hey guys Spirit of the law here in this two-part series we'll be going through
one mildly interesting trivia fact about each civilization in Age of Empires 2. it could be
an especially unusual Tech Tree combination they have a little known or obscure hidden effect for
a bonus or just a historical curiosity now I make no promises up front that any of this
will be helpful in a practical situation but your aoe2 trivia knowledge will definitely grow three
sizes to keep things manageable we'll be doing civilization starting with letters a through K
in this video and L through V in a part two that will hopefully come out later this week with that
we'll start off at letter A with the Aztecs as we all know they start with three extra carry
capacity on their villagers while this is good for collection rates on basically any resource
when fact you may not know is this has a big impact on Milling deer having plus 3 carry
capacity means three villagers can carry all the meat from a deer in a single trip during the dark
age minus what's lost to Decay after which they'll immediately start hunting a new Fresh deer as the
old one is used up for a generic civilization on the other hand with three villagers they end up
taking two trips instead one trip carrying their maximum amount which is a bit less than Aztecs and
then a second trip with just a handful of food each leading to a lot more wasted walking time
unless you're micromanaging them thanks entirely to this bonus Aztecs are in fact one of the only
exceptions where three villagers are better than four when Milling deer moving on to the bengalis
their wrath Chariot is of course unique for being able to switch between a melee and ranged mode
while that gives obvious advantages this also gives them the dubious distinction of requiring
the most techs of any unit to fully upgrade requiring 17 different attacks costing over
combined 8600 resources as a bonus fact showing all of those texts on the screen just now is also
the most video tracks I've ever had to add while editing as there's nothing else in the game that
has 17 unique things affecting it that I've needed to illustrate before naturally a lot of the text
for the Chariot apply to other units as well so some of them you might be picking up anyway but
being a Cavalry and Cavalry Archer hybrid is just a very expensive combination speaking of Cavalry
archers though next up for the berbers this one you may know already but I think it's an easy
enough confusion to be worth mentioning their interesting fact is the berber's camel Archer
unique unit is the only camel of any type in the game that has zero bonus damage against Cavalry
on the flip side though camel archers also had the advantage of taking less anti-cavalry bonuses than
other Cavalry Archer variants basically while they don't get the attacking upside of being a camel
they at least get the defensive advantages next up for the Bohemians again continuing the Cavalry
Archer theme they're in fact the only non-american civilization without a mounted Archer of any kind
as all other non-american civilizations have either Cavalry Archer or the elephant Archer
Bohemians are also unique for being the only Eastern European civilization missing hussar
or Bloodlines breaking what was otherwise a very Cavalry heavy set of civilizations sharing that
architecture all of these facts together are pretty clearly a design choice to push
Bohemians instead towards their actual identity of foot archers Spears monks and gunpowder not
Cavalry now as for the britons their fact is a bit more of a practical tip I assume most
players know that generally buildings require half the cost to repair from one HP to full
as they would cost to rebuild giving you a bit of an incentive to repair as a way to save resources
Town centers are unusual for not following this rule though instead costing no stone but twice
there would cost to repair instead of half it turns out this is even worse for britons as
their Townsend wood discount doesn't apply to repairing meaning it costs them four times as
much to fully prepare a town center as it does to build a new one in Castle or imperial age adding
salt to the wound the Frank's discount on castles does apply to their repairing so this is just an
especially bad case for britons moving on now to the bulgarians their fact is about the krepost
in the original 2019 Definitive Edition release despite being very Cass alike in many obvious ways
unlike a castle the krepost could be converted by enemy monks though your enemy wouldn't be able to
create conics from it that was later changed so now they can't be converted which makes them now
the only unique building in the game that monks are unable to steal from you next up for the
burgundians their Eco upgrades costing 33 less food is often considered a solid Eco bonus and
Apple applies to all camp and Mill upgrades Gill Nets as well as Caravan and guilds at the market
for whatever reason though it doesn't apply to the market tax coinage and banking despite
those generally being accepted as Eco upgrades whether this is intentional to disincentivize
slinging and oversight or the devs just don't consider those eco techs isn't totally clear
moving on to the Burmese their unique unit the arambai has the distinction of having the lowest
accuracy out of any non-siege unit with just 20 percent in comparison the Cavalry Archer Sports
a much more respectable but still not amazing 50 accuracy though in their case that can be improved
with thumb ring to 100 only the trebuchet when targeting individual units is technically worse
than the arambai and really not by that much now as for the byzantines they're mildly interesting
fact is that the only civilization with the combination of Paladin or Blaster and Siege Ram
which sounds pretty great on paper especially for team games on the flip side though they're missing
Bloodlines blast furnace and Siege Engineers to offset this so especially the Paladin is quite a
bit below average and maybe surprisingly despite these great options byzantines are quite a poor
performing team civilization according to the stats moving on now to the Celts they're unique
for being the only civilization having just two Imperial age blacksmith upgrades luckily
they have enough for fully upgraded halbadier and Siege onager and really what else do you need in
fact I doubt anyone's even noticed those other texts are missing next up for Chinese their chu
ko nu is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons with some unusual bonus damage behind the scenes
and their quirky multiple projectiles what you may not know about them though is they benefit
the most out of any unit from thumb Ring's fire rate boost generally archers have their attack
rate increased by either 11 or 18 depending on the unit whereas chu ko nu for some reason
specifically have it set to improve their attack speed by 25 in addition to this disproportionate
benefit to their firing rate they also get a nice discount on that Tech in Castle age making it an
even more obvious choice to pick up if you're planning to make chu ko nu moving on to cumans
now an interesting bit of trivia is that thanks to a sieve bonus their Imperial laid Scout Cavalry is
the fastest land unit in the game though if you get the like Cavalry upgrade they actually drop
to being the third fastest as a little known fact about light Cavalry is that it comes with a tiny
drop in speed of course what they lose in speed they more they make up for in other improved stats
and it's definitely worth getting the upgrade in a practical situation next up for dravidians the
elephant in the room here is there's a notable criticism circulating that both their unique Tech
Medical core and even more so their unique unit the thirisadai are allegedly based on Wikipedia
claims that have since been removed for dubious historical accuracy at this point both now seem to
be historical misconceptions living on primarily through Age of Empires of course In fairness
coming up with unique units and Tech names every time is probably not an easy job especially when
it comes to Niche topics now as for the Ethiopians you might expect Goths to have the fastest train
infantry in the game after perfusion or maybe that title goes to the malays Karambit Warrior which
costs just half a population and while they are both created very quickly in fact the Ethiopian
shotel Warrior is the most spammable unit after the unique Tech Royal heirs this is made
even better with a Berber Ally but even without that they're the fastest train unit in the game
moving on to the Franks this is another little historical one where despite the arbalest being
a medieval French word for the crossbow derived from the Latin arcuballista in AOE 2 Franks are
in fact lacking the arbalester upgrade entirely this may not be completely surprising though
as in Age of Empires pioneering or naming a technology historically in no way guarantees
your civilization will have access to it in the game most often due to balance considerations
next up for the Goths this may be too well known to include here for Long Time Players
but given its impact on the game I think it's worth mentioning back in the original Age of
Kings of 1999 they were in fact the first and only civilization with two unique tags
Paving the way for the introduction of castl age unique text and the Forgotten expansion for all
civilizations which we now take for granted have that precedent not been set it's hard to say if
we would have eventually gotten too unique texts as a standard for all other civilizations or if it
would have stayed at just one next step for the good jars despite being considered quite strong
in online play interestingly they're the only civilization without a fully upgradable military
unit in fact they ever so slightly beat out the Gauss for the title of least upgradable units as
ghosts have fully upgradable hand cannoneers of all things Burger jars this is the result
of missing ring armor blast furnace and Siege Engineers but even a lot of common unit upgrades
like pikemen arbalester and champion are also missing on top of that luckily they have very
good unique units and camels to make up for it emphasizing their slightly offbeat play style
moving on now to hindustanis they're officially a gunpowder civilization if we go by the standard
classifications of the gunpowder civilizations though they're unique for missing the bomber Tower
as Bohemians Portuguese Spanish and Turks all have it instead all they really have are very good hand
Cannon ears with extra range and armor making them apparently gunpowdery enough for the gunpowder
Club next up for the Heinz some of you long time players may know that each civilization had a
quick 5 Second jingle prior to the definitive edition that is no longer in the game [Music]
now while those classic Jingles have been Rewritten into largely excellent expanded
minute long themes the Han jingle is unique for having directly made the jump to Definitive
Edition while the tech is relatively unpopular that sound is played when you research atheism
alerting your enemies that their relics are going to generate less gold foreign
unusual sounds when researched the Hunts still have the only jingle to have directly survived
the transition to the new game moving on now to the Incas this is maybe one of the
more obscure on our list it turns out some of the male Inca units specifically the male
villager and monk were actually voiced by cysion founder of Forgotten Empires
to the best of my knowledge the current voice lines in use today are all still the original
bedroom recordings he made for the Forgotten Empires mod long before it was picked up and
made into an official expansion by Microsoft now as for the Italians their interesting fact is when
astute players may have noticed before which is that they're unique for having all of their sieve
bonuses come in the form of discounts no other civilization contains even close to this many
discounts together though I'm not sure whether this was intended to be their Central Identity or
it just worked out that way keep in mind instead of Cheaper fishing ships at release for example
their fish and chips had plus two line of sight so it seems like it wasn't the plan to begin with at
this point though its discounts all the way down plus even a unique Tech giving you one more for
good measure if you're really a sales Shopper and hate paying for things at full price then
Italians might be right up your alley next up for the Japanese this one's pretty straightforward and
is simply that the Japanese Samurai is the fastest attacking land unit in the game now technically
fire ships attack a bit faster but there's sort of a weird exception and we can ignore that if
we restrict ourselves to just talking about land units this is of course because of the Japanese
faster attack bonus combined with the samurai attacking five percent faster than the champion by
default moving on now to the Khmer and interesting fact is despite everyone I've ever heard calling
them Khmer that is actually an incorrect pronunciation my understanding is it should be
pronounced Kh-mai and the best explanation for the confusion is that the French romanticized
the word from the khmer's own spelling without realizing the final r that they wrote was meant
to be silent the mistake has since just caught on and well I think I'll keep calling them Khmer to
avoid confusion for viewers just know all of us are saying it wrong and pronouncing it as it's
spelled instead of how it should sound next up for Koreans something that all too often surprises me
in game so I thought included as a way to remind myself going forward is that they're the only
civilization without the demo ship line though on the flip side they're also the only civilization
with a full University Tech Tree Bohemians Italians and Turks almost share that title
but are each missing one Tech but that brings us up to the halfway point and letter k in the
next part we'll cover the remaining civilizations shout out to Seb James John joxter amiral zarkon
Justin Kyle Samantha Woodruff and everyone else on patreon for their ongoing support which helps me
do research intensive videos like this thanks for watching and I'll see you next time for part two