Best Defensive Building in AoE2 

the best defensive building is the house. Not even the owner can get inside.

0:22 that sick 360° from the boyar just to die 2 seconds later

Best defence is goth offence.

Bombard towers making no damage to rams never made sense to me. It's a bloody canon ball!!! How is that less effective than arrows agaisnt a covered siege engine???

Didn't even mention the Outpost... pfft.

Best building to protect villagers from raiding - Feitoria. Villagers work in overseas colonies of Portugal;)

I think that since you were including Yasama towers and Kreposts you should have considered Frank Castles

Is me or this whole vid is SotL trying to make us play with japanese? 11

5:35 "... to secure a really important location" Important Location: ENEMY BASE

As a Bulgarian I gotta say your pronunciation of Krepost is actually pretty good. Krepost literally means fortress. There are no true castles (as in very fortified houses of feudal lords and then military instalations) in Bulgaria but there are like 4000 fortresses which are the opposite of the castle mainly military but could provide housing for a lord. If you see something with towers and crenelations sticking up on hill here it's actually a Krepost. The model of the Krepost in the game is actually a modified Hrelja's Tower in Rila Monastery build in 1342. ;)

Request: "Which is the best defensive civilization" up next.

I think there's some satisfaction in having multiple bombard towers in a small space with cannon balls everywhere.

Well this is gonna need an updated version with the Donjon now

an important thing of the bombard tower: The canonball wrecking the poor unit it hits is damn satisfying.

Spirit on the law : most known Japenese fanboy Also Spirit of the law : " I'm starting to think Japense might be good"

"Starting to think Japanese are pretty good"... joke was so genius I couldn't even laugh.

"You know those arrow slits that we use to allow archers to shoot at attackers from buildings?" "Yeah" "LET'S HAVE MORE!!!" -Japanese engineer, CE 1354

Defensive buildings, for the people who want to keep playing AOE, but still want to maintain that quarantine

A very important point to note here is that Towers have the armor class "stone defenses" while castles and kreposts dont. This means Bombarc Cannons (+40), Tarkans (+12), Elephants (+7/10(Elite)), Villagers (+6), Ballista/Archer Elephants(+3/+4(Elite)) Obisdian arrows (+6), Sappers (+15). deal significantly more damage to towers than to Castles and Kreposts.

You should also have mentioned the "wall" effect of each of these. A castle effectively is a 4x4 wall where as a tower is just a 1x1 wall. That won't change the numbers a ton but is important for players like the Goths who don't get walls as a way to partially enclose an area. Also I'd like to see how much masonry and the hoardings upgrade effect the longevity of these.

There are a few considerations. For example, Castles have a much longer firing period, so if the first arrow of a volley kills the target, it has a long time where it's firing at nothing. Also, it's important to consider effectiveness when garrisoned; castles just tend to overkill more, while keeps, with less arrows each, tend to just become more effective.

What about harbours? They should be considered above all the mentioned because they are trash buildings

Hi Spirit, great vid as always. I think given we're looking at post-imp defensive buildings, you have to consider how they stand up against trebs. Trebs often miss towers, whereas they always hit castles. That should be factored in to their longevity. Love your vids!

Another factor to consider maybe space efficiency? Like we can build 4 towers in the same space of castle. That is especially important in special maps like arena or zombies maps.

Teutonic castles with crenellations are the best defensive structure with the unique A2AD capabilities in my experience.

From my experience: bombard tower is the coolest and the weakest of them all. Even AI dodges those slow moving cannonballs between attacks. What's more those towers have no splash damage (or its incredibly small), which makes them useless vs an army. My guess is either fully loaded archer tower or just a castle

Can i just say how amazing your content and your passion about this game is ? I used to play AEO 2 nearly 10 years ago when i was in high school with my friends. But i was never really good at it. Recently i wanted to get back into it and hooked up into your educational videos. Ever since then i've been binge watching them. It's awesome to see how many strategies and effort you need to put into this game that i had no idea. Thank you. Even your 3-4 year old videos helped me a lot.

I don't even play age of empires, I just really enjoy your way of presenting information. Thanks for making these videos.

What about teutons castles and with crenellations, celt castles and towers with strongholds and the the factor that the castles of incas and franks are cheeper? Aren't those things change things up?

idk why not include other civs special buildings (Franks, Teutons, and maybe even Koreans since they save all the techs)

happy to see you updating regular content while you're working on the villager pathing mechanics after building a TC or camp/mill.

Love the defense topic. Would like to see more on defensive setups, walling etc.

What about Teutonic towers and castles?

What about TCs? Like Malian,Persian or Teuton TC’s? Love the vid btw

Dude you are awesome. Such detailed statistics on towers. This is superb.

So glad the intro is back 🙌🏼

Solid video. By normal person standards, but for Spirit of the Law? I am concerned about his wellbeing and hope he's hanging in there. Where's the comparison to town centers? Where's the factoring of outstanding civilization buffs for defensive buildings? Where's the care to stipulate about the civ bonuses inherent to the Krepost and Yamasa towers compared to generic civs? If I'm playing the Japanese does this comparison hold wholly true, or do generic civs have better/worse castles? Where's the in-depth situational analysis for best use and placement of the structures relative to factors like opposing civilizations, map style, the current age, your army composition, or construction time? In defensive play, how does using defensive structures compare to not using them? Is a stone wall with archers a better choice?? What about specific unit type countering effectiveness? No talk about the implications of research buffs?! And not even a mention of relevance for naval defense?? Something's not right, I tell you what... 👉

I love the Krepost in the castle age. You can build 2 of them for 1 castle price, it is sturdy enough not to be taken down in the castle age (need lot of rams or trebs), and 2 for 1 means you can lock down TWO locations on the map instead of one. you can guarantee defending all weaker points, or really constrain the opponents room of expansion.

Love your videos! This game is my favorite game of all time

Thanks for the intro, I really love it!

It's worth noting that if you build as many towers as you can for the same Stone as you build a castle, and your enemy sends in an army he has to destroy each Tower individually, whereas if the castle is gone all of your arrows have stopped shooting. Not sure if that makes sense, hopefully I'm getting the point across that I'm trying to make.

I think what went unmentioned in the economic consideration is that due to being able to move on to imperial age after building just one krepost it means you can go to imperial having spent less villagers on stone

Really like the font used for the numbers

one missing factor: footprint, as in the space they cover can be a downside and uppside depending on cirkumstances. normaly your first castle will be in an important spot, the fact that a few vilagers can stand at the other side of it and be relatively save from archer fire and it being so dam big you got the time to garison them is a slight strength for the castle

Instant click when I see RU-vid email. Best content creator ever.

What about Briton towers and Celtic castles and towers? Also Turks BBTs Teutons castles and Korean towers only have extra range so the damage output should be he same, but they could be more usefull in some situations like against bombard cannons.

Nice analysis, very helpful! Can you do a video on defensive strategies maybe? Just a suggestion

Love the new intro

3:56 i see what u did there :D

It would be nice to see with equal resources how do they perform against hussars rushes (let's say, in a couple of minutes) defending the same area with villagers and farms

Really nice video! I would love to hear input on Frankish Castles, as well as Teuton castles after Crenellations, but otherwise well done!

The new intro looks sick!

When it comes to the bombard tower, would prefer the time in the early history of the game where it did its full damage vs rams... Also if you are willing to spend population you can make archery range units and put those in the tower for extra arrows.

Why wouldn’t the bombard tower destroy the battering rams the easiest? I mean those things are supposed to protect from arrows not heavy stones

6:07 Love how the projectile from the Bombard Tower just bounces off the Champion as he walks away totally unfazed. 😅😂🤣

Confirmation Bias: The Video =P Joking aside, great video, love your stuff SotL, keep up the awesome work, cheers.

I definitely see either best defensive civ, Bulgarian overview, or a remake of the byzantine overview. Place your bets

SotL “The last consideration is the garrison space” Me “laughs in tectonic”

Nice to take a break from the Corona and watch some AoE

Just wanna say: I love the intro.

hi sotl, i dont think measuring dmg output vs 1 pa targets makes much sense since late imp raiding partys will almost always consist of high pierce armor units.

I think you should run the tests again, but this time with moving cavalry on patrol, instead of stationary units, as per the spirit of raiding, like with 10 paladins. I think the bombard tower would perform the worst here, and castles would kill the paladins the fastest. Prove me wrong SOTL :)

not sure if i missed it, but the tower also takes less space to build so it gives you higher resource concetration in a given area, unlike krepost or castle

I can't even play the game on my 'old' PC, but still enjoyed SoTL's great video! Thanks. :)

I just can't get used to the shortened intro, please bring the old one back :(

Needs a Donjon update!!

If you ever re-do this video, would love to see the Malian Tigui TCs compared.

Another important effect not considered is population room. Kreposts cost 350 but give the same pop space as a castle, or 4 houses. Subtracting that cost gives you a real cost of 250S, and a real Damage per Resources of 7.34.

You forgot to analyze the most important thing: tile-efficiency.

4:10 error. Krepost has smaller footprint so its range "diameter" is 17 tiles versus the 20 of the castle. 18% more coverage for the castle. This decreases to 13% with bracer.

Excellent Choice!

Very well done

ofc it had to be japanese, right, sotl of the law? totally unbiased

I have a slight suspicion that the author might be a bit biased towards Japanese.

if Japanese specific towers were included, I would have liked to see Malian Tigui town centers as well

Since you already mentioned that the range is measured from the buildings edges, I think its important to consider that the castle covers an area with a diameter of 10 while the other buildings only cover an area with a diameter of 8.5.

Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here. - Spirit of the Law 2055

It feels like you should have discussed about range more

Have you considered taking a look at cutting UUs with general units of similar speed in mixed hotkeys? Eg. samurai or 'zerks bulked out with pikes or mangudai or mamelukes bulked out with regular cav archers or cho-ko-nu or longbows or jannies mixed with crossbows and/or skirms. If they are worth talking about that can be a fair few videos concepts, which seem to have dried up a bit since you finished the civ overviews.

Loved this one!

Should have done the damage test against units with 6, 7 and 8 pierce armor, since those are the values of the primary late game raiding units of hussars, paladins and elite eagles.

If your find to talk about the Japanese unique towers why not others like Tuetons (garrisons) or byzantines (hp)?

hey just came back to say i saw your video and went on to win my first late game against extreme ai. made me really focused

I love this channel

you forgot the celts, teuton's bonuses, shame on you spirit. Also, please add closed captions

"I'm starting to think japanese are pretty good" Teutons: HOLD MY +3 RANGE CASTLES AND ARROW SHOOTING INFANTRY

I think it's worth a mention that you could transition from regular towers into Yasama towers quite easily via 1 tech if you're Japanese. most other civs have a bit more trouble with the transition though.

I feel like the Malian towncenters were neglected. besides that, great video as always :)

Best Defensive building is one with a 50% decrease of corona virus

An entire video for all the cowards out there!

Some other things up for consideration are blacksmith upgrades, I believe they also add range and damage to castles and towers. I think a very good defensive civ would be the Teutons on account of increased garrison space in towers and their unique upgrade for the castle, increasing its range.

How do the defensive stats change when you factor in garrisoned archers though?

Really wanted to see how tc stacks up, cause its important def building aswell.

So interesting as always :)

The damage per minute for bombard tower doesn’t account for the tech Arquebus so the number is slightly off. Though it’s barely noticeable so overall the DPM still stands

with the tower bombard there is a big impact at the beginning of an attack because it's releasing a lot for damage in one hit, it's useful if the ennemy go back juste after

Wow! Just notice that the intro video is also updated to definitive edition!

And how does effect that some civilization towers or castle has extra range, hp and cheaper cost How much change the damage output with units inside and if the castle has thumb ring ?

Not disappointed, thank you!

4:40 I love how that bombard tower is just dumping boulders on the ambitious ram.