hey guys spirit of the law here in the last video we looked at a genitour and
skirmisher comparison with some cases where you might favor one over the other
this time we're going to switch from a generic focus to specific civilization exceptions and
which bonuses or unique texts are worth keeping in mind if you end up allied with berbers it's
not immediately obvious if the game is consistent in treating them like skirmishers and therefore
benefiting from dravidians mayans and byzantine bonuses or if instead they're cavalry archers
getting attack speed upgrades from mongols and the huns discount of course they're not affected by
parthian tactics but is that an exception or does it reveal something about the rule essentially
the goal here is to go through various sieves that seem they might have a bonus or tech that applies
to genitours see if it does affect them and then if that makes them a particularly good choice
hopefully this gives you some ideas and plans to seed for the next time you're one of these sieves
with a berber ally so you'll know if your relevant sounding bonus is actually doing you any good
we'll start things off with the most well-known which is the turks the irony is that the turks
are unique for not having the elite skirmisher upgrade but with a berber ally get arguably the
best genitours out of any civilization the key is a unique tech that says it affects cavalry archers
but secretly impacts their genitours as well this is also on top of having all of the regular
upgrades that you'd want giving turk janitors potentially more than three times the hp of the
regular skirmisher clearly a berber ally gives turks a great option against archer civilizations
in the late game and flips what's usually a weakness into a strength next up gurjaras actually
have a couple of impactful bonuses the first is a unique tech reducing the food cost of all units by
a quarter meaning their genitours are just 30 food and 35 wood unfortunately they miss the last armor
upgrade so they're not as tanky as they otherwise would be but benefit from another advantage
receiving 50 more bonus damage on account of being a mounted unit against the heavy cavalry
archer for example that means doing 13 instead of the regular 9 damage per attack and remember this
is something the regular skirmisher is not getting as they aren't mounted there is a bit of a glass
canon vibe going on here considering the lack of final armor but they're still nice for some extra
support for gurjara camels continuing with another indian civilization next we have the dravidians
they're missing both bloodlines and husbandry so immediately their genitours aren't looking
that great at a glance but dravidians have a special bonus for their skirmishers to attack 25
percent faster which does apply to genitours as well initially i was a little surprised
this one worked and it seemed to imply anything affecting skirmishers should also help genitours
just to foreshadow a bit here though there are definitely exceptions to that rule
and as a side note they're not considered cavalry for the purposes of wootz steel
this all got me wondering about a similar sounding bonus for the mongols while they're
missing the last armor upgrade they have a 25 attack speed bonus for cavalry archers it may
come as a surprise since the janitor benefited from the dravidian skirmisher boost already but
it turns out they benefit from the mongols bonus as well it seems at least for attack rate bonuses
they really get the best of both worlds as both a skirmisher and a cavalry archer when it suits them
unfortunately these aren't team bonuses so you can't stack them at the same time but the point is
with either civ your genitour get a little extra damage output the next three sieves we'll look at
are the american civilizations and while all three are lacking bloodlines and husbandry for obvious
reasons they all at least have extra bonuses to somewhat offset that starting with the mayans of
course their stats don't look great at a glance especially their hp but they have a unique tack
adding a second javelin for skirmishers which you can see applies to the genitour the second
projectile only does one damage so it's roughly a 17 attack boost against halberdier for example
but at least it looks pretty intimidating from a distance or when you have a large number of them
in a similar vein for the aztecs they have a unique technology for one extra attack and
range on skirmishers in this case again that also applies to the genitour at the same time they're
lacking bloodlines the last armor upgrade and husbandry so i'm not convinced they'll actually
be all that good in practice but extra damage in range is certainly nice to have and it also
gives aztecs a fast late game option to deal with cavalry archers which they also happen to
out range finishing off the triple alliance of american civs as it were we also see the incas
have plus two line of sight for skirmishers which again incidentally also applies to the genitour in
addition to that it turns out they also benefit from andean slang which removes the minimum
range for both the skirmisher and genitour you're still missing some important upgrades
especially bloodlines but at least they are helped in a few small ways to offset that next up
for vietnamese they also have a couple of things going on at the same time as well since they're an
archery range unit they of course benefit from 20 more hp giving them the second most hp after turks
of course vietnamese also have the imperial skirmisher and depending on what exactly you're
up against and how much anti-cavalry your opponent has you can probably justify either
choice in the right situation moving on to humans as we'd expect they do benefit from their mounted
unit speed boost unfortunately though they don't have access to brazer so they lose a big chunk of
range and attack in the late game here we run into a bit of an odd exception though it turns
out there's no effect of step husbandry on their creation time so at least in this context they
aren't considered a cavalry archer moving on to another step civilization the tatars also get a
couple of benefits the first is silk armor does give some extra armor for the genitour while not
giving it to the skirmisher making them a bit more appealing option than usual they also give plus
two line of sight for cavalry archers and in this case that is including the janitor as it turns
out this bonus even stacks with the inca's line of sight for skirmishers giving a lot of extra sight
obviously as tatars you still get the extra hill advantage as well as it applies to all of your
units taking a look now at the huns they miss out on the last armor upgrade but have a nice
discount for cavalry archers in this case it's a general enough interpretation of cavalry archer
that it includes genitours making them cost just 32 food and 28 wood in imperial that's actually
the same total resources as the elite skirmisher and makes it an even more appealing choice in
imperial age for hunts than usual similarly for koreans they're 20 wood discount of core supplies
making them the same 28 wood cost as huns while they also get the archer armor upgrades for free
the trade-off is their lacking bloodlines and their bonuses also work for skirmishers so the
janitor itself doesn't have a lot of extra appeal now so far it may feel like just about everything
for either skirmishers or cavalry archers seems to apply though that might be because i started with
the ones that do now let's get into the relevant sounding bonuses that don't help the genitour
starting with the byzantines they have a pretty significant discount on their skirmishers along
with some other counter units there's really no reason to think it wouldn't also apply to
the genitour as well but it turns out it doesn't considering byzantines also lack bloodlines their
skirmisher line comes out looking like the clear choice in this comparison costing 40 less per unit
the britons are another although in this case it may not be as surprising their range bonus
for archers and unique tech yeoman it turns out don't affect genitours though of course the range
bonus even specifically excludes skirmishers of course this is because both are specific to foot
archers and not just ranged units in general considering britons both lack bloodlines and
their skirmisher has one more range than usual the janitor here is actually fairly weak in comparison
another situation that maybe shouldn't be a surprise is the saracens bonus against buildings
also doesn't apply as it's again for quote foot archers in this case though foot archers does
include skirmishers who it seems are sometimes in that category and sometimes not if you've played
age of empires 2 for a while you may remember saracens used to have an anti-building bonus for
cavalry archers and that did apply to genitours making them a surprisingly effective choice
against castles but of course saracens no longer have that bonus these days they just end up with
fully upgraded genitours who do no extra damage to buildings whereas their skirmishers do and
finally lithuanians have what look like a couple of potential bonuses for genitours but it turns
out don't have any effect in practice the first is tower shields which gives skirmishers more armor
and you can see that doesn't help the genitour stats the second is the lithuanian skirmisher
speed boost which also doesn't apply this feels a bit inconsistent with whether genitou rare
considered skirmishers or not but you could argue it specifies these spearman and skirmisher lines
which technically the genitour isn't part of and it is what it is so that's all of the bonuses that
both apply and the ones that don't but before we wrap up i have three civilizations we haven't seen
yet that i'd like to highlight as being especially bad with genitours these are civilizations that in
addition to lacking relevant bonuses also miss on most or all of the key upgrades and as any of
these three i would be hesitant about making genitours even in a situation that seemed to
be crying out for them the first notably terrible sieve is the celts they lack bloodlines the final
archer armor bracer for the last bit of attack and range as well as thumb ring thumb ring isn't
that critical for the genitour as all it does is increase their accuracy from 90 to 100 percent
but unlike the american civilizations who also miss on a lot of those techs celts don't even
have a relevant bonus to make up for it the second notably terrible sieve is the franks
in their case they get a bit of extra hp from a civ bonus for mounted units but it really doesn't
make up for lacking bloodlines as it's based on a percentage of hp and like the celts they're
missing the last armor upgrade bracer and thumb ring in a way it feels like a shame as mounted
skirmishers would make for a pretty nice combo with french paladins against halberdiers without
sacrificing mobility as you typically have to with throwing axemen skirmishers or hand cannons
and finally you could argue burmese should be thrown in here at the end but instead i'm gonna
go with the teutons while it's true that they do have bloodlines at the same time they're lacking
bracer thumb ring and husbandry compared to the skirmisher side by side they don't look too bad
but missing both speed and range is not an ideal combination for a unit that often relies
on hit and run to be effective but those are the major civilizations that i wanted to highlight
in total we saw in almost every case you get the benefits of being a skirmisher or a cavalry archer
sometimes even aligning those bonuses to stack at the same time i have to admit the omission of
parthian tactics and the byzantine's discount were the two most puzzling outliers for me i assume
those choices were for balance reasons and looking in the game files it seems they intentionally went
out of their way to remove parthian tactics effect for genitours who otherwise would have benefited
by default to me that shows a lot of thought went into which bonuses should apply though in general
the devs were quite generous with including the genitour in pretty much every related bonus that
i could think of that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys i'll see you next time