hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to continue our through the ages
series where we look back at how age of empires 2 civilizations have evolved between their original
design in 1999 through today this time we're going to take a look at one of the classic cavalry
civilizations the persians from the start they've been unique for actually a few different reasons
among the original 13 age of king civilizations they were in fact the only one to have the
full stable tech tree which is something even byzantines and mongols couldn't boast they were
and in fact still are also unique for lacking the two-handed swordsman giving them an especially
underdeveloped militia line as well as being the first to have elephants providing an incredibly
population efficient unit in the late game finally they were also the only age of king
civilization with stone walls that lacked an upgrade for fortified walls to me suggesting
an intended aggressive play style using cavalry to establish map presence and relying on mobility
to keep the pressure on your opponents looking at their original bonuses you'll notice off the bat
they're very familiar you start with some extra resources faster working town centers and docks
plus a handy team bonus for knights against archers the war elephant was a little different
though with its cost weighted more heavily toward food and less on gold than it is today as well as
a few other small differences behind the scenes the war elephant itself was actually one of two
unique units considered for the civilization and in an interview with the legendary designer and
developer sandy petersen he said they thought about a multi-purpose cavalry that could either
shoot arrows or engage in melee similar to the recently introduced wrath chariot of course
persians in age of empires 1 were primarily an elephant civilization and if they wanted to have
elephants in age of kings then persians were really the only option that makes any sense to
have them now one small difference from back in the day is that only elite war elephants had
trampled damage giving a bit more incentive for what was and still is the most expensive single
upgrade in the game of course technically there are other upgrade lines like the mangonel that
in total are a bit more but either way elite war elephant is an expensive upgrade there were also
no unique texts in age of kings so war elephants ended up being significantly slower though at the
same time there were also no halberdiers so it's debatable if they were a greater or lesser threat
than they are now the conquerors expansion in 2000 introduced those upgrades with petersen directly
commenting on this saying he thought mahouts was more than compensation for the halbedier's
combined extra 15 damage against elephants in fact he saw persians improving overall in the expansion
thanks to reduction in the cost of cavalry archers and changes to the camel the changes referred to
there included a faster training time taking less anti-cavalry bonus damage and bloodlines being
introduced for more hp the cavalry archer comment is interesting as persians lack bracer so they
usually don't jump to mind as an ideal cavalry archer civ though that may also reflect the fact
that the devs thought the cavalry archer would be a more popular unit than it ended up being and
thought it was strong enough that missing a single upgrade wouldn't be a deal breaker of course even
after more buffs it would still be unusual to see someone make cavalry archers as persians
now one strategy i don't think the devs predicted and actually mirrors a similar mistake for the
teutons we discussed earlier in the series was the inadvertent creation of a persian town center drop
persian town centers and docks have double the usual hp which was presumably a way to partly
offset not having stone walls or good towers but was quickly reappropriated into an offensive and
some would say offensive strategy where a player would delete their starting town center in dark
age and place it beside yours making for a very messy dark and feudal age players not anticipating
this could easily use up all of their wood trying to repair their town center or lose their
villagers trying to attack it directly without realizing it's not really a fair fight on account
of persians having double the hp there's dedicated build orders for this going back at least as far
as 2014 and as recently as three months ago i found a post of someone asking if it was a
reportable offense to use the strategy while it's always been somewhat controversial and undoubtedly
an unintended use of the bonus it's now become a meme strategy synonymous with the civilization
enough so that it's even an official achievement in the game now completed by over seven percent of
players i should note though that persians were always considered a strong cavalry civilization
often several villagers ahead of opponents thanks to a faster working town center and in no way had
to be played with meme yolo strategies in fact they were in such a solid position heading into
the forgotten expansion of 2013 that they weren't changed in any serious way the only thing added
was a new unique tech boiling oil which became one of the most ignored techs as it was both
situational but also didn't really fit with the persian's design and game plan as an aggressive
cavalry civilization obviously not everything in the game has to make perfect sense like why wolves
favor attacking elephants over sheep and we're all used to a bit of strange video game logic
at the same time the idea of attack called boiling oil improving the arrow damage of castles against
rams at a distance felt like there was probably a better idea out there and their unique tech is now
definitely much more interesting two years later african kingdoms introduced the new
tech arrowslits which was temporarily given to persians but again that was later walked back
presumably in keeping with them not being a defensive civ the following year though the rise
of the rajas expansion brought battle elephants into the game stepping a bit on the persians toes
of course since battle elephants were created at stables for balance reasons they needed to
be much weaker than the persian war elephant the new battle elephants also received a toned down
version of trample damage doing 25 instead of 50 percent but that still created a situation where
the battle elephant in castle age had something the war elephant didn't while also being much
cheaper to address that 50 trample damage was then added to the non-elite war elephant giving
persians a small buff and re-establishing their dominance in the elephant hierarchy
fundamentally though outside of their mandatory unique tech additions persians hadn't really
changed since age of kings suggesting they were fairly balanced and in fact they rarely showed
up in discussions of either the best or worst civilizations 2019's definitive edition was about
to turn that on its head though and for whatever reason the devs decided persians needed some major
spicing up while at the same time accidentally making them quite possibly the best non-cumin
civ for the first few months of 2020. the first big change was their faster working town center
bonus was expanded to dark age filling a gap in a pattern that looked suspiciously like it had been
intentionally excluded and very quickly everyone found out why and that the original developers
knew what they were doing while five percent faster work rate for a town center in dark age
might not sound like a lot that effectively turns into a villager ahead and six seconds faster to
advance to feudal on water maps especially they doubly benefited by having fishing ships come out
a bit quicker of course persians still started with 100 extra resources all of their previous
bonuses and fully upgraded knights and camels the combination of all these things made persians
temporarily one of the most aggressive and top three performing civilizations on the ladder until
it was removed after a few months and this was happening during a period when pathing for cavalry
units was especially poor another factor in their immediate success in definitive edition was a new
tech on to replace the unpopular tech boiling oil its effect of course makes persian crossbows
only cost wood giving them a fourth trash unit option it was a little too strong at first though
and has since had its cost nearly doubled as well as the cost of individual crossbows increased from
50 to 60 wood the end result after the buffs and then subsequent nerfs was persians were a
bit more interesting but kept their reputation as primarily a solid booming and night civilization
and finally in lords of the west they changed the cost and training time of the war elephant from 31
to 25 seconds making them a little easier to mass and encourage their use especially in the mid game
so that's the current state of the persians in 2022 they're currently ranking about as average
as you can get on open maps like arabia the reputation is as a solid night civ that's easy to
pick up for new players with a few unique quirks like the town center drop the strongest elephants
in the game and their so-called trash bows all of which make them not completely predictable
as a pure night civ on closed maps though they're struggling quite a bit more with a sub 40 win rate
these days that's pretty consistent over the last few patches and is maybe surprising given their
faster town center bonus which you think would help them have a great boom behind stone walls
i suspect there's actually a couple of things going on here first they're a primarily cavalry
civilization and those almost universally do better on open maps with basically all
cavalry civs having worse performance on close maps second and i don't want to get too deep
down the rabbit hole with this but the persian's booming bonus is fundamentally quite different
from other civilizations not necessarily giving you more resources than other good booming civs
throughout the mid game as you're having to pay for your extra villagers sooner the main
benefit comes quite a bit later once you max out at 120 or 130 villagers sooner than everyone else
they also have fairly weak monks and defenses but like anything i'm sure their poor results
are actually a combination of factors in the next installment of the series we'll jump from what's
currently the second worst arena civ to the second best which is the turks including why microsoft
lawyers got involved prompting a last-minute change to the janissaries in-game appearance
that's all for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time