All the Hidden Advantages of Aging Up (AoE2) 

The second SOTL reminded me of tracking, I felt like I aged up several times

Obviously the biggest bonus is buildings looking cooler - although in some cases I find I can prefer the aesthetics of the feudal buildings e.g. slavs

The only advantage I got aging up was the privilege of paying taxes

One additional bonus which seems to have been missed: In dark age, if you attack a vilager with your scout (not sure about militia), the villager will fight back. Once you hit feudal, the vilagers will simply run away,meaning that yoi have a much better ability to harass enemy vilagers, as your opponent needs to micro them to counter you, and can't just rely on auto retaliate

I always stayed in the Dark Age in all my games, but now you’ve convinced me to age up. Thanks!

House HP used to be static in AoC but that was too good on defense so it got dropped in successive updates. same for melee armor recently. building HP matters less in AoE4 since they dont serve as walls.

You certainty recall the days of Voobly AoC where the game was centered around Arabia and Hun wars. This was, in no small part, influenced by how campy defensive structures made the game. The staggering of building HP is a new addition in reaction to this. It perhaps was not a design necessity, but making some assumptions here, AoE 1 had very low HP on buildings. AoK might have over compensated, and this is something that was in effect until AoE2 HD. By then, adjusting the balance of building HP with further technologies may have seemed excessive or clunky, so the staggering of HP might have felt the most natural way to address thus. I would agree.

"Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here." will always be so comfy to listen to at the start of these videos.

I feel like one of the biggest weaknesses of this game is how many things are hidden in bonus damage and unexplained effects. You're like Maimonades, but everyone should be able to learn these things in game, maybe in an extra page of info for every unit, even every thing, with all bonuses, hidden stats and the like.

So scout units gain over all stats alongside LOS, good to know. This alongside the other bonuses to units and buildings are good to know. I can always count on Spirit for teaching me the hidden secrets and mechanics of AoE2.

Donjons also get much stronger when hitting castle age

I just age up by watching a Spirit of the Law video the moment it comes out.

ever since i noticed the heroes in AoM getting way better with every age i've been paying attention to this kinda stuff, it's quite interesting what the devs decided was a good bonus

You should make a video about the best militia civilizations, I think it would be interesting to see which bonuses would influence such an early unit enough to make one stand out over the other

Spirit, have you any idea what controls whether you see a battle icon in the timeline in the post battle results screen? It seems rather random if you get a battle icon or not, and whether it's you or the opponent who gets a battle icon. Why don't you both get a battle icon? Is it controlled by number/percentage of units lost or killed or something else?

The little smooth touches of the text being covered by the revealed map are really NOICE! XD

1:30 Didn't villagers used to have daggers? I don't know what kind of sword that villager is using but it definitely doesn't look like something a feudal peasant would carry.

I really like the Sicilian's, having your Unique unit even as far back as Feudal is really interesting for me, and how going into castle; they teir up to fit their Castle unique unit status before having to elite them in imperial.

Forget TCs or trebs. The most obvious advantage is the star in the statistics at the end of the game 😀

I've often taken advantage of the Serjents insane boosts. You do a small Donjon rush and then get to Castle as fast as possible. Next thing you know, your opponent is spending tons and tons of resources on trying to make Longswords while you have to do absolutely nothing to get your alpha-chad Serjents going instantly

Thank you so much! This is such a concealed and under-explained issue! Thanks for clarifying these things to the non-pros!

The thumbnail for the video should have been an old guy in a nursing home, sitting on a couch, contemplating life, while holding a cane.

Holy cow. Tracking… you unlocked a memory I forgot I had

What about Wonders and their HP and Armor? In some campaign missions/scenarios you have a wonder while not being in imperial. I would assume it is like the TCs and Castles. All in all pretty interesting video :) Another question I have. What do you think about the free trial version of AoE3 DE and do you think this concept would work for other Age games to increase their player number?

makes ya think that ages are somewhat an important concept in this game series

1:05 I noticed that edit. Pretty slick.

There's also a psychological advantage when your opponent sees you hit castle or imperial. They're more likely to expect certain units or aggression and you can take advantage. Plus they're pressured to age up themselves, or they'll feel left behind. And that equals out the resource cost and TC time you spent.

7:55 "Slavs" (after the Portuguese) is not colored, unwatchable. Awesome video! It's not an "advantage" obviously, but I believe the scout actually loses speed when upgrading to Light Cavalry? from 1.55 to 1.50?

"dont want to stuck in feudal any longer than necessary" yeah i feel that applies to humanity in general as well. We stayed in feudal much longer than was required

Fascinating idea for a video, SOTL! I had an idea for another video you could do. A historical accuracy series where you dive into how accurately AoE2 portrays civilizations and battles compared to real life.

When you talked about track I remebered this tech! And I remembered that there were LOTS of other techs like other gold upgrades and all in the original game? right? What about a video showing all old techs that does not exist anymore? Since I can't find it

I noticed another thing you've not mentionned if i'm right. Some units changes stances from Dark Age to Feudal Age. This is mostly impacting with custom scenarios as the impacted units are mostly created at Feudal Age but have "keep ground" stance while present on dark age, I've seen that on eagle warriors. My guess is that as the eagle scout exist, and the scout cavalry got keep ground stance, then the entire line is affected by that parameter, but maybe there is more to that mechanics.

I think this is actually very fitting. While no particular tech relevant to your campaign is discovered, the the idea of aging up is that the general tech level of your civ has increased. It makes sense, then, that it would come with a variety of subtle, minor improvements. Manifesting these as mostly defensive buffs also slightly tones down the power of rushes without breaking them entirely. You feudal rush will slow the moment someone hits castle, but only enough to stop you if you've already lost momentum.

I liked the transition at 1:05 covering the LOS

I wish those hidden unit stats were actually shown in-game + data on ageup upgrade buffs (in the recruit tab, kinda similar to how it's done for detailed skill descr in LoL for example, instead of absolutely obvious lines like "but wait there is more, more upgrades in BS/monastery/etc")

The editing has reached a new level❤

The vast amount of hidden stats makes the game very hard to approach for new players who want to play it seriously. It feels like a phd is required in these stats before being able to really compete with people who have all this memorized from years of playing.

This was a great video. I didn't know any of the HP increases for buildings stuff.

Garage Camel Scout sounds like a wicked good indie band name.

About castle hp, in game there is a unit ID identical to the standard castle that has 5300 hp, maybe it was planned to autoupgrade the castle once hit imperial to get a flat +500 hp, this unit ID exist since the age of kings in 1999 and still is an unusued feature

This is awesome!

Wow, I've played AoE2 for I don't know how many hours, and I had no idea this was a thing. At all. Thank you so much for this video!

7:00 In Age of Empires 2, it was actually abnormal for buildings to get better just by aging up. Go pick up your an CD and find that houses are a flat 900 HP and so on. About the only thing I think changed was your Scout getting better at seeing. I think it was the only thing that changed by agining, and it might not even get its combat abilities affected. I remember several times killing villagers with my dark age Scout... although the AI likes to drop off its resources before either garrisoning or fighting back. I mean heck I was able to kill 3 villagers with loom with a Dark Age scout cavalry. Back then Scout Cavalry either got a line of sight and combat upgrade or it only got a line of sight, I don't know which. Killing villagers who don't fight back obviously is not very impressive, so that really can't be used as evidence that Scout Cavalry were at their full combat potential. But even if Scout Cavalry behaved the way it does now back then, it was the only thing really, except maybe some civilization bonuses.

Did you mention that the Feudal Serjeant build slower than castle/imperial age? I may have missed it.

How do units obtained from Gaia react to this hidden Age Up bonuses? Do they retain the stats from the age in which they were obtained? or does it depend on which age Gaia was?

6:40 my brain heard "Byzantine Bears" and I'm like "great, as if Berenstain Bears wasn't enough already, another parallel universe shift just happened"

thnx SOTL... i never knew about the eagle hidden bonuses v cavalry. learnt somethin new today :)

Hey Spirit, can you make more videos about your gameplay, vs AI or other players. Love your videos btw.

I think for transparency a lot of this could be indicated by either a slight visual change upon upgrading or a different name such as in age of empires 4 with early and vanguard men at arms.

You think there are enough scrapped techs to do a video on? Tracking, boiling oil, hunting dogs, and the old allied line of sight tech. Not sure if there are others.

The hidden serjeant bonus was very noticeable even in casual play

Spirit coming with the hard hitting facts that give me the age in my matches once again.

Yet another instance of "effects that should have been explicitly laid out to players in-game but aren't".

It's my birthday and I thought this video would cheer me up but then I undersood the title

aging up has only reduced the HP of my knees

The Sargent castle power spike in particular is brutal. The only threatening unit possible in early castle is the knight, which cannot mass early in Feudal. If you can destroy a stable with a workshop drop before a knight mass is built you can beat your opponent sisenseless

Do all of these also apply to Aoe2 HD Edition?

Does this mean we'll get a list of "silver fox" and "daddy belly" civs someday?

its probably a very simple video, but id love a video on unit's speed, for example i think E woad raiders and E eagle warriors have the same speed, is that right?

Its a shame that unit doesnt change their apperance when you age up. For example Eagle in Feudal is different enough compare to Castle age to look different. Would be a good help to new players who dont know about those stats changes

I've always played with the mindset of "SLOW to FEUDAL, FAST to IMPERIAL"

Dude, the fact that a casual AoE2 video gets 100k+ views is mind-blowing to me. Is it actually actually the biggest RTS game today or is that still SC2?

Im curious. Do unit upgrades automatically restore their hp? If so, would it be beneficial to time the upgrade for the midpoint of a figbt?

What about building speed of Town Centers, that also increases, right? (particularly interessting for Cumans)

Doesnt the donjeon also get the hidden bonus of firing extra arrows when ageing up?

Ok. SOTL. Testing for you. how is this affected by conversions? so, if someone converts a dark age unit, does that mean it will gain the bonuses from the person who would be in castle age? If a converted unit stays the same, what about when the original owner advances, does that unit upgrade as well?

Excellent video! Thank you!!

Always a good day when solt uploads

Very good one, thanks, SotL!

Thanks for the advice. I will try to incorporate aging up more into my gameplay 😂

Maybe the increase in line-of-sight with each age is a metaphor for how the people became more enlightened with each passing time period.

Spirit of the Lah is my favourite AoE2 youtuber

All in all reaching castle age gives lot of advantages, me who resigns if I see enemy sheep walking by my base : if only.

Deep down Im.hoping for a well rounded civ tier list or top 5

Now please a real-life version of this video (aka, getting older): that'd be very interesting, honestly.

I very randomly thought that it would be interesting to give a civilization a bonus that makes them able to garrison vills or archers in watchposts for a small ranged attack. That would of course necessitate very specific balance. What do you think?

Great video.Keep it up.

I have a question, do you think the same things happen in the older HD version of the game?

I can't believe I didn't notice Tracking was missing all this time

I like how there’s a title card for Scout Calvary and then no other title card shows up for the rest of the video lol.

Those of us who have played 10x civ bonus mod are definitely aware of that sergeant stat increase...ouch

It would be interesting to know which civs benefit the most from these "hidden" bonuses from aging up.

Not quite on topic, but I keep remembering that you could attack an enemy villager who is constructing something, causing the construction site to collapse instantly. Is this a AoK/AoC thing that changed? Or maybe the ai of cpu opponents?

wow i just noticed that the video just released

Did this video inspire the YouPudding strat? 😮

It's bad design that the Scout Cavalry changes so much without a visual cue. Why don't they just name the first one something like Horseman with a different model and upgrade it to Scout Cavalry once you reach Feudal.

Scout camel fits to eastern and african civs. Those civs have trade carts with camels so why not give them camel scout? Elite Eagle Warrior should lose bonus attack vs cavalary, lose 2 pierce armor and have cost replaced with food. Also militia line shouldn’t do any extra damage to them. It would be good and slightly cheaper variant of raiding unit for mezo civs. They already have -20 hp compare to light cavalary and their cost would be 70f instead of 50g and 20f. Good replacement for hussar which btw should have attack increased to 9 attack just to be on part with elite eagle warrior. Winged hussar on the other hand requires to be fixed and redesigned to be gold unit. “Tracking” tech would be cool if instead of extra line of sight would show tracks units leave behind. That would allow to track them through fog when they dissapear from line of sight. Obuch doesn’t melt armor of buildings but Tarkan should do it. This is anti building unit and apart of that it should have special command to prioritize to attack units or buildings first. I’d love to see fortified palisade upgrade in ranked games. They are available only in scenario but would be great in defense for civs like cumans and goths.

I am not sure but I thinks military building create units faster through the ages. I notice in campaign my building having different queue time.

I did not know that about scout cavalry 😳

God bless your sould, SotL!

I don’t think that any single one of these improvements exist in AoE2 Conquerors! This video should be named differently IMO.

Videos you need while approaching 30:

Forgot to mention that base food from farms increase with age

Waiting for a "Top Monk Civs" video someday. You haven't done one yet. :-)

aoe has HIDDEN buffs? you dont say. i thought the game information was comprehensive and very well displayed :O

I don't see why only Gurjaras get the Camel Scout. This should be a regional unit to all north african and middle east nations, like the Eagle Scout is for the americans.

Does a damaged building get more "healthy" hp or more "damaged" hp with these hidden upgrades? ie 1000 out of 1200, does it go to 2000 of 2200 or 1000 out of 2200?

Explorer increase their view for exploration.

Is donjon and Dungeon the same?

I'll never understand why the Eagle Warriors upgrade exists. +1 Pierce armor and 5% movespeed and 5hp doesnt seem fair for the ammount of resources invested