hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to take a look at the Incas who are
having quite the Revival of this patch both in terms of performance as a top save recently but
also as you might expect in their play rate basically doubling what it was a month ago
specifically we're gonna check out their Castle unique unit the kamayuk and how they compare to
Pikeman against Cavalry how they keep up with The Swordsman line these days in melee battles and in
what situations their extra range comes in handy we'll get to the Imperial age in the second half
and that is where you tend to see them more often but as it requires a castle to make let's start
things off in the castle age to me eco Warriors have a different role entirely as anti-archer and
kamayuk really feel like more of a blend between the pikemen and swordsman line looking at their
stats you can see they split the difference in terms of attack and are a blend of both types of
armor with one more melee armor than Pikes but one less Pierce armor than long swordsman they share
an attack bonus against Cavalry with Pikes but are not as extreme again feeling like a blend of
the two units here though with a compare Harrison starts to break down is its unusually high 70 HP
and of course it's extra range remember Incas have a food discount on all three units which would
be minus 25 in Castle H but are missing supplies even still it's clear that the kamayuk is the most
expensive of this group and also require castles so looking just at the stats they might seem hard
to justify one thing that does work in their favor though is they have the fastest training
time out of this group which just helps to mask them up and their castles are also discounted
15 from a sieve bonus still it feels like you're paying a bit of a premium especially in gold cost
reflecting their extra reach so how big of a deal is that one range if you remember my Inca overview
from seven years ago at that time they obliterated Champions with equal numbers and believe it or not
melee pathing is better than hd's back then so I think it's worth following up on to get a sense of
the benefit of one extra range we'll start here with two nearly identical units here I have a
castle age kamayuk and an Amazon Warrior which I've modified with triggers to have the exact
same stats but without the extra range they both had the same attack rate and the only difference
here is having zero or one range so any difference we see can be entirely attributed to that feature
feel free to try to predict how large of a difference this will make in large battles
say 30 kamayuk against 30 Amazon Warriors if we start simply with a 1v1 test you might assume
they're perfectly balanced but keep in mind one extra range means the Cameo always gets to attack
first so despite being exactly equal in HP attack and armor the kamayuk wins and already has an
advantage this happens against basically any melee unit and functioning gives your kamayuk first
strike next though we'll scale things up to 5e5 and already we see an impact it's very dependent
on pathing and how confused the enemy units are when finding targets but it's clearly kamayuk
are all engaging earlier and end with anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of their HP left the
results only get more dramatic from there and if we switch to 10 vs 10 we notice all the kamayuk
enter fighting significantly easier and in this case end with 40 of their HP left remember the
other stats of these units are all identical so this is purely from one extra range giving a first
strike and getting more units involved in the fight right away of course this pattern continues
and with 20 vs 20 20 it's nearly 50 percent of their HP left and with 30 versus 30 it is in
fact exactly 50 from the test I Ran So Far these tests are telling us a couple of things first
it's obviously a big advantage in melee battles but second you don't need a massive Battle of
60 versus 60 to get the effect even with a group as small as 10 units the effect is already quite
noticeable now of course one thing hidden here is that Cameo bass stats are kind of bad blending
Pikes and long swords so maybe a better comparison instead of isolating the effect is to see how well
they do against longswords as a benchmark stats wise I think it would be hard to say at a glance
which is better but I think you know where this is going 1v1 the long sword wins and while it's not
considered a particularly strong unit it seems kamayuk one-on-one are kind of garbage even if
we only scale this up to 5v5 though the results already flip it depends again on the pathing of
the long swords but in a best case scenario is about an even fight and if there's some
unfortunate pathing for the long sword it can be as high as a third of the HP left for the kamayuk
of course just as a reminder if we take away the range and go back to the almost identical Amazon
Warriors they lose this fight every time but of course why stop at 5v5 and going even further with
10v10 it gets pretty wild with over 50 percent of the cameos HP left and at 20 versus 20 they
almost seem to hard counter longswords with nearly two-thirds of their HP left over even
knowing it would be good going in and seeing it in isolation I was still surprised by how
effective that one range is if the devs ever truly nailed melee pathing in the game I think
that would probably be a huge Nerf for the kamayuk as currently they benefit in large battles from
other units struggling to engage efficiently keep in mind they are about 20 percent more expensive
than ink along swords with their discount so this is slightly exaggerating the difference
but even with balanced resources it's still not really that close and cameos are looking pretty
great now I don't want to go completely overboard and suggest that they're in any way Unstoppable
as anything truly specialized against them like Samurai Jaguar Warriors or Teutonic Knights are
still going to absolutely shred kamayuk thanks to either High bonus damage or absurd armor
so far though they're doing great as a general melee unit but now let's take a look at what's
probably the most common melee unit in Castle age the Knight who they happen to have an attack
bonus against while we'd probably expect them to do well personally I sometimes wonder if their
high cost is Justified rather than using the much cheaper Pikeman in this matchup so let's find out
to look at that comparison 1 on 1 the kamayuk has a smaller bonus behind the scenes but its
higher HP and armor means it ends up doing more damage than the python of course they're both a
good trade against Knights even with Bloodlines but where the Cameo gets about 1.3 times its
value worth of damage the Pikeman gets about 1.6 essentially meaning the Pikeman is technically
a more cost effective choice this is just 1v1 though and if we scale things up kamayuk become
incredibly deadly against Knights here with 12 units against 12 a kamayuk win very comfortably
and of course are the cheaper Army to begin with you might reasonably assume that Pikes
as a great Cavalry counter can do something similar but they really don't in fact they
lose to an equal number of nights and are just considered a counter because they cost less than
half as much as Knights to begin with of course while a trade might look good on paper if you
end up losing your entire Army your opponent's Knights might just have free reign to attack
your Eco what I like about kamayuk is you can actually take those equal scale fights and not
just went on paper value-wise but also end up with units left over giving you some initiative
now I should point out as well that all of this applies to camels and if anything applies even
more the kamayuk attack bonus is slightly lower than it was against Knights but don't let that
fool you camels have very weak stats and both of the units here survive pretty comfortably
1v1 again as the armies scale though the kamayuk perform much better even when outnumbered and in
this example would double the resources spent on camels only two kamayuk go down out of 15.
I'm not sure why anyone would make camels against Incas and especially why they would try to fight
kamayuk instead of running away but it's just to point out the lower bonus against camels doesn't
really hold them back of course keep in mind all of this has been against melee units and as good
as kamayuk have looked so far they're really not a good choice against crossbows they take about
the same number of arrows as a long sword and or kamayuk have a bit of extra speed in range
it's obviously not enough to make them anti-archer now there is a unique Tech an imperial age to help
them out in this exact situation but to summarize them in Castle age their selling feature is
really just their versatility in melee fights taking great trades against most infantry units
once you have a critical mass of say 10 or 15 while also packing a punch against Cavalry in
particular of course you have to weigh the cost of castles in there as well and that's really their
biggest downside it's often well into Castle H before you could even start massing them at all
and Incas already have good choices in crossbows and Eagles for late Castle age making kamayuk less
popular than I think they would be otherwise but now let's switch to the Imperial age and
see what if anything changes as this is actually when you see the unit more often in my experience
first off keep in mind you have not just the elite upgrade but also their unique Tech fabric Shield
which gives them additional armor on top of all of the blacksmith upgrades notice in terms of
attack though they really start to lag behind the champion and lean into being a low attack
but high durability unit with a lot of armor and HP they also gain a bit more hidden bonus damage
against Cavalry though definitely not keeping up with the halberdier in that regard on the flip
side since they're Champions Miss gambesons kamayuk and as easily the best in this group
against arrows again highlighting their General flexibility also keep in mind while their cost
drops a bit as the Inca food discount grows from minus 25 to 30 percent your Alternatives in the
halberdier and Champion also become cheaper giving unusually good value in their own right in fact if
we balance resources between Elite kamayuk and Inca discounted Champions that fight can really
go either way depending on path Elite kamayuk just don't immediately feel quite as dominant
in Imperial age mostly held back by having just eight base attack their extra range is still
enough to let them hold up against other Mass infantry units in general though in a balanced
fight against World Raiders for example which admittedly aren't the tankiest elite kamayuk end
with about half their HP left and a mid-sized battle they win even more convincingly against
berserks again thanks almost entirely to units engaging with fewer passing issues of course
as you'd expect on the Other Extreme Samurai with their very large anti-unique unit bonus
still win so you always have to be smart about the fights you're taking against counter units
but now let's see how they fare against Cavalry as that is supposed to be their specialty though in
this case the halberdier's 20 extra bonus damage for zero gold is pretty tempting and they're also
discounted for Incas so let's see if the kamayuk higher cost is really worth it to start one-on-one
looking at population efficiency the kamayuk attacks about 50 faster than halberdiers so
despite doing less damage per attack they actually end up doing significantly more damage in the end
crunching the numbers in a cost analysis though both units are trading about 1.1 times their
cost if we don't give gold any special weight on a small scale like this it's hard to say that either
one is really hard countering the Paladin and it seems almost more like an even trade if we try on
a larger scale though the contrast is dramatic for example 20 versus 20 Elite cameos end with about
a third of their HP left losing about a thousand resources of value whereas the paladins lose 2700
that's cost and population efficiency on the flip side as you might expect 20 Inca halberdiers lose
to 220 paladins and I don't think that should be a surprise but maybe unexpectedly they basically
trade equally in terms of total resources I expect that's a surprise as halberdiers are supposed to
be a good counter unit but first remember we're valuing gold is the same as food and wood and
second the main point of cheap units is that you can spam more of them to get a numbers advantage
and some effects of Lanchester Square law not just match your enemies numbers though that
isn't always possible if you're pop capped if we ignore population restrictions and flip to
balanced resources factoring the Inca discount we have eight paladins against 22 halberdiers
in which case they end with 90 of their HP left Elite cameos and a similar balance test in case
you're wondering and with about 80 percent but in a post-imperial situation it's hard to count on
having three times your opponent's Army size and to me that's the biggest selling feature
of kamayuk while they do need to be masked to an extent they don't need to outnumber enemy Cavalry
and the way that halberdiers do in order to be effective and equal numbers is more than good
enough in addition to being arguably a better choice against Cavalry than spear units maybe
their best quality in Imperial age is their better resistance to ranged units thanks to their unique
Tech fabric Shields they take six more arrows than a champion and almost Triple A half a deer
given our blasters have three anti-spirit bonus damage so you're getting at least the
anti-cavalry ability of a halberdier without the extreme weakness to archers and skirmishers of
course it goes without saying that the Inca Elite Eagle Warrior is a considerable step up from that
and are genuinely anti-archer whereas kamayuk are more Archer resistant in fact the Inca Elite Eagle
Warrior actually becomes even more impressive when you compare them against units with 11
attack like Cavalry archers longbows and Viking are blasters as those discounted Inca Eagles
still take 60 arrows whereas the other options are impacted by the plus one attack thrown in
there so to put it all together generally kamayuk are thought of more of as an imperial age unit but
as we saw it can be pretty dangerous in Castle age if you mask them up even if some of the
because other good options are often the go-to the extra reach is an insane ability on its own
in melee and is enhanced even further against Knights by having an anti-cavery bonus on top
while I think they lose a bit of their Edge against infantry and Imperial they start to
stand out even more compared to halberdiers when population efficiency is taken into account and
after fabric Shields they stand out against archers making them feel like an incredibly
well-rounded spear unit albeit with a gold cost as especially in team games where gold is less of
an issue and you may want some of that population efficiency and versatility kamayuk can be a great
option to consider it along Eagles depending on the situation those are just my takeaways
though and next time we'll hopefully take a look at the other Inca unique unit the Slinger
big thanks to Seb joxster Justin Kyle Woodruff James Admiral zarkon Samantha and everyone else
on patreon as always for their amazing support thanks for watching and I'll see you next time