How good are Throwing Axemen? (AoE2) 

I can't wait to try their counter, the catching axeman

Another advantage of using Axemen as cavalry support is the fact that they share the same attack upgrades as the knight line, meaning you save resources and research time.

A throwing axeman shooting at a ship is just lumberjacking with extra steps

Another fun fact about the Throwing axeman, out of the original civilisations, it was the only unique unit to not match the civilisation's speciality. Like Mongols, the cav-archer civ had unique cav archers and the huns, the cav civ had tarkans, the unique cav. The franks were the only exception to this rule with unique infantry as a cav civ. (of course later more civs followed this trend)

0:06 I love how constantly Spirit just casually breaks my mind. Last time with the whole "an army made up of champions" and now "thowing axemen don't actually throw axemen" 🤯🤯 11 keep up the great work Spirit!

That axeman getting thrown made me rewind it a few times to make sure i really did see that

One "hidden" plus is that if you're massing them, you can guarantee more damage out of each unit due to pathing and space limitations (when attacking buildings, f.e.), or even avoiding trample damage.

I do think it's not fair to use only 8 axemans for a late game senario. We all know that range units scale with mass, do a group of 40 axemans and 50 champions and see who does what. That way you get to see the real potention of mass ranged units (that are also quite tanky).

Frankly, throwing axemen fight on a hill pretty much 90% of the time in late games so I would take that into account as well. They can hold their ground really well, axe-ually!

I think it would make sense for these ranged unit tests to actually show how well they perform WITH either halberdiers or hussars as a meat shield. Like, what is the most effective ratio?

The Throwing Axemen were a huge reason why I was so successful in the Tour Historical Battle with their ranged melee damage. These guys may not be the best UU, but I personally like them and have them in my Frank army comp with other infantry to help support the cavalry.

Throwing Axemen are highly underrated imo. They shred trash once you get a mass of them. They are a much better generalist support unit than archers, especially for their anti-building utility. A knight+axeman army can basically rip down whole segments of your opponent's base at lighting speed. Denying production buildings has serious snowball potential.

I would like to point out that Franks do also have Heavy Scorpions with Siege Engineers as a ranged support unit so I wonder how those would compare to Throwing Axeman.

About trash wars compared to champions: it might be interesting to see bigger armies. That would give throwing axemen an edge, as many of the champions won't be able to engage, especially in a tight spot.

totally outside of real-fight application, but getting a 60 unit squad of Throwing Axemen close to a TC or most any other building and melting it is such a nice visual, with out the hassle other infantry has to go through to get into position (not that wouldn't apply to many other units as well)

Very strong as a mid game attrition unit imho. No hard counter, can deal with siege with ease, deals solid damage against buildings and naturally synergizes with castle dropping. Crazy powerful on maps like Gold rush where map control is important.

1 comparison I would've loved to see in the trash comparison, is a combination of throwing axemen and halberdiers/light cavalry. The great advantage of using them in a trash was is that when trash meets trash, the throwing axeman can walk away. The staying power of a throwing axeman is higher than a unit that necessarily takes return damage from having to be in melee fights. In Champs + Trash vs Axeman + Trash, I'm not entirely convinced they'd lose out in the long run.

This was the best analysis so far. Mix compositions, balance gold in the late game, awesome. With a little bit of micro this would be the perfect analysis of the unit. If you tell us how many ranged units can one shot the target would be cool to, since in micro this is key to the outcome of the fight. In the end throwing axemen should look better agaist the melee foes if compared to champions. That was sad 😢

The funny thing is that throwing axemen and knights were from completely different eras historically, but they're so intrinsically linked gameplay-wise that it would be impossible to separate them without causing severe balance issues.

I really like your videos that focus on a specific unit. Thanks!

One of these for Teutonic Knight.

I would have liked to see a test of combining Champions AND Throwing Axemen at the end, rather than choosing one or the other. Regardless, I believe I would prefer the axemen simply because I’d have already teched into them, rather than waiting several minutes to upgrade from militia to champion, plus I like that axemen can defend hills better.

I like to do the reverse support, cavalry supports the T.A, if you can survive long enough to train 35-40 elite throwing axemen with arson researched then you can just say gg because nothing can stop them from 1-2 shotting most buildings, the small cavalry force on the side will deal with siege and archers

LOVE the quick visual showing changes from AoC. Do that for everything

One of the most underrated unique units

This is the reason why Franks are so strong. Cavalry civ whose unique units cover exactly the weakness of the cavalry. Therefore super-straight forward civ with great farms and castles.

When I read the title I was just about to make a joke about throwing men. that wield axes. So glad you made that joke yourself within the first 15 seconds. Love you, man.

Best advantage is when opponent doesnt know melee property and produce skirms against that. Feels so good when it happens

I've been advocating this forever but no one listened. They all laughed at me! Now with this, we can all laugh together😊

Frank re-overview incoming? Would be interesting to see their pala vs so many better pala and stronger camels that are in the game now

Very well researched good video.

encore une vidéo génial, merci Mister Spirit

I always like pairing up my paladins with some throwing axemen as support. the axemen destroy pikemen, and the paladins can get on archers or siege quickly, while the axemen can focus buildings.

I feel like Throwing Axemen's effectiveness stacks up exponentially against melee units as you add in more units, which could explain its poor performance against halberdiers and hussars. 10 axemen seems like a low number to test, especially in the latter stages of the game, where 20-30 axemen can be much easier to mass. Do you think the tests would give a different result if you made the battles larger?

@spirit of the law Not that it matters that much, but since the latest patch the organ gun now has +2 bonus damage against infantry and skirmishers, instead of +1 (while in the video it was shown to be +1) Some things that weren't pointed out, axemen are available in castle age, while something like hand cannons isn't. I also don't believe you accounted for the amount of upgrades axemen need, while I like the unit a lot, you need 1300f and 1050g without blacksmith upgrades for elite+unique tech. For hand cannons you just need chemistry and you're good to go. The axemen has a lot of advantages, but making both Paladin and axemen isn't easy, before you get your first FU axemen out, you'd have 21 hand cannons worth of resources.

Literally was complaining about axemen to my friends last night. Spirit always so timely

I can see the Throwing Axeman doing best behind defenses like a wall or a meatshield. If you're facing an opponent using Teutonic Knights, for example, your champions or paladins will not be very effective at stopping them, but the Throwing Axeman acting as support might be a good counter. It is an admittedly niche scenario, but one that I hope warrants a second look.

Spirit can you do a video on maybe like the top 6 best Monk civs we have currently? I feel like Monks are really underrated and need more love and you never disappoint on your in-depth analysis videos! Love the work you put in, I learn so much from you even if I've played this forever lol

I always like it when a civ's unique unit and bonuses lend itself to an entire *composition* of mixed units. The Roman Legionaire-Centurion-Scorpion ball *feels* very Roman, and a Paladin-Axeman-Halberdier composition has a lovely feel that your knights are charging ahead and being vaguely supported by a mob of peasants with modified farming tools. It's very Warhammer Bretonnia of the Franks, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

love your work x

That is... Axe-tually an interesting case study. Spirit of the Law Axe-celled in this research.

Hey Spirit, the next time you make a civ overview try to include team bonuses of other civs that can greatly benefit the civ being considered.

You should have compared with scorpions too imo. Something like halbs+scorps vs halbs+axemen or champs+crossbowmen

hey Sotl, thx you again for such an interesting video. you should maybe redo your video on the italians, they changed quite a lot since 7years ago. And also a video about genoase crossbow would be very cool.

great work!!!

I LOVE this unit. Franks Paladin + Axethrowers is my favorite strategy in team games. It clears house.

A few points that I've seen in the comments but wanted to mention myself coming out of the video: Worth mentioning in the cavalry support that there is some upgrade overlap between Throwing Axes and Cavalry when compared to Range and Cavalry, being only a half 'tech switch' as it were. In the trash wars comparison, this is also worth mentioning as a frank player will likely already have fully upgraded Elite Axes, and would not need a full on switch to champion, saving more resources and being a more responsive response. Throwing Axes and Champions would never be the only unit in a trash wars scenario, and not having a ball of Light Cav to help screen for the Axes and get in the Champions' way is very disingenuous to the implied scenario. Especially in the idea of building up a strong core of gold power units: Axemen would suffer (theoretically) much less gold attrition in trash wars than Champions, eventually hitting a critical mass that their ranged nature would get full value out of.

Going mass elite throwing axemen can be a lot of fun. Used to do it in games with my friends. They had no idea how to stop it. 😂

One thing usually I see on the comparision of TA and Champion is the cost of investiment to make them. The Campion ha the barracks to make, but they need to be upgraded from militia and had 2 techs( suplies and Gambesons) apart from the general Squires,Arson Attack and Defense upgrades; while the TA had one tech with Bearded Axe and not considering elite Version, but they need a castle to make, even the civ's Castle is cheaper. Other vision I had is with the Unique Units "ranged infantry" with being them, Gbeto and Chakram Thrower, with the Gbeto being a high mobile glass cannon, the Chakram being a scorpion like and the Throwing Axeman being a more slow and tankier.

"And frankly, it just didn't." This is the kind of thing I watch this channel for!

There are two things/factors I am surprised you didn't mention :) 1) You did say they are tanky but a huge advantage of axemen over archers/Hand cannon (both 35 hp) is the fact they survive a direct onager shot. 2) Okay champions look superior but if you commit to axes you'd ideally want a critical mass like archers, imagine 60 champions trying to pathfind to kill a barracks compared to 60 axes throwing down hill. They absolutely melt buildings in big numbers. Same goes for vs the hussar, if you create or pack them into a chokepoint then melee units can barely touch them.

The situation where that unit is very useful is when you castle drop your opponent in range of a defensive building. If he sends a ram to damage your castle, you can easily destroy it from distance with that unit popin from your castle and not losing it to the opponent fire.

I also consider scorps to fill a similar roll when I’m playing franks. I would’ve compared the scorps too.

About ships that don't want to get into range of throwing axemen: Demo ships might try that, actually. If the demo ships kills 3 throwing axemen, it has paid for itself (unless you value wood very highly). With the large blast radius and 110 attack for the un-upgraded demo ship, and 140 for the heavy demo ship, it doesn't sound too hard to end up dealing 60-70 damage to a few infantry units standing in shallow water or maybe even at the shoreline. I think demo ships can be cost-effective in a lot of situations against land units at the shoreline and especially in shallow water. Earlier, you ruined a group of trebuchets in shallow water. Demo ships are cost-effective against trebuchets even if they hit only one becaue trebuchets are so expensive. For some siege units, you have to hit only one or two to be cost-effective, with archers it's probably around 2-3 often, and unlike throwing axemen, the archers can't bypass the demo ship's high pierce armour. For cavalry, it could be harder, because their formations aren't as tight due to their size, and cavalry usually has higher HP, making it harder to kill them instantly. I can't tell how many skirmishers you would have to hit at bottomed out market prices in a trash war for the demo ship to be cost-effective, but I imagine it might be possible. Could you maybe make a video about the cost-effectivity of demo ships against land units?

Guess this means in a week or 2 we are going to be getting the Franks Overview!

I feel like this needed a champions vs champions with axemen support test just to see if that can beat the larger group of Champs dealing with pathing.

I would like to see them renamed to Axe Throwingmen

I think one of the advantage axemen got in trash wars compared to champion is that it often wont be in direct combat hiding behind halb and hussar saving some gold in the long run

One other potential advantage to add is the surprise factor, when people see franks they almost always assume you’re gonna go cavalry I went full throwing axemen one game while taking ground/ hills with castles, won me the game

Best beard of any unit

Harald Hardraade takes the whole concept to another level: Being a ranged melee unit with high speed and no armor class, he can counter a lot without being countered. Throwing axemen deserve better!

Will you cover other unique units that doesn't immediatly fit the civs focus? Like cavalry uu for non cavalry civs or archer uu for infantry civs and so on?

against trash if you have some halberdier in front as shield. axemen are decent support while reducing the amount pathing issues of having only melee units

One flaw of the anti-trash analysis is the weight given to gold late game. Thinking in terms of opportunity cost, weighing gold 3x as much as other resources is definitely too little and arbitrary. Taking into account the scenarios where you would find yourself in a trash spam war, you would either have no access or very little access to gold, possibly having some relics, but most probably just trading at the market. Therefore, the relative cost of gold at the market provides a much more practical and actual weight to gold. Even if you consider relics, the sparse gold you get is demanded for siege OR anti-trash, making the case that relics don't fundamentally change the relative cost. So a weight of either around 7 (no Guilds ) or 6 (with Guilds) would be appropriate, or even 5 if you want to factor in some small gold income.

Just want to point out two things: First is that the champion test is not entirely accurate since the skirmishers would never be on stand ground. They would constantly run away to try and get a shot off. Would be interesting to do this test again and take time into consideration as well. The reason why this is important is that a lot of the skirmishers were just standing around not dealing any damage while the ones fighting the axemen were all dealing constant damage. Doubt it would make a huge difference, but I think the axemen could take them out faster. Second is something that you've mentioned already, they're not a frontline unit, they're a support unit. If you mass cavalry, it's easier for the axemen to deal damage than for the champions, who could get blocked by the cavalry. But of course, once they do start to deal damage they'll deal more than the axemen. An interesting test would also be to do a test like you did with the hand cannoneers and axemen, but also substitute them for champions. Could that be the best option?

Is it just me, or is SotL's voice more... gravelly? Than usual. Its really nice to listen to.

How many throwing axemen could throwing axemen throw if throwing axemen could throw axemen?

What have you done to us SoL? Now I need a comparison between Mamelukes, CA and Camel Archers in these situations... AaaaaAAAAa

Can't wait for the Frank meta to change to castle axeman rush after this video.

Pals, Habs, Skirms, & Trebs are my go 2

Throwing Axemen have a delay animation, when the aimed target die, they reset the cooldown to aim another one, that make it very bad again trash units.

It's also a convenient, on top of cheaper castles and the fact that it's an ok unit out of the gate, that it shares attack upgrades you'll get pretty much every single games playing Franks (same as knight line, etc). So it's like getting their most important upgrades for free, adding to a unit that is useful even as its weakest, if nothing else to defend your castles in a pinch. To me it's what made Franks "work" for me, not only can you build more castles (so map control), but they are hard to destroy when you can train a unit that is basically made to destroy siege. Every civs with special unit from the castle that has any kind of bonus or advantage against siege do have a big but a bit underrated castle related advantage (that can help to defend and maintain map control and push). Still, I feel now more than ever that Frank are losing their identity a little bit. ESPECIALLY since the Persian patch. AT LEAST give us a unique reskin of the Paladin, since it's where the idea for the unit is exactly from lol... And they can barely be in the top 5 for the best knight line nowadays, so outside of decades of experiences, a few other civs can do the only thing the Franks are good at, but with also great tech trees so good at other stuff too. Devs need to stop putting SO MUCH weight on win rate stats while also periodically over buffing a civ like hell for no reason, only to nerf when back to the previous stance. Also, buffing civs that are unpopular but already good rarely work as indented. 99% of the time it's followed by a spike, a big nerf bringing the civ back to status quo followed by the original level of popularity... Some civs are just found to be more entertaining to play as by more players than others, no matter where they place in ladders IT"S NORMAL, and a thing that separates us from AI (people like to have fun, after all...). For most normal players, it's the civs you have the most fun with that you end up performing the best as, if only by experience and other factors...

one combo you didn't test - it's been awhile since i've played franks but i used to really like putting them behind champions or halbs. in my mind like, say you have a 30 vs 30 battle. if it's all champions a bunch of them are just pathing around, whereas if 10-15 are throwing axes theyre all attacking too. idk if this mathematically works out to be better, but it'd be interesting to see.

Still seems like by far their most practical use is to run in, kill the siege, and run out again. And you don't even need to upgrade them for that. All that other stuff like killing trash or camels, while it's nice that they're *ok* at it, there are better options. Gbettos and Mamelukes are more-or-less the same deal

are we getting an updated version of the Franks overview?

Petition to bring back SoTL intro music

Finally started playing ranked last week, started as britons, now mainly franks. Love how the axemen basically shred everything the paladins are struggling with.... 🤷‍♂

Frankly... interesting indeed :P

I think a key factor is being missed here: it's a ranged unit that costs only 25 in gold. Yes, it's not great before upgrades, and to fully upgrade them is costly. But once they're at their peak a 5 range, 12 attack unit for 55 food and 25 gold is remarkably cheap. Half in gold cost compared to hand cannons that can make the difference if the game runs long, more spare gold means more paladins!

We all know the real reason to use the Throwing Axemen is the satisfaction of tearing down siege weapons at range.

I wonder if Mass matter in late game trash, since 10 vs 10 They are all targetable, but 40 vs 40 hussers, I assume since only 10-15 are targetable , they will do better than champions

It's been quite some time since the last time I saw AoE2 stuff. What's the 2 arrows and boot at 1:09. I guess speed and?

They clearly need a throwing axemenmen upgrade.

Why not use halbs to counter have though? You can use that to soak damage, let cav kill the range, and use scorps in the background to attack mass damage. Since halbs only cost food and wood, they'll be available good cheap alternative.

Such an amazing underrated unit

i remember when i was a kid i thought they wore big helmets, but it was actually just a giant beard the whole time 😅

Man how do you forget Free tracking! The most important buff to throwing axemen!

Updated Frank overview coming soon

I'm slightly disappointed that you didn't test clumped up throwing axe men since you took into account how kamayuks one extra range changes the out come.

Throwing Axeman must be big fans of The Cure...

This gave me a lot more respect for the TA, but i still feel they could use a bit of love.

Looking at the throwing animation of the HD version I'm now wondering which unit has the most out of sync animation? On a general note: I really liked the unit back in the day. Not that I knew what was really effective xD unique unit available? At least one full stack is built. Trash units? Are trash xD

Needs to be a mod where theres a throwing axe that throws the Frankish

Please tell me that a mod to throw aoe axemen exists.

do they shoot arrows from castles? i really don't remember

This unit could benefit from a little redesign. I’d rather see this infantry with rechargeable attack of throwing single axe dealing a lot of damage. While special ability is recharging, throwing axeman switch into mele mode. Accuracy should be on the same level as arambai and attack increased.

Against AI, put them right behind your walls in "stand ground", if you're expecting a lot of rams. About 5 of them make rams go bye-bye before they can make a dent.

HC are better in most situations. Champs too, but champs require a lot of prep time to switch. HC require a little less (odds are you wont have a single range up till you need them). So its all about the gamestate and how quickly you need the unit.

All they need to do is just give throwing axement the same eagle warrior bonus as the LS and an anti-camel bonus so that in the castle age 3 shots take a camel down to 1-4 HP and it would be fine. It doesn't even need to get a bigger bonus for the elite version come imperial age since the elite version has a bigger base attack. Camals vs the best tankiest Paladins in the game winning with equal resources is understandable since while they are tanky Paladins, they're still against anti cavalry. Take 1/4 of those resources put into Paladins and replace them with the throwing axmen and the camels still winning with 11% HP is not really acceptable. I like how they are balance wise against pikes, similar to the hand cannoneer when supporting Paladins but since as infantry they do better than canonners vs melee units if things go sidewise and they start entering melee. A problem is camels is a much bigger problem than pikes and the Axemen show themselves completely underwhelming. While they also beat eagle warriors, they don't do so as much as many other melee unique units do, so that's a small concern. I don't think it should be better than the Champion in imperial age for that role, but the margin of victory I feel ought to be better. On top of that the attention the devs gave to the Axemen and moving Chivalry to the Imperial Age if anything makes me feel the devs tried to buff them in a way that didn't buff the civilization at all. But actually, Hand Cannoneers shouldn't really be what we are comparing to since they aren't good enough to begin with. Spirit of the Law showed that they did more DPS against Halbardiers than fully upgraded Arbalests. They do 420 damage per minute while Arbsalests do 315. The hand canonner has 33% more DPS than the arbalests (assuming you're at the range the arbalest can fire but the hand cannoneer cannot) so at least they have _that_ going for them. The Arbalest has a short firing delay, beats the Hand Cannoneer 8 vs 7, has a longer range, used to have 5 more HP and in general is an easier unit to micro, but at least the Hand Canoneer gets the anti-infantry bonus so all is good right? Arbalest is a better well-rounded ranged unit, but the Hand Cannoneer is better against infantry. Now if we value wood and food equally and remember to get gold we sell 100 food to get 11 gold we find that arbalests give more DPS per resource against halberdiers. Yeah halbadiers isn't the only infantry unit in the game, but it's the most common late infantry! Yeah Franks don't get Arbalests, but if you consider that full upgraded generic Hand Cannoneers kind of suck compared to fully upgraded Arbalests, that means even if the throwing Axeman compares OK compared to the Franks' best ranged alternative, that range alternative already is pretty bad outside of a civilization that gets bonuses to gunpowder units. Hand canoneers are pretty cool, but while population efficient, are not resource efficient at the one thing they are supposed to be good at so any comparisons with them aren't using a good "baseline." I'm not even sure Portuguese Hand Canoneers are resource efficient when selling food.

is it an archer? do japanese cavalry archers have bonus against them?