hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to continue a recent
mini-series going through the evolution of the original age of king civilizations
this is the third installment and i haven't really been sure what to call it but i'm kind of liking
the title through the ages so i'll use that for now this time we're going to summarize the more
than 20 years of changes that have occurred for a couple of classic beginner favorites
byzantines and goths now being popular with new players isn't a slight or to imply they're
necessarily bad civs but more that they both have some instant appeal and compelling unique
units these two civilizations in particular are also a nice contrast as well as byzantines were
intended from the start to be unusually versatile with their unit choice and have a defensive focus
whereas gods represent the other extreme and are entirely focused on one specific type of unit
and all-out aggression at the same time while being polar opposites in some respects the two
shared some notable similarities featuring large unit discounts no early eco bonuses on release and
unique units that are specialized to counter what their unit type traditionally struggles
the most against besides how can you not make a video pairing the eastern roman empire and goths
it just wouldn't be right so with that we'll start off with the byzantines from the start
they've always had a remarkably open tech tree in fact they received the most texts of any
civilization at release missing only nine compared to the saracens 12 and the japanese 18 for example
of course two of the nine texts that byzantines are missing they arguably get a better version
of anyway through a civ bonus looking at their original bonuses at release in 1999
they should sound very familiar with extra hp on buildings camel skirmishers and pikes having a 25
discount fire ships attacking faster and the cost of imperial age reduced by a third notably
though their original team bonus for faster monk healing was at triple the usual rate instead of
double as it is now at the time their team bonus meant monks healed at 450 hp per minute which to
put in perspective was almost exactly enough to offset a fully upgraded paladin attacking a unit
with zero base armor their cataphract always a fan favorite was at the time though quite a
bit weaker without trample damage and importantly missing its hidden resistance to spears and camels
despite that legendary designer and developer for age of empires sandy peterson said at the time
cataphracts were one of the most popular units in the game not to contradict him but i found a form
discussion about byzantine's from before age of conquerors was released in 2000 and it seemed to
be agreed upon at least by players serious enough to visit the online forums that cataphracts were
very expensive and weren't very good with one person noting they'll be a lot better once the
upcoming expansion gives them trample damage the theme that cataphracts are too expensive for high
level play is actually one that's carried over for quite a long time now despite starting with a much
weaker unique unit byzantines were of anything in a better position competitively in those early
days given the very different meta at the time recently the common feudal openings typically
involve men at arms scouts or archers whereas in the earliest days feudal wars between spearman and
skirmishers were much more popular there were several reasons for that but notable ones were
that scouts didn't receive a free plus two attack in futile age initially walling typically happened
later in the game and it seems from post they read players like the idea of focusing on just
wooden food as it happened byzantines ended up being in a good position to execute that
popular strategy with their unit discount in this article from 2004 for example the feudal age rush
or flesh was identified as being around since the very early days with byzantines highlighted
as a civilization set up to do it well despite lacking a dark age bonus the age of conqueror's
expansion in 2000 though brought a number of notable changes the first is town watch was
given for free adding some extra sight and warning in futile age fitting with their defensive theme
they also received their unique tech logistica giving cataphracts trample damage which
apparently had a way more powerful version during internal playtesting that we never got to see
i suspect instead of the plus 5 damage to surrounding units that they ended up getting
they did half of their attack which is how trample damage worked for the war elephant and would have
been considerably stronger their monks healing rate was also nerfed from 200 to only 50 percent
faster byzantines also of course received the newly introduced the halberdier while crucially
missing out on the new tech bloodlines considering their lack of the final attack upgrade that made
byzantine paladins among the worst in the game cataracts were also overhauled with a faster
creation time attack rate and gaining resistance to anti-cavalry bonus damage from spears and
camels this was a somewhat revolutionary idea when you think about it as cataphracts already
had bonus damage against infantry but this was really doubling down on the idea that this was
a cavalry unit that you had to fight with either heavier cavalry or ranged units this is the state
where byzantines remained for well over a decade as the meta developed away from feudal trash units
and the pace of play improved partly thanks to new very aggressive civilizations like huns aztecs and
mayans byzantines fell out of discussions around the best arabia civs typically you'd only really
see them brought up in discussions around the very late game as being notable though
even then there's almost always a mention of how expensive it is to get their upgrades especially
for the cataphract over a decade later with the forgotten expansion maybe surprisingly then the
byzantines remained remarkably unchanged their only direct buff was the new technology greek
fire adding plus one range on fire ships on top of fire ships generally gaining 20 hp for all civs
peterson envisioned fire ships representing not just greek fire which this unique text seemed to
reinforce and the new developers taking over the series seemed very interested in making a rock
paper scissors dynamic on water camels were also made a little stronger in the new expansions with
one more attack which of course made them more viable for byzantines among other civilizations
shortly after african kingdoms arrived with a reduced gold cost for the byzantine's unique tech
and a major overhaul on water giving the fire galley as a feudal unit which considering
byzantine's faster fire rate and the fire galley's immediate popularity was another significant
indirect buff still on land maps the cataphract's reputation persisted as being too expensive which
was finally addressed in 2019's definitive edition in that the elite cataphract upgrade
and the unique tech logistica's costs were reduced by a combined 600 food byzantines also
underwent a cosmetic makeover with their middle eastern architecture changed to mediterranean
and the cataphract looking in my opinion significantly more armored than they had before
finally in 2021's dawn of the dukes they were given town patrol for free and their monk healing
rate increased from plus 50 to twice as fast as usual both playing into their defensive identity
that's where they are today and as for their ranked ladder stats on open maps 26 civilizations
are better and 15 are worse which about summarizes their results on closed maps as well they're
certainly not considered top tier on land maps but searching for recent discussions online regarding
byzantines they get a lot of credit for their flexibility and powerful unique unit albeit
the comments about being very expensive are still present in retrospect i'd say they're still quite
honest to their original vision they have a couple more free defensive texts added some doubling down
on the fire ship identity and cataphracts have had some general tweaks to give them more of
an anti-infantry role and make them a little less expensive to tack into though i'm sure some would
argue that they haven't gone far enough the second civilization we're gonna look at is the goths
now this has always been a controversial civilization in a forum post from 2000
keep in mind this is just a few responses but it's not terribly surprising to see gods show
up in a poll about everyone's favorite and least favorite civ being represented in both positions
within the first few responses sandy peterson even acknowledges they were intended to be a
little controversial personally i love civs with a really clear identity and god certainly have that
if anything though we'll see their concepts around spamming infantry that shreds through archers and
buildings was not only present from the start but has really been dialed up to 11 in the two decades
since release in case there's any doubt peterson directly said in an interview they were designed
to be a horde civ who produces hundreds of cheap expendable warriors though with an intentionally
delayed startup giving their opponents a fair chance another age of empire's designer greg
street pointed out there were a multitude of intended ways for goths to be countered between
their slow start and lack of defenses looking at the civilization on release they had an increasing
infantry discount plus one attack for infantry against buildings plus five attack for villagers
against boar plus 10 population limit and imperial age and the team's barracks worked 20 faster the
attack bonus against bore is an interesting relic of how the game was originally envisioned very
early tutorials for example talked about hunting taking you far away from your town's center
and that hunting boar in dark age may not even be viable for civilizations without this bonus
of course in the age of boar luring the extra attack can actually be a handicap leading to
killing the boar too early though obviously what they had in mind was villagers going out
in groups to hunt where it would have been an advantage the plus 10 maximum pop cap was also
a bit of a carryover from the early days as the age of kings demo had a population limit of 75
custom scenarios before the age of conquerors expansion also had a hard limit of 75 pop per
player which is reflected in the old campaigns presumably when they came up with the bonus they
didn't imagine 200 population per player being the standard and certainly not the 300 pop cap that's
so common in the unranked lobby today as for the huskarls like the cataphract it was quite a bit
weaker on release they trained at a very long 26 seconds each had four pierce armor submarine
castle and six in imperial along with only plus three or plus four against archers on top of
all of that they also moved significantly slower from the start greg street explicitly stated that
champions were an intended default unit choice for goths being cheaper and more powerful huskarls
were really meant to be an anti-archer and tower specialist and remember in age of kings there
were no unique tacks so huskarls were actually a difficult unit to mask from castles alone
the conquerors expansion though really doubled down on everything we've seen so far
about the goths and dialed it up to 9 or 10. rather than staggering their infantry became
a flat 35 percent cheaper starting in feudal age and the combination of anarchy and perfusion was
introduced allowing huskarls to be produced at a barracks and for the barracks themselves to work
at twice the normal rate the huskarl itself also underwent some major changes to their training
time increased pierce armor greater bonus against archers and faster movement it's fair to say that
everything they were intended to do they became much better at doing in the conqueror's expansion
like byzantines though the lack of an early eco bonus and a shifting meta toward archers
and cavalry meant they generally fell out of favor competitively though in the right situations their
infantry spam was never dismissed entirely forums were likewise flooded with new players asking how
to counter the gothic unit spam with predictably a lot of responses about how the secret is to not
let goths boom which would probably be the same advice given today generally though they weren't
considered very strong and for example in zero empire's five worst aoe2 civs list from 2014
goths landed as the fourth worst in the game unfortunately this is before win rates were
being tracked so it's hard to say exactly how they were performing but the perception at least was
not very well in the forgotten expansion like byzantines the developers didn't seem very
motivated to make goths more competitive treadmill crane was removed and other than that the sieve
was unchanged more indirectly walls in general received a nerf with longer construction time and
less hp which you could argue works out for goths and suits their play style though it also weakened
their own early defenses as i noted in the last episode there was also a slow but consistent push
for infantry over the years and goths have of course benefited from that incrementally
in african kingdoms the tech arson was added and while gods are now the only civilization
who don't have that tech initially they got it just like every other sieve they were also
temporarily given arrowslits but that was later removed and probably fits their identity better
the true gothic renaissance was just around the corner though with definitive edition where for
a time changes were being pumped out faster than huskarls from a barracks to set the stage for
why so many changes came so quickly you have to think about the position of the goths going in
not only do their bonuses singularly focus on infantry which is considered less competitive
than archers and cavalry sieves but they also didn't have a dark age bonus which is a major
drag in competitive situations as a consequence of their original design they became almost the exact
opposite of what you'd be looking for in a high-level 1v1 arabia game keeping that in
mind shortly after the release of definitive edition in 2019 a patch gave the seemingly
innocuous but in retrospect very broken bonus of applying the goth's infantry discount to all ages
where previously dark age had been excluded while obviously well intentioned to give them
an early game boost this resulted in an incredibly oppressive militia rush with meme videos appearing
of all in dark ages overwhelming town centers with men at arms in mid feudal it only took a
month before that was walked back to a staggered discount though still including something for
dark age and arson was removed along with a now staggered version of their anti-building bonus
meaning dark age militia no longer had that extra attack still unhappy with their dark age another
change came a month later that shot them to the top of the ladder they were given loom for free
as a sieve bonus essentially putting them one villager up and giving them an extra 50 gold to
spend on their discounted militia heading into definitive edition goths were a below average
sieve and at their strongest with the free loom bonus they floated between number three and number
one overall with consistently around a 54 win rate after years of mediocrity for about a six-month
period goths were indisputably one of the best sieves on the ladder winning a lot of quick games
what finally brought them back to earth was free loom was replaced with instantly researched loom
meaning they retained a villager advantage but had to spend 50 gold on it like everyone else
the effect was immediate and brought their win rate from being at the top two down to about
average it was a lot of tinkering in a short time period over 2020 with seemingly every major patch
bringing another change to goths at this point though they're back to sitting between average
and slightly below average albeit with a more interesting early game than they had previously
now with two or the game bonuses where for years they had none arguably the handling of the gods
has been the first misstep by the developers we've seen this series and arguably was the result of
going against the civilization's original vision remember gods were originally envisioned to have
a generic weak dark age and when that formula was tinkered with it was amazing how quickly
they rocketed to the top still i think what we have now is a reasonable compromise between their
original concept and the reality of trying to be an infantry civ in a very cavalry and archer
dominated meta and where early eco bonuses are critical to being competitive like i said off
the top i think byzantines and goths make for a great contrast both were originally known for
their imperial age potential and unconventional unique units which is still true today while in
most other ways the two civs are polar opposites in case you're curious as i certainly was on open
maps the civs have an almost exactly 50 win rate against each other which sounds about
right historically the goths brought down one of the roman empires but were outlasted by the other
shout out to jean-paul connor james kyle justin jockster brock seb john woodruff samantha yang
and everyone else on patreon for their awesome support thanks for watching i'll see you next time