How good are Mamelukes? (AoE2)
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- čas přidán 11. 01. 2024
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1:08 Stats vs camel rider and cavalry archer
2:10 Bonus damage
2:48 Upgrades
3:25 Speed and training time
4:45 vs knights
6:40 vs camels
7:02 vs elephants
7:20 vs spear units
7:55 vs eagles
8:24 vs Gbeto/Throwing Axemen
8:45 vs Teutonic Knights
9:05 vs arbalester
9:58 vs Genoese Crossbow
10:14 vs skirmishers
10:37 vs hand cannoneers
10:50 vs cavalry archer
11:50 vs elephant archer
12:12 vs siege
12:35 vs monk
12:50 vs buildings
13:21 Final thoughts
14:12 Sponsor
___________________________________________________________
Patreon: / spiritofthelaw
Background music from Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com
Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition - Hry
Mamelukes not getting bonus dmg from skirms is their biggest buff by far. Imagine if the paladin took bonus dmg from skirms
mamelukes were used to receive bizarre attack bonuses😅, infantry (AoK), archers and ships (AoC, HD) and finally they are more resilient rn
I don't think you can parallel a Mameluke and the Knight-line, scout-line, elephants or steppe lancers.
The opposites aren't (mostly) ranged.
Shooting gets damage from skirmishers. Logically. And throwing is kinda shooting... yes...?
@@acresir If they countered Throwing Axemen, sure, it would make sense, but they don't
@@acresir I dont think its about logic, its about the fact that a gold heavy premium unit like the mamluk gets wrecked by skirms and halbs (unless you micro halbs). Comparing the mam to another premium unit like the knight makes sense in that case.
sad ratha noises
Always loved the memelukes as a kid, my favourite units along with Mangudai since The Conquerors :D
Based taste
One of my only memory as a child of playing Age of Empires II was when I kited some persian elephants for ten minutes with my Mamluks, killing them all without losing a single unit. Thankfully it was against AI otherwise any player would have raided my base to death during that time XD
@@yanchoho Nah, based means he just doesn't like lemons (and other acidic tastes). 😜
Yes my fav Civs and Units as well
@@yanchoho I was probably tired and read 'bad' instead of based😅
Remember that at one point or another Mamelukes were considered Infantry, Cavalry, Ships, and Archers, before finally settling on the armour classes of Camel, Mameluke, and UU
I think only the Mangudai has probably had more changes as a UU!
In Arabic, camels are known as the "ships of the desert" so I guess it makes sense they were classified as ships.
Mamlukes werent arabs though. They were mostly from the caucasus, being warrior slaves in the service of the Fatimids who then took over.
@@daarom3472 Correct! Cumans were also a really big percentage of the Mamelukes of the Fatimid Caliphate. Probably that's why they ride Bactrian camels instead of Dromedaries
I feel Saracens and Mamelukes are one of the most balanced sets in the entire game. You get a little in a lot of areas, but each area requires more input from the player to overstep inherent weaknesses, and if you're good enough YOU CAN overcome your inherent weaknesses.
One of the most fun civs/units in the game.
I always saw the "mameluk" as a camel with a ranged attack forever, so it made me angry that they are easily countered with skirmishers or another bonus against archers, when that's really not the case.
Jup. I always thought of them as mounted throwing axemen.
they are not countered by skirmishers anymore and they are unstoppable with siege onager combo
@@martijn9568knife/sword throwers
@@raulcalimann7738 Nothing is unstoppable in AoE. Heavy camel would still counter that combo.
@@longbow857not when I have Pikmin sticking you
Imagine you're a knight and you see the guy in front of you get hit by thrown scimitars from 8 different guys all sticking into him from different directions and with a few more in his horse. He topples over. Then it happens to another 5 one by one, with unerring accuracy. Medieval warfare.
"I will not play AoE this week it is taking up too much of my time"
> SOTL upload
"you're right it is time to learn a new civ and drop 100 elo"
really underated unit, the saracens probably much better with cavalries archer for their unique unit because arab people are well known for their horsemanship. people often jokingly said the high cost is for buying new sword because the mameluke keep throwing them
Why don't you do a UU elite upgrade tier list? Seems that for the Mameluke the elite upgrade is fundamental, but for other UUs maybe is not so much. Thank you, love your content!
Castle age mamelukes are great - 120hp with ranged melee attack and faster than a knight
anyone else remember the good old days when ZeroEmpires' profile picture was once a poorly cropped screenshot of a mameluke?
Could you maybe make a video about how many land units you have to hit with the demo ship line ships to be cost-effective?
I think there are some interesting results there. The petards couldn't make a good case for themselves due to low damage and small splash radius, but demo ships have higher damage and a larger blast area.
It's pretty easy to get your money back when hitting a formation of arbalesters or trebuchets in the shallows, but I'm also interested in the more tricky cases such as mamelukes, which have a large hit box so they don't stack as densely, and they can take a point-blank non-heavy demo ship hit. On the other hand, mamelukes are very expensive, and despite the ranged melee damage are unlikely to be able to snipe incoming demo ships due to the demo ships' speed and their own low range, so I think a reasonably skilled player could pull off such an explosion, ending cost-effectively.
I'm not at all certain, but maybe a heavy demo ship could even hit enough elite skirmishers at bottomed out market prices in a trash war to be cost-effective despite the demo ship's gold cost.
The one critical thing I think you missed is that numbers have a MASSIVE affect on how good they are. Yes, that is similar to other ranged units, but it's actually far more impactful than even archer units because they deal melee instead of pierce armor. I would say that all of the tests you ran would be a lot different if you used bigger armies. In fact, with a big enough mass of mamelukes you can even take on Cataphracts and Camels without micro (albeit the size is probably unrealistic for a 1v1 game), because you have so many mamelukes firing from the back rows while cataphracts and camels can only attack with the frontline units.
This.
On top of that, equal resources tests are a bit meaningless. Once both players are pop capped, it doesn't matter if your units are cheaper, you won't have more of them. So, it'll be a 60 Mameluks vs 60 Gbetos, and the Mameluks will slaughter.
@@AoE2Pathing equal resources isnt meaningless. Its the only way to do fair tests. If you are pop capped with a higher value army than your opponent with stockpiles of resources then you are already winning and dont need these test scenarios to tell you that.
This. Like a chain reaction effect where if 10 v 10 gives Mameluke a 50pc advantage then 20 v 10 would give them upto 200pc given they're ranged.
Mamelukes have always been and will always be my favorite UU. Nothing like slaughtering an army of knights with my throwy-bois 11
Love your videos SOTL! I recently got Aoe2 and its my first rts and your videos have been a blessing so far!!!!
i've learned to expect a saracens overview from you after this video :)
I REALLLY like what the Devs. have done with the Saracens in the last several patches.
I have been using the Saracens since the inception of AOE2 in 1999. They have most def improved over the years. Not only are they great against MOST cavalry, they also pair well with EVERYTHING! A meat shield is crucial in some fights including skirms if it is Genoese crossbows. If you are fighting other camels, your camels and general camel counters will pair well with them.
Really underrated unit. Not my favorite UU, but one I use plenty of them whenever I play Saracens.
I love that Lanchester Laws left a permanent mark on the channel
Raiding potential of mamelukes is also huge, they can bust into walls easily and decimate a woodline. They're a severely underrated unit, even just mixing a few into a regular knight/camel army is a big force multiplier.
So on the whole, they're a solid step up from saracen heavy camels in most cases.
Vs infantry they have better dps and can kite to offset their lower hp. VS archers they outperform H camels with the dps and range offsetting the pathing disadvantage. Cav archer hit and run can be counter microed (barring cumans) since they have the same speed as mams, so I'd use them over camels even here. Vs buildings, the heavy camels have more hp for arrow fire but that doesn't amount to too much for the lack of armor and the dps + focus fire of mams shines again. Bonus; mams can snipe vills better.
Though mams are, in the end, units with middling hp and no armor - certain civs and unique units are pretty hard on them.
Any civ with good camels is trouble for mams. Fortunately, saracen camels beat most other camels head to head so its usually fine to pick camels yourself and support them with skirms if the civ has particularly strong archers. Notable exceptions are Imperial camels and gurjaras camels, which can match and beat saracen camels respectively. Saracen camels at least tie with imperial camels and counterweight siege can break that tie, but vs gurjaras its best to opt away from cav altogether - between shrivamshas, the civ perks + unique techs for their own camels neither saracen camels, mams, nor cav archers will see anything done.
Well barring that, mams should out perform camels in all fields given the right support.
R.I.P. Spirit of the Law Squarespace joke. You held up longer than I expected and you will be missed.
I watched till the end hoping for the new Spirit of the X joke
Mameluke video! You know what that means: updated Saracen Civ Overview coming soon! 🥳
Great video as always
I think that they're an amazing unit against any civ which doesn't specialize in camels.
Also, I find it (at least in theory) that Skirimishers + Mameluks are very solid. Add to that a bit of siege and you've got yourself a death ball.
Or also mix in some fully upgraded generic champions if facing Eagles or other infantry.
I think the Romans would stand a pretty good chance at countering them if they've massed Scorpions.
Even against special camel civs, a critical mass of mamelukes can soft counter camel masses due to the range and high melee damage.
@@soonyo3430 I disagree. This is incorrect even for generic camels, and even if you had all the APM in the world. But remember that in the late game, you have less APM to micro, because you need more time to spam units and buildings, push the opponent and defend against raids. Also, the civs most likely to build mass camels against Saracens are Gurjaras and Hindustanis, and you really don't want to make mamelukes against those civs. Against camel civs, you probably want to combine your own camels with arbalests, pikemen and hand cannoneers.
@@soonyo3430 Maybe you are most correct in a black forest team game when you're fighting in a chokepoint and your ally is making archers. But certainly not in 1v1 arabia
Just before watching this video I played a 2vs2 on Arena as Saracens vs Koreans on my side and my enemy tried to counter them with skirmishers.
I knew that was not a solid counter but he apparently did not.
Favourite UU alongside the Woad Raider and Cataphract!
Crusaders coming home with scimitars sticking out of bodies after fighting mameluks.
My favorite unit ever yeaaaaaaah
The Mamluks were among the very few enemies to defeat the Mongols in combat, and they were never conquered. The Mamluk institution had appeared in Islamic civilization in the eighth century as the Caliphs sought to create a military force that was loyal only to the Caliph and not to regional, tribal, or another personal ties. Most Mamluks were of Turkic origin, primarily because the Turks were viewed as better, or at least more natural, warriors than Persians and Arabs. Turks of nomadic origins possessed riding and archery skills from an early age, so that after purchasing them as slaves one only had to refine those skills. The Mamluks therefore became perhaps the most highly trained warriors in the medieval world. They seized power in Egypt in 1250 during the ill-fated Crusade of Louis IX (Saint Louis) and created a Sultanate that dominated Egypt and then Syria until the sixteenth century.
The Mongol Art War, p.109
Zealotry originally costed 750f 800g. They decreased the gold cost to 700 with the release of DE. Then obviously it got reduced even further when it was switched to the castle age tech and then it was just removed in favor of the camel HP civ bonus
Unless there’s a hard counter present Mamelukes have always been great as a „strike team“. Spam lots of Hussars and use one moderately large group of Mamelukes more actively to overwhelm positions or clean up holes in my defense. In my experience their range along with melee damage and speed makes them a more versatile CA in these late game situations.
With a meatshield they can deal with almost anything so in my high skill matches against the AI they‘ve done amazingly even before the buffs. Even if they’re too expensive for most 1v1 matches I have seen them used in the way I describe in team games which is where they probably shine the most for better players.
Hindustani team bonus of Camels doing +2 damage against buildings affects Mamelukes and Camel Archers, by the way.
Great video. Felt a little sad there was no "spirit of the lock, lord, long or lot" website joke.
Expensive units like those are best when the game is reaching population capacity for both sides as the Mamelukes are very pop-cap efficient. In late team games when resources are not much of a worry they become extremely useful and powerful. But that applies to practically all expensive units in general.
The issue is, in such situation, they are still fragile and take a lot time to replenish their numbers.
Mameluke: "Oh? You're approaching me?"
Teutonic Knight: "I can't kick your ass without getting closer."
Speed and HP that I think the early devs put on so much different armor and even ship on Mameluke because they can runaway from their counter pretty easily, even when they got hit thanks to high HP they can still survive one or two attack before reaching safety.
Spirit of the Mamelaw
But what about the best Halb in the game ?
Teutons extra armor ?
Viking pikeman?
Celts extra speed?
People want to know
Japan or slavs is best
Surely it's going to be Japanese.
Mameluke vs. Teutonic Knight just might be my favourite interaction in the game
I would count this as a win for the teutonic knights, you can cheaply throw a couple at a group of mamelukes and force the other player to either trade badly or waste loads of time avoiding/microing them, it's almost like putting rams in front to soak archer fire.
Yeah! Sarracens update video coming soon! 🤩
I have an idea for future video.
Please read and if you like give thumb up for SotL to consider doing it.
Thank you Spirit. You finally did a awesome micro consideration. In the cavalry archer part in special. You even talked about critical mass effect in the micro wars.
Maybe you could make a video analysis on critical mass in ranged armies' fights. Would be very cool.
Talk about the concept, apliccation in general and the diference of onager critical mass, scorpion critical mass, high range critical mass (where many units can shot from afar) and low range critical mass (like mamelukes and others).
Some critical masses mean you 3 shot, or 2 shot, or 1 shot a unit. Each number of these can turn a fight completly. And the knowledge of this also mean you can take care with over kill.
one day we will get a melee unit that does ranged damage
I think the memelukes have two issues:
The gold cost and the low producing speed (same as camels but built castles). That means that it takes a lot of economy and time (or castles) to build a critical mass of them. The trade-off against the arbalests is a great example: in a situation where gold is not a limiting factor for either player, the archer player almost always want to trade, as they will be able to build up the numbers again in few seconds
They could be made less fragile to archers by adding +1 pierce armor when receiving the elite upgrade and bring the 1 melee armor to the standard mamaulke that way they can have a better time navigating archer fights
Do you know the best way to ensure the accuracy of the trebuchet? It's annoying that it misses so much especially when it hits from the side.
My fave civ and unique unit. 🎉
Mamelukes and Teutonic Knights will always have a special place in your heart - they are like the girl you had a crush on back in primary school.
Mamelukes prove their sigma chad energy by throwing scimitars instead of using them in melee like common scrubs, making them automatically top tier.
one thing I would have liked to see against cavalry was what if you change some mamelukes into heavy camels? does it bring better or worse results or just the same?
also while obvious to most, newer people would have benefitted seeing how cataphract changes the cavalry encounter
Mixing in camels would take away the possibility of micro, or at least efficient micro
@@slayersam1 well sure, but you´re not always in a position to micro. like what if the army size is so big that your options are to run or fight? if it´s a cavalry army you´d propably want to fight. or it´s an attack against your ally and you have come to defence and you really need to take that fight?
how does the result change if you pit say, 40 paladins vs 20 heavy camels and 20 mameluks, as opposed to 40 camels/mameluks
My favorite unit
Could you make a video listing all the AOE II units ? Cheers.
As a former franks picker nothing strikes greater fear into my heart than seeing these chucky boys
Ahhh yes. My favorite ship. The Mameluk!
If your voice wasn't so tantalizing I would skip the ad in the end. JK - great work once again SOTL!
I will add one very awkward thing about their attacks: a bit similar to other melee units that attack from range (Gbeto and Axe Thrower), they do A LOT of overkill damage. Usually melee units get the distribute their attack mroe evenly, but on the flip side they get body blocked. Units with 1 range like the Kamayak or the Steppe Lancer bipass that and get to ditch out more damage. But I guess the range around 3 to 4 hits that awkward zone in which they dont have enough distance between their target to dps from safety all he time like archers, to the point were it pays off even if there is overkill. Also since their attack packs a huge punch you can really feel that extra damage go to waste. So they can be very counter intuitive, since you want to mass them like cav archers, but to me they make more sense in groups of 7-10, or whatever the perfect math is to 2-shot a knight with some wiggle room.
a good idea for a video is if the suicidal units (Petard, Demolish ship, fire camel) worth.
Last time I was this early Mameluke was still archers
How do you move your units like that? When I try to micro my units always go back a bit before moving forward when I tell them to move. This always results in extra hits that they could have been avoided.
My favs
Have you done a recent overview of the italians or genoese crossbowman? Searching shows a video on italians from 7 years ago, and nothing comes up for the later.
LET'S GOOOO
In my experience playing Sara, Mameluke single handedly destroy Civ that wants to play Knight+Pike or Pala+Halbs combo like Teutons or Franks (which is fitting to be honest).
For most civ, when facing Mameluke they need to either make camel or range unit like halbs but Sara can make Pikes for camel and Skirms and onager for arbs.
I would have loved a test against cataphracts and boyars.
This video tells me that mameluks should be used like the conquistador.
Fun fact, that ending monk was generating something like 4500 gold per minute!
I like such units that sit in between and don't follow traditional laws of countering. And these even have range. They can attack through walls and deal melee damage, paired with high HP and good mobility.
good video, some of the saracen losses in the current NAC5 is literally because the pro players are not very aware of how good of a combo is skirmishers + mamelukes and they never do it. so cheers for the good highlight there.
May I request a video about the “best” handcannoneers?
My guess would be - Hindustanis, Italians, Turks, Bohemians
As they are not affected by ballistics, can you "easily" dodge their shots, or do they have built in ballistics or better yet homing projectiles?
3:46 Historically Mameluks (Mamluks) were Turkic slaves who rode horses and used lances. They were employed by some powers who were ethnically (or liguitically) Arabic, but probably didn't see as much action actually in Arabia.
you missed Cataphracts. they are like soft counter, last i played mameluke deathball vs cataphracts they did not take same damage as other cav, less than regular cav.
Is "spirit of the lamp" (e.g. for a genie) a missed opportunity at the end of the video? Or was that used already?
Thoughts on archer - mameluk comp? Other than being gold intensive
strong, but expensive.
Mamelukes and arbs are two of the most gold-intensive unit lines you get in the game. But they also give you an insane amount of power. Mamelukes deal with heavy cav, skirms and threaten siege, arbs take care of .... pretty much everything else.
Sad we didn't get to see the stand-and-fight against the Teutonic Knights :(
"How good are Mamelukes?" ask the Mongols at Ain Jalut
The Mamelukes are goated
I just played through Saladin for the first time. Memelukes are OP
mamelukes great at hit and run. if your micro is decent or your opponent isn't watching, you can bumrush seige and throw your swords right past those pikes picking off the trebuchets. If you have a group of about 25 they can even counter cataphracts using hit and run, but they can't stand their ground. Maybe pick off the trebs first. You could use hussars to soak up some arrows then try and get in and out quickly with your mamelukes to kill those trebs as long as there aren't too many archers.
Me trying to picture a castle full of Mamelukes throwing hundreds of swords at the enemy.
Something to note is that 1. Only the drabidian archer elephant are somewhat cost effective, other elephant archers are not
2. Camels don't do that well when the mamelukes are being micro'd
updated Saracens overview coming up!
I would say there two reasons generic arbelester counter mamelukes:
1. An even trade is still pretty solid without micro
2. With micro they would do much better
3. A halberd meat shield would totally change the dynamic
4. Mamelukes can only be trained from castles where as arbs are trained from the archery range, meaning you can outproduce and will likely always have more resources worth of units and won't be taking balanced fights.
I am disappointed you didn't make a Spirit of the Law pun website name for your Squarespace ad read.
It would be a good expansion idea to break up Saracens into a few different civs like Fatimid and Abbasid
The camel versus scout cav types of examples against Tartar or Magyars for example, should be thought of as a combination perhaps... Where when you have Saracen Hussar + Mamelukes you have to focus their scout cav first given the latter has range and puts your cav archer micro into overdrive just to balance the fight. I'd rather see the combined unit fights, because yes we see full mamelukes, but even just a few frontline units can stall the pierce damage or archer-type units completely.
The big problem with this unit is team-games... It takes 1 person (usually a friend) not setting themselves up right to countre Mamelukes, for the Saracens player to snowball - it really is just similar for their archers. The unit shouldn't really be able to countre Cav-Archers unless in a good position against them - 25 gold over them is not a lot considering. Their speed has just always been too high for my liking.
Cav archers are an even trade if you micro and keep producing
@@fiable262626 They both move at 1.4 speed, so with husbandry on both sides you can't kite at all. Perhaps if you take damage C.A. and get them in the back that makes sense, but that's a lot of micro versus an A-Move unit.
@@justincronkright5025 They can do more than just one hit. CA often have a numbers advantage too. I have played plenty of games with mameluke vs CA and its never easy to catch the CA.
You don't have to be faster for stutterstep micro to improve you combat outcome a lot; being slower or the same speed means you can't kite and take zero damage, and against ranged units, their pathing won't hinder them as much, but micro can still have a huge effect.
For the most common example I imagine, crossbows vs knights; stutterstepping increases the value of the crossbows enormously.
I see Saracen review on the horizon
Ah, Memelukes, such a great unit. Hits Pikes before they reach melee, demolishes cavalry as well as camels, and speedy enough to run down archers. A great one-unit composition... as long as you're not fighting enemy camels, because for some reason anti-Mameluke damage is a thing.
8:27 Chakram Throwers: I'm I a joke to you?!
Hmmmm, I feel like the camel design of the mameluke is actually more like the Bactrian camel, so it's not crazy they're less used on 1v1 Arabia as they're not native to that region. ;-)
I remember first time seeing them in a lan party around 2000 with friends. Gameplan was simple, the most paladins won. And then they came by one player and no one knew what to do with them. Still a bit scared
I was able to get the achievement in Saladin 6 by being carried by these units.
I will have to watch this later. Too hungover for numbers right now
I feel like halbs still counter them as in a normal game you normally don't have the time to constantly look at your units and micro them as you need your eco to be running too. Oh no example website today?
I smell an updated civ overview incoming.. 👀
Since mamelukes are also camels, halberdiers get a whopping 37 bonus damage in total against them.
they also get a bunch of scimitars right in the face
Cam you do eagles vs knights
Guessing Saracen revisit is next?
I was today years old when I learned that camel archers don't deal bonus damage to regular cavalry.
I would be interested how well a combination of Mameluks and Heavy Camels does against the various foes.
Pretty well but mostly mameluke + hussar works best.
I smells Saracens overview incoming.