hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to look at the secret hidden Buffs
that units and buildings receive automatically when you advance to the next age we all know the
obvious power spikes when aging up like Castle age giving additional Town centers for booming
and Powerful units like Knights and mangonels while Imperial age gives trebuchets as a serious
threat to castles unlocking more of the tech tree is important but what about the hidden stat Buffs
that aren't as obvious especially when you first learn about dark vs feudal age Scout Cavalry which
has a dramatic stat change I think it's natural to wonder what other similar things are lurking
in the game's code so in this video we're going to look at what I believe is a fully comprehensive
list of similar sorts of changes as the poster child and inspiration for this video though let's
begin with the Scout Cavalry which basically turns into a brand new unit the instant you reach feudal
to start with the Scout cavalry's line of sight increases by two in each Direction which doesn't
sound like a lot but technically more than doubles how many tiles are revealed at any one moment they
all also speed up by about 30 percent altogether meaning they uncover the map about twice as fast
as they did in Dark Age while ideally that should come too late to help find your initial resources
it definitely helps explore your opponent's base once you hit feudal and explains why it feels so
much easier to run into enemy Town centers during Dark Age maybe less well-known this continues in
Castle and Imperial adding another two site each time naturally that extra vision is also retained
when upgrading to light Cavalry or hussar as well now arguably an even more impactful change is to
their attack Scout Cavalry and Dark Age deal three damage which means a villager armored up with loom
can beat a scout one-on-one you can still harass villagers and be annoying but you don't want to
stand around and let a fight play out as shown here that Dynamic reverses though the second you
hit feudal age where Scouts gain plus to attack that's a bigger deal than it sounds as you can
start engaging isolated Builders and potentially even kill them leaving your opponent not just down
a villager but also with a half-finished military building or an incomplete wall so that's the Scout
Cavalry and something similar but not identical happens with the garage camel Scout first they
receive the same line of sight boost matching the regular scale Cavalry and futile age though on
the flip side this is just a one-time effect and doesn't increase further in Castle and Imperial
they also speed up like light Cavalry though in this case it's only a 21 increase instead of 30.
they also receive a similar plus to attack though their stats are a little different than the Scout
Cavalry and tilt more toward HP than damage the implication is the same though where in
Dark Age they lose to a villager with loom but after the passive boost in feudal they can win
that fight and become a legitimate threat to pick off a villager though their lower attack means it
takes them a little longer to do it Feudal age is also when their bonus damage against Cavalry
camels and ships kicks in as obviously having plus 5 in Dark Age would make them way too good
against Scout Cavalry so there's a one age secret delay to that bonus damage maybe most significant
though is their benefit to reaching Castle age where they instantly upgrade to regular camel
riders with much better stats overall and also a faster training time on top of that and finally
to complete the scouts the eagle scout naturally has its own set of hidden upgrades first off upon
reaching feudal Age The Eagle Scout adds three line of sight in each Direction unlike the other
Scouts they don't gain any new attack in feudal but already started with more to begin with so
it all evens out instead it's the castle age where they get their important set of hidden
improvements first they gain an instant plus 3 attack and on top of that unlock their hidden
bonus damage against camels in Cavalry their creation time at the barracks is
also automatically brought down from 60 seconds to 35 and if you ever thought Eagles were hard
to mass in feudal age and felt easier and more effective in Castle now you know why and it makes
an important distinction between feudal and Castle Eagles for American civilizations remember this is
all happening passively and doesn't require the eagle Warrior upgrade which instead targets HP
Pierce armor and speed but you have to pay for it the faster creation time in particular has a
similar feeling to the crossbow upgrade secretly cutting that unit Line's creation time from 35
to 27 or similarly for the war Galley upgrade nearly trimming that Line's creation time in half
for how important they are it's very easy to overlook the creation speed element of these
upgrades and highlights one reason you don't want to get stuck in futile for any longer than
necessary when trying to mask any of these three units getting away from these Scout
units now another hidden change you probably wouldn't know if you just picked up the game
with Definitive Edition is all infantry gain plus two line of sight in feudal age this used to be
a separate Tech called tracking and costs 75 and later just 50 food but is now given instantly to
all civilizations when they hit feudal you may have noticed this before with militia where if
you haven't hit feudal age yet you find yourself stumbling around your opponent's base and walking
into town center fire but suddenly in feudal age you get a much better sense of what's going on
around you no promises you won't still walk into town center fire but the fact each unit
suddenly reveals twice as many tiles at least takes away some of your excuse but speaking of
infantry there's a particularly interesting one for our purposes here which changes more
than maybe any other unit as a direct result of reaching the next stage and that's the sergeant
again it would be possible to not even notice in casual play but their stats improve dramatically
When You Reach Castle age adding an instant 50 to their HP three more attack and plus one plus one
armor along with a secret 33 faster creation speed the obvious reason for this was to make a feudal
dungeon Rush not completely overwhelming while also not leaving you with something useless in
Castle age at the same time so the decision was made to basically make it two different units
depending on the age you're in now those are all the hidden changes that I know of for units but
it turns out buildings have their own set of secret improvements each time you advance we
all know aging up makes buildings look different but did you know it generally also makes them more
difficult to destroy the general rule for most buildings is that they begin with zero melee armor
and seven Pierce armor and each of these increase by one every time you age up that armor is not
removed by the oh boot by the way though I'd say it's mostly ranged units that run into problems
with this in addition to this depending on the building their HP also scales to some extent
here showing what their HP is or would be in all four ages if you were able to build it or if you
started with it on Mega random for instance right away you can see houses and economic buildings
receive a large benefit when hitting feudal in Castle age while military buildings experience
the largest increase overall by Imperial obviously you can throw masonry and architecture in here and
for byzantines they're building HP bonus stacks on top of these changes meaning their buildings get
tougher faster than you might expect by looking at the bonus alone I Byzantine barracks in Imperial
age for example doesn't have 30 more HP than one in Dark Age it has over a hundred percent more
personally I find it interesting they decided to give buildings staggered HP at all as that's
certainly not a design necessity Age of Empires 4 for example has static HP on buildings when
advancing and even within Age of Empires 2 certain buildings like Town centers and castles don't
increase their HP automatically they're kind of the exceptions here though as generally defensive
buildings do get tougher when aging up Palisade walls for example jump from 150 to 250 HP when
you hit feudal and stonewalls engage do this even more dramatically when hitting Castle age
similarly Tower HP also increases in Castle age though in this case that's actually because their
feudal HP was dropped in Definitive Edition to tone down Tower rushing even outposts sort of
get in on the action with plus two line of sight each time you age up same as a scout Cavalry all
in all especially reaching the castle age gives a lot of surprise defensive benefits and even the
case of the town Center which doesn't get a direct HP Improvement they still gain additional armor
so those are the general hidden improvements though for the sake of completeness I thought
we'd run through a list of the civilization ones as well while this wasn't the initial focus of
the video when I started to think about it it's amazing how many civilizations have bonuses linked
to reaching the next age in one way or another when you really lay it out like this advancing to
the next stage is pretty clearly giving you more than just an expanded Tech Tree whether it be for
Scouts buildings or something civilization linked advancing to the next stage always has something
else going on behind the scenes to help you out and give an immediate and passive benefit that'll
do it for this one though big thanks to Seb James joxster Justin Kyle Samantha Stephen Woodruff and
everyone else on patreon for their amazing support thanks for watching and I'll see you next time