Update: Nothing about the Mayan Hul'che tech changed in the hotfix on Feb 11. Only the Burgundians and Sicilians received balance changes. www.ageofempires.com/news/aoe2de-hotfix-45185/
ANother nerf as the previous wasn't enough. Devs won't be satisfied until all american civs are throughly unplayable. How about fixing the less than 1% boost to farms that Incas team "bonus" gives? The so-called extra spear is just "50% chance of doing +1 damage". ULTRA WEAK.
That describes me also. Sometimes I go in to a game and I truly intend to use my awesome knowledge of how the game works (thanks to SotL) but I always end up just recruiting a mish mosh of various units because if I just create some of everything all my bases are covered and it's so much easier than actually trying hurhurhurhur.
@@Dr_Doc35 "A thousand nations of the Mayan Empire descend upon you! Jerry's javelins will blot out the sun!" "Then we will fight in the sh- wait, who's Jerry?" *Hul'che noises intensify*
*_"This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them"_* Lmao that 256x tech. Imagine seeing that many spears being thrown at you, not even a cobra car can save you
Imagine if the cheat wasn't a mentally idiotic attention grab by Microsoft and you could unlock it whenever you wanted instead of being a stupid one time event.
"Don't you think converting all villagers to a super champion halberdier combo is too OP, I mean ...." Dev: "Shushh i'm trying to nerf obsidian arrows"
Double bit axe has much more value than horse collar. If you have ever seen pros play, they will always get double but axe in feudal and sometimes pick up horse collar (depending on the build). The reason why is that double bit axe is an actual increase to the production of an important resource in the early game. Horse collar on the other hand, simply gives better value to existing farms. Since in dark age you typically don’t build many farms (again, depending on build), double bit axe would be much better than horse collar in dark age, especially having it minutes before the opponent where you can collect many more resources than them. It must be noted that you also have to judge if the resource investment of double bit axe is worth it for the build you are going. Since it delays you in the short term for a long term payout, you have to plan accordingly: maybe you are up against a mongol player who is going scouts, which would mean it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to go double bit axe since it would delay you by enough for the mongol player to do some early damage. Hope this helps.
Considering how the second javelin is only a +1 attack, why not make it a hundred percent accurate? That way it would make them better against Hussars and infantry but not OP against Archers or other skrimishers.
@@luggy9256 They were already balanced. Mayans didn't dominate every tournament and don't have abnormal win/loss ratio neither did Incas or Aztecs before nerfs. The only unbalanced thing was with Saracen bonus which could have been easily fixed by making that non stacking. Oh and they make new OP civs that take half damage for free...
The classical story of extra projectiles: - only do 1 extra minimum damage - that makes them more capable of dealign with units they already do minimum/low damage against.
There's also a very high chance the tech and all other unique techs for those civs will be completely reworked in the next couple weeks so I think he'll be waiting until then to touch on them.
This tech is a useless trap. As mayans you already have cheaper archers/plumes/eagles for if the opponent is going archers themselves, making plumes fairly unappealing for most of the game. If the opponent isnt going archers, then why are you making skirms? As a UT, you also wont likely get it until imp when you have a castle and are already going for skirms, at which point it is most likely that the map has run out of gold (so as a meso civ you lose because you are missing the best of the trash units) You dont see skirms in team games, so team bonuses are highly unlikely to ever come up. The only time I could ever see this as a viable option is in a mayans war, since those tend to turn into plumes + siege rams in front, and the skirms could help take out the siege ram. But this tech seems like a pretty big bust imo
@@CornBredCrusader If its just skirms yeah wouldn't work, but if you mix in siege suddenly its a lot more effective. Skirms can sit under castles to support/defend siege and also add some damage.
The silly thing is a Hul'Che and Atlatl are the same thing. Or parts of the same thing to be specific. Basically what I'm saying is the Aztecs and Mayan may aswell have a shared unique tech. That or give Atlatl to the Mayans and find the Aztecs are second melee tech.
... but would there be anything stopping you from making a 2-pronged atlatl? I remember messing around with atlatls in school and how you could probably trade some of the range for splitting the momentum per spear in half...
@@MrEternalFool I don't think underwhelming unique techs can be good, almost by definition. Hopefully there is a line between OP / easily abusable and underwhelming / overly situational.
@SOTL, I noticed the extra javelin always miss farther than the target. Thus, do you think you'd have a better value shooting at retreating units rather than at an approaching ones with this tech ?
This is my suicide note Spirit of the Law has failed to make a tree hp video. I’ve tried to convince him but it’s no use. However is Spirit would make a tree hp video it would bring me back to life. Farewell and goodbye, my lovers
Devs: get rid of Obsidian Arrows cause is an OP meme tech Also Devs: introduce first crusade and flemish militia on same patch Bring back Obsidian Arrows
Seems like a pretty useless tech to me. It makes skirmishers less bad in situations where you shouldn't be using them at all. Maybe if you make a mistake and end up with your skirmishers getting caught out of position by cavalry, the few extra HP you manage to take off the cavalry will help you compensate for the mistake in the next fight, but it seems like a stretch.
I agree but it did kinda suck before that you kinda had to pick between using either their unique unit or unique tech before since making a mix of plumes and arbs doesn't make a lot of sense.
It seems like this tech requires a lot of extra baggage to be particularly useful. And anyone who knows they have to go up against Mayan Skirmishers will find it pretty easy to counter them, so overall it's a sizeable nerf, and arguably knocks Mayans off of the 'Best Archer Civ' podium.
I don't think obsidian arrows was the reason they were considered a great archer civ though. They've still got the fantastic tech tree, a powerful unique unit, and one of the best economies in the game. As sotl says towards the end, this is the sort of tech you get when the game is going late, and while you might not notice the benefit it will be working quietly in the background. Much better as a balanced civ bonus, and one that won't affect Mayan's win rate all that much.
Why would it "require a lot of extra baggage"? You just get it whenever you feel like you will have to transition into trash, and once its a trashfight, this WILL be useful. 2-3 hussars breaking through your infantry are no danger anymore. The odd siegeram pushing you will die that much quicker. You get an edge over generic skirms. All for just 300 gold? Thats amazing.
Gonna miss Obsidian Arrows, it was a ton of fun. But I get why they got rid of it, it was an extremely powerful castle age tech and it felt very out of place, no other tech just messes with the basics of the game's balance like that. And on top of that it made no sense at all XD Why would sharp but brittle shards of volcanic glass be any better against brick, stone or wooden structures than metal?
It's just aesthetics but i like that the ground gets littered with missed spears here and there, it makes it look much more like a real battle field, imo. Once you've researched ballistics and thumb ring for your archers and all arrows always hit you only ever see a bunch of arrows in one single spot from overkilling a unit after a volley. It's also another - even if minor - reason i like Longbowmen so much because Britons can't research thumb ring :)
Oh-freaking-boy, one bonus damage. Why do they keep making multi-projectile units that don't actually do any appreciable damage with the extra projectiles? Just have it be one projectile that does slightly more damage. Yes, I mad.
It’s a nerf while you’ve got gold for archers yea, but it also makes the choice of plumed archers or crossbows easier (since crossbows are now basically pointless once you can make plumes instead) Besides obsidian arrows was too huge a power spike when you had a good mass of archers, just snowballed games the moment you clicked it with even 30 crossbows.
Crossbows shouldn't be able to destroy castles. Needing to bring in siege with your army is a major balancer against massed xbows, since they can't break down structures and can't wander into your base or your garrisoned units pop out onto them. Ob arrows completely blocked that since xbows could snipe buildings in two volleys.
Obsidian Arrows is much better, and I disagree is a tech only for when you are winning. You could use it defensively to destroy enemy military building near your base or just to put presure.
The damage is not rounded in Age of Empires. Units hit points is stored as floats internally. It is just displayed as integers rounded down. The Hul'che javelins hitting other units actually deal 0.5 damage to them. This can be checked with a wolf and a villager fighting in a hill. After 1 attack each it might look like the villager dealt 4 damage and took 3 damage. But it is actually 3.75 and 2.25. After 4 hits, the wolf would have lost 15 health and the villager would have taken 9 damage.
Not even close... Hera made a video of destroying a post imperial castle with Mayan skirms and it wasn’t even a minute... that’s crazy pushing power during a trash war even without siege.
![Mayan Unique Tech: Hul'che Javelineers [AoE2]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
