hey guys Spirit of the law here in a previous video we looked at the mule cart in the new
Mountain Royals DLC and in this video we're going to do a similar quick introduction to
the Fortified Church to hopefully address some of the common questions that may come to mind
for this pretty unique building to start off this is of course a regional replacement for
the monastery like a monastery it can hold relics and is the source to train monks as well as get
your monk text like usual one major advantage it has over the regular Monastery though is it can
gar units this is somewhat restricted in that you can only Garrison villagers monks Warrior priests
and strangely mule carts which is odd considering those are technically buildings whereas regular
military units can not use it altogether I think this makes the Town Center the most comparable
building as side by side their attack and range are identical with the same base HP as well they
also fire at the same rate and when garrisoned by villagers have the same arrow firing mechanic
just like Town centers they also don't fire when ungarrisoned but are limited to Five Arrows as
their maximum whereas Town centers can fire up to 10 so while it looks like a town center with low
Garrison numbers its maximum Firepower is only half as much and it also only holds 10 instead
of 15 villagers as a general rule every one or two villagers you add contribute one more
Arrow mimicking how it works with the town center with monks and Warrior monks contributing nothing
besides getting a place to hide I don't want to undersell that benefit though as for a forward
Siege workshop and monastery being able to pop your monks into a fortified Church to protect
them could definitely come in handy now one strange exception to the arrow mechanic is
when it comes to relics a relic always contributes one Arrow assuming you haven't reached your cap
of five as for upgrades basically the building upgrades you'd expect work on them as well as
Arrow attack upgrades including a Georgian unique tech for even more attack that said keep in mind
just like a town center you can increase its attack but you can't increase its range which
can become a bit of a problem in the late game as even a mangonel can outrange them for example
that's one case where a defensive tower has a very significant Advantage a couple of other points is
that the Fortified church is much cheaper than a town center at just 200 Wood versus 275 wood
and 100 Stone while it's also a 3X3 building instead of 4x4 tile building which makes it
much easier to place on rugged terrain in places it would be hard to fit a town center for terrain
reasons but you want a bit of Defense having a fortified church for some protection seems like a
good idea they also have the same build time as a monastery at just 40 seconds compared to the town
center 100 the creation time and lack of stone cost I think are giving some people pause that
these might be too strong when used aggressively but we'll talk about their drawbacks in a minute
another interesting quality you may not have thought about is they're very good for healing
it turns out for units garrisoned inside they heal twice as fast as castles and in fact four times as
fast as Town centers or Towers that's enhanced by herbal medicine by a factor of six meaning
damaged monks and villagers are fully healed in well under a minute even more strange though is
what it does to The Mule cart here I have a mule cart with 38 HP put it into a fortified church for
30 seconds and when I kick it out it's at 182 HP meaning it's healed by 300 HP every minute
12 times faster than a villager this is even enhanced more by herbal medicine giving you
about a full heal in 10 seconds countries around the world should apparently be taking notes from
Georgia and Armenia on Healthcare now this might all sound great except for the lack of increased
range with fletching Etc but there's a couple of key drawbacks to point out first unlike the town
center the fortified church has a minimum range you in fact need murder holes to attack units
directly beside it or at least a large degree of overlap considering murder holes also requires
a university first that's quite an investment in early Castle AG another hidden weakness is
they take damage from both anti-b building and from units that specialize against towers and
stone walls that's bonus damage that town centers don't take and villagers are among the units that
benefit from that extra bonus together I think both of those disadvantages make them feel like
something you could probably Rush down with villagers if someone tried to fast castle and
drop them in your town likewise players without a university can have these Focus down with knights
or anything else melee who won't take return fire from isolated churches so that's a general look
at the building and a few quirks that I found but of course of course it comes in two very
different flavors depending on the civilization you pick so we'll look at that now starting with
Armenians one of their bonuses is that the first fortified Church they build gives a free Relic not
only does that mean a passive arrow that will fire but also 30 gold per minute I can also
confirm it starts A Relic countdown to Victory if there are no relics on the map and you're
on standard Victory setting as far as the game is concerned there's now suddenly one Relic on
the map and you own it so the countdown begins likewise wise if your opponent has all relics
on the map and has already started the countdown building your first fortified church as Armenians
will cancel it as there's now A New Relic on the map and the game is where your opponent
doesn't have it this obviously doesn't have any importance in ranked but might come up at some
point if you're playing unranked as scenario or quickplay Armenians also have their unique
Warrior priest available at the building which I don't want to get sidetracked looking at too
much here but it's a mix of an infantry and monk performing a bit of healing and Relic collecting
backed up by some decent stats though it takes anti-monk bonus damage from the light Cavalry
line so I think it's going to be a little easier to counter than some players are expecting now
on the other side Georgians I think have a little more going on at their fortified Church thanks to
it granting a plus 10% collection rate bonus to villagers within a ten tile square which
to be clear does not stack multiple times on the same villager note the eco boost reaches
the outer square shown here as the Inner Circle shows the building's firing range when garrisoned
now plus 10% is a very good boost to your economy and with mule carts you'll tend to have very good
efficiency on your wood gold and stone to capture most of that 10% doing a quick check even reveals
that farmers in the very late game benefit from this of course you do have to pay 200 wood for
it and recoup that cost before you're really Off to the Races and that got me wondering how
useful they are on wood lines to get a sense of whether they're worth it here we have a group of
10 Georgian Lumberjacks one option is to build a fortified church for 200 wood and then a mu cart
getting the 10% boost or we could just skip the church and save 200 wood how does that decision
play out in the long run well trying it out both ways and tracking how much wood was collected each
minute it seems for 10 villagers is about an 8 minute payback before the Fortified church
starts to pull ahead that's good but not amazing and there are definitely eco techs that pay off
faster I'm starting to see the church more as offering protection for units and paying for
itself back in 8 minutes rather than supercharging a small group of villagers now of course a group
of 20 cuts that time in half to close closer to a 4minute payback which is pretty good but then
only half the villagers can Garrison inside of it so you're also taking on more risk of course this
isn't really a factor if it's inside your town where you'll also have at least one Town Center
to pick up any extra villagers in that case you probably are getting something closer to that
very nice 4minute payback in addition to this bonus Georgians also have a unique Tech giving
defensive buildings plus to attack which of course works on fortified churches though funny enough it
makes it hard to actually get all the available Arrow the way the mechanic works you max out at
four Arrows with 10 villagers inside so you actually need the guaranteed arrows of relics
to reach your full defensive potential after that Tech also as a quick side note yes they do benefit
from the Georgian team bonus as well taking just 50 wood to fully repair as opposed to the 100
repair cost for Armenians this is one factor that makes me a little nervous about battles with Town
centers or enemy towers and remember you have a very nice Hill bonus that can come into play here
as well personally though though I find Georgians have a really interesting economic trade-off with
their churches hitting Castle age it's hard to get Town centers and churches out at the same
time unless you Advanced much later than you had to considering churches at least at the moment
cost about half the resources and no stone it's tempting to stay on one town center for a while I
could definitely see a 40 stone cost or something like that added to the building down the road as
that way you'd have to pick between five churches at the start of Castle Age Two Town centers or
a combination of the two as for concerns these will become wooden towers for offense the fact
they have to be garrisoned at all times have a minimum range until you build a university
and get murder holes and take a lot of bonus damage from villagers I think is what the devs
are counting on preventing that either way it's a very creative building and or effects are really
showing up a lot in the more recent civilizations that's all for this one though and hopefully that
covers the main questions that came to mind thanks for watching and I'll see you next time