serjeants set up Donjons and help screen pikes and camels, knights brawl, skirms can help soften enemies at range. Speaking of me being wrong, Spirit would you consider a video on if there's value in healing high armour units in combat vs only using monks post battle or exclusively for relics?
Few points I have in mind : 1) Event though we compared Knights vs Serjeants , important part in real time is meele pathing, especially in choke points which you can create by strategically placing buildings - Kinghts suffer due to bulk of size, serjeants don't ; So you can have more serjeants attacking knight in such conditions 2) More pierce armour means a lot, you can create an army of serjeants and send them to enemy town have few construct Donjon (while rest run around and tank arrow fire) efficient then Champions ; Theoretically These guys can be good counter to goths provided you build enough donjons ; again you don't need to send villagers 3) Knights has speed, however castle age people have resources to create a small army of pikes and skrimishers(or archers) ; You have to run around a lot looking to damage economy of opponent. Now try serjeants in this situations coupled with their ability to create donjons (send few knights to take down archers if any) (better then long swordsman) - Again this is situational
I do think there is something to be said about the fact that they can also start massing their unique unit long before anyone else, and the best counters don't come out until castle and imperial. Basically, if you can manage to eat the early game cost of the unit, you can end up being pretty far ahead before the enemy can practically defeat the strategy. I stick by my belief that the Sicilians are basically a "tank civ" in the same way that the Teutons are - boa constrict your enemy to death by straight up being hard to kill; be defensive while keeping constant pressure and focus on map control, but as soon as the enemy can out maneuver you the pain train starts to hit you instead.
I feel like the Sarjeant's stats makes it perfect at pushing fortifications. You can build your own and hide/heal in your donjons while having high pierce armor for town center, castles and tower arrows coming at you whike you are knocking on someone's door. I had hooed that you would feature how surprisingly easy it is to take down a TC in feudal age and in castle age with only a handful of them.
The Serjeant is fantastic at creating a foothold. They can create in the field a fortified position that can then be used to reinforce them. Even a single serjeant getting in behind enemy lines can thus give you the ability to create a defensive position and an army behind the enemy's defences.
I use them like zerglings in Starcraft : coming in huge numbers, to harass villagers, and hold a position against the main army (because they are quite resilient), with a little help of monks. They are weaker against archery/powder units, but you can use them in a "pursue then regroup" tactic and they will be effective.
With full upgrades, and elite serjeant has 4+4 pierce armor and 85 HP. With full upgrades including chemistry and bracer, which many civs don't have both of, arbs do 10 pierce damage. So with many civs, the elite serjeant may end up just tanking arrows even better than an elite Huskarl.... taking 43 to 85 shots to go down depending on the civ.
I think the biggest difference to the infantry line is that there is no common counter to serjeants like archers are to the infantry line. And knights are also easily countered with the spear line.
After watching countless SOTL videos, I've come to wonder how much of this precise mathematical information is used autonomously by high level players like for example The Viper. And how ridiculously good of a player would a perfect AI be at this game with all the intricate information the game beholds?
Would it be possible to go for a timing attack right at the castle age? That way your army of serjeants is going to be leagues better than any archers/man-at-arms your opponent is going for as they won't have time to start researching any blacksmith techs before your tower building marauders are bearing down at Mach Jesus.
Good question. I always assume skirmishers/archers have fletching in feudal tests, but that melee units don't have upgrades. I find that's usually how it plays out in practice, though admittedly sometimes I've seen people get melee upgrades in extended feudal battles.
@@SpiritOfTheLaw oh yes indeed Fletching is probably the only feudal blacksmith tech that feels mandatory in most situations. I will keep it in mind for future videos, thanks for the clarification!
to be honest i adore the Serjeants, but mostly for team games they feel very much like a one size fits all and are all around excellent for tanking and keeping up advantage due to their ability to build towers
About the diminishing returns on a build, I heard somewhere that each additional builder does 1/3 the work of the first. I could see how the math would appear that you have diminishing returns but it might not be entirely accurate. hmm
Just to point out something for ppl, the high armor on sergeants means lower-attack units are a lot weaker to them than to champions. So even if you are not fighting archers it is wrong to assume that champions win in a melee fight vs other units compared to segeants. You can bring trash as an example, hussars "excet for maygars and maians" do 11 damage. vs champions though, that would go down to 7 after armor. in total Hussar does down to 3 damage vs sergeants though which is less than half what champion takes.
They have very good armor that is not counting blacksmith upgrades. 2+1/2+1 in feudal is strong, 3+2/3+2 in castle age is already better then knight in armor, and 4+3/4+4 is powerful on the elite in imperial age given that only a few unique units have 4+3 melee armor in imperial let alone 4+4 pierce armor is like a fully upgraded elite skirmisher. Very strong on armor makes those units good versatile all around just have to watch out for mass archers cavalry archers and even then it is a problem only for playing against the ai or if they don't hit and run to avoid them or use paladins to fight them, it is tough to take on such armies given that donjons can mass them if the player spends several castles worth of stone.
Don't forget that if you go infantry line, you need to upgrade to each new unit. Which costs resources and time. Going serjeants rather than Champion could put you in a better economic position late game.
I like both units and both have their uses but Donjons can be really useful if you want to defend your base from early archer raids, you get a tower which creates a military unit which is decent stat wise and can hold up against archers well and to support it, you can mix in few skirms and in late game you can also use sicilian cavalier to counter archers since they have really high pierce armor and also take less damage from the pikes because of their civ bonus.
I wish you could incorporate some typical battle scenarios of mixed compositions. For example 10 Searjeants/Knights/Champions + 10 crossbows vs each other.
That 3 pierce armor in castle age plus potentially two more from armor upgrades by that point is scary. Crossbows get 5 base attack and 1 more from fletching. If they have bodkin then they will do TWO whole damage. Without full castle age upgrades, the crossbows will be dealing 1 damage against a serjeant, giving them an almost Huskarl-like presence....
the only issue is that huskarl is cheap unit and more importantly very fast movement rate which enables them to catch up to archers and then wreck them with their anti-archer bonus. Sergents won't ever catch up to archers in low numbers when people micro. And even if they do, they won't do nearly as much damage to archers. This unit is more like the Teutonic knight
i wonder how effective a tower rush transforms into a castle age, the stat boost when you already have the towers standing seems like a strong transition!
I've only been donjon rushed once, in Arena. He spent too much time collecting stone though, I clicked up to castle age and knocked out 4 donjons with just line 6 knights with some scouts. I wonder if that normally worked for him. His eco was so far behind that it was a one-sided fight. Definitely less effective than waiting to do a castle drop.
Me wanting to go to bed at 2am because I need to get up early *sotl: "how good is the sergeant"* Me who doesn't even play aoe anymore: "hmm interesting, let's find out"
Plus, your infantry have kite shields in Imperial Age, thus netting them some style points.
Kite shield is a great shield
@@unifiedhorizons2663 didn't like them that much until I saw shadiversity's video
“The champion takes 14 shots vs the Serjeant’s 43.”
Makes sense. The Serjeant has a shield while the champion had traded in his shield back when he was just a two-handed swordsman.
Sort of, yes... But then you remember that shields were phased out because armor got so good that arrows and bolts was a non-issue altogether. Shields was mostly used with pre-plate armor. It's time travel, and a not very correct one :D
Then again, Age is not that time-accurate :D
@@gtheavyy8543 yes but Lithuanians were known to be top notch
Ask Vigo Mortenssen how it feels trying to deflect an arrow using only a sword ^^
@@gtheavyy8543 How many units actually wore plate armor in an army though? Nobles, sure, elite retinues sure but the common foot soldier/levy? No way. I'd say mail and gamberson would have been the most common armor wear for the average joe and that's only for a decent army.
@@pickleinspector5948 True, though by what Age upgrades imply, militia line also rises in rank as it upgrades with each age. It is not called a "champion" with no reason. The same could be applied to militia; no matter where you put the dark age, common soldiers had way better equipment.
I would consider Champions to represent early gothic/white armored infantry, somewhere in early 1400s. Armies at that time started shifting towards pike and shot formations, with cavalry for shock, and heavy infantry to break pike lines. If these champions are indeed the pike-breaking, zweihander-wielding tanks, noone in any mail could even wink at them the wrong way. The only solution was firearms, warhammers, or even more (MORE) pikes.
Regardless; aoe2 is anachronistic. Serjeants clearly represent something around 10th-11th century. It is just visually strange for them to slaughter gothic knights, or even any properly armed modern man-at-arms
4:09
Never thought I would hear Spirit reference Daft Punk in a sentence
completely missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
yeah, thanks for the earworm! :D
I was about to say that. 11
Was about to comment almost the same :D .
Kan Ye tell me who covered that song?
I know that Donjons were not a topic of this video, but it is something you have to give to the Serjeants.
While the Serjeants are building the Donjons, they continue building them even under attack/fire, where your villagers would just run amok and you would need to constantly click on the building foundation.
Which only supports their symbiosis further :-).
You've reminded me of something that came up in a recent video, and that's Herbal Medicine. Serjeants can create Donjons, which can hold 10 units, and will heal a near-1hp Serjeant in (I think) 2 minutes. We don't usually see towers built as part of offense, so we don't think of the idea of a nearby source of healing. It's probably still too micro-intensive to back off individual hurt infantry and keep track of which Donjon has hurt units, but the thought is there.
Yeah also feel the unit is designed for pushing bases, attack bonus vs buildings, pressuring with Donjons to get more troops and resistance to castles and TCs pretty brutal
The best feature of Sarjents. Unlike villagers they will ignore attacks when building towers.
It helps when you have a shield covering your back.
9:59 I think this gentleman don't give a shit about ad revenue
I believe they made it so you can add midrolls at 8 minutes now.
they changed it to 8 minutes a while ago
@@emdeo
Yeah, 7:59 is the new 9:59.
he gets $$ from patreon
Good to know that they changed it to 8 minutes
I guess my comment doesn't make sense now, Whooops
I still think the Serjeant should have the ability of reapiring siege weapons, I mean if they can build Donjons, and they still have their niche of building or reapiring things related with weapons
make them less cost efficient at repairing and I think you'd have a pretty solid argument
I don't know, that might make them a bit broken considering how tanky they are.
@Robert Rowe In a way, they can be considered combat engineers given that they're a unit that can fight AND build. Being able to build a Donjon and repair siege weapons would make some sense. They could make it so they can repair siege but half the rate (making it better to have villagers do it if they've retreated back from fighting, and Serjeant's could just help with maintenance in a way). Tbf though, they wouldn't do it, but it's a neat idea :o
They would be a massive unit
Can build their own towers, resistant to arrows and attack bonus to buildings... That's all I need to hear.
It's always fun to build too many towers pooping out units that auto attack buildings and don't care about enemy towers. You just let that go on autopilot while you focus on your eco and let the enemy try and clean it all up.
Dinjeons are weaker than towers con feudal, and sarjeants are very slow so Archers owns them
Only problem being that it is very expensive to do so.
@@karonteazt3286 donjons arent weaker then Towers just a bit more expensive.
The best thing that can Happen to your donjon rush ist that a tower fight breaks out
Just hit Castle age, the bonus damage against Towers kicks in and you won
@@Wyagra donjons are weaker than towers.
Donjons take a lot of stone to build. They're good as an overwhelming maneuver but if your opponent knows what he's doing he'll cut you off from the stone supply early and that's that.
Serjon vs TC is an important but overlooked point. All the pierce armour plus arson makes them eat tc if you have a big mass from fuedal. The power spike is massive
I’m still debating whether I should get the DLC but this pretty much convinced me
It is worth it. I'm not really a campaign guy but the multi-player content is worth the money alone. Sicilians and Burgundians both have a pretty novel play style that is really fun and interesting
Gotta keep them servers going whrrrrrr ;)
The civs are fun and everything, but the campaigns they added are among the best in the whole game
don’t buy it
it’s not worth it really
Sicilians and Burgundians are fun niche civs but outside of that they are just not worth it
even for the basic and common strategies their are much better civs than these 2
i’ve bought the dlc mainly for the campaigns tbh and if that’s your goal then go for it but don’t expect them to perform competitively
@@ammarfd1361 full scouts in feudal with Sicilians is good tbh. Backed up with a few spears in case the enemy has gone scouts.
Last time I was this early, there were only 18 civs
Wait till AoE 4 comes out with just 8 civs 11. :D (Though granted they are a lot more differentiated than civs in AoE 2)
From a design perspective, I think they are really interesting, They have their strengths and weaknesses, but are viable at different stages of the game. And the unique techs can give immediate power spikes, but are a one-shot, if not timed well, it will have no effect. Which leads to interesting decisions for the player.
7:16 that huskarl is a Chad when taking all those arrows.
Would have liked to see at least a bit of discussion about their atk bonus against buildings compared to champions given the arrow resistance.
1:50 This is the biggest flaw that make Serjeants useless. The fact that infantry are the first unit you can produce is *VERY* important to their viability, as no one would ever make infantry otherwise. The entire point is that you can get infantry out faster than everything else and mass them enough so that even against a superior unit (such as Knights), you still might win and trade cost-effectively because you already had a healthy sum of them before your opponent even began making units.
Serjeants unfortunately surrender this highly critical component to making infantry and thus feel underwhelming: it is NOT worth delaying your rush to be tankier, especially when you consider that the entire point of a Feudal push is to try and pick off vils; you 100% prefer the unit with the extra attack at this stage in the game, only welcoming Serjeants if you plan on facing archers. (which even then, the Malians have a more elegant and effective solution to)
By the time it's castle, it's unlikely you have such a mass of them that they're worth making over Knights, whereas with Longswords it's *possible* to have had enough of a mass left over from Feudal that it's worth going Longswords/Pikes vs. Knights. (not common, but feasible)
By Imperial, now the problem is that the necessary building to make them is incredibly vulnerable to Trebs...or any enemy, really. Enemies scale up better than Donjons do, so Donjons become fragile. Suddenly, whilst they're far more viable for Imperial, you'll have a much harder time making them simply because Donjons get torn through like paper. Remaking them just to make Serjeants is also a highly expensive investment for what's still a modest unit.
And again: Malians look at this civ and say "WTF are you doing?" Malians effectively *have* this unit in the form of their Champskarls. The #1 most attractive aspect of the Serjeant is the pierce armor, but Malians get this on a generic unit. This means Malians also get a unique unit. Likewise, the Champskarls are essentially Mali's only tanky unit late-game, as the rest of their composition are glass cannons. The Champskarls are just there to tank, hold the line and buy time. The *real* focus of their army are things like Farimba Cav or Gbeto, which are phenomenal raiding units.
.....And then we have Sicilians, who lack a Gbeto unique unit to do the raiding, lack a unique tech like Farimba to make their units more viable, and instead one of their "best" units is suddenly the Serjeant, which is still very modest in what it can accomplish. Honestly, Sicilians have perhaps the worst lategame composition in the game, and when you look at how Mali gets an equivalent unit (Champskarls vs. Serjeants), a solid unique unit in Gbeto, and a solid lategame tech via Farimba, you have to wonder why exactly Sicily gets absolutely nothing for it's lategame. Mali is arguably stronger start to finish, so what gives? Isn't Sicily just straight-up underpowered?
So yeah, to me, all these tests don't matter. The meaningful part is at 1:50, and that singlehandedly makes Serjeants a garbage unit. It's like if a civ got War Elephants but only collected food at half the normal gather rate: theoretically a fine unit, but god awful for the situation it's provided in.
IF they want to significantly improve the Serjeant, let it be constructed from Barracks as well and starting in Dark Age. (but with god awful stats obviously; probably equivalent to the Militia but with -1 attack and +1 defense) This would solve both it's issue with being too slow to make in Feudal whilst simultaneously making them more viable for Imperial, since you'd no longer NEED a Donjon to make them.
Yes, knight do counter Sarjes with simmilar numbers, but you theoreticly could start massing Sarjes from feudal age, giving you the edge in early castle anyway. Easier to say than do, especially given its not hard to slap down few stables, but since you brought up amassing Militia line since dark age, it seems fair to point out! :)
What the fuck? I came for the intro dude! The intro! How long has this been going on? This is inconceivable! Outrageous! I want the intro back right now! We demand the intro that made your channel famous back!
... durum du du dum ♫durum du du dum ♫ du du du dum ♫ duriruriruiruri dum dum♫
(no, seriously, put it back)
Sicilian unique units are very fun it feels like a more special Korea at times
4:08 my man has good music taste.
Harder, better, faster, stronger.
SIcilians with Teutonic allies, that's some conversion resistance.
recently I am winning many 1 on 1 match with serjeants well I am enjoying them and also thanks for many info which I don't know still now and as always a good video
Always enjoy your detail-oriented analysis! It would benefit me greatly if you would do a recent "Best black forest civs" video. I love playing that map but have no idea how some of the new civs factor in.
Next Video : "How Good is The Berserk?". I want to know if I'm playing as Vikings, can I just make them as a bulk of my army or should I go for my already quite good Champion?
I think Spirit went over that a bit in the (tbf pretty old) Vikings civ overview.
IMO the Berserk's speed advantage alone makes it a better infantry unit, everything else stat-wise is pretty close and/or a trade-off; more attack and armor in exchange for a few HP (which the regen can make up for if if isn't killed in the first 10-20 seconds after first taking damage). Their main issue at the moment is that, as with many other champion-like unique units, the Supplies tech has skewed unit costs in the Champion's favor and there haven't been any buffs to counteract this.
If you just look at the raw stats and the cost, Champion seems better, but the Berserk's regeneration practically give them the edge in almost every situation and if you get Berserkergang, it isn't even a contest anymore.
Berserks have cool capes, always go berserks.
@@nlb137 Yeah but the video is really old. 5 years and since then there were some balancing updates especially for the chieftan tech, which now also buffs the champion.
So an update would be welcome. ^^
Beserks work best as defensive units. Just make a few patrol your base and the enemy will never get through
Good analysis. I'm definitely curious how First Crusade plays into cost effectiveness of Serjeants. Sicilians are my current go to on Arena, and I just FC, 5 TC, and then First Crusade when I need units. Last game I pushed with Serjeants into enemy Cataphracts, and while I lost, I felt like it was honestly a pretty cost efficient exchange for me.
Also, in Post Imp, if you're using Serjeants to push into an enemy town, and they have arbalest...just ignore the units and tear down the buildings. It's hilarious how little you have to care about them.
Dosn't that make them an even better anti-trash unit then the champion? They are tankyer especially against skirmishers.
The problem is being cost effective too
They cost a lot more gold then champions, and I think both take 1 damage per shot from skirmishers
@@Septimus_ii No, the Champion takes 2 damage per javelin
Nothing makes me happier than seeing a new SOTL video pop up : >
i like it. theres so many interesting and different ways to use them over 3 ages.
Who else doesn't play AOE2 anymore (or never played) but still watches his videos?
Well, I didn't before... but I started because of his vids.
I haven't really played in many many years. Got the definitive edition but it was too heavy for my notebook so now I play Medieval II.
7:17 chad huskarl
Glad you got the video within the YT alotted 10 minute max.
Their helmet reminds me of the helmet of the skyrim guards.
No lollygaggin'
Sicily was conquered by Normands back in the day and the sergeants use the Normandic style of armor of these times
I used to be an adventurer like you
But with their high pierce armor, would they take an arrow to the knee?
I'm new to aoe2 but i seriously can't stop watching your videos
Spanish villagers when they see Serjeants : *"Finally, a worthy opponent! Our battle will be legendary!!"*
4:09 *"Knights are harder, better, faster, stronger."* Wait, is that Daft Punk reference?? xD
4:10
Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well
The return of the King!!
I just picked up the expansions pack yesterday, and I think that Sicilians are my new favourite civ. You can tell the devs put more effort into the premium civs than the other ones.
Great vid as aways Spirit!
Premium civs? Dafuq mate... It's just civs created later some time that were given something unique, how can you compare nowadays made civs to the AoK civs lmao, such a difference on how aoe was played back then and now.
Every civ made after AoK got something special that made them stand out when they released, but after the next batch of civs people got used to em. Look at AoC & FE civs.
Plus Premium civs? It's an expansion, you call AoC etc also premium civs?
I think they just make a great combo with pikes to counter knights in castle age
Great video about serjeants, but i'm here to point out the daft punk reference at 4:08.
Question: Are you going to do full civ overviews for Burgundians and Sicilians?
Yes, after all of the balance changes will be settled down a bit
1:46 the serjeant should take 23 arrows from the archer, not 15, it's like the archer has the offensive upgrade but the serjeant does not have the defensive one.
Hey Spirit. Great video as usual! Though in the end I missed a comparison, in Imperial Age, with the both the Cavalier and the Paladin. It's fair considering in Castle the Serjeant was compared to the Knight.
oh goood yaaaas, a new SOTL video :)
Thank you for the great time :)
I think serjeants have such a fun and interesting play style!! After building the initial donjon, villagers can go back to work while serjeants take over construction of additional donjons. They're great for point control, and can choose to fight underneath the donjon for an additional advantage. Weak serjeants can garrison, while being replaced with a stream of full health serjeants, and once the weak serjeants aren't in immediate danger, they can be tasked to repair donjons to apply additional pressure to the opponent. It's like a hybrid between tower rushing and forward barracks, but without the need to invest as much villager idle time. So fun!!
Scutage still applies to teammates, right? Because malay can potentially get 400 karambit warriors, so 6000 gold
Boi thats a lot of gold
Karambit-Coin stonks
@@kaneroberts5046 yeah but muh scutage
or someone with 200 flemish militia......
The First Crusade tech is honestly quite awesome. Not only it gives you extra units, but it also provides the same efect as technology Faith, while being cheaper (300F and 600G vs. 750F and 1000G) and is available one age sooner. Not to mention you can still reasearch Faith as Sicilians. Yeah, they might lack a Heresy, but good luck succesfully convert more than few of their units (and if they are allied with Teutons, ouch!)
Here's a video idea - when is the best time to build a castle in economic terms? How much resources do you lose out on, or how much do you slow your boom, for each additional villager sent to build?
Sicilians have been one of my favourite civs to play since the expansion and all the fun considerations that the Serjeant brings are a large factor. I think one of their really strong aspects is that big power spike from feudal to castle. They're decent units to pressure your opponent in feudal, then ideally you have a good mass of them, you hit castle and suddenly you have a nasty army in your opponent's base for no extra cost, while massing up knights would only just start at the beginning of castle. I kind of think of it as the advanced version of the Bulgarian free militia line upgrade where you send your militia over in dark age and they become men at arms for free.
I would really Love to know how long it Takes to convert a sicilian unit, when They habe first crusade, teuton ally and fairh resaerched
Day 23: Enemy monk is still WOLOLO
@@KorialstraszD Day 30 : Enemy monk lost his voice so he is swinging his stick more furiously instead :D
In the past he’s released a Unique Unit biopic shortly before a full civ review. I think we are about to get a Sicilian overview video. Sweet.
All that poor training dummy units just standing there, hoping SotL finishes his explanation fast enough so they don't have to die
Fascinating versatile unit, you can use it to tower rush, or to gain a power spike by insta-spawning 35 units, or save that tech as an emergency to protect from a severe raid, or wait until post imperial and trash wars, save the gold, and spawn the sarjeants and then use the secondtech, gain more gold, and recruit knights on top of that while your enemy is using trash.
I think an important distinction here is that the Serjeants only have one upgrade you need to pay for, as opposed to the four unit upgrades the swordsman line needs to get to champion.
Factor in the total amount saved by sticking with Serjeants instead of getting those Swordsman upgrades and translate that into units and I think that makes a good argument against the Swordsman line, at least investment wise. (The saved
resources can also be used for villagers, tech switch into knights or archers, etc. etc.)
Hey man , great work on your videos! Love em! I have an idea for you ... you can try to to find out what happens when scouts 1v1 , on dark and feudal. Who will win , does it matter if you click or patrol or attack move ? Or if you turn and attack before enemy scout chasing reaches you? You will put an end to that dispute once and for all with your test's 11. Keep up the great work!
I start using Donjons to encroach on enemy resources at Feudal, by the time they reach castle and start producing knights you typically have enough of a numbers advantage that you can beat them back and maintain the pressure.
Very powerful, very beautiful
I feel like when discussing their building compared to villagers, it is worth noting that they don't stop building when attacked unlike villagers.
I don't think players should choose between knights and serjeants in castle. Go for a mixed force of skirms, serjeants and knights. Serjeants set up Donjons and help screen pikes and camels, knights brawl, skirms can help soften enemies at range.
Speaking of me being wrong, Spirit would you consider a video on if there's value in healing high armour units in combat vs only using monks post battle or exclusively for relics?
Hey, could you do a video on the battle event post-game timeline marker perhaps? What exactly triggers it?
Few points I have in mind :
1) Event though we compared Knights vs Serjeants , important part in real time is meele pathing, especially in choke points which you can create by strategically placing buildings - Kinghts suffer due to bulk of size, serjeants don't ; So you can have more serjeants attacking knight in such conditions
2) More pierce armour means a lot, you can create an army of serjeants and send them to enemy town have few construct Donjon (while rest run around and tank arrow fire) efficient then Champions ; Theoretically These guys can be good counter to goths provided you build enough donjons ; again you don't need to send villagers
3) Knights has speed, however castle age people have resources to create a small army of pikes and skrimishers(or archers) ; You have to run around a lot looking to damage economy of opponent. Now try serjeants in this situations coupled with their ability to create donjons (send few knights to take down archers if any) (better then long swordsman) - Again this is situational
Sicilians have become one of my favourite civs pretty quickly, and the Serjeant is a big reason why. I'm a sucker for really resilient Infantry units.
I do think there is something to be said about the fact that they can also start massing their unique unit long before anyone else, and the best counters don't come out until castle and imperial. Basically, if you can manage to eat the early game cost of the unit, you can end up being pretty far ahead before the enemy can practically defeat the strategy. I stick by my belief that the Sicilians are basically a "tank civ" in the same way that the Teutons are - boa constrict your enemy to death by straight up being hard to kill; be defensive while keeping constant pressure and focus on map control, but as soon as the enemy can out maneuver you the pain train starts to hit you instead.
I feel like the Sarjeant's stats makes it perfect at pushing fortifications. You can build your own and hide/heal in your donjons while having high pierce armor for town center, castles and tower arrows coming at you whike you are knocking on someone's door. I had hooed that you would feature how surprisingly easy it is to take down a TC in feudal age and in castle age with only a handful of them.
The Serjeant is fantastic at creating a foothold. They can create in the field a fortified position that can then be used to reinforce them. Even a single serjeant getting in behind enemy lines can thus give you the ability to create a defensive position and an army behind the enemy's defences.
I did not notice how the Flemish Militia looks extremely aesthetic in teal
I use them like zerglings in Starcraft : coming in huge numbers, to harass villagers, and hold a position against the main army (because they are quite resilient), with a little help of monks. They are weaker against archery/powder units, but you can use them in a "pursue then regroup" tactic and they will be effective.
these units remind me of age of mythology's Norse faction
This is a Norman unit from the Hauteville dynasty that invaded sicily so yes
With full upgrades, and elite serjeant has 4+4 pierce armor and 85 HP.
With full upgrades including chemistry and bracer, which many civs don't have both of, arbs do 10 pierce damage.
So with many civs, the elite serjeant may end up just tanking arrows even better than an elite Huskarl.... taking 43 to 85 shots to go down depending on the civ.
Math class time😁
I love AoE II DE and SOTL's math
Nothing else😅
7:00 The arbalists are so close to syncing their shots to the beat of the music...
There's also the 4:40 mark.
Good info!!!
I think the biggest difference to the infantry line is that there is no common counter to serjeants like archers are to the infantry line. And knights are also easily countered with the spear line.
After watching countless SOTL videos, I've come to wonder how much of this precise mathematical information is used autonomously by high level players like for example The Viper. And how ridiculously good of a player would a perfect AI be at this game with all the intricate information the game beholds?
Last time I was this fast, spirit still had his old samurai logo T_T
Important thing to keep in mind is, for the double unique tech combo, you need to have a lot of resources stockpiled before researching them.
Would it be possible to go for a timing attack right at the castle age? That way your army of serjeants is going to be leagues better than any archers/man-at-arms your opponent is going for as they won't have time to start researching any blacksmith techs before your tower building marauders are bearing down at Mach Jesus.
Happened to me today, was building a daut castle at 90 % to train samurai and I got serjent rushed
Serjeant should be able to make palisade walls
4:09 You didn't think you could hide that daft punk reference from me?
harder better faster stronger
Is the background on the Donjon icon at 1:04 the Windows XP wallpaper?
yes
Spirit can you do a scenario soon? Ty
Yay another video🙂
Shouldn't the Man at Arms take only 1 damage from Skirms too? Or am I missing some bonus damage? I though they only had bonus against spears
Good question. I always assume skirmishers/archers have fletching in feudal tests, but that melee units don't have upgrades. I find that's usually how it plays out in practice, though admittedly sometimes I've seen people get melee upgrades in extended feudal battles.
@@SpiritOfTheLaw oh yes indeed Fletching is probably the only feudal blacksmith tech that feels mandatory in most situations.
I will keep it in mind for future videos, thanks for the clarification!
to be honest i adore the Serjeants, but mostly for team games they feel very much like a one size fits all and are all around excellent for tanking and keeping up advantage due to their ability to build towers
About the diminishing returns on a build, I heard somewhere that each additional builder does 1/3 the work of the first. I could see how the math would appear that you have diminishing returns but it might not be entirely accurate. hmm
Halbs +Sergeants can take out most things and they're dangerous against Eagles of Meso Civs
thats exactly what diminishing returns means
Just to point out something for ppl, the high armor on sergeants means lower-attack units are a lot weaker to them than to champions. So even if you are not fighting archers it is wrong to assume that champions win in a melee fight vs other units compared to segeants.
You can bring trash as an example, hussars "excet for maygars and maians" do 11 damage. vs champions though, that would go down to 7 after armor. in total Hussar does down to 3 damage vs sergeants though which is less than half what champion takes.
They have very good armor that is not counting blacksmith upgrades. 2+1/2+1 in feudal is strong, 3+2/3+2 in castle age is already better then knight in armor, and 4+3/4+4 is powerful on the elite in imperial age given that only a few unique units have 4+3 melee armor in imperial let alone 4+4 pierce armor is like a fully upgraded elite skirmisher. Very strong on armor makes those units good versatile all around just have to watch out for mass archers cavalry archers and even then it is a problem only for playing against the ai or if they don't hit and run to avoid them or use paladins to fight them, it is tough to take on such armies given that donjons can mass them if the player spends several castles worth of stone.
The 35 crusade sarges spawn with 5 Tcs is life!
4:09 i got that Daft Punk reference
the knights are harder, better, faster stronger :)
4:09 I see what you did there
Hey guys! Spirit of the law here!
Don't forget that if you go infantry line, you need to upgrade to each new unit. Which costs resources and time. Going serjeants rather than Champion could put you in a better economic position late game.
I like both units and both have their uses but Donjons can be really useful if you want to defend your base from early archer raids, you get a tower which creates a military unit which is decent stat wise and can hold up against archers well and to support it, you can mix in few skirms and in late game you can also use sicilian cavalier to counter archers since they have really high pierce armor and also take less damage from the pikes because of their civ bonus.
I wish you could incorporate some typical battle scenarios of mixed compositions. For example 10 Searjeants/Knights/Champions + 10 crossbows vs each other.
That 3 pierce armor in castle age plus potentially two more from armor upgrades by that point is scary.
Crossbows get 5 base attack and 1 more from fletching. If they have bodkin then they will do TWO whole damage. Without full castle age upgrades, the crossbows will be dealing 1 damage against a serjeant, giving them an almost Huskarl-like presence....
the only issue is that huskarl is cheap unit and more importantly very fast movement rate which enables them to catch up to archers and then wreck them with their anti-archer bonus. Sergents won't ever catch up to archers in low numbers when people micro. And even if they do, they won't do nearly as much damage to archers. This unit is more like the Teutonic knight
Make a video about tree hp.
Why?
i wonder how effective a tower rush transforms into a castle age, the stat boost when you already have the towers standing seems like a strong transition!
I've only been donjon rushed once, in Arena. He spent too much time collecting stone though, I clicked up to castle age and knocked out 4 donjons with just line 6 knights with some scouts.
I wonder if that normally worked for him. His eco was so far behind that it was a one-sided fight. Definitely less effective than waiting to do a castle drop.
Me wanting to go to bed at 2am because I need to get up early
*sotl: "how good is the sergeant"*
Me who doesn't even play aoe anymore: "hmm interesting, let's find out"
The patch did wonders.
"Hey guys! Spirit of the law here. Today we are going to read this in my voice."
nah