hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to take an in-depth look at a fan
favorite unique unit the cataphract it's of course very well known for its ability to negate bonus
damage and disrupt the usual counter system that spears and camels typically enjoy against cavalry
at the same time it's traditionally been not that common of a unit to see competitively
even after some improvements to its upgrade costs part of that may be that byzantines have a lot
of good options and counter units already but i would argue the cataphract fills a pretty unique
role that shouldn't be overlooked entirely the unit has come up in various of my videos in the
past including the topics of trample damage and bonus damage reduction but i realized i've never
sat down and methodically dug into the numbers comparing cataphracts to the knight line to really
highlight their similarities and differences so that's what we'll be doing in this video as
usual with unique units we'll start things off in the castle age in terms of cost the two units are
fairly similar with the cataphract being just 10 extra food per unit comparing their stats at
a glance you can see the cataract has one less attack in pure summer but 10 more hp and not
shown but worth noting is the two units have the same attack rate so we're really comparing apples
to apples a first impression is they're remarkably similar making this feel like the right comparison
as we look a bit deeper at their hidden attributes though we uncover some major differences
first the cataphract in castle age has plus nine bonus damage against
infantry which is guaranteed as that damage ignores armor in many cases that'll more
than double their attack against those units but in extreme cases can add up to even more
in this example especially you can see the bonus damage is doing a lot of heavy lifting keeping in
mind the knight would otherwise have one more attack those cataphracts pack quite a punch
adding to the complexity cataphracts naturally count as cavalry but have extra hidden armor
that negates 12 anti-cavalry bonus damage against most units this won't factor in but means they're
unexpectedly resilient against spear units and camels in particular that said this also applies
to a handful of other anti-cavalry units that you might not think of right away with some of
them in castle age having their bonus against cavalry negated entirely if they have less than
12. jumping back to finish the comparison to the knight both have the same movement rate and
also the same line of sight the cataphract has a bit quicker creation time at 20 seconds instead
of 30 though it has to be said that multiple stables are much easier to make than castles
so combined with the night slightly cheaper cost the knight is definitely the easier unit to mass
to the point that can eliminate the cataphract as an option entirely in some players minds
so that's how they compare on paper but now let's try them out against some common unit match-ups
and see how all the different parts are working together in practice we'll be focusing mostly
on anti-cavalry units as that's really where we expect the cataphract to differentiate itself
and when you typically think about making it just to give a quick snapshot of the two units head to
head the cataphract takes 13 hits from the knight while the knight takes 14 meaning while they're
basically even the knight should theoretically win with equal numbers every time with no bonus
damage involved it's fair to think of cataphracts as roughly comparable in melee to a night without
bloodlines if we correct the starting conditions to reflect the knight's lower cost though they
start to show a fairly significant advantage so in a vacuum i wouldn't suggest making mass
cataphracts against knights emphasizing we really want to make use of the cataphract's
special abilities to justify it but now let's try them against spearman as not everyone is going to
invest in the pikeman upgrade balancing total resources and upgrades to get a sense of their
cost effectiveness the results are night and day the cataphract despite being outnumbered almost
two and a half to one actually win with over 80 percent of their total hp left the cataphracts
here lost about 500 resources worth of value compared to the spearman's over 1700 the knights
on the other hand are completely crushed even by spearmen ending with almost two-thirds of their hp
left this is admittedly an unrealistic scale as i have 29 spearmen but that actually puts the spears
in a more positive light than you'll probably get in practice showing how dominant the cataphract is
in comparison one-on-one it's a bit easier to see what's happening on a per unit basis as cataracts
are taking out spearman in three attacks instead of five while negating all but four damage that
leads to them being able to take four times as many hits as the knight leading to drastically
different outcomes but now let's give the spears the pikeman upgrade adding seven more bonus damage
against cavalry in this case the knights are predictably overwhelmed while the cataphracts
can still edge out a slight victory against spearman all but three bonus damage was negated
whereas pikes have 10 extra damage not being blocked meaning pikeman is a significant upgrade
even still it's clear the spearman line is not a cost-effective counter to cataphracts
one on one again there's 12 damage going through with each attack which is still much less than the
24 that the knight is taking and i should point out again that byzantines don't have bloodlines
so they're very close to losing one-on-one with equal upgrades the gold cost isn't even really
an issue in castle age either so i can't see a compelling value proposition here for the pikes
looking now at the camels this may seem like a good response to cataphracts as they won't be
taking the cataphract's anti-infantry bonus at the same time the camel's own anti-cavalry bonus is
likewise being completely negated by the 12 hidden armor the results are less dramatic than against
the spearmen but again cataphracts win handily while byzantine knights without bloodlines are
at a large disadvantage again just to look at what's happening mechanically one-on-one
the cataphract is taking 4 damage per attack compared to the knights 13. both units are doing
similar damage back against the camels meaning the story here really comes down to that hidden armor
so far i have to say cataphracts are looking great you're getting roughly the melee strength of a
knight while negating units that typically threaten knights the most so why would a
byzantine player ever make knights one big factor we haven't looked at yet is against ranged units
against crossbows it's not a huge difference and i think it's overemphasized at times but
they only take 28 arrows instead of the knight's 34 assuming you have plus two armor from the
blacksmith cataphracts have more hp but having one less pierce armor in this case hurts more
when it comes to crossbows and by extension town center arrows cataphracts are objectively weaker
than the knight line also it may be less important but if you only have the first attack upgrade
then villagers also take four hits from knights and five from cataphracts so in that specific
case having one less attack makes them noticeably worse at quickly picking off villagers though this
is a relatively small factor monks are another important consideration as they're equally good
at countering both units so it wouldn't be fully accurate to say the cataract is protected from all
of the knight's major weaknesses overall though in castle age there's a good argument for and
against the cataphract at times it's shockingly good against the knights counters while being
very comparable in strength and cost to a night without bloodlines at the same time it's a little
worse against ranged units and raiding in some situations while being just as vulnerable to monks
probably the biggest downside in castle age though is again it requires a castle to be trained of
course this isn't their final form as they don't yet have trample damage which is only accessible
in imperial age so let's turn our attention there looking first at upgrade costs it initially
appears the elite cataract upgrade is cheaper than cavalier and paladin upgrades combined
the problem is when you add logistica for more bonus damage against infantry and trample damage
it brings the total to 2 000 food and 1400 gold and this is even after a recent reduction to both
the cataphract's imperial age upgrades that's a big cost so is it worth it on the surface the
imperial age upgrade gives plus 3 attack with a hidden six percent attack speed boost plus 40
hp a combined plus nine more against infantry and plus four more resistance to anti-cavalry attacks
in comparison going from knight to paladin adds plus four attack with a hidden five and a half
percent drop in attack rate plus 60 hp and plus one pierce armor clearly the paladin is
pulling ahead against ranged units both from an hp and armor perspective while the cataphract is
doubling down on its specialty against infantry and adding trample damage the trample damage in
question simply works by dealing 5 damage to surrounding units each time it attacks which
completely ignores armor that trample damage really throws a wrench in everything here as
it's very context dependent it does absolutely nothing one-on-one but can add up in large groups
we'll see how it does using some moderately sized armies keeping in mind the bigger the fight the
better trample damage should perform as there's just a greater chance to have multiple units
nearby to start things simply head to head against byzantine paladins with equal resources it seems
trample damage is balancing things out to make them roughly even we can tell trample damage is
doing a noticeable amount of work here because one on one the byzantine paladin wins so the takeaway
here is fully upgraded paladins with logistica are only on par with a weak paladin in large groups
remember byzantine paladins are lacking both blast furnace and bloodlines and if we try
elite cataphracts against a similar investment of frank paladins and contrast the paladins clearly
have a large edge this is just to emphasize we're comparing cataphracts again to the weak
byzantine paladins and not something top tier it's also illustrative of the fact that strong
melee units like elephants paladins and other heavy cavalry unique units will brute force
their way through cataphracts but while they're a little underwhelming as a general heavy melee unit
what about against anti-cavalry units halberdiers and camels get their own upgrades in imperial age
so does the cataphract's improvements make them better relative to those units keep pace or do
a little worse to start against the help a deer this is the age-old question of who counters whom
in this case i found it's again the cataphract coming out ahead doing even better than they
did against pikes in castle age largely thanks to logistica the paladin on the other hand is easily
handled with equal resources of course there's no reason byzantines couldn't also add some
cheap skirmishers here to help themselves out to see it on a smaller scale one-on-one cataphracts
are taking 21 damage per attack compared to 37 damage it's mostly the difference in
damage output that's striking and is especially good when trample damage primes halberdier is
to take just two direct attacks to emphasize that point here's a comparison of cataphracts with and
without logistica which remember means they're lacking trample damage and an extra plus six
against infantry in this test they end up doing noticeably worse but also at the same time maybe
better than expected the final results were only about 10 percent less of their total hp left over
and they still of course win against halberdiers clearly most of their strength is from their
built-in attack bonus and damage negation but at the same time logistica is also making an impact
to quickly use the champion as another infantry example we again see against fully upgraded
cataphracts they can handle them pretty easily whereas byzantine paladins which admittedly are
pretty weak as paladins go come out from the fight about evenly matched again this just emphasizes
how much better cataphracts are at dealing with infantry and the only real argument you could make
for infantry is that they cost significantly less gold so for a civilization with a strong
infantry bonus like japanese you could probably come up with a situation where you'd eventually
overwhelm cataracts with nothing but infantry but it's a tough way to do it one-on-one both
byzantine cavalry units win but cataphract is much more to the point taking just three attacks we'd
expect similar dominance against other infantry units including eagle warriors who have their
anti-cavalry bonus negated entirely moving on now to the heavy camel again as a group with balanced
resources cataphracts win and paladins lose just like in castle age there's nothing really
unexpected here with cataphract again flipping the regular cavalry camel relationship on its head
where things start to fall apart quite a bit though is against arbalesters assuming everyone's
fully upgraded elite cataphracts actually take just 30 arbalester arrows whereas paladins take
54. this is the result of a combination of lower hp and more importantly pure summer where they're
taking 5 damage instead of 3 per shot while also starting with lower hp unlike against paladins our
blasters are actually quite a good counter to cataphracts and something to be aware of when
playing either as byzantines or against them so to wrap up with some closing thoughts as you'd expect
from a well-designed game like age of empires 2 cataphracts aren't necessarily a strict upgrade or
downgrade from the knight line while they excel against infantry and camels the trade-off is
they're more difficult to produce due to upgrade costs and building castles while struggling a lot
more against ranged units especially in imperial age that said thinking about how they fit within
the byzantines overall i think they still have a niche role with various unit discounts byzantines
already have great anti-cavalry and anti-archer options so the cataphract completes the set as
a dedicated anti-infantry unit that really isn't hard countered by any generic unit or it can be
used in situations where you don't want to use the hand cannon ear they're also a surprisingly
decent response to the classic halberdier and siege combination while the focus here was on
how they compare to the night given all their similarities looking into it they're really
quite different in how they perform against many types of units they're a great tool to keep in
mind as byzantines in your never ending quest of countering everything your opponent throws
at you that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time