shout out to squarespace for sponsoring this video hey guys spirit of the law here
in this video we're going to be revisiting and taking an in-depth look at the sloths
now there are some new civs i haven't covered yet so it may seem odd to go back to what i have done
but this has been a long requested redo on account of the last one being seven years old now entering
grade two this fall and is pretty outdated both in format and because of various tweaks to the
civ itself according to the in-game summary slavs are an infantry and siege civilization
and while there may be some truth to that in the late game i would contend that cavalry
is really the safest default plan glancing at their ranked stats online they're a pretty
average civilization on open maps these days while also being a little below average on
closed maps like arena in general we can also see their civ matchups are actually
against good knight civs like lithuanians students and franks though as we'll see
slavs have a maybe under-appreciated secret weapon against knights let's check them out
to start things off their team bonus is that the basic military production buildings each add five
to your population space basically giving you a free house since most players are more focused
on their own civ than their teammates it's always nice when team bonuses help your allies without
them even having to think about it which is definitely the case for this one unless your
teammates are huns to attach some ballpark numbers to it houses are worth about 33 resources between
the wood and builder time as a wood bonus for a barracks and two military buildings in feudal
age that's already around 100 resources saved for every ally as well of course for yourself
throughout the game it also has the benefit of pushing up your housing space just as you're
spamming military buildings and need to raise it quickly another side benefit is it's also more
difficult to be housed if someone is destroying your main town or your house walls overall it's
just a great team bonus in both 1v1 and team games and like i said is one of my favorites moving on
to their civ bonuses the first and most iconic is that slav farmers work 10 faster as if we needed
another reminder that eastern europe is a major breadbasket for the world the way this works is it
actually increases the farmers gather rate by 18 during the time they've stopped and are physically
gathering but after including all of the walking time it ends up averaging out to around 10 percent
if you have doubled up farms it's a little less than that before wheelbarrow but for reasonably
placed farms it does about what it says throughout the game obviously you still want to take your
free food sources in dark age and won't feel it then but over time the faster farming is a very
significant bonus in feudal age for example with 18 farmers it's an extra 28 to 37 food
per minute after wheelbarrow which can easily add up to several hundred food by the time you're in
castle age at that point if you're booming five farmers usually isn't quite enough to sustain a
town center or knights from a stable whereas for slavs five farmers placed right next to a drop-off
point can comfortably sustain either one likewise it means if you have three town centers and two
stables making nights you can get by on 25 farmers instead of 28 showing the advantage is actually
worth multiple villagers even in imperial it means just eight farmers per stable to spam hazards
instead of nine freeing up both in population space as well as physical space on the map in
fact slavs end with better late game farmers than everyone except the poles the point is there's
no question it's one of the strongest long-term bonuses in the game in total free resources while
again involving no extra effort on your end as a player there's a reason that back when this bonus
was plus 15 percent instead of 10 subs were an incredibly popular and dominant civ on the latter
the next civ bonus is you get supplies for free when you hit feudal age this is a replacement
bonus for the fact they used to get free tracking until that was given to all civilizations for free
now theoretically free supplies could help a large men at arms push dropping each unit's cost
by 15 food in feudal though i actually consider this their weakest bonus keep in mind supplies
cost just 75 food and gold with a quick research time as well it kind of plays into the infantry
civ label but practically it's not that impactful and even with this long swordsman in the mid game
would be pretty unusual as they're otherwise completely generic i think late game is when
infantry makes a lot more sense for slavs though this bonus does mean you don't have to worry about
forgetting to pick it up during a tech switch into champions moving on their negative bonus
is that their siege workshop units are 15 percent cheaper slavs also have a ton of siege options so
there's plenty of opportunities to make use of this discounted manganese and castle age are my
personal favorite but it helps right through to adding siege ram scorpions and onagers and
imperial technically though they give the greatest savings on their siege towers to put things in a
bit of perspective if you have two siege workshops making manganese the effect of the bonus is
similar to having three more villagers divided between wood and gold this bonus combined with
slav's great late game infantry means they end with arguably one of the strongest halberdier and
onager pairings in imperial especially if gold is getting tight at the same time their skirmishers
aren't that great either so having discounted siege can also be especially handy against archer
civilizations believe it or not that's actually all of their bonuses it's a relatively short list
carried mostly by the flexibility of the farming rate boost so far slavs actually have a lot in
common with students as they share an infantry in siege leaning but are also well set up for cavalry
thanks to a great farming bonus as we'll see they share a third similarity which is a heavily
armored unique unit speaking of which let's turn our attention now to the boyar i like to
think of them as a teutonic knight on horseback given their high melee armor traditionally they
haven't been a very popular unit but have had some incremental improvements over time to their armor
and a quicker training time which together i think make them a bit better now than their reputation
that's why is there a more heavily armored version of the knight when it comes to melee
though they attack a bit slower so looking at the attack stat on its own is slightly misleading
both units also have a similar cost though with slightly more emphasis on gold for the boyar
it turns out though that once you factor in their very quick training time they actually
end up needing basically the same economic setup as two stable knights to create the same number
of units from a castle usually there's a stigma around castle units being harder to mass but after
their sped up creation time and definitive edition that's really not as much of a concern similar
to knights they also don't have any bonus damage behind the scenes and in castle age they beat even
strong night sips one-on-one and hold it better against melee counters though camels and pikes are
still cost-effective responses in most regards you can think of them as a night plus with the
drawback of of course needing a castle one way you can think of it is you have regular knights at the
stable and top tier nights from the castle that you can choose between or even combine together
jumping ahead to imperial age their elite upgrade has a relatively high cost especially compared to
cavalier but the elite boyer is a significantly better unit on the same level as almost any
top-tier paladin in melee keep in mind slavs don't have the paladin so it can be a bit of an awkward
decision to stick with the conventional knight line you may have been masking in castle age that
ends at cavalier or making an expensive switch to give yourself the next level of unit despite
now having as much as 11 melee armor they're actually still cost effectively beaten by good
camels and halberdiers though while also lagging behind paladins against our molesters taking just
50 instead of 60 arrows this is another case where after having some pierce armor added a few patches
ago they don't really deserve their reputation as being especially poor against archers in fact they
compare quite favorably to the slav's cavalier and hussar alternatives at the same time i don't want
to oversell the unit and lots of players just stick with the conventional stable either out
of habit or momentum once you start making nights though the boyar is definitely a solid melee unit
when you want a bit more punch just to emphasize again though because i think it's very important
halberdier's and heavy camel bonus damage ignores armor so the boyar's hard counters are basically
the same as the regular knight line despite their melee armor of course you do always have to come
back to the fact that you require castles to make them though a recent change has made them
significantly easier which is their brand new tech detinets for 400 wood and 200 gold at a
castle the tech replaces 40 of the stone cost of future castles and towers with wood which is
generally an easier and faster resource to collect of course the first castle is at full cost as you
need to build a castle to research it and it is 600 resources up front so it's not as crazy in
early castle age as it might sound once researched though spamming castles is much easier as you can
make them with just 400 stone in the bank and have a little left over which is very satisfying
it does affect towers as well though for slavs their towers max out at guard tower without bracer
and they're also lacking bombard towers so this is primarily for castles for a bit of context a
typical civilization can create five castles with a stone around their starting town plus their free
starting 200 whereas slavs can make as many as eight castles if they buy a hundred extra stone
from the market obviously you'll want to set some aside for extra town centers as well but that's
still potentially three extra castles that can be used either defensively or aggressively it even
factors into how many resources you need to repair them as well which depending on how much wood
you have may either be a good or bad thing but usually good moving on their second unique tech
is druzhina this allows all of your infantry so halberdiers or champions to deal 5 damage to enemy
units around them with every attack not including the unit they're targeting this is especially nice
because it ignores armor and while it is very expensive and really only a post-imperial option
it gives them amazing halberdiers and champions in fact this tech single-handedly sends slavs
from not being an infantry civ to arguably the best in the late game that said it's a difficult
tech to quantify since it does nothing in a one-on-one fight but is obviously very impactful
in large groups one thing i do love about it though is that the more you're outnumbered
and surrounded the more enemy units are being impacted so it's helping to its maximum extent
exactly when you're at a numbers disadvantage especially against enemy units with low attack
units like karambit warriors and enemy halberdiers for example just get absolutely wrecked by slav
champions so that's their unique units and tax the castle discount is a really nice addition to the
civilization and between good infantry cavalry and siege you have a lot of options to mix and
match depending on the situation that said there are some pretty large gaps in their tech tree so
let's take a look at that now starting with their largest failing the archers the archery range is
a building you typically avoid in the late game as slavs thanks to missing r blaster hand cannon ear
thumb ring and bracer lacking the extra range and thumb ring also means even the cavalry archer
isn't a very appealing option though of course you could still open with archers or use skirmishers
as a counter practically speaking i'd say it's one of my rare f grades as they're very similar
to teutons who got a c but teutons actually have hand cannon ears putting them a clear step above
next up for the infantry this one's tricky you have all the standard techs available
free supplies in the early game and druzhina in the late game as i mentioned before though
they only really stand out in a post-imperial situation which you're not guaranteed to get to
their farming bonus does factor in here though as infantry are pretty food intensive and slav
infantry makes for a great combo with their strong siege protecting each other's weaknesses i'm gonna
say it's an a minus for infantry giving respect to their late game though acknowledging they're
pretty mediocre for the first while and druzhina is a very expensive tech moving on to cavalry this
is primarily how i approach the civ the only major thing missing is the paladin which isn't
exactly replaced by the boyar as existing knights in cavalier you have reached an early dead end
for most of the game though their night spam is very strong thanks to their farm bonus of course
and something i haven't really touched on is their light cavalry line is also up there with the best
while they don't have a direct bonus considering they only cost food the farming bonus is very
impactful here they have one of the best hazard spams in the game arguably even better than polls
given their wink hazards are missing an armor upgrade though mag your hussars are pretty hard
to top going back to their online stats they do seem to get out competed by other strong
cavalry civs so it's hard to give them an a or a plus especially while also lacking paladin but i
can comfortably give them an a-minus that said it's an a-plus for the hazard spam specifically
next up for their siege the only notable thing missing here is the bombard cannon remember
their siege discount doesn't apply to trebuchets but even still discounted siege rams and onagers
are pretty great like i said they're also nicely complemented by slav infantry as well personally
i'm a big fan of discount bonuses in the mid game when your economy is still growing and
considering all of their options in imperial i'll give them an a for siege i still think a couple
of civs like celts and mongols have an arguably higher ceiling but slavs are definitely up there
moving on to the navy it's hard to point to a useful civ bonus in the early game faster farms
doesn't really help when you're trying to focus on building fishing ships instead most civs have
something tangential to help on water so slavs are a pretty underwhelming and generic sea grade
though if we stretch maybe faster farmers is sort of useful to free up some more villagers to chop
wood in the late game you're also missing bracer shipwright and a couple of naval upgrades so
again i consider them as c on water and not even particularly well suited for hybrid maps
taking a quick look now at monks despite losing a monk related unique tech recently this is one
of their strengths all that's missing here is heresy probably on account of having the boyar
and cheap onagers monks also make for a nice combo with discounted siege so while they don't have a
direct monastery bonus i still think they're an a minus in practice they're a useful wild
card unit even if it's just throwing in a few to heal your expensive cavalry units moving on
to defenses the castle discount basically sent slavs from a terrible to a great defensive civ
you can see they're missing tons of university texts plus bracer but when you have three extra
castles with your starting stone you're instantly a good defensive civ in my eyes if all of their
castles had the discounted stone cost it would be an easy a or a plus but the fact it takes a while
to get going on top of missing bracer for a bit of final range i think we have to drop it down
to a b-plus certainly if you like spamming castles though slavs are now right up your alley
finally let's look at their trash units meaning units that don't cost any gold like i said their
halberdiers and hussars both end up being among the strongest in the game and it's only really
their skirmishers that hold them back i think of slavs as a top tier trash war civ with their farm
bonus and even discounted siege contributing to that as well i've seen stats suggesting in games
lasting well over an hour that they actually end up being quite good and even affording the odd
extra onager here and there can do wonders against skirmishers especially for this category i'll give
them an a minus held back mostly because of their underwhelming skirmishers so that's the sloth's
tech tree it's a little surprising that with such a strong eco bonus free early housing and an a
range grade in 5 out of 8 tech tree categories they still end up performing just middle of the
road on the latter i find it especially surprising given their great cavalry which tends to put a lot
of upward pressure on a civilization's win rate it just seems for whatever reason despite some
strong tools the combination just doesn't take them to the top level competitively
the most obvious explanation to me implied by their win rate over various game lengths is
they're just a bit too slow to get going to compete with hyper aggressive civilizations
despite ending up very strong the farming bonus in particular isn't really kicking in seriously until
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so hopefully that was a helpful look at the slavs and gave you some ideas or inspiration
to play what i think is a very fun civilization thanks for watching and i'll see you next time