hey guys spirit of the law here in the last video i tried out a new series summarizing the
history of balance changes for a few different age of king civilizations since their original
design at release that video got a lot of positive responses and i wanted to follow
it up with another entry in that mini series to confirm that i am going to be sticking with it
after this one though i'm picturing they'll be sprinkled in now and then for a bit of variety
between the usual videos that i do this time we're going to focus on a couple of popular requests
that i think contrast really well with each other the teutons and japanese and the multitude of ways
they've changed over the 20 plus years since age of kings we'll start off by looking at the teutons
they have an unusually long list of bonuses which has mostly remained unchanged over the years
there is one especially notable deviation and that they originally had plus two attack and plus
five range on their town's centers instead of what's now extra garrison space also hidden
behind the scenes on release their teutonic knight was quite a bit weaker in terms of hp
attack and armor the civilization's identity from the start was as a very defensive civ with
a great economic boom followed up with generally slow but powerful units so basically what they
are today when it comes to teutons the unique unit has always attracted a lot of attention
and discussion being a bit of a fan favorite seeing petersen talk about the unit in 2000 he
pointed out a connection that i hadn't made before in discussing teutonic knights he explicitly
links them to hoplites in centurions from age of empires 1. if you're unfamiliar in that game there
were two major infantry lines either the lightly armored swordsman at the barracks or the slow but
high melee armor hoplites and centurions at the academy the original age of empires was a major
success in its own right and it makes sense that the same development team would link units from
that game to age two albeit in this case under a medieval reskin funny enough peterson says
tudens were actually one of his least favorite civs on release given their defensive playstyle
though that same feature is exactly why a lot of new players gravitate toward them
even within this quote though we see a hint at what was an infamous problem with students in age
of kings that largely overshadowed their intended playstyle in fact one exploit was so game breaking
that players online were banning students and they became the only civilization directly toned
down in age of conquerors so what was the problem remember their town centers had more attack and
critically more range initially that sounds like a great defensive bonus instead of the town center's
regular six range which covers basically your first two rows of farmers teutons started off
with 11 covering a large portion of their town that was intended to help against early raids but
players quickly learned you could delete your own town center and replace it in your opponent's base
not only could your opponent not fire back if placed correctly but they couldn't even repair
it as villagers even on the far side could still be in range initially as well town centers only
cost wood and no stone for the first 11 months after release so students had a cheap mobile way
to section off any part of the map they wanted especially in castle age with no upper limit on
your number of town centers even castles could be completely helpless and couldn't fire back
if things were placed just the right way this gave them the affectionate name the two and death stars
emerging from the fog of war to annihilate your opponent's town from distance and made teutons
probably the most despised civilization for the tail end of those first 11 months
with the conqueror's expansion in 2000 there was a corresponding update addressing the
exploit now changing their plus five range to a similarly themed but much weaker plus five
line of sight they also received their unique tech crenelations for extra garrison arrows in castles
like many infantry unique units the teutonic knight's training time was dropped by quite a bit
from 19 to 12 seconds and they received the newly introduced albediere and bloodlines
as a subtle indirect change rams also gained the ability to garrison units which had at least
on paper some nice synergy with teutonic knights following these changes the impression seems to be
that they settled as an average to below average civ at least in competitive arabia games from an
aoe zone discussion in 2012 for example i found a thread asking why the teutons farming bonus
doesn't make them a competitive civ on arabia the whole impression of the discussion is that they're
considered an unremarkable civ 1v1 but pretty decent in team games interestingly the topic of
tower rushing with teutons came up several times which implies that teutons were considered off
meta and players were looking for creative ways to make them work i didn't see it explicitly
mentioned but i personally remember them also being among the most popular picks on team game
black forest thanks to cheaper farms and a variety of powerful late game units including siege at
this point with the teuton's middling reputation in mind going into 2013 the forgotten expansion
brought some small changes first the town center line of sight bonus was given to chinese to help
them find their sheep early and teutons were given extra garrison space in their town centers instead
mirroring their tower garrison space bonus they also received the unique tech ironclad giving
their siege units additional melee armor and the non-elite teutonic knight was also buffed by 10 hp
which is part of what we'll see was a long-term trend to encourage more use of that unit in
castle age in 2015 african kingdoms doubled down on those changes reducing the cost of ironclad
and speeding up teutonic knights from .65 to .7 tiles per second well for reference the champion
moves at point nine arson was added in the game as well making teutonic knights feel even more
like siege units than they had before rather than continuing to push for their siege in the teutonic
knight though definitive edition in 2019 took a radically different approach deciding to take
the high melee armor concept of teutonic knights and apply it to other units an early update gave
tuden's barracks units plus one melee armor in castle age and increased the discount on their
farms from 33 to 40 percent shortly after the armor bonus was then expanded to barracks and
stable units with plus one melee armor in castle and another in imperial teutonic knights were also
sped up again from .7 to 0.8 tiles now 23 percent faster than they were originally in age of kings
herbal medicine was also added to the tech tree and made free as a bonus giving them now
three focused on garrisoning by january 2021 teutons had a win rate of 52.4 percent which
is about where they are now often landing between 5th and 10th on the ranked ladder unfortunately we
haven't had precise win rates for most of aoe 2's history and as far as i know even tournament civ
pick rates haven't been tracked in a consistent way so it's hard to back up with hard data but
i can say with a lot of confidence the reduced farm cost and melee armor additions moved teutons
from significantly below average to significantly above average in aggregate performance top posts i
found about teutons at the moment generally paint the picture of a sieve that's in a healthy place
and it seems to be a popular opinion that even teutonic knights are fine as they are in their
niche in fact i would consider teutons to be a massive success story bringing what was at
one point probably the most hated civ through a period of being unremarkable and generally
unpopular and at least competitive spheres to now having a unique and very strong identity that
has remained loyal to how the civilization was originally conceived especially with the unique
text they've stayed laser focused on two central themes first high melee armor on basically now
everything except archers and second encouraging units to be garrisoned inside of defenses
if anything in my opinion all of the changes have only reinforced those two themes so that's the
teutons and the second civilization we're going to look at now is one that's especially near and dear
to my heart as long time fans of the channel may know the very first video i made was a 10 minute
screed about why i thought this next civilization was underrated at the time for their versatility
following changes in the forgotten expansion it became basically the only civilization i
played online for the next couple of years that civilization is the japanese to go back to the
beginning again at the release of age of kings japanese were pretty clearly intended to be an
infantry and water sieve with very similar bonuses to what they have now
in fact of their bonuses only the infantry attack bonus has changed making it a little stronger
that's not to say the civilization feels the same though and in fact i'd argue they feel
very different but it's really their tech treat that's responsible for that in my opinion the
identity for japanese has greatly shifted from an original focus mainly on infantry and the samurai
in particular to their current identity as a jack of all trade civ back in 2000 sandy petersen gives
the impression that japanese were less powerful in age of kings than they had hoped especially the
samurai which didn't consistently counter unique units as it was intended in the decades following
the wider opinion has largely been that infantry was underpowered compared to archers and cavalry
from the start requiring either eagle warriors or massive bonuses to make infantry viable in early
interviews the developer death shrimp describes japanese as not being an economic powerhouse and
petersen recalls the original intention of samurai being able to switch between melee
and arranged mode i think that would have added a lot to the unit and fit in with the identity
of japanese as a combined archer and infantry civ but as he points out complicating ui can sometimes
backfire of course we now have that mechanic in the game with the wrath chariot for the bengalis
the conquerors expansion in 2000 attempted to address the japanese weaknesses both by
improving their infantry but also by giving them an above average archery range as a fallback
to achieve that their infantry switched to a flat 33 attack rate boost starting in feudal
and they also received the newly introduced thumb ring and parthian tactics that gave them
a completely unlocked archery range and given the long-term meta shift away from infantry on top of
their early wood bonus had the effect of turning japanese into functionally an archers if japanese
also received the unique tech katapuruto for their trebuchets and their samurai were overhauled with
much faster training time additional pierce armor slightly faster base attack and faster movement
their bonus damage against unique units was also doubled and you can tell they were serious about
trying to make samurai more viable now while i'm unofficially identifying them as an archer civ
it seems some players at the time did accept the infantry identity a tutorial website from
2000 explicitly says their advantage is in their infantry their best strategy is mass
infantry units and their samurai makes them a late game favorite against players who use
a lot of their unique unit which depending on the unique unit is a somewhat bold claim
others though i think correctly identified the japanese reliance on archers and their lack of
powerful late game options so there seems to have been some disagreement about what japanese were
best set up to do similar to teutons though the general perception was japanese were not
a top tier competitive civ aside from maybe water maps unlike teutons though who have really stuck
to their original identity i would argue japanese were radically changed in 2013 with the forgotten
expansion to start with the most significant change for their identity was that they received
bloodlines not only were knights and light cavalry dramatically improved through gaining easily the
most important cavalry upgrade but it's also a critical tech for cavalry archers suddenly giving
japanese another viable unit cavalry archers in general were also made five gold cheaper and today
they're 10 gold cheaper than they were in age of conquerors on top of that japanese were also given
gold shaft mining and the yasama attack adding extra arrows to their towers as early as castle
age after all of these changes suddenly japanese had a brand new identity they went from a quote
infantry civ with decent crossbows to now fully upgradable cavalry archers fully upgraded knights
in castle age with bloodlines and now an incentive to go heavily into towers for a civ that never
really had that as part of their playbook relative to release in age of kings they also even had some
of the best trebuchets what had initially been talked about as a mostly one-dimensional infantry
focus civ had become a jack-of-all-trades that could reasonably pull off many unit compositions
albeit mostly not at a top tier level shortly after african kingdoms tone down the yasama
attack to just two extra arrows instead of three with an accompanying cost reduction arrow slits
was added to the game and japanese were given treadmill crane helping them spam even more towers
the newly added arson tech also gave a small boost to infantry units including the samurai much later
in the 2021 dawn of the dukes non-elite samurai were again buffed with 10 more hp and 25 more base
attack along with a corresponding decrease in the cost of the elite upgrade on one hand samurai had
benefited from arson in free tracking so you'd think they'd be in a good place but they'd also
really been hurt with the introduction of supplies in definitive edition lowering the food cost of
the regular swordsman line the more the swordsman line specifically is strengthened the harder it
is to justify samurai and often players default to their top tier champion line anyway i should note
though that that was actually intended from the start and it seems it was intended for the samurai
to not completely eclipse the swordsman line after all of these changes at this point japanese sit at
being average to slightly below average on the ranked ladder at least on land maps on water
and especially hybrid maps they still have some great bonuses which are unchanged since age of
kings i wanted to specifically contrast students and japanese in this video because i think their
journeys have a very interesting juxtaposition teutons were imagined as a slow defensive
civilization and have managed to hold on to that identity even having it arguably enhanced with the
extra melee armor on their generic units pulling them more in the direction of the teutonic knight
japanese on the other hand began as an infantry civ with good but not exceptional archers and
in a way i think would have been perfectly encapsulated by a samurai who could switch
between range and melee attack at this point though i think they've moved a bit away from that
and for better for worse have drifted into being one of a few civs claiming the identity of being a
jack of all trades with a bit of extra emphasis on infantry in both cases i think the civs have ended
up working though dual purpose samurai would have been pretty fun to play with for all those years
that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time