hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to look into the turks trash units
and how bad they really are are they truly rubbish or do they have an unfair reputation
of course this is referring to the turks being the only civilization lacking both pikeman and elite
skirmisher the hussar is obviously not included in this discussion as while it's a great option
for turks with a free upgrade plus extra pierce armor it really isn't what people are referring
to when they say turks have weak trash units so we'll just acknowledge at the start that's an
obviously important unit but not our focus now what makes this an interesting question is that
while initially you might think a couple of fetal age units would automatically have no
utility in imperial age or even maybe castle age for that matter remember they still get blacksmith
upgrades so they do end up objectively quite a bit better than when you see them in early feudal
of course other civilizations are also sometimes lacking blacksmith and other upgrades and it's not
immediately clear how far behind turks spears and skirmishers are compared to other civilizations
plus speaking of upgrades this is maybe looking a little hard for a silver lining but remember turks
also require fewer upgrades that saves hundreds of resources right there on top of saving the hazard
upgrade cost as well the crux of the question here for turks though is do you just need a few more
spears against cavalry or on the other extreme are they just not cost effective at all the same
question applies to skirmishers and in both cases while they may not be the best unit choice are
they at least able to counter the types of units they're intended to at all stages of the game
the way we'll go about determining that is to do some fights with balanced resources i'm not going
to be including upgrade costs here and we'll just be basing things on the units themselves
we'll then see what percentage of the spearman's hp is left at the end where zero percent means
they lost and are not an effective counter with balanced resources on the other extreme 100 hp
left would be impossibly good and means they took no damage though really anything above 50
is quite good and anything under 20 would be considered a soft counter at best at the same
time to give a baseline for what turks are missing out on i'll show how a generic pikeman is doing in
the same fight though the focus is really going to be on whether the spearman is winning or not
we'll start with the spearman in castle age looking at the pikeman upgrade turks are missing
out on 10 hp one attack and a hidden plus seven against cavalry among some other miscellaneous
bonus damage improvements the cost of the upgrade is about 300 resources which is roughly the total
cost of just five units against another trash unit the light cavalry balancing for total resources
with full cast leach upgrades all around the pikeman ends with about 50 more hp left over
at the end of the fight in both cases though the spear line is completely fine and even for turks
this is a cost-effective exchange it's a similar story against knights at least when we balance
total resources spears work as a reasonable counter if they can force the engagement
you can see here they end with almost half their hp left though obviously pikemen still have a
massive advantage of course spearmen are just one of several units that turks could use to counter
knights in castle age and arguably the worst option given their slow movement plus i should
note you get a very different result with equal numbers and it's the spearman's low cost that's
making this a good trade to give the full picture again it's a very similar result against camels
the point is despite being an age behind you can see these are still cost effective match ups for
spearman in castle age and as long as you have decent numbers even without the pikeman upgrade
you can be confident you're getting at least a balanced trade this is all down to the fact that
spearmen have a very nice plus 15 bonus damage against cavalry which also happens to ignore armor
just to make the point clear again though spearmen do lose one on one against all of
these units whereas pikemen are actually able to beat like cavalry and camels with equal numbers
so far though things are looking at least okay for turks but now let's advance to the imperial age
with a wave of new technologies enemy cavalry generally gets better across the board
while turk spears only receive access to a couple of new blacksmith attacks compared to even just
a generic halberdier turks are now missing out on 15 hp 3 base attack and most critically have
only about half the halberdier's bonus against cavalry they would never be your first choice
but are to experiment still even anti-cavalry at this stage to start off against hazards your own
hazards again are probably the better idea but if we balance total resources spearmen actually
come out looking okay they have about a third of their hp left though of course pikeman and
halberdier do much better interestingly at least in this test the halberdier wasn't that far ahead
of the pikemen as pikemen are already doing quite well in this matchup again this does rely entirely
on tour experiment having proportionately more units as one-on-one they lose to a fully upgraded
hazard on top of the hazard's speed advantage and maybe another surprise result it's very similar
against heavy camels where turk spearmen are arguably cost effective though again both pikes
and halberdiers do very noticeably better with relatively little distinction between the two
so far i have to say turk spearmen are doing pretty well and the halberdier upgrade looks to
be giving very little improvement in the outcome that's about to radically change though when we
take a look at the paladin the results depend a bit on pathing but with equal total resources
ignoring any extra value on gold paladins beat turk's spearmen and even trade basically even with
generic pikemen the halberdier on the other hand completely shreds them i ran this one a few extra
times to get a range of values and in every case two experiments were absolutely crushed this isn't
even using a good paladin civ as here they're just fully upgraded without any extra bonuses
admittedly if your opponent in imperial age is in a position to make a gold unit and you're not
then that's a bad spot to begin with and ideally you'd be using heavy camels or gunpowder in this
situation the point though is while turk spearmen can do a surprisingly decent job against hazards
and camels they run into a bit of a wall against heavy cavalry toning things back to the cavalier
in this case chinese cavalier it's a bit closer but again the turk spearman isn't getting it done
even with a better than two to one starting numbers advantage though there's maybe an
argument here that it's a decent trade if you highly value gold and are just looking to stall
likewise it's a very similar story with battle elephants where even with a three to one unit
advantage spearman just can't cut it and again like the paladin the albedier upgrade leads to a
significantly better outcome altogether it's clear to me from these examples that while spearman can
definitely hold up in castle age and at least do the intended job somewhat against lighter cavalry
in imperial against heavy cavalry they're just too far behind despite imperial age upgrades and their
bonus damage especially in imperial the camel line is going to be the preferred anti-cavalry
unit hands down if for no other reason then it trades efficiently one-on-one and can therefore
make better use of your population space but now let's switch and take a look at the skirmisher
which actually gives some reason for optimism the elite upgrading castle age gives five more hp one
more attack an extra one against archers and three against cavalry archers one more pierce
armor and maybe most important in some situations one extra range compared to the spear pike and
halberdier trio we don't see a massive bonus damage increase for the elite skirmisher which
suggests that turks are maybe not missing out on as much with that upgrade to start with castle age
against crossbows with equal total resources turk skirmishers actually hold up just fine obviously
not as well as elite skirmishers but it seems feudal counter units can generally perform their
counter roles just fine in a pinch though the blacksmith upgrades here are helping out it turns
out though they don't do anywhere near as well against cavalry archers missing out on some pretty
important bonus damage but again they survive assuming you use their cheaper costs to build up
almost double the numbers but now let's switch to the imperial age since the imperial skirmisher is
specific to the vietnamese i don't want to confuse the issue by including it here the fact is for the
vast majority of civilizations their skirmisher line is only being improved in imperial age by
blacksmith upgrades in chemistry implying the gap between the units doesn't increase in the same
way as with the spearman and halberdier which is cause for a bit of optimism here for turks
starting off against fully upgraded arblesters though 7 versus 6 the r blasters consistently beat
the turk skirmishers while losing handily to elite skirmishers of course these are fully upgraded
arblesters to give a baseline and if we dig a bit deeper including some civilizations missing some
upgrades and an ethiopian faster firing arblester you can see there's quite a variety of outcomes a
turk skirmisher for example can even beat an aztec r blaster one on one as it has an armor upgrade
that the archer doesn't likewise if we try them head to head against a burmese frank and a generic
elite skirmisher you can see they're basically on the same level as burmese who are lacking both the
final armor upgrade and thumb ring it's clear to me that while turk skirmishers don't hold up
against fully upgraded units the point is as you start to take away upgrades they can get pretty
close for another benchmark heavy cavalry archers actually beat them with equal resources pretty
handily unlike the elite skirmisher though on the other hand against hand cannoneers turks do all
right so it is quite dependent on what unit we're talking about very consistently though they're
underperforming even generic elite skirmishers by a noticeable amount so to put it all together our
turk trash units outside of hussar completely garbage or still viable first off based on what
i've seen in castle age there really isn't an issue other than you have better alternatives
at the stable against both cavalry and archers even generic civs can forego at least pikemen
and still get what they need out of spears they reliably beat what they're supposed to at
least cost effectively if you're keeping up with blacksmith techs and utilizing their cheaper cost
in imperial age though things are more situational turk spears can be made to look arguably okay
against light cavalry units but fall apart against heavy cavalry likewise while turk skirmishers can
hold up in castle age and imperial they trade reasonably well against only very weak archers
or some very poor elite skirmishers like burmese though it's hard to imagine why you would ever
choose the skirmisher over the hussar in that situation one final point to keep in
mind though is that the turk skirmisher has the same anti-spear bonus as the elite version and
if you're low on gold may be your only response to mass pikes and halberdiers as desperate as it
looks with what appears to be a feudal age unit so that was a look at the turks and how their
trash units may not be as bad as you thought or not as good if you're an extremely optimistic
person big thanks to yang brock connor james john paul joxter kyle justin john samantha woodruff and
everyone else on patreon for their amazing support thanks for watching and i'll see you next time