hey guys spirit of the law here in this instalment of through the ages we're gonna travel back to
1999 and specifically the evolution of the mongols between how they were originally designed and how
they've changed up until today so far i've been doing videos in the series mostly with pairs of
civilizations though mongols are going to get the entire focus of this video as well it depends a
bit on how you count them it may surprise you to learn that mongols actually have the second most
changes of the original 13 civilizations now that's not to suggest they've been radically
redesigned but simply that the mangudai has proved to be a very difficult unit to get just right
being the target of a lot of tinkering over the years in fact of the mongols 18 distinct changes
since 1999 more than half of them applied to the manga dice specifically before we get to all of
those changes though let's set the scene of what mongols look like at release to start with their
bonuses were basically identical to today their cavalry archers fired faster their light cavalry
line had 30 more hp hunters worked 50 faster and their scouts had greater line of sight as a team
bonus so like i said basically what they are now as i foreshadowed already though it's the manga
die that look quite different originally they attacked faster had greater accuracy were trained
faster and had a frame delay of 10 for non-elite and 0 for elite in case you're not familiar with
the term frame delay i'll just briefly explain what it is as it comes up a few times and is
critical to understanding why mangadai have their legendary reputation simply put it's a measure of
the delay between when you set a target and when your unit fires which is completely independent
from their usual firing rate or reload time as it's often called frame delay is like a real-time
version of first strike or you could even think of it as your unit's reflexes here i have the
game paused with an elite mangudai and a heavy cavalry archer and if i set them both to attack
a unit when i unpause notice that they don't fire at the same time the manga dive fires first and is
in fact so quick on the draw that the projectile is halfway to the target before the animation is
caught up to show the mangudai is firing the crazy part is this undersells how quick they were on the
draw originally as back in the day they responded even faster than they are in the version of the
game i'm showing early on players quickly realized this made the manga die much better than the
regular cavalry archer as you could kite basically anything without taking any damage whatsoever
cavalry archers on the other hand had to stay a healthy distance ahead of what you're fighting
to accommodate that dead time between telling them to attack and when they actually fired
their approach to the magnetized frame delay as well as an anti-siege bonus set them up for
the next 20 odd years as indisputably one of if not the best unique unit in the game
at least at skill levels where players were able to take advantage of the easy micro
that was kind of a long explanation but it is hard to overstate how critical just that small timing
difference makes for the unit interestingly according to one source who was a beta tester
mongols originally fired 50 faster instead of 25 faster before release if that's the case
mongol cavalry archers were actually pretty crazy good at one point and that bonus also
of course would have applied to the manga die and would have made them even more bonkers
even in their slightly toned down state at release sandy petersen the legendary designer on age
of kings and the conquerors expansion suggested shortly after release that in the first expansion
they intended to tone down the mangudai in other comments though it seems petersen attributed a
lot of the mongol strength to their hunting bonus and how quickly it allowed players to advance now
i do want to take a quick detour here though and briefly talk about the cavalry archer in age of
kings i don't want to get myself in trouble here but i would contend that the cavalry archer at
release was notably underpowered consider they're now cheaper have one more range up to 20 more hp
fire up to 11 faster with much greater accuracy and that some civilizations get them with more
armor and a larger bonus against spearman despite all of these improvements over time outside of a
few civilizations with strong bonuses cavalry archers really don't dominate the meta armies
of knights and crossbows and arguably even camels or elite skirmishers can often reasonably handle
generic cavalry archers even after all their buffs so why were they so underpowered at release my
hypothesis is because of the chariot archer the chariot archer was arguably broken especially for
assyrians who fired 67 faster in age of empire's original release than generic chariot archers
i don't know enough about the age of empire's one meta to say if it's still overpowered in
definitive edition but a chariot archer spam i know is considered a very difficult strategy to
counter they have no gold cost great value lots of mobility and the same range as foot archers which
is not true for the age of empires 2 counterpart sandy petersen directly acknowledged that cavalry
archers were much weaker in h2 than chariot archers and i personally suspect that chariot
archers being too strong was a major factor in the balance we ultimately got for aoe 2's cavalry
archers the punch line here is the mangadai is basically the cavalry archer but without
frame delay and a small bonus against siege yet with just those changes it's sometimes called a
cheat unit and is arguably the best unit in the game that's how close the cavalry archer was to
being overpowered so in my opinion the devs were smart to be cautious with them in the early days
bringing things back to the mongols though the first big wave of changes came in 2000 with of
course the conquerors expansion this is where the unique tech drill was introduced and mangadai
received an overhaul with plus one against spearman a slower firing rate lower accuracy
a modest speed increase and a longer training time which was probably the biggest nerf in practice
indirectly and easy to overlook is elite skirmishers also gained an extra plus 2 damage
against cavalry archers giving them a total of plus six against mangudai and the halberdier was
introduced as well despite seeming to receive a lot of nerfs though i'd argue the mangadai in
the conqueror's expansion actually got better the expansion brought bloodlines thumb ring
and parthian tactics all three of which are now considered important upgrades for the unit though
admittedly also make it relatively expensive to tack into the hazard was also added which
played into the mongols extra hp bonus for that unit and overall this is how the civilization
remained between 2000 and 2013. when asked sandy petersen gave the opinion a couple of times that
mongols had the best cavalry archers even better than the huns on an equal numbers basis that's
absolutely true and it's a little ambiguous if we're including the manga die here though i think
many players would agree the meta settled with huns as the best cavalry archer civ in the game
at least prior to the new expansions where their discount was reduced in fact the mongols have
always largely been defined by a strong scout rush and then mangudai and siege in the late
game rather than regular cavalry archers which have never been a common unit choice for them
in 2013 for example an aoe zone poll put mongols right up with the huns and magyars for the best
scout rush in the game and in a reddit thread about the best unique unit in the game seven
years ago the overwhelmingly popular opinion was the mangadai and in fact the top comments
said they were the best archer mounted and even best infantry unique unit which gives you a sense
of the status and reputation mangudai carried for early adopters of the forgotten empire's expansion
in 2013 they gained the mongols new castle age unique tech nomads they still have this unique
tech and essentially houses would continue to add population space even if they were destroyed
it's a situational tech but i think the idea was mongols were already quite strong and the castle
genie techs were used to bring up weaker civs a more dramatic change was that the mangudai's
attack bonus against siege was reduced to just plus one and compensated with a specific bonus
against rams the generic cavalry archer then had its gold cost dropped making the regular
cavalry archer line a bit more competitive with the mangudai which was losing some of its edge
the non-elite mangudai then had its frame delay dropped from 10 to 5 which remember has
the effect of making them easier to micro though still not quite as good as the elite magnetized
zero frame delay finally the elite canon galleon was also removed from the tech tree altogether
this was obviously trying to tackle the mangadai's perceived imbalance though arguably had the effect
of making the unit feel more generic and less interesting maybe that's why in 2015's african
kingdoms they undid a bit of that work in that the elite mangudai's frame delay was increased to 5
which is why i said the initial demonstration was underselling as that's after this change was made
to compensate for that nerf their attack bonus against rams and other siege was reverted to the
original staggered bonus against all siege units mongols were also given arrow slits briefly but
that was later removed as towers weren't really their intended strength the tech nomads was also
made a little more expensive by adding a gold cost the consensus after these changes as far
as i can tell is that the elite mangadai was still the best unique unit but not as bonkers
to micro arguably their biggest changes were yet to come though in 2019's definitive edition
in that the first major patch nerfed the 100 work speed bonus from plus 50 to plus 40 giving one
and a half less food per villager per minute while still being obviously very strong they also gained
access to the step lancer which even benefits from the mongols plus 30 hp on light cavalry this is on
top of having camels which is a lot of flexibility for their stable especially for what isn't
technically a cavalry civilization in another example of a mongols trend of having nice things
but then having them quickly taken away they were temporarily given supplies for their swordsman
line but that was later removed most recently in 2021 the magnetized speed was reduced by three and
a half percent to the same as the cavalry archer and the generic cavalry archer's attack delay was
brought down by 12 percent making those units a bit more similar as it stands today they currently
rank on 1v1 open maps around the seventh best carried a lot by fast up times and are considered
a very strong arabian civilization as they have since the very early days on closed maps they
rank pretty average which isn't unexpected from a civilization that leans on early aggression
and raiding though their siege is also quite strong and something we haven't really touched on
in fact arguably part of what makes the manga die so strong isn't just the unit itself but how well
it's complemented by hazards and a large variety of faster moving siege so overall my feeling is
despite having the second greatest number of changes out of the original 13 civs mongols
feel remarkably similar and even through all of its tweaks the mangadai is still an all-star unit
personally i'm glad they ended up keeping the anti-siege bonus as it gives them a fun quirk
that's different from the regular cavalry archer line and challenges players to come up with a
creative way to counter it the hazard missing the last armor upgrade but having it replaced
with more hp is actually another fun quirk of the civ making them actually worse against archers but
better in melee it feels like there's a lot of depth to what are deceptively simple bonuses on
paper that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time