hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to revisit and give an updated
ranking of the trebuchets now trebuchets are an incredibly important unit from a game design
perspective and often a major motivation to reach Imperial age since especially for civs
without bombard Cannon it becomes the easiest way to deal safely with enemy castles in fact
it seems fitting that the unit is unlocked just as you end the castle age as it's truly
the great equalizer and without the mini-games would last much longer in thinking about how
to rank various civilizations trebuchets then were immediately struck with two very different
situations that often come up the first is a treb war and might be what comes to mind the classic
case is two castles out of range of one another and both players hit Imperial at about the same
time where whoever gets an early Advantage with their trebuchets should theoretically be able to
take out their opponents and the castle should fall quickly after largely in this case what's
important is trebuchet accuracy and how quickly they're created with attack rate and raw damage
playing a role and a bit of luck helping out as well well alternately we can think about a more
ideal situation where you're already winning and trying to destroy someone's town or production
buildings quickly here raw damage and Mobility matter more than accuracy as trebuchets are
quite accurate against especially large buildings already notice that just because a civ has good
trebuchets in one context doesn't necessarily mean it translates as well to the other with
that context the idea for this video is we'll go through the relevant bonuses and texts put them
into perspective compared to a generic trigger shape for reference and then we'll put it all
together with a ranking for trebors and a separate ranking for Pure wanton-based destruction we'll
start off with what many would consider the king of trebuchet Wars the britons there's no
doubt that trebs have the highest ceiling thanks their unique Tech warwolf which is a reference
to what may well be the largest trebuchet ever constructed now an important starting observation
is that trebuchets normally have very low accuracy against each other allegedly it's 15 accuracy in
the game files though even miss shots can still hit especially large targets and in practice it
ends up being more like 25 percent of shots that land with about one out of every eight
supposedly missing shots Landing close enough they're counted as hits anyway the exact number
of stray shots that hit depend on the size of what they're aiming at but that's what it works out to
against other trebuchets which are fairly large after their unique Tech werewolf for 800 Wood
and 400 gold Britain trebuchets acquire a hundred percent accuracy against units as well as a blast
radius though that's not really our focus in this case as it's mostly just useful against clumps of
units having a hundred percent accuracy against other trebuchets means they automatically win or
at worst tie against a generic civilization and a one-on-one battle trebuchets normally take three
hits to take out meaning just to tie a generic civ we need to make three very lucky shots in a row
and even outnumbered 3-2 in 10 trials britons with warwolf won nine of them the takeaway is
yes it's an expensive Tech and you don't have it instantly in Imperial age but once you get it even
outnumbered you're almost guaranteed to win any dread War the next civilization we'll see is for
related but slightly different and that's the Huns they have a civ bonus giving them an allegedly 30
accuracy Improvement and while that doesn't sound like a lot let's see what it really does remember
trebuchets have 15 base accuracy so a bonus giving a 30 Improvement could be interpreted as just
bringing them up to maybe 20 accuracy in reality though that stated 30 Improvement is in fact a 35
accuracy Improvement added to the base accuracy bringing it up from 15 to 50 of course again even
their missed shots can still land so in practice you can expect to get even more than that compared
to a generic trebuchet hitting about a quarter of their shots at maximum range that means Hans
don't have a 30 Improvement but it would be more accurate to say you can expect two shots to land
more often than not for every one that a generic Civ gets it's not the 100 accuracy of britons but
the best part is it's a free civ bonus the instant you reach Imperial age as one illustration in a
set of 240 one-on-one trebuchet battles against a generic civ the Han trebuchet went outright almost
three quarters of the time lost about a sixth and had a handful of perfect ties so far we've seen
the incredible power of better accuracy but now let's move on to the Celts who have a bonus for 25
faster firing Siege units including the trebuchet again this is a totally passive bonus that unlike
britons they don't have to pay for trying that same test again that we just saw against a generic
civilization this time Celts went outright about three-fifths of the time so it's not that big an
advantage compared to the Hunts similarly if we try the two head to head Hans went outright
against Celts about 60 of the time though Celts can get lucky and win about a third of course
a bit of Randomness is in the nature of treb wars where unlike how a Frank Paladin will always beat
and inferior Byzantine Paladin with all upgrades in treb Wars an underdog can still win if they get
lucky but now let's move on to what many consider to be the best trebuchet civ or at least the most
fun to use and that's the Japanese their unique Tech which is similar in cause to the Britain's
warwolf makes their trebuchets pack and unpack faster as well as fire 33 faster similar to their
faster attacking Infantry against generic units in the same earlier test they perform basically
identical to Celts which makes sense as we're talking about only a very slight difference in
attack rate between them the faster unpacking here isn't taken into account though and the ability
to unpack almost immediately would let them get their first shot off a few seconds earlier Head
to Head compared to Huns though we again find that like Celts Japanese are at a disadvantage
as remember we're talking about double accuracy compared to 33 faster attack rate so far it's a
pretty clear rule of thumb at least given the numbers chosen in the game for now that any
bonus increasing the accuracy of trebuchets will beat a civilization that increases their attack
rate now up until the last year those would have been the four main ones to talk about but we've
recently got a new top Contender the saracens were recently given under unique Tech increasing the
attack of their trebuchets and mangonel line by 15 again you do have to pay for it and admittedly 15
sounds modest but this is another example where we have a percentage increase that is much more
significant than it sounds without this Tech 150 out of the trebuchet's 201 Pierce damage is
negated by armor so trebuchets typically require three hits by increasing the saracen's attack by
a modest 15 that means their trebuchets now deal 81 damage after armor is considered suddenly saris
and trebuchets only need two shots to land instead of the regular three again it sounds
small but this makes them better than Japanese and Celts against generic units as while they
do fire slower they only need to get lucky twice even against the mighty Han trebuchets saracens
seemed to win or tie about half the time of course in the definitive edition we've also gotten the
tatars and they have a unique Tech giving plus 2 range to trebuchets and some extra elevation
bonus damage more than any of the civs we've seen so far these get very situational advantages that
are difficult to wait compared to the others for example when on top of a hill they can take out
another trebuchet in Two Shots which is not true of generic trebuchets that have a hill Advantage
at the same time there still is an advantage for any trap on a hill as they survive an extra hit so
it's a situation where you win even more with tatars at a time you're theoretically already
winning the extra 2 range is also hard to assess in a universal way an example of when this might
help is when your trebuchets are already set up and your enemy's shorter range traps are having
to move in closer letting you get essentially a free shot at your opponent and that certainly
should not be dismissed of course in other contexts there'll be times that you aren't
making use of that extra range and there's no Hill around in which case there's nothing really
special about Tatar trebuchets at all next though we should probably make a mention of the teutons
they have the unique Tech Ironclad which increases all Siege including trebuchets melee armor by four
now this may not seem significant in a treble as trebuchet's deal Pierce damage where this
does play in though is it preventing melee units from charging your traps hazards for example need
10 extra hits against students to bring them down teutons also have free murder holes and a quickly
created infantry unique unit that they can spam to fight off melee attackers so the trebuchets
if kept under castles often end up being the most difficult to actually charge down moving
on the next civil look at is the Portuguese their advantage is their trebuchets cost 40 less gold
per unit and while that can add up we are sort of stretching the definition of a trebuchet bonus
here to add to that if we're willing to expand the definition even further there's quite a few
other civs that we should mention for example the Vietnamese have free conscription not only
does that free up Castle work time especially at the start of Imperial it also means your first
trebuchet comes out sooner than anyone else's if you hit enter real at the same time given the
importance of snowballing your tribe numbers I see this as a temporary but very significant advantage
in a similar vein Aztecs great military units 11 faster and berbers with unique Tech have 25
faster working castles theoretically byzantines Italians MLA can also reach Imperial earlier
meaning getting their first trips out a bit sooner some of these indirect bonuses are arguably more
important in practice than even a few of the treb techs we've looked at and I think are
worth acknowledging as a side note pure celtica and torsion engines don't apply to trebuchets
and the Slavs discount is also specific to The Siege workshop units the Koreans unit discount
also specifically excludes Siege so these are not texts and bonuses I've forgotten they just
don't apply so now that we've seen all the civ's bonuses and texts work in isolation let's try to
get to the real question of how they rank Head to Head speaking just about treb wars and starting at
the top my top seven would begin with hunts given their free extra accuracy maybe controversially
I put them ahead of britons at number two they undoubtedly have the highest ceiling but I think
it comes a bit later and is expensive to get to if hunts have already sniped your trebs and
destroyed your castles while you're spending 1200 resources and waiting on warwolf then I think you
might agree after that I'd put saracens as their ability to take out traps in two rather than three
hits removes a lot of the frustration over RNG as for fourth I'd put the Celts as again I like
passive bonuses and against most civilizations you're just going to win treb fights more often
than you lose fifth I'd put the Japanese they're a classic but I don't think treb wars are where they
shine especially needing to pick up a relatively expensive Tech first I then put Vietnamese thanks
solely to getting conscription instantly saving research time in the long run and getting your
first trebs out quickly finally I'd finish off the top 7 with tatars who I think situationally can be
very good but their advantages are less reliable and need to be consciously taken advantage of now
that was the longer section laying all the groundwork but that was still just part one
part two is what about if we're just just trying to destroy buildings as quickly as possible this
basically just comes down to damage output and maybe faster packing though here we also need
to consider if a civ has Siege Engineers as it gives extra bonus damage against buildings
running a very simple test to check their damage output using a generic civilization with Siege
Engineers as a benchmark they give between 2800 to 2900 damage per minute if firing in
a sustained manner in contrast a civ without Siege Engineers does about 10 percent less damage over
time looking at some of our high Achievers in the last round though it's a bit of a fall from
grace against most large buildings britons with warwolf end up with no advantage over generic
Civ with Siege Engineers as trebuchets have very high accuracy against buildings to begin with at
the same time at least they're doing better than Huns which actually miss Siege engineers and end
up in the bottom half of civs unlike the last round looking at treb Wars in this case faster
attack rates shine and we see Celts with 25 percent more DPS Japanese with 33 percent more
and saracens after accounting for armor with 16 based on this it's hard to say there's even a top
7 versus buildings but we'll try to start one to me it's an easy number one for Japanese especially
when you consider other faster packing adds their Mobility I then put Celts at number two followed
by saracens and then really any order you like as long as the civ has Siege Engineers personally I
think tatar's extra range in the teuton’s extra melee armor are good candidates for being next
in line here zooming out though to try to combine the list the question is if there's an ultimate
trebuchet ranking admittedly it's a cop-out answer but I would say it comes down to what kind of
situation you're picturing and how you personally weigh building destruction against winning trap
Wars any of Japanese saracens or Celts strike me as being the most versatile and personally I
find Japanese traps with faster packing to be the least burdensome to include in an army though I
could also see an argument for Celts as they don't have to pay for their advantage I also like how
quickly saracens have catapulted themselves into the conversation recently after such a seemingly
minor adjustment another big takeaway for me was how poorly The Hun's description does them
Justice don't let that modest sounding 30 fool you they're scary in treb wars so hopefully that help
with the various trebs into perspective and wasn't too many percentages in one video in total there
were 34 percentages brought up but who's counting thanks for watching and I'll see you next time