She covers a very different set of topics but Jenny Nicholson is a master of this as well. She will make jokes in such a normal tone of voice that it can take a second to recognize that she joking.
Oh boy the War Wagon, seeing this as a little kid way back in the day instantly made the Koreans my absolute favorite civ. It actually made me really interested in Korea, so I remember doing reports about South Korea in class. Of course now I have found out there is nothing Korean about the unit, so it is neat a fake wagon that has no ties to the area made me so interested in a country on the other side of the world as a kid
i remember how koreans were ridiculously OP when AoC came out. war wagons with 6 base range (elite only), and +4 bonus damage vs rams. combine that with their 12 range SO, 13 range keeps and BBC, and you have a deadly defensive combo. Edit: add to that free tower upgrades and +1 range for towers/keeps in castle and imperial age (free +2 range in total), and bombard towers doing *melee* damage. Their siege onagers gaining +2 range from shinkichon, +1 range as team bonus was also so ridiculous that they brought down the former's effect from +2 to +1 range.
The historical Chinese war wagons are used as shields for infantry against horse archers and can carry supplies. When battle commenced the commanders would order them into circle and turned these battles into a makeshift siege battle. I think these Korean unique units should of been something like the hwatcha or giant chukonu
Korean's death ball is actually their towers. They build it faster and are cheaper and their stone miners work faster too. So essentially a defensive Civ on land. Pack a few war wagons inside ur castle to increase castle attack and u have a formidable base. Koreans don't have anything else at all lol. One interesting use is to build a castle near ur harbor and pack it with war wagons and along with turtle ships u have got urself an unbeatable harbor too. Use herbal medicine and use the war wagons for minor skirmishes and bring them back inside the castle to heal quicker!!
I have always hated this UU for its historical inaccuracy.. we were supposed to get the Hwacha, which could have been represented as a scorpion/chu-ku-nu blend.. 😢😢
An interesting addon to the ability to hold up well against mangonels is their large size is a good thing here, as it means group mangonel v group wagon means less splash against the wagons
Those Black Forest team games with 150 elite war wagons go hard, can't even get close to them, units don't survive long enough to get close, even resorted to attack ground with trebuchets to get some damage in
An aspect about the War Wagon that was just barely mentioned and deserved way more attention is the bonus damage against building. They are an archer ball that can start mowing down entire bases if left unanswered. There are even powerful and hard to counter builds for arena involving going up at 28-29 pop and spamming wagons nonstop from two castles, because not even stone walls survive much against them. And that's an aspect we definitely don't need to take into account when facing other kinds of archers.
another thing to mention, when running away from a unit that kills archers/cav archers, a common micro technique is to find a nook in a tree line or group of buildings in order to minimise the surface area that melee units can attack while still allowing the archers to attack in depth, due to the greater collision size of war wagons, they cant hide themselves away as easily
I think another thing worth mentioning is that in an (admittedly unlikely) scenario of a post-imperial trashwar war wagons actually become really affordable compared to other units, due to their 60 base gold cost, which, assuming lowest market prices with guilds, means they cost just about 450 resources, where a paladin costs 500, a monk almost 600, and an onager almost a 1000- and with a solid frontline of meat they can fight with any of those. And on the other side, when comparing to cheaper units- with a choice between 3 war wagons or 4 crossbowmen/9 champions to supplement the trash-unit spam, I know what I'd pick.
The main problem with that is that war wagons don't trade well with trash units, so they don't add much to a trash war. Koreans are better off just spamming their own trash and maintaining whatever gold units they've kept alive in the lategame rather than adding more.
One thing you didn’t mention is the ability to stay underneath TC thanks to high armor. I think this is one of the reason why fc into war wagons can be effective, especially in maps like nomad
I always thought the Koreans could have been given an ancient anti-personnel weapon like the Hwacha, which was a sort of rocket launcher, as a unique unit, that would be historically accurate.
Its still possible to add it without removing the war wagon. Instead of having siege onager they could add a special upgrade. They arent the same but at least they have their unique siege unit.
I love the image of a wagon trying to kite. It rushes ahead, then grinds to a halt, does a 180° turn on the spot somehow, shoots once, turns against and runs away. it would look so funny to see somebody try it IRL
Whatever Squarespace is paying you, they should definitely pay you more :D Usually is just skip the "i want to thank my sponsor, blahblablah...", but in your vids i'm actually always happy to hear about your new sidehustle xD
Please never stop doing those smoooooth add transitions. There are very few people who can make them work well but yours are always amazing. As is the rest of your content of course
The only thing missing here in the unit composition discussion was how to counter monks since they may be the biggest threat. Since the War Wagons can be healed by monks, I'm guessing that a monk pairing is pretty high on the list. Of course, the other unit pairings mentioned would be pretty effective against monks too, especially the onagers.
an angle that wasnt explored here but i remember was that War Wagons arent ressource efficient vs Elite Skirmishers but they are produciton time efficient, meaning 1 Castle War Wagons will beat 2 Range Elite Skirmishers over time. they will trade bad on ressources until allt he skirms are dead and then they suddenly snowball. But that was before War Wagons got -1 on their CA armor so i wonder if this is still true.
We really need a rework of the Korean. They should have a historically realistic unit but most important a useful and unic strategy. RobbyLava has great ideas about this.
The most broken aspect of them is that they can be heal by monk together with archers and pike so the combination force in Castle age is far more durable than normal siege+pike+archer. Their shorter range also work well in this combo when they will always stand in front of squishier crossbow so they can tank a lot of arrows for weaker units. The hustie wagon serves the same role but don’t have this benefit and it is quite annoying when you only have a few of them in early castle
Right totally. You basically never have to lose a war wagon. If it gets low then it can get healed in the back. Then once you have a high number of them the pop efficiency takes over.
I have been watching your videos for a lot of years now and I have to say this might be the first time Im actualky happy to see a video sponsored. You deserve it!
Or lean into their current build and have the elite upgrade double their bonus damage against buildings. Personally, I think it would be more exciting if they either got some pass through damage to deal with massed units or if they had their reload time reduced to allow for more effective micro. Another fun idea would be to give them a "circle the wagons" formation and while in that formation give them an extra +1 pierce armor.
Using the square formation to rush villagers, pikes & monks is underate. No panic is quite like having towers slammed against your house wall while monk conversations are going off.
8:14 That just dredged up a long-forgotten memory of mine. Some 20 years ago when I was still a kid, I played a game as Koreans against an Aztec AI. I loved War Wagons. They looked cool. Well. Aztec Monks. With AI micro. Little old me was very upset at the game, very quickly.
Spirit, your analysis of units is getting better each day. Very good video, you are awesome :D One improvement is to micro ranged units with run and focus fire 1 unit instead of the run-stop micro. For expensive and high dmg units this makes a lot of difference. Maybe handcanners and korean weagons are two of the most impacted by this micro change. Maybe flipping some matches. But then the critical "hit kill mass number" become a factor. It is ideal to begging 2 or 3 units above this number or above the half of the hit kill (if you want 2 hits = kill, in smaller fights) and then balance for resources just to see the result. If you are 1 hit killing your enemy you are killing the DPS of the opponent and also (probably) killing the closest unit (so you get less hits in a fight because you kill many units just before they hit you). Another possibility is to test some proportion of meat shield/testes unit expecially in expensive units comparison. This video with the weagon if you split a 1/2 resource by pikes vs paladins or 1/2 resources by hussars vs archers you could had a refferece if the composition is a winning resources one or a more ineffective composition than 100% tested unit. If you think this way: compositions are one way of saving resources in bad fights. Could be 2 nice changes. Hope you find them useful.
When I was focussing solely on Vietnamese during my first few months - going Imperial Skirmishers against them, they felt mostly like butter. Mixing in Rattans to tank whilst your Imperial Skirmishers do the damage & TANK, meant you generally got the better trade unless they fully focus-fired.
"Rock me mama like a war-wagon wheel, rock me mama any way ya feel, Heyyyyyyyy mama rock me. Rock me mama with the halbs and the siege Rock me mama with the the monk tech tree Heyyyyyyyy mama rock me"
I'd be interested to see how the war wagon performs as an odd-ball anti-siege unit. Its performance against the mangonel line is impressive, especially considering its classification as a cavalry archer, and based on some napkin math, it should have a substantial cost efficiency advantage against scorpions (in a post-imp context). Additionally, due to the war wagon's increased collision size and reliance on population rather than cost efficiency - scorpions wouldn't be able to leverage their effectiveness against massed units nearly as much. Obviously they wouldn't do fantastically against rams, but their speed would allow it to out-manoeuvre massed rams and Koreans could easily incorporate halbs in front or onagers behind to deal with them in a pitched fight. Even against Houfnices doing melee damage, it would take 5 shots for the Houfnice to bring down a fully upgraded war wagon, and those shots take 32.5 seconds to fire. Even vastly out ranging the war wagon won't help much as the wagon's speed means it can close the gap and - without ballistics - the Houfnice is going to have a hard time hitting it. Once it does close the gap, the Houfnice only has a ~5s advantage on TTK - while costing nearly 3x as much. The fight swings even more in the favour of war wagons when compared with normal bombard cannons. The other consideration for the war wagon vs siege argument is that their range allows them to attack past any meat shields that may be in front of the siege. Yes, you need to manually task them to do it, so it's not like you can just patrol in - but it's much harder to physically prevent them from attacking the siege just by having units in front. Not having a minimum range helps with that. This gives them an interesting niche as most ranged counters to siege are other siege units, which have the general disadvantages of low HP and speed. Contrast that with war wagons, which are tanky enough to sit on the front line and fast enough to get there. I see war wagons as being intended as the middle layer of the Korean late-game army. 10 range siege onagers in the back as the main DPS unit, a layer of war wagons in front to provide a meat shield (which is also tough to flank or slip past because they're so bulky) and deal with enemy bombards, and halbs at the front to slow down and soak up heavy cavalry - which is otherwise the only real threat to the wagon + onager combo. Another unit to consider sprinkling in is the monk to keep the expensive army alive. Although they won't benefit from redemption, atonement or illumination - they do get range, speed and HP techs - all of which help them stay in the fight. On the monk theme, they may not get heresy but they do get faith - which at least somewhat offsets the army's vulnerability to enemy monks.
"once everyone has their 120 or 130 villagers and trade carts.." I clearly am missing something when I feel happy having 60 to 70 villagers and some trade carts 🤔
sotl, great video, I would have liked to see a section of the video where you compare common senerio's you would find in a game. For example simulate a fight of equal resources with the non elite war wagon vs some early castle age units such as knights and light cav. Thanks
I would love to see a video about what order to get upgrades for units. Example- it's probably more cost efficient to get your blacksmith upgrades for cav rather than getting the hussar upgrade because hussar upgrade provides less bang for your buck. So for war wagons what order would you get the upgrades? Blacksmith arrow ups first, then husbandry, chemistry, then elite, then thumb ring?
What would be interesting (and unbalanced with monks) would be if War Wagons had the single unit garrison ability that the mechs had from Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
Personally, this thing is only useful in castle for a castle drop. In imp it dies to infantry, skirms, cav, siege. They have high damage but no attack rate and easy missing makes it mean all piss. Ive tried so many times to work with it, they just dont work.
I remember when AI in DE were bugged to not get the elite upgrade, I was so mad that they literally forget it exists in the late game (looking at you Berserks).
I don't know if you've ever covered it and I just forgot, but I reckon it'd be interesting video going over why AoC gave us Halbs and Hussars but no Imperial Age Skirm upgrade
I loved doing WW in a box formation around a core of fully upgraded Siege Onagers back in AOC when Koreans had range boosts to the mangonel line. Just kind of slowly roll across the map vs. the AI and crush them under flaming rocks. XD
I hope he;s gonna get a video sponsored by Squarespace on April 20th and segway into sponsored segment by creating a website for those who like to play video games with enhanced graphics: Spirit Of The Bong.
@@johnapple6646 Same. Well in my case there's this whole meta thing I never knew about when I was a kid and I liked massing longbows against the AI but now as I'm much older... it sounds like I need to understand the meta of boar luring, deer hunting and when to Feudal and Castle, etc. or when to Loom...
thank you spirit for covering those details please I would like you to make a video summarising the most dangerous civs that are very dangerous once they reach imperial age like (goth with their unique unit and unique tech or britons with their longbowman)
@@chirantans2162 yeah but they are very expensive and countered by most cheap unit in the game skirmishers only the mangudai (mongolian unique unit) and the magyar cavalry archer are the only one who stands out
Koreans were often banned on the Zone DM in noob games as nobody could stop the war wagon SO halb combo. Add in some towers, treb, bbc and it might be best in game
Every time I watch a SOTL video on AOE2 I get really interested in the idea of playing the game. It looks so fun and interesting, and I played a lot as a kid. But I've tried multiplayer when I was older a few times and I'm just not capable of remembering build orders and where to put villagers, all that. And if you can't remember build orders then RTS isn't for you. I've tried winging it but as someone in a 4v4 put it "this guy is playing sim city" because ad hoc builds and timing is so slow and inefficient you're basically just trolling your team at that point
The only time I see war wagons is on nomad, with an fc castle drop feeling pretty oppressive at the 1300 level. You pretty much need skirmish monk ready, and for civs without redemption I have a lot of trouble against them since that nomad build is always followed pretty close by forward mangonels.
The ability of SoTL to maintain the same voice tranquility while cracking up light jokes is hugely underrated.
I used to believe that his voice was synthetic
this skill is quite common outside of the US.
He's a goddman professional, is what he is.
She covers a very different set of topics but Jenny Nicholson is a master of this as well. She will make jokes in such a normal tone of voice that it can take a second to recognize that she joking.
@@powerLuis159 I have seen his face. That video is gone, but trust me, you wouldn't expect that :D based on the voice
Oh boy the War Wagon, seeing this as a little kid way back in the day instantly made the Koreans my absolute favorite civ. It actually made me really interested in Korea, so I remember doing reports about South Korea in class. Of course now I have found out there is nothing Korean about the unit, so it is neat a fake wagon that has no ties to the area made me so interested in a country on the other side of the world as a kid
Haha lol
Choson did, technically, field a "War Wagon."
They totally had turtle ships though
LOL SOUTH Korea
@@serendipitythesoldier6037field fortification against nomads existed in east Asia as far back as the Han dynasty. It’s just wagon fort tactics.
I'm 100% convinced the only reason squarespace keeps sponsoring Spirit of the Law is to find out what his next side business will be
Still waiting for that "Teutons overview (2024 update)"
That would be the third overview
they got another update?
Nothing has changed.
Keeping in line with their unique unit, it takes a long time to get here, but hits hard once it does.
Me too, kid! Me too!
i remember how koreans were ridiculously OP when AoC came out. war wagons with 6 base range (elite only), and +4 bonus damage vs rams. combine that with their 12 range SO, 13 range keeps and BBC, and you have a deadly defensive combo.
Edit: add to that free tower upgrades and +1 range for towers/keeps in castle and imperial age (free +2 range in total), and bombard towers doing *melee* damage.
Their siege onagers gaining +2 range from shinkichon, +1 range as team bonus was also so ridiculous that they brought down the former's effect from +2 to +1 range.
AoC ???
oh god people don't know what AoC is. I have never felt older
@@jaikumar848 age of conquerors expansion
?
@@jaikumar848age of conquerors :D
Ok... But recently red phosphoru shows that how powerful war wagon is in fast castle Strategy
That ad transition was smooth as butter and funny. Well done
The historical Chinese war wagons are used as shields for infantry against horse archers and can carry supplies. When battle commenced the commanders would order them into circle and turned these battles into a makeshift siege battle. I think these Korean unique units should of been something like the hwatcha or giant chukonu
As Korean, I really don't like those stupid war wagon things
The Korean civ was created on a sudden and tight deadline, so the unique unit didn't get as much polish as one would like
"Circle the wagons!" That seems to be a common tactic and a very effective one at that.
I always thought it was a bit weird that the war wagon wasn't a siege weapon
Then elephants should be too
If it was added today it probably would be. Siege UU didn't come until after DE.
@@pax6833 Weren't the portugese and organ guns out way before DE? I'm sure I was playing them on AOE HD.
Korean's death ball is actually their towers. They build it faster and are cheaper and their stone miners work faster too. So essentially a defensive Civ on land. Pack a few war wagons inside ur castle to increase castle attack and u have a formidable base. Koreans don't have anything else at all lol. One interesting use is to build a castle near ur harbor and pack it with war wagons and along with turtle ships u have got urself an unbeatable harbor too. Use herbal medicine and use the war wagons for minor skirmishes and bring them back inside the castle to heal quicker!!
@@stinkinhippy1724 and the the Khmer
I have always hated this UU for its historical inaccuracy.. we were supposed to get the Hwacha, which could have been represented as a scorpion/chu-ku-nu blend.. 😢😢
Hwacha is similar to the Chinese UU in AoE4, the Nest of Bees, right?
God I love those things so much
Yes
Chinese used them for mobile shields
Or like the Organ Gun. Many shots, long reload.
Yes,@@stylesrj .
An interesting addon to the ability to hold up well against mangonels is their large size is a good thing here, as it means group mangonel v group wagon means less splash against the wagons
Those Black Forest team games with 150 elite war wagons go hard, can't even get close to them, units don't survive long enough to get close, even resorted to attack ground with trebuchets to get some damage in
pretty of counters though. SO, Houfnice etc.
@@daarom3472 Yea + some rams in front of SO to tank, still countering them is not cheap, but that is to be expected from such unit.
An aspect about the War Wagon that was just barely mentioned and deserved way more attention is the bonus damage against building. They are an archer ball that can start mowing down entire bases if left unanswered. There are even powerful and hard to counter builds for arena involving going up at 28-29 pop and spamming wagons nonstop from two castles, because not even stone walls survive much against them.
And that's an aspect we definitely don't need to take into account when facing other kinds of archers.
War wagons are quite poor against villagers imo. Vills can easily outrun them. WW can take down TCs tho!!
another thing to mention, when running away from a unit that kills archers/cav archers, a common micro technique is to find a nook in a tree line or group of buildings in order to minimise the surface area that melee units can attack while still allowing the archers to attack in depth, due to the greater collision size of war wagons, they cant hide themselves away as easily
I think another thing worth mentioning is that in an (admittedly unlikely) scenario of a post-imperial trashwar war wagons actually become really affordable compared to other units, due to their 60 base gold cost, which, assuming lowest market prices with guilds, means they cost just about 450 resources, where a paladin costs 500, a monk almost 600, and an onager almost a 1000- and with a solid frontline of meat they can fight with any of those.
And on the other side, when comparing to cheaper units- with a choice between 3 war wagons or 4 crossbowmen/9 champions to supplement the trash-unit spam, I know what I'd pick.
The main problem with that is that war wagons don't trade well with trash units, so they don't add much to a trash war. Koreans are better off just spamming their own trash and maintaining whatever gold units they've kept alive in the lategame rather than adding more.
Its better to use gold for their actual siege unit imo. Their onagers are top tier and you always need treb
This video means what we always have waiting for! I am excited for the review of the Byzantines that's upcoming!!!
The wood discount on WW is like an amazon sale. Double the price so that its still 100 wood after the 50% discount.
One thing you didn’t mention is the ability to stay underneath TC thanks to high armor. I think this is one of the reason why fc into war wagons can be effective, especially in maps like nomad
I always thought the Koreans could have been given an ancient anti-personnel weapon like the Hwacha, which was a sort of rocket launcher, as a unique unit, that would be historically accurate.
Yeah, it could be done in a similar fashion to the Organ Gun and the War Wagon could have become the Hussite Wagon or something?
AoE 4 has this for the Chinese. :)
Its still possible to add it without removing the war wagon. Instead of having siege onager they could add a special upgrade. They arent the same but at least they have their unique siege unit.
Phrases like "raggin' on the wagon" are exactly why I'm subscribed to this channel.
Hey Spirit, Guys of the Law here: 😊❤
Guys spirit, here law of the hey.
Hey Law, Spirit of the Guys here.
Here Law Guys, the Spirit of Hey.
It reminded me of one of the English exam questions where we had to arrange the words to make a meaningful sentence
@johncouzens5321 hey here, guys of the spirit
I love the image of a wagon trying to kite. It rushes ahead, then grinds to a halt, does a 180° turn on the spot somehow, shoots once, turns against and runs away. it would look so funny to see somebody try it IRL
It's much better than it used to be. Would love to see a comparison of this unit over time.
Whatever Squarespace is paying you, they should definitely pay you more :D Usually is just skip the "i want to thank my sponsor, blahblablah...", but in your vids i'm actually always happy to hear about your new sidehustle xD
Gonna jump in my war wagon to head on holiday to Spirit of the Lodge
We need to compile all Spirit’s funny websites.
Please never stop doing those smoooooth add transitions. There are very few people who can make them work well but yours are always amazing. As is the rest of your content of course
The only thing missing here in the unit composition discussion was how to counter monks since they may be the biggest threat. Since the War Wagons can be healed by monks, I'm guessing that a monk pairing is pretty high on the list. Of course, the other unit pairings mentioned would be pretty effective against monks too, especially the onagers.
an angle that wasnt explored here but i remember was that War Wagons arent ressource efficient vs Elite Skirmishers but they are produciton time efficient, meaning 1 Castle War Wagons will beat 2 Range Elite Skirmishers over time. they will trade bad on ressources until allt he skirms are dead and then they suddenly snowball. But that was before War Wagons got -1 on their CA armor so i wonder if this is still true.
We really need a rework of the Korean. They should have a historically realistic unit but most important a useful and unic strategy. RobbyLava has great ideas about this.
I wonder which civilization is about to get an overview!!
Japan
Last time we got Turks after Teutonic Knights, we can't know what to expect now.
Just two bored horses staring at you while a box behind them manifest whole trees out of thin air hurling against you.
Or the lame "Turtle Ship" that glides through the water spitting at you.
Idea for video: Who has the best hypothetical war wagons!
The most broken aspect of them is that they can be heal by monk together with archers and pike so the combination force in Castle age is far more durable than normal siege+pike+archer. Their shorter range also work well in this combo when they will always stand in front of squishier crossbow so they can tank a lot of arrows for weaker units. The hustie wagon serves the same role but don’t have this benefit and it is quite annoying when you only have a few of them in early castle
They should be like SCVs in Starcraft: They can be repaired or healed. Maybe Hussite Wagons can benefit from monk healing as well.
Right totally. You basically never have to lose a war wagon. If it gets low then it can get healed in the back. Then once you have a high number of them the pop efficiency takes over.
Your 'Korean underground car park' joke is the funniest so far!
I have been watching your videos for a lot of years now and I have to say this might be the first time Im actualky happy to see a video sponsored. You deserve it!
They need a buff. A cheaper elite upgrade, faster training time and slight faster movement should be good
Or atleast remove those fire lit ballista like arrows, it looks quite powerful but actually does nothing lol
Or lean into their current build and have the elite upgrade double their bonus damage against buildings. Personally, I think it would be more exciting if they either got some pass through damage to deal with massed units or if they had their reload time reduced to allow for more effective micro. Another fun idea would be to give them a "circle the wagons" formation and while in that formation give them an extra +1 pierce armor.
@@Jondiceful Or they could change one of the castle unique techs into base kit and give them a new tech that adds the piercing damage to the wagons
SoTL is the only CZcamsr that can make me watch ads without realizing it.
Cool! such a unique unit! Thank you for the review! I love the quality of your vids!
Using the square formation to rush villagers, pikes & monks is underate. No panic is quite like having towers slammed against your house wall while monk conversations are going off.
Monk conversations xD
“Wololo?”
“Wololo!”
“Wololooooo.”
Yes of course. One of the biggest threats to every vehicle, the elderly (monks) strike again.
Man, SotL must be rolling in cash from all these side hustles. 10/10 square space ad name.
I hope Squarespace continues to sponsor you, the jokes are top tier
8:14 That just dredged up a long-forgotten memory of mine. Some 20 years ago when I was still a kid, I played a game as Koreans against an Aztec AI. I loved War Wagons. They looked cool. Well. Aztec Monks. With AI micro. Little old me was very upset at the game, very quickly.
What if Wagon Wheels, but it can shoot?
Spirit, your analysis of units is getting better each day. Very good video, you are awesome :D
One improvement is to micro ranged units with run and focus fire 1 unit instead of the run-stop micro. For expensive and high dmg units this makes a lot of difference. Maybe handcanners and korean weagons are two of the most impacted by this micro change. Maybe flipping some matches.
But then the critical "hit kill mass number" become a factor. It is ideal to begging 2 or 3 units above this number or above the half of the hit kill (if you want 2 hits = kill, in smaller fights) and then balance for resources just to see the result.
If you are 1 hit killing your enemy you are killing the DPS of the opponent and also (probably) killing the closest unit (so you get less hits in a fight because you kill many units just before they hit you).
Another possibility is to test some proportion of meat shield/testes unit expecially in expensive units comparison. This video with the weagon if you split a 1/2 resource by pikes vs paladins or 1/2 resources by hussars vs archers you could had a refferece if the composition is a winning resources one or a more ineffective composition than 100% tested unit. If you think this way: compositions are one way of saving resources in bad fights.
Could be 2 nice changes. Hope you find them useful.
The War Wagon seems like an good supporting unit that is way harder to quickly pick off in mixed armies fights
When I was focussing solely on Vietnamese during my first few months - going Imperial Skirmishers against them, they felt mostly like butter. Mixing in Rattans to tank whilst your Imperial Skirmishers do the damage & TANK, meant you generally got the better trade unless they fully focus-fired.
Spirit of the Lodge HYPE
"Rock me mama like a war-wagon wheel, rock me mama any way ya feel,
Heyyyyyyyy mama rock me.
Rock me mama with the halbs and the siege
Rock me mama with the the monk tech tree
Heyyyyyyyy mama rock me"
These used to be my most feared unit as a kid
I'd be interested to see how the war wagon performs as an odd-ball anti-siege unit. Its performance against the mangonel line is impressive, especially considering its classification as a cavalry archer, and based on some napkin math, it should have a substantial cost efficiency advantage against scorpions (in a post-imp context). Additionally, due to the war wagon's increased collision size and reliance on population rather than cost efficiency - scorpions wouldn't be able to leverage their effectiveness against massed units nearly as much.
Obviously they wouldn't do fantastically against rams, but their speed would allow it to out-manoeuvre massed rams and Koreans could easily incorporate halbs in front or onagers behind to deal with them in a pitched fight. Even against Houfnices doing melee damage, it would take 5 shots for the Houfnice to bring down a fully upgraded war wagon, and those shots take 32.5 seconds to fire. Even vastly out ranging the war wagon won't help much as the wagon's speed means it can close the gap and - without ballistics - the Houfnice is going to have a hard time hitting it. Once it does close the gap, the Houfnice only has a ~5s advantage on TTK - while costing nearly 3x as much. The fight swings even more in the favour of war wagons when compared with normal bombard cannons.
The other consideration for the war wagon vs siege argument is that their range allows them to attack past any meat shields that may be in front of the siege. Yes, you need to manually task them to do it, so it's not like you can just patrol in - but it's much harder to physically prevent them from attacking the siege just by having units in front. Not having a minimum range helps with that. This gives them an interesting niche as most ranged counters to siege are other siege units, which have the general disadvantages of low HP and speed. Contrast that with war wagons, which are tanky enough to sit on the front line and fast enough to get there.
I see war wagons as being intended as the middle layer of the Korean late-game army. 10 range siege onagers in the back as the main DPS unit, a layer of war wagons in front to provide a meat shield (which is also tough to flank or slip past because they're so bulky) and deal with enemy bombards, and halbs at the front to slow down and soak up heavy cavalry - which is otherwise the only real threat to the wagon + onager combo.
Another unit to consider sprinkling in is the monk to keep the expensive army alive. Although they won't benefit from redemption, atonement or illumination - they do get range, speed and HP techs - all of which help them stay in the fight. On the monk theme, they may not get heresy but they do get faith - which at least somewhat offsets the army's vulnerability to enemy monks.
Korean civ overview is gonna be fire!
Aztecs overview incoming!
"once everyone has their 120 or 130 villagers and trade carts.."
I clearly am missing something when I feel happy having 60 to 70 villagers and some trade carts 🤔
Yeah, I meant it more as that would be the total (including trade carts). 120 vils + 40 trade carts seems excessive.
@@SpiritOfTheLaw Ah. That makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification 🫶
Spirit Of The Lodge is a new best I think.
Spirit of the la hire!!
We need a video which shows the highest DPS for a singke unit across all civs/types
Oh good, Japanese civ review coming out soon.
He is trying to play us, next overview will simply be Korea again guys.
sotl, great video, I would have liked to see a section of the video where you compare common senerio's you would find in a game. For example simulate a fight of equal resources with the non elite war wagon vs some early castle age units such as knights and light cav. Thanks
I find it too bad they didn’t actually try to visually design a hwacha. These would be badass and probably look much better.
I would love to see a video about what order to get upgrades for units. Example- it's probably more cost efficient to get your blacksmith upgrades for cav rather than getting the hussar upgrade because hussar upgrade provides less bang for your buck. So for war wagons what order would you get the upgrades? Blacksmith arrow ups first, then husbandry, chemistry, then elite, then thumb ring?
What would be interesting (and unbalanced with monks) would be if War Wagons had the single unit garrison ability that the mechs had from Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
Wow didn't expect them to be so bad
Place your bets here:
I think the next overview will be the Tatars 🤣🤣🤣
"This has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever," - Me, when i lose my wagons to a conversion
They should be a siege unit like the Hussite Wagon, hard to convert, with barely any counters, ofc if its OP, just change the stats, its that simple
Personally, this thing is only useful in castle for a castle drop. In imp it dies to infantry, skirms, cav, siege. They have high damage but no attack rate and easy missing makes it mean all piss. Ive tried so many times to work with it, they just dont work.
I remember when AI in DE were bugged to not get the elite upgrade, I was so mad that they literally forget it exists in the late game (looking at you Berserks).
Send forth the Korean updated overview!!! (Followed by the long requested Japanese one) 😅
I don't know if you've ever covered it and I just forgot, but I reckon it'd be interesting video going over why AoC gave us Halbs and Hussars but no Imperial Age Skirm upgrade
I loved doing WW in a box formation around a core of fully upgraded Siege Onagers back in AOC when Koreans had range boosts to the mangonel line. Just kind of slowly roll across the map vs. the AI and crush them under flaming rocks. XD
Raggin on the Wagon is hilarious
Thanks for the vid!
I hope he;s gonna get a video sponsored by Squarespace on April 20th and segway into sponsored segment by creating a website for those who like to play video games with enhanced graphics: Spirit Of The Bong.
One thing WarWaggons allow you to do, is throw Onager shots at a fight between them and infantery, and not fear aboit losing your war waggons.
Sounds like a nasty surprise for any enemy infantry/cavalry
It makes sense for them to lose against elephant archers, since _that_ unit's gimmick is surviving where normal archers wouldn't.
I can never make this Unit work on my favor
damn that smooth transition to the spirit of the lodge tho
I still want Koreans to get hwatchas at the siege workshop instead of onager bonuses
Can;t cuz Koreans are a defensive civ (tower and stone bonuses), while siege is an offensive strategy
Huskarl is a hard counter to war wagons.
Cheaper, fast enough, blocks almost all the damage received and deals bonus damage.
I haven't played AOE2 in 10 years, i just like to listen to these videos
WOLOLO 🙌
You definitely should.
@@h3m75 man times have changed. it's impossible for me to sit down and play games for anything more than half an hour now.
@@johnapple6646
Same. Well in my case there's this whole meta thing I never knew about when I was a kid and I liked massing longbows against the AI but now as I'm much older... it sounds like I need to understand the meta of boar luring, deer hunting and when to Feudal and Castle, etc. or when to Loom...
I would love to see him in red bull
I would like to speed up the reload of War Wagons and remove the -1 armour as they are so easily countered by skirms
OMG, updated Korean Overview incoming! :O
Last time we got Turks after Teutonic Knights, we can't know what to expect now.
Sotl is fooling us again, no Korean review next for sure! 😂
Hey here, guys of the spirit
thank you spirit for covering those details please I would like you to make a video summarising the most dangerous civs that are very dangerous once they reach imperial age like (goth with their unique unit and unique tech or britons with their longbowman)
Most dangerous would obviously be the heavy cavalry civs - they are just too versatile and too much!!
@@chirantans2162 yeah but they are very expensive and countered by most cheap unit in the game skirmishers only the mangudai (mongolian unique unit) and the magyar cavalry archer are the only one who stands out
Koreans were often banned on the Zone DM in noob games as nobody could stop the war wagon SO halb combo. Add in some towers, treb, bbc and it might be best in game
War wagons should have Mele armor
Every time I watch a SOTL video on AOE2 I get really interested in the idea of playing the game. It looks so fun and interesting, and I played a lot as a kid. But I've tried multiplayer when I was older a few times and I'm just not capable of remembering build orders and where to put villagers, all that. And if you can't remember build orders then RTS isn't for you. I've tried winging it but as someone in a 4v4 put it "this guy is playing sim city" because ad hoc builds and timing is so slow and inefficient you're basically just trolling your team at that point
The only time I see war wagons is on nomad, with an fc castle drop feeling pretty oppressive at the 1300 level. You pretty much need skirmish monk ready, and for civs without redemption I have a lot of trouble against them since that nomad build is always followed pretty close by forward mangonels.
ooo, I can't wait for the Korean re-overview.
Last time we got Turks after Teutonic Knights, we can't know what to expect now.
@@arkbuble fair
Great content, thanks for a very informative video. 👍🇦🇺
Korean War Wagon was the Elephant Archer before they are cool
Ive been playing and watching top players play for like 12 years - I know 95% of what Spirit says. Yet Im always thrilled to watch the video!
One of your BGMs always sounds like Caravan to me.
I always thought mangonels were the counter to the war wagons.. now I know that's not the case >_
monks! definitely go for monks!
camels are also awesome
the best unit
2:13 - BOO!! [throws tomato]
raggin' on the wagon