Top 11 Castles in AoE2 

The best castle is the one you can call home

When I saw the video thumbnail I thought it was ranking the appearance of the castles, not the special bonuses.

Boiling Oil walked so Citadels can run

Ahhh. Nothing more satisfying than sniping units with teuton castles.

11 castles, 11 minutes. Just perfect. Chef kiss

Teuton castles are also great against rams since they can just garrison infantry for the arrow bonus. When a ram comes up you ungarrison, kill the ram, and regarrison.

The best Castle is a Daut Castle.

That reference to Stronghold made me giddy with glee.

I get this is talking about functionality of castles, but from an aesthetic standpoint we need unique looking castles for all civs.

Persian bullets coming from the castle just look to damn good

1 small mistake: Frank castles in Castle Age cost 553 Stone, not 593. Apart from that, again very nice content! 🙂

This guy.... How does he manage to find new content every time? I'm amazed and delighted

Personally, I would have also taken the availability of Masonry, Architecture, Hoardings and to a way lesser extent, Treadmill Crane into consideration when ranking the castles. Still the Persians would have been my top pick.

3:25 nice reference. 😄

The amount of nonchalant wordplay in these scripts is next level. Always a pleasure watching your content, Spirit.

Visually, the central european castle (Teutons notably) looks much more defensible, with a drawbridge behind a first gatehouse instead of a big gate.

funny Stronghold reference got me 😂 Did not expect the top pick, but have to agree after seeing those stats. Great work!

A castle that eliminated its weakness to rams being number 1 works for me

I would say that Poles's bonus "stone with gold" also indirectly supports your castle-building.

3:25 hey hey! Stronghold! Love my Feudal town/castle management sim. "The people *worship* you, sire!"

Nice shout out to Stronghold. Excellent game.

Til: conscription isnt a mechanical hook, but instead a hand dropping money into another hand. Been playing since childhood and for 20+ years i thought it was a hook, and it was helping my troops be constructed faster. xD

Great Video. But, I think Teutons have the best castle across the board.

stronghold crusader was a good unique tech too

All I wonder is... why do all the archers in the castle group up and fire from the same window?

Not quite sure about Persians vs Teutons, because in my experience across multiple RTS range is often king over more damage, because map control, first strike and more options who you are attacking.

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad: the strongest castle in all of England.

Havent played the game in over a decade and i find these videos super entertaining.

Does Byzantines Castle's HP were counted after hoardings? Because I remember fully upgraded one can have 8k+ hp. That never mentioned in this video. Also in your Byz civ overview said that Byz castle with hoardings can take 48 Siege Ram hits/17 Trebuchets hits, while in this video were 36/19. That's quite confusing.

That phrase "Franks lack bracer, while Inca's don't" tripped me up a bit before I had a chance to think about it 😆

Crenellations is actually a callback to Age of Kings Teutons only you drop castles instead of Town Centers

I always learn something new watching this channel. Cheers.

0:00 I subscribed to your channel and support your channel even though I stopped playing this game in 2019 at about 1567 elo because that's how much I love 😘 your videos. Happy Leap Day! 🎉❤️

Gotta love that Stronghold reference. One of the best RTS games out there.

+rep for including Stronghold the game icon when talking about Celts tech. Legendary game in my books and i still revisit it from time to time

Attempt numero 5: Spirit of the Law please make a Romae ad Bellum series civilisations overview. Another insightful video and keep up the amazing work. :)

One thing about the bullets from Citadels, is that, they are more concentrated on their target then regular arrows and thus more prone to overkilling their target.

Thank you for another great video SOTL! Idea for a new video - the new march PUP changed siege weapons' damage distribution to do 100% damage at the center of the hit. Could be cool to see how much harder BBCs now counter onagers/scorpions and how much harder it is to avoid their projectiles with siege. Maybe also for xbows against mangonels.

Aaah I was waiting for this one

great stuff SotL! :-)

Detinets discount is great until you force-of-habit sell your wood to buy the final bit of stone, then find yourself with too much stone but not enough wood to afford one. Not that I would ever do that, of course.

I do love how he says "just my personal list" like he didn't just crunch the numbers and give us absolute objective fact. Granted 99% of what Spirit says is just objective fact and I feel like the game relies on him for the stats.

For some reason I thought this was going to be about the Castle appearance. Which imo the best architecture is the South East Asia castles. Maybe one day if you feel like doing a video without math you can just talk about the various Architecture sets and other unique building models in the game

God bless ya Spirit of the Law 🙏🏿

9:39 - when the music kicks in and you know it's gonna be good

Almost thought about quiting life and this guy comes out with a video. 10/10 will live for a while longer.

I did not realize Persian castles were so good. I expected them in the top 10, but I expected Teutons to be #1. Pretty cool

Do a tower one next! Compare with units in them as I’ve always wanted to see which towers can matcha britons one with 5 longbow men in as in my tests against other civs this one seems to beat them all

I randomed into Persians recently, I saw that tech to make castles fire bullets and was like 😲. Clicked that fast, the damage is so crazy with all upgrades.

*Top 11* I see what you did there

the stronghold reference made me almost as excited as the Caesar 3 reference in the old Britons review

Hey Law, Spirit of the Guys here.

This was a need taking point thansk

Can't wait for the top 13 skirmisher vid.

Honestly so happy that Boiling Oil got such a huge glowup. In its new incarnation, it's made the Persian castles the best

Spirit saying facts with his smooth voice :)

I expected the rankings to be on aesthetics/sprites, but this works too.

2:14. "It probably gets too messy if we start including unique techs, in how we rank castles..." 2:21. "At number 8, we have the Slavs with their unique tech..." :P

you can sell the extra stone or have less vills on stone as slavs i thought you'd mention this. love you

One of the creators that can pull me away from Hidden Cup Content 😂

Elephant fact: Persian war elephants are really good at unleashing gunpowder from castles.

I wonder if the extra base damage for Persians can impact against capped/siege rams. If memory serves, the extra projectiles is based on the building's DPS compared to the DPS of ranged garrisoned units (can't recall the exact formula). A higher DPS of the projectile means you need more to garrison to get a single extra projectile (hence why only Teutons can get extra bombard shots). A civ with bracer+arb has arbs that do 10 damage and castles that do 15 a ratio of 2/3. Persians have 8 vs 18 a ratio of 4/9 which is a third less than 2/3 (aka 6/9) and should be getting 2/3 of the extra projectiles and probably less given the way breakpoints work. Since they only do 1 extra per shot against capped rams they're not getting nearly as much benefit. Against siege rams this is possible a detriment as both citadels and regular castles do 1 damage per shot and so anything that cuts number of shots is a negative. If it works how I think it does, they should perhaps look to change that a bit. Diminishing returns like against capped rams is one thing, but a tech that is supposed to buff your castles shouldn't have (fairly realistic) cases where it can hurt you.

I was teuton main in my earlier days of playing aoe for the castle and the cool looking teutonic knights. castle dropping an upgraded teuton castle never disappointed me.

Teutons are easily number 1, not only does the +3 generates a massive extra area of control (area of control grows exponentially with radius) but the whole infantry giving attack power allows garrisoned infantry to attack and if the enemy brings rams you ungarrison and kill them, even if you are not going for infantry, you can use cheap spearmen, since rams have negative melee armor a spearmen with weapon blacksmith upgrades (which you would get anyway since teutons is either cavalry or infantry) does 10 damage per hit to a ram, that mean even siege rams will die from as little as 27 spearmen hits. And even if the enemy pulls out infantry to kill the spearmen, then you shoot them with the castle, but in reality Teutons are usually stronger in terms of infantry vs infantry, and if the enemy is using cavalry you are going to be making halbs anyway. Another thing that its not mentioned is that even trebuchets have issues against Teutons because normally you will be having troops in front to protect a trebuchet, but with teutons the difference between trebs and castles is only 3 range, so there is not much room for a meatshield to operate in.

The Persian castles' hand cannon shots should really spawn more dispersed. It looks like they're firing just one shotgun, or later machine gun, rather than being manned by several cannoneers,

In "Detinets" the second syllable is stressed.

Your videos are the best to sleep with (no irony nor sarcasm intended)

The best castle is the one I manage to drop right near enemy towns. The castles that are OP and need nerfing is the one I am fighting at the time.

Byzantines castles can get to over 8000 hit points with hoardings. To me that makes them No. 1

The best Castle is the one with 256x of the archer attack techs. They can fire through FOW and unexplored map, unlike other archer units, and they reveal map as they fire.

For a moment I thought this was a video regarding castle design rather than bonuses and I said "Man I didn't know there were that many designs! How interesting!!". And I must admit I was a little disappointed when I found out I was wrong. Great video regardless!

Don't know why I thought this video would be about ranking the architecture styles but I came for it anyways

This is by far the most funny video i've ever seen in my life 11

I would add an honorable mention to Mayans. Maybe not a direct bonus but more stone equals more castles or more repair

Loved the Twotones joke 🫶🏼😂

#12: Richard Castle

I would switch Georgians and Teutons. As SotL mentioned, the Teuton bonuses are situational whereas the Georgian bonuses are much more flexible and helpful in the common situations you find yourself in with castle warfare.

Could you make a modern tier list of "Going above and beyond" ?

If slavs have the unique tach, they also pay wood and stone for repair as well, or it's stil ljust stone?

Hey SotL, can you make a video about best looking architectures in game? Like feudal age meditteranean(italians etc) look very good or like castle age southeast asian(vietnamese for example).

Honestly giving Castles guns is pretty OP

I dunno, I would have put Georgians up at #2. I still feel the combination of cheaper repairs and better hill defensive bonuses give them the ultimate staying power in castle and treb wars, and in many games, the castle the stays up the longest defines the victor.

Persians with gun castles is so much fun. I may like Byzantines the most, but gun castles are just the best.

Petition for devs to make unique castles fir each civ

Hi, there’s a mistake in the cost of French castle age castles. 650*0.85 is about 553, not 593.

Does the Celts' castle healing stack, if multiple castles have overlapping healing areas?

Yey my boi Persian getting some love

I wonder how the various castles compare to buildings from the campaigns, like fortresses or fortified towers.

ohh stronghold, i ever wonder that their game mechanics were underrated, i really love stronghold crussader

RoF on castle helps a lot with dps with rams. Even siege rams.Burst come faster.

are there still games with 256x tech mod? cant even find a mod that works. do you know any spirit of the law?

I know why unique techs are in the castle, but I feel like thematically they'd make more sense in the university

I always picked Teutons when I wanted to turtle up against the AI in random maps and have a lazy game. I would usually fish for a map seed that let me line up a wall of castles on a hill.

Took me a sec to get the Teuton appropriately named joke…

Twotons. I love you Spirit

don't forget a very crucial mod that adds Daut's face on every castle that is in construction. with Lord's guidance there is no difference between civs you play as, the castle will the be best it can be (if you can complete it!).

The best Castle is the 1997 Australian movie 'The Castle'. Its the vibe of the thing.

Could you review the AOE2_Golden_DE mod, it has custom units and adds 3 more ages

1. Daut 2. Daut 3. Daut 4. Daut 5. Daut 6. Daut 7. Daut 8. Daut 9. Daut 10. Daut 11. Daut

Please man, bring back your intro for 10+ mins videos. We need it!