Perfect amount of dry humor and proper deep dive into the stats and strategy. Enjoyed the memorial for obsidian arrows. As much as you can enjoy such a sad memory.
your website puns are always 10/10 masterpieces! every time I think that you've done all the "spirit of the _" bits, you come back with another never-before-seen banger. thank you so much Mr. Law.
Can't wait to hear about your Cajun restaurant Spirit of the Craw. I find the Mayans to have a weak team game late game. In general even moderately strong champion or two handed swordsmen still destroy their buffed eagles and they wind up being vulnerable to onager or bombard cannon depending on how that siege is protected. Mayans are strongest mid to early imp, but fall off in the late game slug matches where they don't quite have a power unit to push a line.
7:15 I gotta say, I love the visual of this segment because Spirit talks about how eight Plumed Archers can 1 shot a villager and then proceeds to not kill a single villager for the entirety of the clip.
All I can think of with the Hul'che Javelins tech is that one game during Hidden Cup 4 that lasted almost 2 hours on Arabia and ended up being a skirm war against Vikings.
Was the documentary by any chance about the famous battle between Sundjata the Mayan warlord and the Viking naval commander Admiral Yi Sun-shin? One of my favorites
You made me google "el dorado mexico" and there seems to be a spa resort on the coast of the supposed ancient maya territories. I don't know what that says about the developer's inspiration but it looks like a really nice place to be - wow 🌴
I think Hul'che Javelineers is a great feature in trash wars, as it makes your skirms a (soft) counter to the opponents spears. Thus, a skirm & helbs combination is reasonably strong in trash wars (although of course not as special as strong hussars or malay).
I would say the Dravidians feels worse because you can sink resources into the stable, while the Maya just disallows any accidental purchase to a dead tree
Yeah, it does feel like, damn, do I really want to tech into Light Cav and Battle Elephants with no final armor upgrade, blodlines and husbandry? Even if they can ignor armor with Wootz Steel, Pikes/Halbs are still way too good against them, you might as well just make infantry + archers.
If you vaguely remeber Plums beeing insane. Yes. They got more expensive by 16(!) res before the discount. Which is insanefor a unit that cheap. btw i find it odd that the recent Eagle cost increase doesnt feature in this or the Aztec video.
I wish Mayans and all the other non-European civs had their own skins for the common unit lines. I know some mods exist but many tend to mix in weird balancing changes on top of the often sub-par reskins.
There are some maps where your start with a castle or house, in which case Mayans don't start housed (and therefore don't need to get loom immediately).
Man I love "Going above and beyond" cheat so much... You dont even need to do all 256 research times for things to spiral waaay way out of control... Byzantines with Logistica (Slavs with Druzhina), Britons with Warwolf and even these sort of less immediately game ending meme things like Skirms casually tossing 256 javelins xD
I love how SotL just memed the dravidians so hard that the Mayans had (in his opinion) a better stable.....you know, a civ that can't make cav units XD
Thanks for content whenever i get sick i binge watch your content which helps me recover faster. I also would like for you to do Civs teams who help each other.
Obsidian Arrows is unfortunately broken. it mean in practise that if mayans ever win a fight in castle age the game ends immediately bc production buildings, TCs and hosues go down faster than they go up.
It's actually not obvious at all, so don't feel like you're overlooking something. Basically, the Mayan longer lasting resource bonus works by having them collect 13% slower (all work rates are multiplied by 0.87), but then have the resources they collect multiplied by 1.15. That means they're technically "working" on each resource slower, so the resources on the gold etc go down slower, but the villager's total goes back up to the regular amount (.87 * 1.15 = 1). For some weird reason their farmers' work rate specifically is multiplied by 0.81 instead of 0.87, so it seems they very intentionally wanted them to be slightly worse at that task. That might imply their farmers are 7% slower than usual, but because so much of farmers' time is spent walking around it ends up being closer to the regular speed in practice.
El Dorado should be renamed, and an excellent name I saw suggested in one discussion, is Star Wars, which is how the astronomically inclined Mayans called large scale conflicts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_war
@@Duke_of_Lorraine Idk if that would ever happen. There is the Expanding Front Mod though which adds a ton of content to play around with. It gets regular updates too.
Am I the only one who thinks the devs should reskin the main infantry and archer lines for the Meso civs? Like keep the same stats, it's a game but like make them look less medieval Europe. Even just like add some native garments and feathers or something to their uniforms...
I have a theory for the naming of El Dorado. The Mayans might have wanted to extend their empire to that "Lost Land", and in that inspiration, their Eagle Warriors had to toughen up by +40HP. Other than that, one general balance change I do want is that Aztecs, Mayans and Incas should get Dromons.
I have a question, can you please do one time where u add eagle warriors bonuses like +4 for Aztecs or +40hp for Mayans and 1/1 armor for Incas to Xolotl warriors and see how would that change them and it would be cool if you convert a stable it would be permanently unlocked for them so they can make more stables and make all of these 3 civs to be able to convert buildings it would be fun addition
Well El Dorado was never found in all the expeditions in the circled area, so we might reasonably conclude that it was never there and it is more likely to be outside that area. Formerly Mayan territory is outside that area, so it makes sense that Mayans have the El Dorado tech. Quick maffs 😤
Mayan eco bonuses are one of the most 'feels good' in aoe2. You get loomed villagers instantly and much more gold/stone/wood post imperial with no effort. I miss obsidian arrows+saracens team bonus combo.
Greetings, this shall be 2nd attempt of asking Spirit of the Law to create a series to review civilisations of Romae ad Bellum mod. Keep up the good work :).
Another reminder. Tje top 5 infantra cavalry and archer civs are also outdated heavily. Especially cavalry had even many civs added, that definitly compete for the crown (Lithuanians, Poles, Tatars, Gujaras, Georgians...)
I miss obsidian arrow 💔 back then, I'd be very okay without plumes, now i gotta wait for the even slower mangonel lol. I understand why it got removed. Damn saracens lol. Anything to make their team bonus relevant
North, central, and South America are still the same continent, though they may be in different hemispheres. Well, unless you follow the 7 continents model. Nevertheless, Mexico (Mayans used to live there) is considered North America by the most part of the world, even though americans don't accept them as part of it. Hence, I don't have any issues with the chosen name for their unique technology. 😅 Anyway, I love your videos. Keep up with your great work!
I missunderstood the effect of resources lasting 15% longer as that the decay of sheep or boars is just 15% decreased. All this years I misstook one of the best civ bonuses as one of the worst
Interesting video idea: Which civs suck the most out of resources? If you where on a team with Mayans, Malians, or Poles who should you have mine which resource if you are trying to suck the most resources out out of every tile of minerals? Could there be an argument for Turks to mine the gold to get it faster so you can get trade running quicker? Whos monastery should you put the relics in if you are trying to go for full optimization? It feels like a very mathy AoE2 question.
To be more nitpicky than is probably deserved for a map that was probably just available public domain, there wasn't a "Maya empire" as depicted there; they were a cultural sphere of independent city-states like ancient Greece or medieval Italy. The closest thing would be the hegemony of Tikal or the later Mayapan League, but neither of these controlled the entire Maya area.
What gives more hp??hoardings before masonry or after masonry?? Hoardings is straight up 1000 more hp. If masonry and architecture done after hoardings will it give 20% more hp than doing those researches before doing hoardings?? Or it does not matter?? Doing all researches in any order gives same hp??
Back in the day, it was annoying getting mayans randomly since you weren't aware of it until the match started. Nowadays, it is annoying because we already know we got mayans before the match begins and still queue villagers instead of loom 😢
And they have soldiers in metal armour and European-style ships... Actually it would be funny if the ram line were just some dudes carrying a ram and garrisoning it adds more dudes carrying it... after all their Trade Cart consists of a guy pulling a wagon.
@@micahbush5397 Makes me wonder if they should have gone with a llama or a travois or something? Actually don't the Inca use llamas for their Trade Cart?
It's unlikely they make an american expansion given how isolated the continent was. I rather bet on East Asia on the periphery of China (Tibetans, Jurchens)
A dumb question: Couldn't you delete your starting eagle scout and start villager production immediatly? Probably not worth losing the scout for, but I'd be interested in how that would change the eco mid term.
I think C+ is a little too harsh on their monastery. After all they still have Attonement, Theocracy, Sanctity and Block Printing, so their monks are still very valuable and I think they deserve a B overall
its a result of the coding of their longer lasting ressources. mechanically Mayan villagers collect 1,15 res for every 1 res the source loses and as a offsett mayan base collection rate is turned down. bc of how farms work this impacts farming more. and it used to be worse. but Mayans used to be OP anyway.
"El Dorado which i cant help but point out is on a completely different continent from the Mayans" And did they find El Dorado there? yeah I thought not
