hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to cover something I missed in
my initial video looking at the DLC and that's a brand new generic unit I mentioned the new
unit for the Romans called the dromon which replaces the Canon Galleon but didn't realize
this is not unique for the Romans my first hint should have been that it wasn't listed
as a unique unit but it turns out this is also going to be available to byzantines Goths
and Hans which is especially important for Heinz given they previously lacked Cannon
Galleon that now leaves only the American civilizations and the cumens lacking a good
option to bombard the shoreline and clear out enemy castles the new dromon unit is mutually
exclusive with the Canon Galleon taking up the same slot at the dock and while it's very
similar and appears initially to be a near reskin basically every stat is tweaked to
some extent to the point it's not totally clear if these are important or just superficial
differences that's the main thing we'll be looking at here breaking them down and then
seeing how they do in a few similar scenarios to start with as well see over and over their
cost is extremely similar but tweaked ever so slightly the German actually is the cheaper
version costing a bit less wood but it's clearly in the same ballpark cost wise the game seems
to be implying that the German is maybe a little weaker though as we'll see I'm not
sure that's actually true looking at their stats it's a mixed bag with a slight advantage
in HP and armor to the German but maybe more importantly a slight advantage in range for
the cannon Galleon of course the elite canning Galleon has even more range so the German
is definitely at a large disadvantage compared to that which is available to about half of
civilizations theoretically 12 range should be all you need to attack most castles though
a Tune-in castle for example actually outranges Romans making them a little extra annoying
to deal with on the coast for Romans and their friends similarly while both Romans and Canon
galleons have 50 attack notice the German has five projectiles giving them a bit of
a blast zone which is reinforced with a larger blast radius behind the scenes while you might
assume that gives them five times the damage this seems to be a situation where four of
the five projectiles are just for show with one main projectile doing the real work and
the other is just doing the minimum of one damage against any Target rest assured you're
definitely not getting their full 50 attack five separate times and you can treat the
X projectiles as more cosmetic than anything one critical difference about their attack
though is Roman's attack significantly faster reloading every 8 seconds instead of every
10 leading to 25 percent more damage over time the German also moves about 10 faster
and so far it seems like the German might be the better unit in every way except range
as an aside here one strangely technical distinction is the German takes four more seconds to train
though it's hard to see how that would ever be an important factor and at this point feels
like someone is just having fun tinkering with numbers in fact one of the only things
that isn't different between them is they have the same minimum range of three tiles
as these are meant to be anti-shore units and not intended to engage fire ships for
example a final consideration is their bonus damage which is where the Canon Galleon shows
a non-trivial Advantage where Canon galleons do 200 damage against buildings increasing
to 270 with the elite upgrade Romans only have 135.
despite all of their other advantages this immediately makes them look worse at performing
their main function of bombarding defenses though remember cannon galleons also reload
slower so it's not as big of a deal as it looks at first strangely on the flip side
for some reason Romans have 30 anti-siege bonus damage instead of the Canon gallons
25.
also at least for now Romans take unique unit bonus damage from the samurai so maybe at
one point it was intended to be a Roman only unique unit and that just hasn't been cleaned
up yet remember this is pretty early access so that's the comparison on paper with the
Germans seemingly a little tankier and having better attack against everything except buildings
but let's run a few direct comparisons now that we know what to look for and see how
they Stack Up when it's all put together to start against buildings which are of course
the main thing they're built for first off the German is doing by far the least damage
per shot since it has less bonus damage ending up doing about half the damage per round of
firing as an elite Cannon galleon remember they attack faster though and if we look over
a longer time period they're actually not that far off a regular Cannon Galleon in terms
of damage to buildings in fact they're only doing about eight percent less damage over
time which I wouldn't consider that big of a deal something to note is that only one
of the civs four getting the dromon has Siege Engineers to enhance it both types of ships
have their range increase by one and bonus against buildings increased by 20 with that
Tech researched in general though as long as you outrange a castle it's eventually going
to go down and damage output is more of a secondary consideration in contrast where
Germans really start to shine is against galleons as mentioned earlier they have a bit of a
blast radius that makes a noticeable difference letting them hit multiple ships at once this
is a Bare Bones example but they end up clearly doing the most damage to a pair of galleons
at least in this case remember they have three times the cost of a galleon and also fire
very slowly and while they found they can put up a bit of a fight against galleons and
take out a few I wouldn't say Germans are a counter to someone going full Galleon it's
more that they just aren't as useless as candy gallons in that situation especially if you
had a few Roman galleons or Byzantine fire ships in front to soak up damage it seems
like they might do okay and even be a population efficient substitute in late game water battles
so let's see first though we need to know if Romans actually do Friendly Fire and it
turns out yes they do so we need to keep that in mind though they also have some interesting
Behavior where they'll avoid firing automatically if you have friendly units too close to an
enemy which I think is kind of cool and something you may have noticed in mangonels as well
notice here they won't attack the enemy Fire Ship if there's a risk of hurting my own fishing
ships though every time the enemy moves far enough away then my ships will attack of course
the main argument here in favor of adding a few Germans is they actually deal damage
faster than galleons even without considering their area of effect and also have three extra
range to give an example of what this would look like in a 24 versus 24 ship battle swapping
out a third of the Roman's galleons for Germans well is obviously more expensive is actually
a winning play and hopefully because of their range tanky Roman galleons gravitate to the
front with the Germans and their 40 less HP staying behind while adding some extra Firepower
just to make the significance of this clear swapping out 8 galleons for Cannon galleons
does not seem to be a winning move so at least on battles of this scale the German's area
of effect is turning into a pretty big deal likewise substituting a few in against fire
ships is also not a bad thought given their hide melee attack goes right through the fire
ship's Pierce armor fire ships also tend to Bunch up quite a bit which again Works to
the German's favor here in a quick test you can see they do a pretty decent job clearing
out fire ships attacking your galleons even if the Romans did end up losing this particular
battle with their advantage on Open Water established another matchup they're really
going to thrive in is against grouped up Siege units the combo of more bonus damage a larger
blast area and faster firing means players are going to have to watch out for what's
effectively mangonel shots coming from the water keep in mind Romans don't have demo
ships so this may be their best option for taking out a group of Siege units that have
bunched up too much along the shore this is also true of blobs of pretty much any unit
and maybe this example best shows off their increased blast radius considering they're
almost as good against buildings as the regular Cannon Galleon and can also be a legitimate
threat to land units they feel different enough to be more than just a recent skin which was
my initial reaction and I'm starting to reconsider this is more like a mangonel plus a slightly
shorter range candy Galleon put together personally I have to wonder if there was at least a little
bit of inspiration taken from the Roman War mod water overhaul that I covered last year
while the new German is obviously less ambitious than that project which added almost a dozen
ships it's at least including a new ship type with its own Dynamics to learn and I'm in
favor of anything that spices at the late game on water especially the Drummond is also
just one reason to think Romans are going to be pretty good on water as they already
have good armor and extra attack on the galley line now keep in mind for all of this the
specifics here could change quite a bit down the road we're still 10 days from release
but this is what I'm seeing from the unit so far remember even if you don't get the
DLC this is going to be available for byzantines gods and hunts so it's something you will
encounter every once in a while if you play on water Maps I feel like I've been drumming
on about this unit for quite long enough though so we'll call it there thanks for watching
guys I'll see you next time