hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to look into a new technology
being introduced in the upcoming patch called gambesons it's a reference to a type of padded
armor and fittingly adds plus one pierce armor to the militia line it'll be available at the
barracks in Castle age after researching supplies extending that bit of the tech tree the main thing
I'm interested in here is whether or not this Tech is a big deal and if there's any context where you
might notice a large Improvement considering the fact that Molly and long Swordsmen already have
plus two pure swimmer for free as a sip bonus and another Plus One in Imperial age while this
is just a plus one that you have to pay for so right away it may not sound overwhelming on the
other hand many infantry civilizations get this Tech so in many cases it's going to be stacking
on top of existing bonuses that's not to say every civilization gets this Tech and actually it's only
about half of them that's obviously so the devs have more flexibility and can individually pick
civilizations who benefit and exclude once who would be too good notice gods and malians in
particular are lacking it for balanced reasons with Goths probably not getting it because they
don't want to give them supplies to give some context long swords and champions for that
matter have one Base Pierce armor and in Castle age at least you can add up to two more from
the blacksmith so we're talking about this new technology improving long swords from three to
four pure summer in Castle age to now match the Knight and potentially from five to six Pierce
armor in Imperial age for a civilization that has all infantry blacksmith texts
now right off the top I think it's worth asking the question is a lack of Pierce armor really
the problem with Swordsmen and going into this I would say that's actually not their biggest issue
instead for long swords in particular the big things that come to mind are first they have low
Mobility so they can't pick fights like nights can and have difficulty raiding villagers they
also require a lot of upgrades made even more now with this change and cost almost entirely
food which is slower together than wood and gold and competes with creating villagers for any food
that you have the point is infantry have a lot of headwinds already and traditionally on top of that
they're also easily countered by archers and just about any ranged unit so with that context let's
look at some matchups and see if this at least addresses that weakness are we talking about
doubling the resistance to arrows or is the change just too small to matter we'll start off in Castle
age assuming full upgrades all around probably the most common things long swords will run into are
crossbows and town centers with Bodkin arrow in this case it's a pretty big difference going from
15 shots before this Tech to 20 shots after for a 33 Improvement in survivability now crossbows are
admittedly a little tricky to talk about because often you're against a large group that's Focus
firing so for a group of 10 or group of 20 this doesn't change the math at all where they still
need two or one Focus fired shots to kill long Swordsmen in those cases respectively instead this
is going to be most significant against groups between 15 and 19 crossbows where you go from one
to two Focus fired shots needed In fairness even outside of edge cases like this when things get
messy just taking 25 percent less damage is what I'd consider a significant change long swords also
have a bit of bonus damage against buildings as well and they will be a little scarier at tearing
down a town center as on average they'll each take five extra arrows so far this Tech isn't
looking that bad but this is nothing compared to what it does against skirmishers typically an
elite skirmisher with its five attack requires 30 javelins to take out a long swordsman with
defensive upgrades as it does two damage at a time adding just one more pierce armor to the mix
though means long swords now takes 60 or double the number of javelins elite skirmishers suddenly
become almost hard countered by long swords and quite possibly because of this a lot of the Archer
civilizations like Britain's Chinese Mayans Ethiopians and Vietnamese don't have gambesons
as maybe there's concerns about long swords and archers being a difficult combination for some
civilizations to counter it really brings up the question though that if gambesons is so effective
at safely absorbing javelins why these guys aren't wearing them very suspicious of course as much as
it's nice to speculate about a new tech I don't want to oversell things here and knights are still
better in almost every way against skirmishers having more HP than the long sword the same final
Pierce armor and they're faster long swords just become yet another incredibly effective counter
but probably not the best one now a lot of what's going on in this situation is the skirmisher's
low attack and we'll notice here if we look at some other ranged units that as you might assume
the higher their attack the less impact gambesons will have to start by moving up one level Cavalry
archers elephant archers organ guns and longbows all have eight attack against longswords and in
this case the plus one pierce armor only lets them survive 25 percent longer compared to 33 percent
against the crossbow already this is probably bordering on what you would find noticeable in a
game though against a group of 12 13 or 14 Cavalry archers specifically this would be significant as
they wouldn't be able to take you out in one shot anymore to give a bit of a concrete example if
we balance resources is with a Bengali elephant Archer against longswords the ones with gambesons
win with about half their HP left while longswords without and with a third of their HP that's
certainly enough to be noticeable side by side but arguably is not a radically different outcome
moving into the next level though we have a scorpion with 12 attack and now we're down
to just a 14 Improvement in longevity from seven to eight bolts required to take out a long sword
it's not nothing but in many cases wouldn't be enough to swing a fight and the eye test it's a
very similar level of Effectiveness as there's already so much Randomness with units picking
targets that a difference that small just isn't obvious a lot of the time at least mathematically
it is doing something but when we get to the real Heavy Hitters like Slingers conquistadors or
janissaries with 16 or 17 attack there's actually no difference even theoretically in how long
swords perform taking 5 hits either way it's the same deal with castles who also take them out in
two shots with or without this Tech now personally I think it makes a lot of intuitive sense that
for something like a skirmisher with low attack gambesons has a big impact and I'd even say it's
still important against crossbows Town centers and Cavalry or elephant archers but as we get
into range units with more attack we eventually get to the point this Tech just doesn't do much
of an anything for a generic civilization I don't think this will bring long swords into the meta or
anything like that though for a sieve like Celts Japanese or Vikings this could be helpful for a
long sword in Siege push as that's already helped out by those civ's other bonuses alternately you
sometimes see long swords as an eagle counter and this would help him resist any range units mixed
in there to some degree American civilizations who rely on archers skirmishers and Eagles will
presumably run into long swords more often now or have a bit more difficulty with them if they do
now usually I go into the same level of depth in Imperial age and break down all the matchups but
I'll show you guys the numbers and the story is basically identical with the same general
pattern in Imperial age champions again hold up about 30 percent better against our blasters they
take double the javelins from Elite skirmishers and we have the same story where the bonus helps
less and less against higher attack units until once again you reach hand Cannon ears where this
Tech has functionally no impact it's safe to say again by far the biggest impact is when fighting
skirmishers archers and town centers now of course this is going to make champions for about half of
civilizations even better as in anti-trash unit in the late game they already performed well against
halberdier and skirmishers with hussar is a more debatable counter but for civilizations
that have all the Infantry upgrades and now gambesons skirmishers are just not a threat
to even two-handed Swordsmen with their slightly lower HP I could see this being picked up at least
semi-regularly by Vikings Japanese Slavs Malay Celts Burmese Aztecs or bulgarians in Imperial age
dravidians with discounted Barracks texts might also be tempted and I think there's also some
potential in mixing Champions with our blasters as a skirmisher damage sponge with infantry adding at
least some sort of threat against enemy buildings traditionally light Cavalry or hazar would fill
that role as a meat shield for our blasters but don't have a bonus against buildings and now with
Champions taking potentially double the previous number of javelins this might lead to the militia
line being a bit more popular for weak Cavalry sieves if you're seeing a lot of enemy skirmishers
now one side note I should make is that for some civilizations this might put their infantry unique
units in an awkward spot of course this tech only applies to the militia line so any unit that was
an alternative to that just got a bit worse in a relative sense the big ones that come to mind
are the samurai Jaguar Warrior Karambit Warrior berserk and woad Raider who all now end with one
less pure summer Than The Swordsman line and The urumi Swordsman who ends up with two laughs some
of those units have other selling features and bonuses to differentiate them but the impact on
those unique units may be that they're seamless often remember this change also isn't happening
in isolation the long sword two-handed swordsman and Champion upgrades are also being sped up on
this patch as well as the re research time for supplies even adding in this new technology to
research it's still faster to Tech in a champion than it was before so that's the new gambesons
tech where I think it's helpful and where it isn't overall I think it helps a bit with long
Swordsmen and Siege plays but it's really Imperial age against skirmishers where I expect to see the
most impact either way hopefully it helps put the new tech into a bit better perspective and
gives an idea of how players may try to use it thanks for watching I'll see you next time