hey guys Spirit of the law here in the last video we looked at examples of unexpected attack bonuses
ranging from mamelukes to sheep the inspiration was the elite mameluke's random looking plus one
damage they do to themselves but turned into a larger discussion around various strange attack
bonuses boni bonapodes etc though I didn't have a great reason for why mamelukes have plus one or
why Canon galleons have an equally random looking plus 4 attack against mameluke specifically trirem
who's a Dev for forgotten Empires answered the question in the comments though and it all makes
a lot more sense now in fact in context it would actually be stranger if Canon gallons didn't do
plus 4 against mamelukes so in case you missed that comment I thought we'd go over it as it's
a pretty interesting story of how we got here and wraps up a loose thread from the previous
video just to recap in Age of Kings camels were all Cavalry there was no such thing as a special
camel type and they just took the same bonus as any Cavalry unit mamelukes then also took Cavalry
damage and strangely enough considered Infantry at that point probably because of their ranged
melee damage making them seem pretty similar to throwing axemen in the Conqueror's expansion the
brand new camel type was introduced whether it was an engine limitation at the time I'm
not sure but they only had so many types of armor and to be efficient they made camels and ships the
same class probably thinking there would be very little overlap between the camels and the ship's
counters it's not like pikemen can find their way into the middle of the water this isn't the only
example of a similar crossover as Siege armor was also given to boar so Gothic Hunters technically
had anti-siege damage strangely enough and it's just to say there were only so many armor classes
to work with and camels and ships weren't the only ones who had to Buddy up on an armor type
of course as many people have pointed out camels are also called ships of the desert so maybe there
was a bit of an inside joke element as well now unlike camels which made the full switch
becoming purely in the camel ship class instead of Cavalry mamelukes gained camel armor but
also kept Cavalry armor with now a little extra resistance to anti-cavalry units the net effect of
that decision vision is they took all anti-camel damage but also a little extra from things very
good against Cavalry like pikemen halberdier and the heavy camel though anything doing less than
plus 11 to Cavalry like Eagle Warriors for example would have their bonus negated this is how things
stood for a long time though admittedly it was a little janky and as the capacity for more armor
types was added eventually the idea was voted to remove the mameluke's Cavalry armor of course if
they just took it away outright that would have massive balance implications where mamelukes would
suddenly take significantly less damage from before with gameplay and balance implications
in order to keep balance the exact same what they did was look at every individual unit dealing more
than 11 anti-cavalry bonus damage so that some was getting through and just gave them that leftover
amount as a new anti-mameluke bonus effectively keeping everything the same in practice while
removing the mameluke's odd Cavalry armor behind the scenes suddenly with this explanation all
of the weird bonuses instantly make sense for example mamelukes have +9 against Cavalry and
Elite mamelukes have +12. considering that 11 of that was previously negated all that really went
through was one of the elite mameluke's bonus which is now preserved as a random looking plus
one Pikeman and heavy camels had a similar thing done though the halberdier specifically has had
its bonus damage brought down a bit because it was pretty punishing considering this is all
on top of its regular anti-camel damage even the Canon gallons plus 4 now makes perfect sense given
as we've already seen they deal plus 15 against Cavalry meaning they were previously having four
extra damage go through to the mameluke I should note that while this was done with the goal of
keeping everything the same in practice there are at least two examples where this change has had a
gameplay impact the first is the gurjara's camel Riders Who start with plus 9 against Cavalry but
do 40 more bonus damage if mamelukes had not been changed then this would have led to two
extra damage that they'd take at this point the other example that comes to mind is Bohemians
with 25 more bonus damage for this spear line which since it's applied before armor would have
made them even better against mamelukes than they are now especially the halberdier considering how
strong its anti-cavalry bonus is presumably these are the sorts of interactions they were trying to
avoid by just getting rid of the Cavalry armor to begin with and as you add more civilizations and
bonuses eventually they were probably concerned about running into situations like this where
mamelukes get completely destroyed by something they didn't intend that's the story of what was
really going on and thanks to Trirem Holy Roman Emperor and a few others in the comments for
explaining that as it's an interesting story and clarifies a lot of otherwise seemingly random
bonuses before we wrap up though while we're already on the topic of weird attack bonuses
there's actually one additional Oddity that was pointed out in the comments on the last video
this is again from Holy Roman Emperor who points out that it's a lot more than just step Lancers
who have an unexpected two extra damage against ballista elephants in this case because of the
elephant's negative 2 Siege armor it turns out they also have negative 2 Cavalry armor
meaning any anti-cavalry unit will do two extra damage complicating this though is the chu ko nu
and a whole bunch of infantry units secretly do plus zero to Cavalry with which in all of their
cases shows up as an otherwise unexplainable 2X or damage against ballista elephants specifically at
least one reason for so many infantry units having a secret Cavalry attack of zero is because of the
Vikings Tech Chieftains which since it increases Cavalry damage means those units have to have that
attack type in the first place even if it's set to zero at the end of the day it just means ballista
elephants are a bit squishier than they look in a lot of match-ups though they're also starting
with a base of 250 HP so they're maybe not that squishy we'll leave things there though and
hopefully that supplied your daily dose of aoe2 trivia thanks for watching I'll see you next time