+Imperiused definitely. There isn't really a downside to it, and you can even ungarrison the teutonic knights to protect the ram from melee units. That's probably why Teutons don't get the Siege Ram
Especially in Feudal. Both of the options are bad now, either with the lesser triangle where fireship just beats all if the galleys aren't perfectly microed or galley spam where it's whoever manages their economy better.
I would deliberately pick Teutons if my ally is Mongols just so I can load into their rams as a sort of "escort" to protect them, also sending some paladins to help. Then I'd unload to tear down castles and load back up. It's a terrifying combo when played correctly. I would defend the siege units, and they'd provide the transportation.
For anyone wondering about ram damage in relation to garrisoned units. I've set up a testing ground that garrisoned increasing numbers of throwing axemen into each Frankish ram and then another line of archers and set them to attack isolated un-upgraded Japanese stone walls (I found out the hard way that capped/siege rams actually do splash damage that radiates around *themselves*, not the target it's attacking; as a result they can nonsensically damage walls behind themselves so I had to stagger the walls quite a distance to prevent this from interfering). Anyhow, here's the result I found. For all types of rams, whether the player has had Siege Engineers researched or not, garrisoned infantry will increase the amount of damage that a ram will do against the main target by +10 per infantry unit (archers contribute nothing). Battering ram damage un-upgraded/siege engineers 0/archers 109/134 1 119/144 2 129/154 3 139/164 4 149/174 Capped ram 0/archers 134/164 1 144/174 2 154/184 3 164/194 4 174/204 Siege ram 0/archers 184/224 1 194/234 2 204/244 3 214/254 4 224/264 5 234/274 6 244/284 Keep in mind that the damage is not done in sinc with the attack animation, every 2nd "ram" does nothing, and no; stutter step micro with the ram to reset the animation does not make any difference in how quickly it does its damage. It appears to just have a far slower firing rate than its animation suggests.
When I was younger, I thought that they were just moveable houses or protection for your troops. It took me a long time to work out that they actually damage buildings lol. So I pretty much thought that they were cute too haha.
in case you were wondering about the attack: 2 base attack +an extra 40 against other siege including rams + an extra 125 against buildings + 10 for every garrisoned infantry(!) unit and as far as i know this extra damage only applies to buildings or buildings and siege for the other stages of the ramvolution the values are also different and i think you forgot to mention that the capped ram holds 5 guys in FE as for speed of the other unit i think the scout cavalry is faster than its upgrades once it reaches feudal age
Give a man a longbow and he thinks he owns the road. Yeesh. I think I read somewhere that European medieval civilization nearly deforested Europe. No idea how true that actually is.
+Kelly Karoly I think that the Black Death put an end to that, and abandoned fields and villages were reclaimed by the forests. By the time population recovered to pre-plague levels, technology had improved enough that they could feed those people with less land. Archaeologists found that in the 1300s there was under cultivation that was not farmed either before or since. These facts are half-remembered from a book about the Black Death I read a couple years ago.
Great Britain was completely deforested during the Bronze Age. All current forests in GB are actually tree farms that were left to grow unattended. That's also true for good part of Europe.
that's one of those things... Then again, in the modern world many countries are no longer self-sufficient and would starve without trade. The UK being one of them; Which of course explains some of the rationing going on in WW2 (Japan also can't feed itself, nor does it have much of anything else, which was part of the motivation for it's actions in the war) Of course, for there to be countries that can't feed themselves, there also have to be countries that can provide an excess. Like, Australia - which provides huge amounts of raw materials to China, and feeds about 90 million people in spite of having a population of about 20 million. (and I don't think Australia is anywhere near to using all it's viable farmland yet either.) The logistics of this stuff is rarely considered. Nor is waste though. We are at a world population of about 7 billion, but produce sufficient food for 12 billion as is, and about 1 billion people are starving at any given moment. So... People worried about starvation due to over-population are not seeing the forest for the trees; because the people that are currently starving are absolutely not starving due to a lack of available food in the world...
0:40 this is one of the reasons why I want to be able to plant trees (similar to how farms work) besides letting game and fish populations rebounce, or breed herbables myself.
+Spirit Of The Law I did read something like that... but it's with triggers so for scenarios... but... well it would be nice. It would also feel somewhat realistic :P
+trent sayers Haha that would be awesome (as well as game changing, literally)! But I'm afraid they won't even add the black villagers that are freely available: aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/showfile.php?fileid=11868
I was like ; 1 - Ram speed video, interesting lets watch. 2 - Quite amazing video. 3 - (on the graph scene) BAT RAM? BAT RAM? 4 - F***k the video i must do the bat ram comment. 5 - Anyway lets watch the video, then i'm gonna do a fantastic bat-joke-ram. 6 - I cant wait this to end, i cant wait till the end, just end it Spirit, end it end it. 7 - (in the end of the video) F**K OFF SPIRIT! YOU KNOW WHAT DAMN BROH. YOU STOLE MY JOKE ALREADY
+Lamprey Milt With that request, have in mind that ranged champions or heroes, acts are 2 units. I tested with Robin hood on a custom map. He shoot 2 arrows on a tower and hit harder than 2 crossbowmen.
+Felipe Viana i notice if you put a more expensive unit from the archery it helps in the keeps. I kinda just go with that. i used to just use skimmishers but I realized longbow men are better to garrison
+Lamprey Milt I'm not Spirit, but this is a thing I happen to know about I think! My brother and I used to speculate on this endlessly. Mostly what I know about is that trying to explain it is a sodding nightmare. 1) If you garrison archers, it appears that the tower fires roughly *(total attack of archers/attack of tower)* extra arrows. This means that a fully-garrisoned Watch Tower would fire four extra arrows. Sometimes the displayed amount seems to glitch out, and display one less, if it's not currently attacking. This is why Skirmishers aren't very good, and why chu-ko-nus add almost no arrows (their individual arrows don't deal 8 damage each). 2) If you garrison villagers, it starts getting confusing again. For Watch Towers, the first villager does nothing whereafter each villager adds one arrow, for a total of four extra but only 15 total garrisoned damage (instead of 20). For Guard Towers, the first and third villagers do nothing, for a total of three extra (with 15 TGD instead of 21). For Keeps, the first, second and fourth villagers do nothing, for a total of two extra (with 15 TGD instead of 16). Basically, villagers provide diminshing returns as you upgrade towers. 3) Is where it gets very weird. If you have both archers and villagers garrisoned, I can't work out a clear relationship any more. A Keep garrisoned with four arbalests and a villager fires four extra, but adding more villagers reduces that until an arbalest and four villagers fire only two extra. 4) Is where it gets horrifying. Not only does damage affect this, so does attack speed. Researching Thumb Ring increases the number of arrows garrisoned archers fire. Interestingly, this makes Elite Mangudai the best units to garrison in a castle, edging out Elite Janissaries, as their higher attack speed means you need less of them to get the max twenty extra arrows. 5) The attack rate of a tower is appreciably decreased by garrisoning units, as Spirit points out in his Yasama video. Lastly, side notes: the extra arrows provided by the garrisoned units will continue until they hit the ground or another unit if they miss, with a LoS of one tile. It's a bit odd to watch. Changing targets *while* the tower/castle is firing will cause some of the arrows to shoot for the original target and others to go for the second target, which means you can avoid overkill if you micro very carefully. I'll probably break out Excel and crack open the game files to try and work out an actual relationship here at some point. Hope this helped!
Hello, Spirit of the law... I am an Architect. I must say, I learnt a lot about how to do a successful analysis and make presentations by watching your videos. And by the way... AOE 2 is my most favourite game from my childhood. I remember, I used to research on different in game things in the scenario editor. I feel great to see this things here.
In defend of the Longbowmen, as Brits they are probably used to drive on the left lane so they were a little confused and tried to over take or change the lane
What happens if a monk converts a ram, building, or transport ship with units in it? Can they convert it at all? If they can, do the units get stuck inside the ram? Do they still increase the ram's speed? Can you hold enemy troops in 'prison'? Do units inside of a ram make it get converted slower? Do all the units inside the ram get converted?
+Tristan Nunn I think garrisoned units get kicked out of a ram or building if it's converted. In transport ships at sea they get stuck because they have nowhere to land. I'm not sure about transport ships converted in range of the coast.
+Tristan Nunn If it is a Building or Ram, the units are kicked out and they are not converted. If it is a transport ship, they remain unconverted but they are trapped in the ship regardless of whether they were on the coast or in shallow water where it is possible to unload them.
Used to play Mongols on the Zone with Michi maps. My first wave consisted of rams and Mangudia, spreading out with specific micro targeting with the rams. It tends to spread out the defenders. By the 2nd wave, the rams had updated pikes; each assigned different spots on the map, they could outrun their infantry and when caught by their cavalry, it packed a surprise. It took about 60 units; a dozen rams, each with about 4 pikes, but when you had a hole, it would take out a base in short order. And the pikes are given a safe ride through tower and castle fire. Rams certainly are under appreciated, in my humble opinion.
and this is a prime example of why teutonic knight ram bombs can be a thing if executed correctly, backing them up is the problem naturally but at least on paper this is actually a sound strategy however i find it confusing that a unit slower than a siege ram makes the rams go faster
I thoroughly enjoy your videos even though most of the time they teach me nothing. I like my numbers. I finally stumbled upon this (could have searched, I know) and I just had to watch it to see the origin of that sequence occasionally used in later intros. :)
+Zakuzelo So I've set up a testing ground that garrisoned increasing numbers of throwing axemen into each Frankish ram and then another line of archers and set them to attack isolated un-upgraded Japanese stone walls (I found out the hard way that capped/siege rams actually do splash damage that radiates around *themselves*, not the target it's attacking; as a result they can damage walls behind themselves so I had to stagger the walls quite a distance to prevent this from interfering). Anyhow, here's the result I found. For all types of rams, whether the player has had Siege Engineers researched or not, garrisoned infantry will increase the amount of damage that a ram will do against the main target by +10 per infantry unit (archers contribute nothing to damage). Battering ram damage un-upgraded/siege engineers 0/archers 109/134 1 119/144 2 129/154 3 139/164 4 149/174 Capped ram 0/archers 134/164 1 144/174 2 154/184 3 164/194 4 174/204 Siege ram 0/archers 184/224 1 194/234 2 204/244 3 214/254 4 224/264 5 234/274 6 244/284 Keep in mind that the damage is not done in sinc with the attack animation, every 2nd "ram" does nothing, and no; stutter step micro with the ram to reset the animation does not make any difference in how quickly it does its damage. It appears to just have a slower firing rate than its animation suggests.
The Mongols exception is from Crashcourse, which is an excellent series of educational videos that I would highly recommend on History, literature, science and several other fields great for teachers and students alike.
Hey Spirit, love the video. I was kinda wondering, would you mind doing a Mongol Civ overview? I was always interested in them and their siege units, along with the Mangudai. Like, I was wondering how would they fair as a civilization as a whole, as well as what are their strengths and weaknesses, and the whole Elite Mangudai vs Heavy Cavalry Archer thing
a woad raider without squires? but the Celts don't get squires, so is it a regular Celt woad raider speed or a generic woad raider with no squires and no Celt speed bonus?
Could you do a video on Masonry And Architecture (+Hoardings)? I know a lot of people don't get those techs and a lot of people don't care about them, personally, I get them as soon as I can spare those resources and think of them as useful techs. In your video you could cover things such as, if having those techs would significantly slow down an enemy destroying your town or a forward, or getting through walls of buildings or stone walls. Things like that. If the time gained from having or not having those techs really matters.
Does Unit Level or Speed Upgrade for Units affect the actual speed of the ram? I don't mean upgrades for the Ram but the units that are in. I mean it would make sense.
Awesome! I always wanted to know these details, thank you Spirit Of The Law! Also, when you say at around 5:18 that a full garrisoned siege rams with drills goes as fast as a woad raider without squires that's not technically correct, since celts do not get that tech but have an infantry speed bonus which makes their infantry move faster than those with squires. I hope i put it in a constructive way :) Keep up your awesome videos my friend!
+wayrof definitely something to check out in the conversion video I eventually get around to. I think you're right, though. I've noticed before that blacksmith techs don't change in a conversion, so civ bonuses probaby don't either
+Spirit Of The Law I created, in the editor scenario, a woad raider with the chinese and a woad raider with the celts,then i have the chinese monk convert the celts woad raider, both civs were in the castle age. It turned out that the converted woad raider was running faster than the 'original' chinese one, so yeah it seems they keep the original civ bonus, but if you want to dig in a bit deeper feel free to cause i̶'̶m̶ ̶l̶a̶z̶y̶ you're awesome :D
What about arbalest? Does arb incease ram speed? What about the extra damage you get from garrisoning in ram? They are also more affected by infantry than Archer units?
and what's with the attack speed? is it still the same with infantry being garrisoned? and what about normal rams? they often miss an attack, doing no damage at all. is the ram able to hit more often with soldiers being garrisoned in?
