The New & Improved Royal Heirs! (AoE2) 

Arrow comes from a standing guy Gasp! Arrow comes from guy on a horse It's Shotiln time!

I think it's a really nice and strong buff for the lesser used units of the Ethiopians, what I don't like about effects like this is that they're not shown anywhere in the stats or with visual indicators or anything. I feel like there's already too much going on "behind the scenes" in AoE2 and adding to that really doesn't help.

“dark blue” aka ROYAL blue 😉

3:25 Japanese mentioned in a positive way in a video about whole different civ ✔️

this technology should add the hero glow to the shotels

Finally! The 'Mangudais have no counter' meme is dead! Some weird interactions I found: 1 - Royal Heirs blocks armour piercing attacks. Elite Leitis without Relics do 15 damage to Shotels, instead of the expected 18 2 - Royal Heirs does not block Cataphract trample damage. The Shotel attacking from behind takes 5 damage irrespective of the tech 3 - Royal Heirs does block Elephant type trample damage which accounts for armour. The reduction is factored into the base attack of the Elephant before the trample damage is calculated. A Shotel consistently takes -1 trample damage compared to an Ethiopian Halb for example

Cav and archers dominate the game now but devs are trying to get infantry up there. I am still waiting for SotLs 6 hours long video about how last patch changes the meta. Realy looking forward to it.

Important to note that this is coming in the context of swordsmen being made into a more meta-friendly option for army composition in general. So while Shotels are getting one hell of a buff, their most obvious counter is also going to come more into relevance right alongside them. Not to say that anything the swordsmen line is getting is going to make them better against Shotels, but rather that you're going to be more likely to be making swordsmen *anyway* for a variety of contexts, so having Shotels become stronger isn't one of those things where your hand is going to be forced into pumping out a counter unit that's not useful for anything else other than *just* countering Shotels.

I don't play AoE2 but dude the way you present the game and it's changes make me get a dopamine hit everytime I see you uploaded something new !

It would have been interesting, just for curiosity's sake, to see how this tech makes the Konnik matchup change, whether it's Mounted or Dismounted the one that is easier to deal with.

“Over the hump” I see what you did there, sir

What is also interesting to me is how they implemented it and if it is going to be available in the scenario editor

Thanks for going over the Cataphract! That's what I was most curious about.

Watched your videos for years and for some reason that "like a good infintary civ, like japaneese" sounded so personal. 3:22 Old Sotl bias! Love your videos as always man : ]

Hera is going to be pretty upset once he notices this Edit: although, to be fair, at least this comes in pretty late in the game but also, on the other hand, Ethiopians already have good archers so idk

With techs like this, do you think maybe it'd be important for the game to display an icon on the unit's card somewhere (for when you select it as an enemy) that'll show they're being affected by a specific tech? I feel like this might be an important thing to have shown for certain techs that buff a unit but aren't visible in any other way (like the unit's stats). An argument against this would be that you can just learn the matchup, but I think that's an unreasonable expectation for most players given the sheer volume of civs and different techs in this game, made even more complex by updates changing things over time.

The most shocking thing is that nothing special happens when fighting with Cataphracts

Great video as always! Didn't think the impact would be this huge. Does anyone know when the new patch will be released?

I still think Ethiopians should have a unique tech that makes them not needing any food for any unit.

I know you go into great detail, but is it possible to see how they match up against the top tier civs. For example, shotels vs Frank knights or Bulgarian knights with stirrups. You did this for camels and it was greatly appreciated. Ethiopians certainly seem to be a much stronger civ than before with archers to counter strong camel civs and shotels/camels for strong cavalry civs.

It feels nice that; as much as you'd think trying to protect your archers with a squishy melee unit is bad, i find Shotel wars are really fun to use, being that they run the gap to situations that a slower unit might not save a straggling archer, or maybe avenge it.

I feel like they are going in a direction to have a lot more infantry battles, which is awesome because cab and archers have been DOMINANT for so long now

Looking forward to seeing the shotel vs conq matchup.

results are kinda what i expected. it fits in with them in that its a strong castle age tech but does fall off a bit in imperial/lategame. The weird thing is now that ethipians has 3 good counters vs calvary. They get the pike upgrade for free, along with the new camels and shotels. Ofc each have a bit of pros and cons with that.

One unit I'm curious about is how/if it will also affect the Khmer Ballista Elephant

Seems like Shotel can single handedly counter anything Bengalis throws in.

Crossbow/arbs and shotels will be a really strong composition in late castle and early imperial. High DPS combo and can't be countered with mass cav like before.

Interesting that the castle age camels get a buff when Ethiopians already get free pikeman upgrade

Hey there :) What I'm often missing in your comparisons is equal resources factoring in the upgrade cost, basically analysing the break even point of "how many units do I have to create on top of the upgrade so it is worth it" instead of only taking equal res for the troops without considering the res you need for the upgrade

I wish Ethiopians still got free Halberdier:(

Don't forget that this is in addition to Ethiopians already having some of the best archer and siege in the game. So in imp, these shotels are gonna be backed by minigun arbs and ICBM BBCs.

If shotels were meant to ge a head to head unit then this doesn't seem to bad, but the fact that they were already a really good raiding unit with their better speed now makes these guys seem really overtuned. I also don't like how visually it doesn't follow that àrmorless guys dual weilding swords are super resistant to mounted horse archers and elphants

I wish the devs would add some optic when you click on an enemy unit that shows if they have researched these “invisible” techs. I can see whether they have got fletching etc so why not something that shows the damage reduction or in the case of Vikings the chieftains tech?

Spirit, how does it interact with units that ignore armour such as the Leitis?

Imagine the videos when ROR comes in may

Snack time and AoE 2 video, perfect! Thanks SotL 👏👍✌️

Hey Spirit, I know you're probably busy with the new patch stuff, but I have a weird specific question: what's the villager ratio you need on wood to support x number of farms?

They will start to suspect something when their cavalry get stomped. Lol that was a good one.

Yesterday was Hera video about how Camel civs break the game balance for Knight civs. Today is a SotL video about how an upcoming patch has a major buff to a camel civ vs cavalry. Is this conspiracy or coincidence or just the nature of things?

seriously OP tech imho especially for a civ that does not need this kind of buff either. meanwhile you see a lot of archer civs with no love at all in the PUP

The Scary part of Shotel is how the civ have the Economy for do the unit, still players gonna mix with pikes against mounted units for maximum damage and archer/siege support for possible counters.

Oh. Oh my. I love Shotels so this is nutty. This is gonna be great

It's a cool new tech that has a great unique effect

Billy Mays up in heaven partying like it's $19.99

Enjoy it while it lasts, no way this won't get nerfed by either making it more expensive or decreasing it to 2 instead of 3

Thanks! Nice show and tell!

2:41 I guess they will add a sound effect displayed for their enemies to make them be aware like they did with some other unique techs.

Not sure if this buff is nessecary. But it is a very heavy buff

"Have you heard about that shotel warriors?" "They have curved swords. Curved swords."

I really like this new effect to be honest for an old unique tech, I hope other techs can have a similar treatment

I love this tech from a flavor sense. Before, having faster creation didn't really make sense considering they were, well, royalty. Now, their better training and resources makes them take less damage. It's perfect (although a bit underpriced XD)

The civ already got Pikemen for free (and formerly Halbs as well) while also fielding incredibly strong archers, it's good to see the Shotels get some appreciation but this might potentially be a bit overkill. At least the unique tech is made a bit more useful.

I guess the plan to encourage more infantry play is just to make cavalry civs unplayable these days! Not a fan of this change. I don't see how a cavalry civ is supposed to counter this when the Ethiopians will have much better archers too, and already had free pike.

let's take one of the most fragile units in the game and make it counter all meta units! ...except crossbow and onagers jokes aside, i think this is too much damage reduction against ranged units, i'd personally make it -3 for melee mounted and -1 or -2 for ranged mounted, but well time will tell how good it is

The king must be really busy making that army.

The Ethiopians really benefit particularly from the fact that the improvement is being given to some of their faster units. The real power-units for the Ethiopians are their archers and siege, and cavalry is an obvious counter to both. Improving your ability to intercept Cavalry and take fights helps protect those units

How does it interact with Wootz Steel?

Pretty nice buff to the unique unit. This means I can consider that Shotel warriors will be useful in more battle situations.

Idk... honestly, I'm pretty excited for most of the April patch changes & the buffs that the Militia line are getting, but I _really_ am not into this one. (1) It doesn't seem fun or fair at all that the opponent has _no_ ability to know whether he's fighting Ethiopian units with Royal Heirs, short of flat out losing an army to it first. I mean... if there's an interface which purports to tell the player "this is how much damage this unit does; this is how much damage that unit resists", then it should just do that straightforwardly... not hide things! Bonus damage is understandable, because that's at least _consistent_ which makes it predictable and fair. Imagine if you saw your opponent with a bunch of halbs, but you couldn't actually know whether they dealt bonus damage to cavalry or not, until you actually fought them! Fun? Fair? I don't think so. (2) It doesn't really make a ton of sense to me that it applies to _all_ mounted units, whether mêlée or ranged. It's a little disappointing to me to see AoE2 increasingly just making techs with random names that do random things, instead of stuff that actually has at least _some_ immersive basis in reality. Is their awesommmmme aristocratic blood just somehow deflecting both swords _and_ arrows, or something? (3) Last but not least, the tech just seems kinda OP. You're basically getting +3/+3 for _two_ different units, against a _huge_ array of opposing units of different damage types, and for only 300F 300G?? And moreover, _neither_ of those units is even the archer line, or even an archer at all, despite Ethiopians being an archer & siege civ? Tbh, I'm betting/hoping that this is gonna get dialed back pretty quickly, and/or increased in cost at the very least.

Goths with Perfusion: Finally a worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary!

This seems too strong to me, specially since it affects both camels and shotels. I am not sure what Magyars or Tatars would do against ethiopians, or even some camel civs (considering ethiopians already have very strong archers)

ethiopian pocket shotel spam might become pretty good in teamgames

I wish Genoese Crossbowmen had a resistance against cavalry as well. An attack bonus is nice, but their shield should really mean sth, and I guess they're supposed to be first good against cavalry because of that shield: it would make a lot of sense if a bit of their attack bonus was replaced by a mounted units attack reduction.

This tech affecting camels is what makes it broken. I’m fine with the shottels, but Ethiopians generally had a good matchup vs CA/Cav civs like huns and Tatars. They have one of the best halb-siege combos, have BBC w/ Tortion, fully upgraded skirm, and now top tier camels. That’s just silly.

Some other points: - Yes you should consider the unit to unit matchup for a lot of cheap units but it matters least for units like the Shotel that train insanely fast. 2 Castles is easily enough to produces a corresponding force of Shotels to a more expensive unique unit since you can train about 3 or more(Or twice as much for Elite Shotels) in the time most unique units take to train 1. - Ethiopian camels will now probably struggle to make an impact as a fast cavalry counter since Shotels are acting in the same role now. They have some marginal advantages but it gets grossly overshadowed by the advantages of Shotels. Notably, Shotels were already disgusting raiding units(Being fast and eating TCs for breakfast). This is particularly bad since camels are typically used to counter the units that Shotels performed really well against in these tests like cav archers. As crazy as it might seem, to me this tech feels like a significant nerf to camels.

Shotels desperately needed this buff, well done AOE2 devs!

Shotel get instantly 4 sec creation time when researching elite upgrade is a massive boost for Ethiopian. Maybe a surprise fast imp castle drop.

On a maybe side note, I find this tech interesting, but not so much intuitiv. How do you imagine a unit getting less damage due to the other unit on a horse/camel/elephant? I can imagine a unit dealing more damage to a horse/camel/elephant and in fact, thats how I viewed the spearmenline bonusdamage, but I find it odd the other way around. Take the archer vs cavalry archer, how would one arrow hit more, but the other arrow hit less? Ofc its not all about realism, but I prefer the more intuitive behavior.

how do Teutonic Paladins do? Their armor bonus in this interaction isn't as big as the Shotel or Camel, but I'd imagine it'd skew the results a bit since they're taking 2 less damage either way.

yes makes the Shotel Warrior even stronger. Because it wasn't the before

Thanks for some more great content.

So, what are the best unique castle techs? Yeomen? Polishzic privileges?

I'd love to see this mounted armor bonus be applied to all infantry for other civs. A +1 or 2 would aid against knight rushes in castle age and make man at arms more viable.

It sounds like against Ethiopians you can't rely on pure cav to counter their archers, you need to use a mixed force of anti-archer cav and a steady archer/melee line to retreat behind.

Feels like a hard counter to CA and Light Cav Civs.

I think the devs are trying to push for more diverse and somewhat more realistic army compositions and especially highlighting some of the features that make the civs stand out uniquely against each other. I think it's cool to make some civs really shine in certain niches to maintain a sense of uniqueness and also should lead to way more strategic and thought out match ups, since it's now much more risky to send in some knights to deal with Ethiopian crossbows, when they are guarded by Shotels or Camels. That forces players to think more about the civs in general and utilize bonuses stronger.

HOW are they doing this? That really interests me. Some hidden armour that only cavalry units check? Damage packets including unit type now? How would this interact with Leitis? It might open many possibilities for the future. But then, they seem to be doing this a lot recently.

This is a balanced update for the Shotel Warrior, well deserved for a Unique Unit. Their camels dont have bloodlines or final cav armor so no big deal.

I'll be honest, I'll miss watching the flood coming from a single castle push.

Over the hump! 🐪

So what you're saying is, ironically, this will probably do as much to help push players into using the swordsman line (What you going to be a better counter to this unit than mounted troops)... Which seems to be a desire from the devs anyway.

No info on whether this wording means that Genitours are just straight up not able to deal damage with imbalanced upgrades?

Ehat about the Byzantine unique unit (can't type in english)? Is it cost efficient? Does it change drammaticaly the results)?

But how did they do it in engine? This should have required a big change to the way damage is done right, with attacks taking into account the armour types/properties of the unit the attack came from which wasn't a thing before right?

So what about the Coustillier? How many charge attacks does it take to kill a Shotel now?

Do you think they’re doing too much to knock down Calvary Civs or not enough? Or even just right?

so to counter shotels you go either infantry (who get outrun so no counter for raiding) or archers against the 2nd best archer civ? seems off.

For all the efforts they've made to make infantry better in a meta dominated by cavalry and archers, I honestly feel like this is one of the more interesting ways to do it

Spirit, can you guess from which side of a building the unit will come out, when it is trained?

How does this work mechanically? Do units gain a 'shotel' attack/armor type? What about for camels?

But does it have an affect on trample damage from mounted units?

Wild tech

Very cool upgrade for the camels, but a little worried about shotel warriors. A lot of cavalry civs feel like they just don't have a good option against Ethiopians in castle age now, even things like axemen play into the typical archer strategy. With imperial age, the elite upgrade has them producing at almost 10x the speed of the knight line, avoiding any problems with massing or transitioning, plus the saved gold, high speed, and high base attack make them excellent at filling the roles the civilization needed. Outside of the archer line, there doesn't seem to be any way to cost-effectively counter shotel raids, and this is against what is broadly considered one of the best archer civs in the game.

Amazing tech

So Shotel, Elite Skirm, and Torsion Engine Onagers is now unstoppable.

9:44 I see what you did there

infantry should never lose to cavalry cost effectively! it should be classical rock/paper/scissors between infantry/archers/cavalry. while the spear line can be a hard counter, the regular infantry should at least be a weak counter. i fully understand this is "specialized" infantry, they should at least break even with cavalry.

I’m wondering when does this patch come I can’t wait to try it

Btw someone know, why gurjaras mounted unit deal not correct damage to shotels (with UT) ?

it would be super cool if they add mounted shotel warrior