How good is the new Mule Cart? (AoE2) 

If it had been around from the start, I imagine the mule cart would have been something given to all the nomadic civs like huns, Cumans and mongols

I love that AOE 2 continues to evolve! What an amazing game.

Mule carts moving together with the villagers is a HUGE eco bonus by itself as efficiency is peak 100% of the time, plus you're not paying extra wood to maintain that efficiency, another big bonus.

The Mule Cart is such a great throwback to Age of Mythology. "There are three things to remember when playing the Norse."

Reminds me of the carts for the Norse in Age of Mythology

With the mule cart you do not have to lure boar or deer, as you can harvest and drop off where they die.

I like that they don't just make new civs: they give them an identity, making them properly distinct and different to play to their counterparts. I really like this

Would love to see a comparison between this and the ox cart of AoM

More civs should have these things like the nomadic ones.

I'm not going to get the expansion, but whoever is, I'd like to see one of you try building mass mule cart use them as blocking shields against cavs in front of your archers/siege. Mules don't cost population limit anyway, so yeah...

Can they be repaired by villagers or healed by monks, and can they be converted and used by other civs (and does it required redemption)?

From a wider design perspective, I think this is a really interesting addition. The Mule Cart has a lot of levers that can be pulled for balance (e.g. restricting which Villager types can use it), it makes sense as a potential addition to nomadic civilizations (if needed down the road), and it allows for some really dynamic custom/campaign maps!

FYI, the wrong celt bonus is highlighted @2:42. The important one is the lumberjacks not infantry

I suppose they could also solve the issue of the mule cart following too closely is to Have it have 2 hit boxes one is for collision and another for drop off. They could be very similar

thank you, as a west bank palestinian i need this escapism atm, we need an analytical video by you about what could be done about militia line as we saw how even the early champions are useless against crossbows with daut vs tatoh friendly match.

I have never once in my entire life played a multiplayer game of AoE 2. I only really played the campaign when I was a tiny child Despite this I have never missed a single Spirit of the Law video since I started watching years ago. This video format is just so good.

Pleasantly surprised such an oldschool rts like AoE is introducing automated smart behaviour instead of tedious apm fluff. More of that I say

They need to give vikings mule carts! Age of mythology reference

That miner mining to the beat at 2:58 scratched me in places I didn't think could be scratched.

I have followed your videos for almost 4 years now. I appreciates your time and effort you put in them. Thank you!

Wait. If the mule cart takes damage as a building, this means that it has a potential to scout dive under arrows quite well.

I think you highlighted the wrong civ bonus for the Celts around 2:46, but other than that, another great video as always. Recently I've been watching pro players and casters, they have unique takes around new content, but the insight you go for is off the charts. Hats off, Spirit.

One downside is that it's harder to wall-in your villagers. You don't always want to run away from your valuable resources. If gold or stone is being raided, people often wall-in the villagers, using the mining camp as part of the wall. But with the mule cart, you have to build a longer wall. I can't wait to see this in competitive!

Funny how just yesterday Hera said that SOTL will make exactly this video and here it actually is

Oops, you said Georgians at 2:40 when talking about Armenians and their +25% mule cart technologies.

Im am amazed by the ability of the devs to still come up with cool and interesting mechanics after so many years

Really like your videos Spirit! Thanks for all your work

Mathematician analyzing one of the best strategy games ever created...SOTL deserves millions of subscribers. 😇

Those mule carts remind me of the Slave Miners from Red Alert 2, and i absolutely love the idea of them. It really makes AoE2DE feel like a different game and not just a graphics and balance update. And i hope to see more cool ideas like this in the future for new civs.

I feel like these might be big for low level players who aren't confident at pushing deer, rather than milling deer they can use this and then send it to wood or gold.

Does it take pop space? If not can you make an infinite Mule Cart army and march on your opponent?

Great video. Love how detailed you get. The mule cart reminds me of what the Norse have in AoM. Very handy.

In case nobody mentioned, I think it's obvious enough that they took the idea from the Norse in Age of Mythology, which works as a nice reference.

The introduction of moving buildings as a mechanic could open the floodgates

That auto following of the tree line is so good. The mule cart is already my favorite unit lol

I hope when they remake Age of Mythology they change the Norse Ox kart to be more like the Age of Empires 2 Mule kart,... vise versa I'm glad that when they basically put the AoM Ox kart into AoE2, they improved it instead of needing to micro it constantly like you had to in AoM

Video made me think of how cool (and hard to implement ) it could be to have a mod where supply lines are a thing (i.e. resources need to be carted/hand carried to a location before they can be utilized at that location). One could lose or gain supplies due to bombardment or raids...

So cool. I like the idea of stealing resources from an opponent with villagers and then retreating, or being able to recover at a new location faster if your base gets overrun.

Mule Cart could be very effective as a sponge unit to throw into fights. ...oh it's a building so I'm guessing units won't prioritise attacking it.

Placing the mule cart strategically well can save you some wood in feudal. Saving lumber camp gold mine cost! Transition to castle can be faster when not needing possibly one villager to wood and using that for food. Of course it depends where the gold is located.

They should be capturable like sheep. It would balance out some of the benefits nicely to increase the raiding risk.

I think they're trying to get people used to more AoM mechanics (as this is effectively a backport of that game's Ox Cart unit in concept) before giving us more info on Retold.

This was a great addition they took from age of mythology. The spiritual successor to aoe2. Didn't have as good multiplayer though, never did really replace aoe2. Maybe next they could take the walls and rotating buildings to odd angles? I thought they were both good additions. I'm guessing that would be pretty difficult in the square grid that is aoe 2 though.

I've only just heard about Mule Carts and I already have a couple of ideas if they need nerfing: -Give them a set amount of resource they can receive, say a couple thousand, and then they'd need to drop these off at the town centre to reset - If a Mule Cart is killed by the enemy, they 'capture' a certain amount of resource off you

One downside seems to be walling. Lots of players use the lumber and mine camps as part of their walls, mainly vs melee. Think of that gold mining camp with 3 villagers wallet by 2 palisade walls. Mule cart will likely make it harder to pull off

There's a lot of potential for these in custom campaigns.

I had a bad day, thank you for uploading :)

Havent played Aoe2 since maybe 3 or 4 years, but i love seeing the amazing things they add!

4:36 Saracen mains best dream come true

Could you make a box formation of these to protect trebs or archers? Could be a great empty pop space way to protect units

My scorching hot take is that the mule's saddle should be the player's colour, not that dull grey.

You mean the exact same thing the Norse had in age of mythology? That was a good entry into the series, it's good to see them bringing back some features from it.

I hope this cart can be retroactively added to well-known nomadic civs like Huns or even Vikings (mule cart with free wheelbarrow and handcart bonus, juicy), similar to that new siege ship designed for Romans and added back to Byzantines later.

The biggest disadvantage of the mule cart is that it seems somewhat fragile, with only 300 hp and 1/2 armor, it'll be very vulnerable to raiding compared to typical eco buildings, especially later in the game when units deal more damage. Fully upgraded hussars/light cav will deal 10 damage to it, so that's only 30 attacks to kill one. Even feudal age archers after fletching only need 100 shots to kill one (Which sounds like a lot, but when you have 20 archers, that's only 5 volleys). It'll also be more difficult to wall off wood/stone/gold to defend against raids, which may be a big deal vs aggressive civs in the feudal age.

This will really help with Georgian TC drops. If it wasn't enough that their TC is unassailable, they can move and hide their eco anywhere for free.

Oh hey, that's like the Norse thing from Age of Mythology! Honestly, it will be neat to see if/how that effects the meta.

If the mule cart exists in HD it would have ship armor class

I wonder if they'll give the mule cart to more civs. In particular, I'm thinking of the nomadic cavalry civs like the Cumans, Huns, and Tartars. They're in the same general geographic area, and having moving camps would fit really well with those cultures being nomadic.

my issue with mule cart is, it is a more like a unit and because of which: 1. we can't use it as static wall because they keep moving closer to the resource. 2. In early game we have to protect it as other units like villagers.

Mobile drop off points sound really good for nomadic villagers traveling from resource to resource they should be really useful to save on wood from constant lumber and mining camps.

Learn something new every day, donkeys are constructed with a hammer, can be improved by architecture and are hard to put down with a spear, you'd need a battering ram for that. Which makes sense since the ram is obviously the donkey's natural predator.

Basically, it's a similar but movable storage pit (AOE1)

Awesome idea. Simple but implemented really well. Seems like it can be quite powerful.

The Mule Cart could be a pretty good team bonus too

Broadly speaking, the Mule Cart is very similar to the Norse Ox Cart from AoM with some core differences, such as being a building rather than a unit and being built instead of created from the TC. The same goes for a lot of elements of the upcoming DLC, such as the warrior monk being similar in concept to Egyptian Priests and the Monaspa to Fenris Wolves, just like how Flemish Revolution worked a lot like the Ragnarok God Power.

The problem that I don't see anyone mentioning. Is that its going to be extremely difficult to wall in attacks on stone or wood if this thing moves or is on a weird tile. No longer will two or three walls stop scouts on your gold for example.

i generally dont have much of a problem with shorter videos but i kinda expected a deeper dive coming from THE SotL

I would imagine the hunter only feature could easily be tricked by quickly ordering the villager who is full of berries to attack a far away boar then drop food at the mule-cart, followed by back to the berry bush. it might be a lot of microing... but it could be done.

i like then skin tbf

I love your voice, you are as an actor, and your intonations make me so much excite everything you say. Well done job.

Honestly having a moving unit that counts as a building in every sense is a fun concept. I wonder what other current or future units they can apply this to Mule knights...

Didn't cover how mule carts after architecture are essentially gold-free rams that don't cost pop-space (when it comes to absorbing archer fire)

Maybe one can use it in feudal age for soak arrow fire (like a ram), if it comes to archer/skirmisher battles. If it has town watch, it could be a nice scout.

Spearman: stabs mule cart Mule: It's just a flesh wound!!

Now that they've added a norse drop-off, I look forward to the civ with an atlantean drop-off

So mule is very similar to the storage pit in return of rome but it can move.

I saw a clip today that appeared to show archers prioritizing mule carts over units until the units got closer, even when the unit was in range of the archer. If I understand what I saw correctly, that would mean that units consider the mule cart a unit for targeting purposes. This could be a big problem for late game, as a player could build a lot of mule carts that take up no pop space and flood the enemy with movable buildings that the units treat as a unit

It seems way OP to me. No renewing camps, perfect dropoff and garrison ability. Find Gold and stone far away? No prob, mule cart takes the place of a town centre for getting resources. A patch of deer? Mule cart in the centre and hunt away. The cart can just move towards the hunters as they butcher. Save on Mining camps by just placing as close to the treeline and mine as possible and then have the cart do gold, stone and wood with very small inefficiency. Not to mention the monastary improves workrate giving the Celt, Spanish and Tueton bonus at once. Wood, Gold and Stone bonus in one. Too OP.

the mule carts gotta be a hint that Age of Mythology retold is coming closer to us

can you drop off other food sources by switching them to a lumberjack or hunter? for the berries example maybe they could been tasked to hunt so they become hunters, and then drop the berries food off

For Georgians, what if you started deer instead of sheep for food income, using the cart as a means for forced drop-offs? Would you then be able to keep villager production up without breaks or is it still not enough?

Now we need a Savar vs Paladin video

This cart gives me Age of Mythology vibes. Can't wait for the remake

I feel like the Georgians will be the new fast castle OP rush strat like Sicilians were.

Just a quick remind that pro always put extra lumber after 2 or 3 tiles. They do it for purpose! And now mule appear!

The Ox Cart from the Norse faction from Age of Mythology has finally arrived to Age of Empires.

Some time ago you made a video about optimal woodline reseting, i would love to see a short video that mule cart as a comparasion.

@2:46 highlighting the infantry movespeed bonus instead of the lumberjack bonus had me so confused for a moment.

Headcanon with the trapped villagers, they're just distracted by the mule.

I imagine they don't take pop space either, even though that wasn't talked about in the vid.

More related /,nomad style civs that have no/bad eco bonus should get the mule cart as a buff

This could make higher level play a little more interesting for drush/man at arms and/or scout plays. Doesn't look as easy to quick wall your wood line with this mule.

I feel bad for the mule having to lug around all those resources all by itself.

Converting mule carts may be quite interesting 🤔

Do they take up population space? I hope not, since they are technically a building. And if not, would it be a feasible way to use them in combat as damage sponges?

So we are entering Age of Mythology territory now.

Babe wake up, new Spirit of the Law video dropped

This NEEDS to be given to the nomad civs, even replace camps for balanc3

Minor Mule Cart questions: Can the Mule Cart garrison in Fortified Churches and/or Towers? Does the Mule Cart add arrows when garrisoned, like a Villager would?

Do enemy units treat the cart as a unit or as a building? In the sense that, if there are units nearby, will they know to prioritize those over the mule carts? Otherwise it might be a very valid tactic to mix in some mule carts with your units to soak up some of the damage.