A serious discussion about AoE2 windmills 

For everyone watching a video on this channel for the first time: No, this is not an April's fool's joke. This is what we watch this channel for. Usually with a bit more focus on the farms.

"I don't want to get bogged down in the physics of medieval windmills" "For GODSAKE MAN THATS WHY I'M HERE"

See, he thinks it’s an April fools joke on us, but really it’s just more peak mid sized gaming RU-vidr content

Bro i didn't expect an april fools video to be so detailed and well thought out, and best of all, historically accurate and educational. This is definitely why we love SOTL.

The content we've always wanted for this first of April

Feel Good Inc. for the outro. A man of windmill culture I see.

2:08 "Developers don't make mistakes" The true April Fool's joke right there

I love how this Video doesn't feel out of place, it could have been uploaded any day of the Year.

I know you are posting this for April first.. but historical accuracy and aesthetics comments of different building sprites is actually something I would love to see more!

This is the best AOE content I've ever seen. Also the cool stick in the Cuman mill is definitely a plow propped against the wall. Another knock against the African mill is that the draft animal powering the mill isn't actually an ox, it's a cape buffalo which is not a domesticated animal. In fact, it's the second most dangerous vertebrate in Africa after the hippopotamus, so using to power a mill would be a very bad idea.

The pre-castle East Asian mill will always have a special place in my heart because I built it on a minecraft server, the group I was playing with got bored and stopped playing on that server, and then i checked the map the year after and found out the mill survived that whole time despite the town being occupied by multiple other groups.

Peak content. 10/10. Very informative and entertaining.

I didn't realize it was April 1st. I assumed this was just a normal upload, and frankly I stand by that assumption.

The windmills at 7:30 do actually have the wind-blocking part in the bottom corner!

Dude, jokes aside, I think we all would love more architecture insights not only for the mills, but for all the other buildings as well! I love architecture and I even designed some graphic mods for the old HD edition, and I never noticed the little details you mentioned here!

Finally a video that appeals to my dutch heritage.

Not gonna lie, this is exactly the type of AoE 2 video I want to see, April Fool's or any other time of year

See now this is the content I like. None of this pedantic villager timing, the 'unique units' nonsense or the barbarity of pointless bloodshed. Just an in-depth well-researched look into one interesting facet of human ingenuity. Kudos!

If SotL did AoE2 historical accuracy videos on top of the mathematical crunching ones he would become unstoppable in terms of Age related content

1:16 The water wheel also has the water behaving as if it would come from the top and going over (like for the next one), instead of from the side and going under (and the orientation of the shovels accordingly). 7:30 This one has at least the lower half of the wind blocker.

Using the Don Quixote scale to rank windmills is an epic deep cut. Very well done Spirit--you are indeed a man of culture

"What am I, veritasium?" You earned +1000 points of respect

Wow. Cant believe you and your team really built a replica of the windmill shown just to visualize the effect of the wind better than in the graphic. The lenghts you go through to deliver the best possible video is crazy! Thanks for all your effort.

Even though it was an April Fools "joke" , I loved this video. I hope these become a yearly tradition.

"If really not now, then when if every would be the right time". As an engineer, that made me jump up on my chair. Cant say how much I love watching you

i must stop everything and watch a video about the historical accuracy of windmills in aoe2

The piano cover of Feel Good Inc. was the icing on the cake. I salute to you.

I think you heavily underrated the Central Asian variant, as it DOES have the blocking wall, just not a perfect one, and is the only representative of one in the whole list.

You wanted to know why the MesoAmerican mills needed those skulls on them? Well that's how they get them to spin against the wind. Duh!

I know this is a random place to say it... but you are awesome, SOTL... seriously. Between you, T-90, Dave, MembTV, and of course all the 2700+ legends (Viper- & all the other V's, Hera, Mr. Yo, Tatoh, Daut, etc...)... all the Low and Mid ELOs.. and commenters in general... this AOE2 community is just so grand. Thank you so much for your dedication, patience, diligence, careful attention, insight, and passion for your craft. It truly is inspiring. _ /\ _

Each second of this video is a work of art.

This is extremely entertaining the 2/10 inflating and deflating sacks was so funny, also the level of care to show off the cool animations was top notch. please more like this!

11/10 Gorillaz piano outros. Top notch touch 👌

For the southeast asian mill, the wheel has the dents leaining to the wrong direction. In order for the dents to effectively use the strength of the water from the fall and for the wheel not be slowed down by the river, the dents have to lean to the opposite direction.

Finally some quality videos. Took you long enough

as an actual, totally real and certified engineer I can confirm that the east asian windmill would work, the flow rate and drag coefficient would ensure that the water kept flowing and stayed in it's path. You are correct that the support seems a bit thin but the wheel would work as a suspension force reliving the bearing from a lot of pressure, assuming that force vectors are correct

The piano Feel Good Inc. bit at the end broke me a bit.

You should deduct some extra points from the east asian mills. Yes the cogs are a nice detail but in the castle age 2 cogs seem to be driven by one main cog connected to the main wheel. Both those cogs run the same direction which would be impossible when driven by the same cog.

Ngl this is one of your best nonconventional videos, I always loved the art in the game and it's nice to learn about it's little quirks. We need more of this!

This is probably one of the best RU-vid videos I have ever watched

If you've ever seen a wind indicator spin, they don't block any wind. But the way they're designed involves a bit of a spoon shape. When they're on one side, they're catching the wind. When they rotate to the other side, the wind is able to go around them. A non-closed off design can allow a windmill to spin, provided it's designed to catch more wind on one side than the other. You can see this in the Castle Age Indian windmill design, too. In fact, the wind forces being applied to each side would have to be perfectly balanced in order for the windmill to _not_ spin. Any asymmetry in forces will affect the way it catches the wind and thus cause it to rotate. That said, restricting the flow of air on one side would cause it to rotate faster, no matter the design.

I just came back from work and turned on my PC, and lo and behold! An SOTL video just minutes old! Thanks a lot for making my day better my man!

This isn't an april fool's joke, this is quality content and the reason we have watched spiritofthelaw for years.

I know this is meant to be an April Fool's joke, but I've legitimately spent time in-game just watching the windmills spin and examining their engineering and accuracy.

My favorite windmill will always be the Mountain Giant from Age of Mythology

nice video enjoyed all 9 min of it

Love the premise, you stuck to it and your style kept it entertaining throughout!

Finally started going online..... it's kinda tough as an Xbox player

You are indeed aoe2 Veritasium

I instinctively hit the like button when we got that "I'm not Veritasium" line. Great video!

Your vids are always fun to watch and provide so much value

Lol when u mentioned that u got a team to build a windmill out in windt canada, i genuinely thought "goddamn he's stepping it up bigtime, hes gona be the veritasium of AOE 2 now" 😂😂😂😂 Still the boss IMO

Next video: Top 10 best Outposts in AOE2.

Spirit of the Law continues to produce absolute top tier April 1st content. Great video, perfect list, incredible outro music. I give it all 11 spinning sails out of 10

3:58 "What am I, Veritasium??" 😂 that made my day

Congrats on the no-bell prize. Unfortunately, i have to turn notifications off because, no bells are allowed. I'll continue watching from the subscription feed.

I dunno is somebody already tell you, but the that "stick" on the central asian mill is a PLOW.

This is the best April 1st video I've seen today, very nice surprise and a still good analysis

You have no idea how glad I am I found this video and this channel, I love worldbuilding fictional worlds but I hate researching farming and general infrastructure for different cultures/nations, but you present that information in such an interesting way. Now I'll finally be able to determine what kind of windmills each the nations I make would be most likely to use

Imagine that next patch would be all mill fixes and additionaly wheelbarrow would appear only after researching the tech 😂

The Aztec windmill is spinning very fast, just below framerate, thus creating the illusion of spinning in the wrong direction. You're welcome.

This is the most important video this channel has ever put out. Well done.

The art for aoe2, whether classic or DE, is absolutely timeless and simply a joy to look at.

this is peak aoe2 content

i think the thing with wheelbarrows popping up before research is that a random mill person built one, but the empire wasn't convinced of its usefulness until an entire age went by, and they just couldn't have the mill people have all the benefits to themselves, so the invention was taken from the mill people, and claimed as a new research by the empire's ruler

I gave this video a like instantly, paying forward the folwark praise. I'm glad it came

This is my favourite video so far. I love the objectivity of your content, but I don't even play AoE II anymore -I still try not to miss any of your videos- and I just love historical accuracy and aesthetics so this one goes to favourites.

The fact that you're using an instrumental cover of Feel Good Inc. from Gorillaz for the outro is amazing, because its music video has an floating island with a windmill on it

7:54, that is a plow, not a cool looking stick

very entertaining. I never noticed those details. Would like to see more content like this ❤

This is the quality content I've subscribed for

Top tier quality content, ten medium-sizes gaming youtubers out of ten

Best list yet. Keep it up man

that gorillaz windmill reference on a piano at the end of the video is the kind of perfect added subtle thing that is the reason i`ve been watching this channel for almost a decade.

This is some of the best content I’ve seen On YT in a while.

I unironically love this and eagerly wait for more of this kind of content

I would love this kind of videos for the other buildings as well!

Excellent content as always SotL~

This is exactly the Video for me that I didnt know I needed. But I desperatly did. Thank you very much

Haha that's hilarious that you used "Don Quixotes" as a rating system for the windmill sails! 😂

It's such an amazing list. I'm blown away!

This is the content we need. Bonus points for the themed tune to finish the video

Joke or not, I want more of this! :D I LOVE your videos, but this one was the best so far

Y'know, for many years the game eluded me after playing for the first time around 2005 and always remembered how pleasant was to just look at my feudal age village, specially mills. When I got my hands back at it in 2012 or so, I just played matches that didnt get past feudal age because of the aesthetic. And you just went and did a raking that I wouldve watch the first day RU-vid was live on the internet.

damn, this is one of the best entertaining videos by Spirit.

One of if not the best video of the channel

awesome video haha! loved it

Love this sort of content on a special day like today. You must have heard about the Dutch windmills getting struck by ‘wing’ defects more and more?

If you were interested in doing a further video regarding the actual power output of each mill (who has the most effective mill) I study waterwheels, and to lesser extent, wind power, and could give some pointers. I love the overshot and undershot wheel designs, but do with the there was more of a canal leading to each, or more water flowing away as opposed to magically diaappearing. So glad you did this video, been think about it for ages

your content never lets me down

THIS is an incredible video. Honestly above and beyond content for any given day, let alone April Fool's Day

I went into this knowing full well that it's an April 1st video but was still excited about the analysis of the various windmill designs. :D

That outro!!!! Really nice touch

Thank you, this is what i came to this channel for!

Delivering the content we didn't know we needed. What a legend.

I hope it's not just an April Fool's Joke.. I honestly would love more videos like this. I've always loved the art that goes into the buildings, and being able to look up close, have it critiqued, and even get some authentic learning out of it... hell yeah, I want more videos like this!

Love this energy!!

The most important video on RU-vid. Lovely

As someone from Mexico I would say we didn’t have proper wind mills before the Spanish (as far as I know). We instead used to grind the corn by hand in the “metate”, the metate kind of like a mortar but flat and when you use it is kind of like you are flattening the dough for pizza with the roller.

10 out of 10 content. Thank you sir.