hey guys spirit of the law here i've made quite a few videos recently talking about the brand new
civs and all of their units so to contrast with that i'd like to do a short mini-series looking
back at the oldest civilizations going all the way back to age of kings i was thinking of three to
four videos of a manageable size that go through those original civs and how they've evolved over
22 years through various releases and balanced patches part of the motivation is nostalgia
and it's always fun to look back at what was either way too strong or weak but there's a
secondary motivation for me to try to chronicle in video form the perception of each civ and how they
felt throughout all the changes to that end i've tried to find examples of what other players and
developers were thinking at various points though that gets a little tricky as you go further back
luckily we have a great series of interviews with the legendary ensemble studios developer
sandy peterson on the age of kings heaven website where we can get some insights about the intention
with each civilization on release and the thought process for their changes over the first year or
so relevant quotes from that source will pop up throughout the video and as the lead designer for
the conqueror's expansion describing changes as they were in the process of implementing them you
really couldn't ask for a more insightful source just for a quick history lesson in case you're
recently joining the franchise age of empires 2 was originally released in 1999 with the subtitle
the age of kings it had 13 civilizations they were britons byzantines celts chinese
franks goths japanese mongols persians saracens teutons turks and vikings for this video we're
going to go a bit in depth with three that i thought would be interesting to start with
the franks saracens and celts so with that let's start by looking at the franks from the beginning
they were built around their free farming upgrades and stronger knights with several bonuses being
the same as they have now initially they were a very strong civilization with not a lot of great
responses as at release bloodlines didn't exist in the game so frank's automatically had 20 more hp
than any other knights in castle age and their paladins had 32 more hp in imperial there were
also no halberdiers in the game meaning you had fully powered paladins from today which players
had to counter with either pikeman or camel's missing bloodlines in an interview in early 2000
with sandy peterson when asked his opinion on the franks and age of kings he specifically mentions
their quote super paladins and going into the conquerors expansion the perception seemed to be
that franks were strong enough they intentionally didn't receive a powerful unique tech which also
focused on something other than their cavalry of course the conkers expansion was released less
than a year after age of kings and brought a lot of new changes in addition to new civilizations
not only did it introduce the idea of unique technologies bringing bearded acts for franks
and imperial age it brought halberdiers for many civilizations as well as bloodlines so franks
were no longer completely dominant in castle age night battles the halberdier in particular was
a major response to the paladin's dominance given halberdier have 10 more bonus damage than pikeman
in another interview sandy peterson even had to field questions prior to the expansion about
whether some civilizations were intended to not be able to counter frank paladins and reading between
the lines you almost get the sense that halberdier was being added because of frank's cavalry
dominance and when asked point blank who the best cavalry civ was the clear answer was frank's
after the conqueror's expansion though the frank's reputation slowly seems to have devolved maybe
partly due to changes in the meta a relatively slow strategy like straight fast castle into
knights 1v1 was probably a lot more effective in 2000 than it was even a decade later as the game
became more figured out in march 2015 for example the opinion that frank's are quote dreadful 1v1
was getting up votes on reddit and the opinions seemed generally that franks were okay in team
games though surprisingly without emphasizing their paladins which is quite a reversal from
the early days the perception of frank's though was about to change first some additions were
made in the forgotten empire's expansion which had come out in late 2013 but took a little while to
fully catch on as the default way to play the game frank's in that expansion were majorly buffed in
quite a few ways they received a new bonus for 25% faster working foragers they were given squires
for their infantry the castle age unique tech chivalry was introduced for faster stable work
rate the throwing axemen became a more responsive unit that attacked sooner after being given an
order and its elite upgrade was dropped by 100 gold if that wasn't enough with the
introduction of african kingdoms in late 2015 throwing axemen were buffed again with faster
movement speed and 10 more hp for the non-elite and elite version arguably their biggest change
though was that their plus 20 hp bonus went from affecting knights to both knights and scouts
this is when frank started to take off on the rank ladder by win rate as the combo of faster forging
plus great scouts with more hp now meant they were incredibly streamlined for scouts in the knights
since those changes every time the stats are compiled on 1v1 open maps franks have
been either number one or number two as the grand lobster king so elegantly puts it the franks are
a pendulum civ from overpowered to trash and then back to overpowered again now this was walked back
slightly in definitive edition where the cavalry plus 20 hp bonus is only applied in feudal age
and beyond which meant no more easy wins in dark age scout fights the lords of the west expansion
also came with the drop of their forge bush bonus from 25 to 15 percent removal of treadmill crane
maybe as a way to keep late game castle drops in check and chivalry switched places with bearded
axe to nerf their castle each night spam and quickly research cavalier in paladin that brings
us up to 2022 where the civilization is today the overarching journey for franks has really
been a story of riches to rags and back to riches from super paladins that couldn't be countered to
dreadful 1v1 in early 2015 back to the top of the ladder by 2016 and still going strong as recently
as late january through mid-april 2022 frank's remain at the top though nowhere nearly 60 win
rates they were achieving at their peak lost in all the focus on their scouts and knights is the
throwing axemen which has been monotonically improved with just about every major release
the next civilization we'll look at you might consider the frank's nemesis in age of kings
and it is in fact the civ sandy peterson says he would have picked against franks and that's
the saracens they're among the most changed civilizations even more than frank's at least
in terms of the total number of distinct items getting the balance right on mamluks
in particular seems to have been a bit of a thorn in the developer's side over the years
big picture saracens have always been a camel focused civ but another major identity of the
civilization has been their very open tech tree their bonuses looked a little different back
in the day with the team bonus being plus one archer attack against buildings though it was
secretly plus two and their cavalry archers had extra attack against buildings reading between
the lines of an interview with sandy peterson it seems the cavalry archer was supposed to be a big
part of their playstyle and a couple of times the claim that saracens are an unpopular civ are made
and left unchallenged like franks their first big round of changes came in the conqueror's expansion
in that they received their imperial age unique text zealetry giving plus 30 hp to camels and
mamlukes for a whopping 750 food and 800 gold leading into that release there's a great quote
from a petersen interview where when asked if saracens are going to be strong enough to defeat
the dreaded frank paladins he cryptically answers you're going to love the saracens unique tech
they also received a hidden unique tech called camelry that's only researched in post-imperial
starts adding extra anti-cavalry resistance to the mamaluke in maps like deathmatch though that's
since been removed mamaluke also went through another hidden change in the conqueror's expansion
originally they took anti-infantry bonus damage but that was switched to anti-archer they also
gained some anti-cavalry resistance and joined the ship class along with other camels meaning
for a long period of time mamlukes and camels were taking extra bonus damage from heated shot
i had a hard time tracking down exactly what the general perception of the civ was following those
changes though in a comment from 2013 it seems their mamelukes and open tech tree received quite
a bit of credit and the most negative thing i came across was a 2001 guide calling saracens the most
generic civilization in the game which you could argue is fair given their nearly all text style
of tech tree at no point does it come across they were a popular civ though and i think that's part
of the reason the newer expansions tried so hard to spice them up the next big round of changes
came with the 2013 forgotten empire's expansion where they received their market discount of
initially 75 wood off their non-elite mameluke attack was raised from seven to eight camelry
was removed from their post-imperial starts and they received the castle age unique tech madrasa
the effect was that every time a monk was lost they would return a third of their cost
the idea of using saracens as a monk rushing civ has been around since at least 2001 which is when
this guide was published though i remember reading one of the original developers was playing around
with the strategy before the game even came out i think the unique tech was an attempt to push for
that and give saracens a monk identity but it was always a niche castle each tech and was recently
removed in 2013 the popular perception seems to have been that mamaluke were great but that it was
difficult to survive through feudal and castle to reach their good late game compositions i actually
think that description holds up today as well despite a lot of changes in the last nine years
the next wave came with african kingdoms where camels no longer took anti-ship bonus damage
and an armor class specifically for camels was created the frame delay of mamelukes was also
increased which you can think of as slowing the responsiveness of the unit when trying to hit
and run and note that was one of the things highlighted by the popular comment two years
earlier that's the first nerf the mamluke received and addressed how oppressive they could be with
good micro a few years later though definitive edition brought another attempt to overhaul
saracens with initially giving their archers plus three against buildings though that was promptly
dropped back to plus one the market discount was increased from -75 to minus 100 to encourage
early market play even more mamalukes became a bit more resistant to halberdiers and the cost
of zealotry was reduced all of these changes were clearly intended to buff what at the time was the
fourth worst civilization by win rate following that up in 2021 lords of the west then introduced
even more changes their camels were given plus 10 hp as a civ bonus improving their castle age
zealotry was reduced from plus 30 to plus 20 and made a little cheaper to compensate
and the archer bonus against buildings was increased by one in the shuffle the cavalry
archers also lost their attack bonus against buildings even with all these changes the devs
weren't done and as of the release of dynasties of india zealotry was moved down to castle age
madrasah was removed and they gained a new unique tech and imperial age increasing the attack of
their trebuchets and manganel line all of which i would say is an overall improvement for saracens
as i looked at recently as well their mamelukes also lost its archer armor meaning it no longer
takes bonus damage from anti-archer units like the elite skirmisher in retrospect it's been quite
the journey for saracens with regular tinkering of their archery range bonus against buildings
losing their cavalry archer's bonus generally having their mamluke improved over time
and the camel's extra hp becoming easier to access i think it was probably the right idea
to move away from the monk identity with their monk unique tech and the increasing discount on
building markets has really made that feel like more of an early bonus now than it previously had
so that's the saracens and what i'd count as a whopping 15 notable changes but now i want to
finish up by contrasting them with the celts who are tied for receiving the fewest changes over
the years it really seems like a case where the developers just nailed it the first time
something i found revealing is that through all of the sandy peterson interviews the celts are
barely mentioned and even when they do come up it's just to say that they like them how they are
celts of course are known for infantry and siege and never received bloodlines so in some ways they
were impacted less than other civilizations by the early tech tree expansion they did get halberdier
and hazard so their original tech tree wasn't identical but it's fair to say the civilization
feels very much like it did on release of the changes that were introduced the majority were
actually to the woad raider in the conquerors expansion their training time was reduced from
a brutally long 16 seconds down to just 10. their movement speed was also increased by 17 percent
and they went from zero to one pierce armor so clearly an all-around buff they also received
their unique tech furer celtica for 50 more hp on siege workshop units and that's pretty much how
the civ has stayed since then in the forgotten empire's expansion they received their second
unique tech strongholds which is generally seen as an inoffensive but kind of boring tech and
pure celtic was tweaked from 50 to plus 40 percent their only other change since definitive edition
was their faster moving infantry bonus no longer applies to militia in dark age i should point
out though while it isn't specific to celts infantry overall has been overhauled in many
ways between arson supplies free tracking buffs to the long swordsman and just the general love
that infantry has received has had some spillover effect for the celts as an infantry civilization
so hopefully that was an interesting look at three civilizations and how they've evolved
or in one case really hasn't changed all that much over the years as i said off the top i wouldn't
mind making this into a little mini series covering all of the original civs if there's
a good reception to this video if not i guess this will just be a one-off video on an unusual topic
that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and i'll see you next time