hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to be taking a look at and ranking
the best camel civilizations in age of empires 2. now i did a similar video in 2017 but we've
actually had a few new sieves since then and various balance changes at this point there's
13 sieves with camels including three that didn't even exist when i made the last video
since then camels have been creeping up a bit in terms of power which isn't necessarily a bad thing
considering the dominance of sieves like franks on the ranked ladder but it's enough that the
sieve i would have called number one last time is now number three we're not going to focus on
all of the civilizations with camels though since while quite a few like mongols chinese persians
ethiopians tatars and turks have access and those can be an important tool for them they don't
have any specific bonuses so i'm not going to be considering them in this list the cumans as well
have faster moving camels in imperial age but lack heavy camel so i think they're automatically out
of a discussion around the best that's still leave six though which i'd consider to have some kind of
significant bonus so we'll make this a top 6 video just a heads up before we start as well i'm going
to try to be consistent with one color for each sieve to hopefully make things a little easier to
follow as there's a lot of comparisons we're going to make pretty quickly against each other as well
as how they all do against knights so with that let's start off with number six the byzantines
they're a bit of a mixed bag on the plus side they have a 25 cost reduction giving them the
cheapest camels in the game at just a little over 40 food in gold to give a sense of what that means
practically in castle age with equal resources you can see in this test they can pretty easily
handle a generic civilization the trade-off though is their missing bloodlines and the final attack
upgrade even with those shortcomings they can still win if you balance resources against generic
heavy camels in imperial which again speaks to how strong this discount is but i think it's fair to
say on an individual basis they're quite a bit below average just comparing stats considering
how byzantines and many civilizations use camels though i don't think that hurts them too much
they're often a complimentary unit sprinkled in against knights and the discount obviously makes
that easier to do if we're talking about the top camel sieves though we're really looking
for camels who pack at least a little more punch that leads us nicely into number five the malians
their big advantage is they're imperial age unique tech farimba giving their camels plus five attack
like byzantines they're also missing blast furnace though so in practice it looks more
like plus three but that's still pretty good combined with the other blacksmith
texts they have that doubles their base attack of seven all the way up to 14.
this is a really nice text specifically because camels have relatively low attack to begin with
so it's directly addressing one of the major weaknesses of the unit they do beat byzantines
one on one and do better against knights of course because they have bloodlines and byzantines don't
accounting for their different costs though byzantines actually had the edge
in castle age it's not until imperial age with their unique tech that malians really start to
shine and are obviously much better one-on-one than byzantines or even generic heavy camels
the extra attack is enough in fact to make them essentially even with byzantines when
resources are accounted for in post-imperial and of course there's lots of other side benefits of
higher attack when it comes to picking off injured villagers siege units and pikemen etc altogether
i think they end with a slight edge with the major thing holding them back just being how late in the
game they start to differentiate themselves as well as the high cost of farimba itself
next up at number four we have the saracens their big advantage is high health with both
a completely passive plus 10 hp throughout the game as well as a unique tech for another plus
20 that they can pick up as early as castle h extra hp is nice both against other camels
knights and melee units letting them perform a bit better head to head but also has the side benefit
of letting them hold up a bit better against archers which camels can often struggle against
one recent change is zealotry for plus 20 hp was pushed down to castle h meaning saracen camels are
now exceptionally strong in the mid game with that said their imperial age doesn't add anything new
aside from regular upgrades and it turns out they trade about even with malians i'd still give the
edge to saracens though simply because they have a passive bonus and cheaper tech compared to the
malian's single large tech and as you can see here in post imperial they end up fighting about the
same i'm not really going to include unique units here but just to mention it the mameluke is also
technically a camel unit and now that it no longer takes bonus damage from skirmishers i think it's
going to be an even more potent option than it was before moving over the hump now into top 3 we have
the berbers their big camel bonus is a discount at the stable of 15 in castle and 20 in imperial now
that sounds worse than the byzantine's 25 discount so it may seem odd to have them higher on the list
but burpers have a couple of advantages the first is they're fully upgraded so unlike
byzantines you're not missing out on bloodlines or extra attack in the late game berbers also have
an imperial age unique tech for camels that lets them regenerate 15 hp per minute that's not a huge
amount and probably won't swing things mid-fight but in between fights it'll keep your units in a
bit better shape testing them head-to-head in castle age they perform a little worse
than saracens on an individual unit basis given the saracens extra hp but after accounting for
their 15 discount and giving them a corresponding numbers advantage they end up trading about evenly
the fight can really go either way depending on pathing so it's hard to say that one is outright
better where they start to shine is an imperial age with an increasing discount and of course slow
regeneration saracens are still better one-on-one and slightly better against paladins but once you
start to factor in the berber's 20 discount it becomes very obvious that they have an edge
one way to think of it is saracens are basically getting 21 more hp than usual
while berbers are getting 25 more units so it's not surprising this goes in the berber's favor
of course remember their knight line is discounted as well so berbers are in a great position to
take cost-effective engagements against other cavalry sieves and can even match the saracen's
unique camel unit with one of their own next up at number 2 we have the hindustanis previously called
the indians they've had a big change for their camel riders which now attack 25 faster of course
they've also retained their unique imperial camel upgrade giving plus one attack and plus 20 hp
with also a bit of extra damage against buildings altogether that makes them very well rounded
and i especially like that two of those three advantages are completely passive bonuses
in castle age even forgetting about their bonus versus buildings they pretty easily beat generic
camels and do better against knights thanks to faster attack giving the berbers their castle
age discount we see hindustanis can reliably take that fight though berbers can make it very close
remember camels have a bit of bonus damage against each other so every extra attack you can sneak in
is doing more damage than you might expect in imperial age though of course you have their
unique imperial camel upgrade making them much better against other camels and paladins than
we've seen so far from any of the civilizations including saracens in my mind they're definitely
a cut above berbers in these rankings and even once the 20 imperial age discount is applied you
can see the hindustanis hold up just fine in the last camel comparison video i did i would have
placed berbers ahead of indians but the new faster attack bonus has flipped that around
the only thing arguably holding back hindustanis here is the cost of their imperial camel upgrade
which is almost the same price as imperial age so it's not trivial but the real reason they're not
number one just speaks to how good the camels of the number one sieve are that civilization is of
course the gurjaras when fully upgraded their camels have fifty percent larger bonus damage
against cavalry and other camels plus four melee armor are created faster and after a unique tech
even end with the same food cost as the byzantines in castle age their extra bonus damage lets them
beat any other camel and they perform the best against knights of all the civilizations on the
list while also being able to train camel scouts in feudal age to build up their numbers early
jumping ahead to imperial age after plus 4 melee armor they do as well or even slightly better than
imperial camels and this isn't even accounting for their cheaper cost and faster creation time
those are just extra things that make them feel even easier to use now yes there are a
lot of expensive technologies to reach their late game potential but in my opinion they're the best
camels at the moment in castle age and have the highest ceiling in imperial age as well to me that
makes them number one those are just my thoughts on the state of camels at the moment though big
thanks to jan joxster yang seb bryan james john kyle connor justin woodruff jean-paul samantha and
everyone else on patreon for their amazing support thanks for watching and i'll see you next time
you