Analyzing and Ranking the University Techs (AoE2)

hey guys Spirit at the law here in this video we're going to be looking at the various Technologies at the University and ranking them from worst to best of course in practice there isn't necessarily a strict hierarchy as the texts help in different situations so we'll be discussing what exactly each technology gives you in more detail than the in-game description provides try to give a little context to how impactful that is practically and then finally how important each technology is generally considered especially once we factor in cost jumping right in at number 11 will open at the bottom with heated shot right away I should point out there are situations this Tech makes sense on water maps and I think it's important to make a case for the tech instead of writing it off entirely it gives Towers more than double their usual bonus damage against ships with keeps going from plus 10 to plus 23 for example and all arrows from castles harbors and krepos gain plus 4 bonus damage against ships for castles this means taking out galleons in two instead of three rounds of firing which is a notable Improvement keeps getting even larger impact effectively dealing double their regular damage letting them hold out against significantly larger navies arguably an even more dramatic result is against Fast Fire ships though where castles are less impacted but still helped out and instead critically Towers become unbelievably more effective taking nine shots instead of 35 doing almost four times the damage that might sound hard to square with the advertised effect of only plus 125 percent but as per usual on water there's some sneaky armor Shenanigans below the surface I keep in addition to its regular Pierce attack usually deals 10 bonus damage of which 9 is negated by the Fast Fire ship's armor so when you get heated shot you go from one bonus damage passing through to 14 making them much better than expected in case you're wondering a galleon doesn't have that secret armor so that's why it behaved more predictably really though besides this pretty good case you can put forward I had to put heated shot at the bottom of the list for two main reasons first castles and even towers are already so good against enemy navies that players are used usually reluctant to engage them in the first place the obvious exception is against Canon galleons which you can't reach anyway so heated shot doesn't help against what's actually your biggest threat in the late game in fact the main use case for heated shot would be against American civilizations who are lacking candy Galleon and Roman or in campaigns where the AI is more happy to stand under Tower fire meaning even on water Maps it's not guaranteed to give you any value for what's also not an amazingly cheap price the second major issue is it does nothing on land maps at all which comprise the vast majority of games played online now way back in the day it increased Tower attack against camels as a hidden side effect so it was actually researched for that purpose but these days that bonus damage doesn't exist making it now useless on land Maps besides the minor uptick in score it provides to intimidate your opponent Next Step though at number 10 we have another Tower upgrade this time aeroslits giving extra attack to your Watchtower line depending on how upgraded your towers are right away I consider this slightly more versatile than heated shot simply because it helps both on land and water for watchtowers against Knights for example you deal three instead of 2 damage with every arrow and with fully upgraded keeps you go from 5 to 8 damage against fully upgraded paladins which percentage-wise is a fairly large boost obviously the effect is marginal against ships compared to heated shot but that's the trade-off for more flexibility the problem is mostly just that it's kind of expensive and also helps objectively less than even the basic tower upgrades as it doesn't improve HP or armor it's also an imperial age Tech now so it comes very late and to get the most out of it you already need to upgrade to keep maybe if you're Japanese and going for yasama Towers or another very good Tower civilization like Koreans you could pick it up but it's just not that common to see this is another case where it used to be better and at one point was considered borderline broken when it was significantly cheaper and gave double the attack increase that it does now but Towers in general and especially this Tech just aren't as impressive as they used to be continuing with our Tower theme though at number nine we have the guard Tower in keep upgrades which I'll put together on the list these increase your Tower's attack armor and HP and also increase the benefit from Arrow slits now guard Tower in particular is sometimes nice to have if you have a lot of existing watch towers and especially against High armor targets like Megan else they can be quite effective dealing three times as much damage as a watchtower with Bodkin Arrow even letting them win one-on-one even against their major Nemesis the ram the HP can still be helpful though again outside of Japanese and maybe Koreans you don't see that many guard towers and while players online like to play 4 keeps they rarely play with keeps as there's just better ways to spend your stone on Town centers or castles getting away from Towers now though next on our list is treadmill crane which gives a 20 construction speed boost to your Builders this is probably more useful than it gets credit for but is mostly associated with Death Match where you can get off to a faster start or in the context of Castle drops or a Wonder to put it in perspective getting this tech means completing buildings when without it those buildings would be at 83 percent complete it's kind of middle of the road for its cost as well to the point you might wonder whether there's maybe a separate economic argument for it we're building faster means villagers are getting back to work sooner and collecting more resources overall to explore this idea and ballpark the potential of an economic argument we can think about the cost of the tech and how many seconds we're saving on some buildings that we might be making a lot of in the later stages of the game if we crunch the numbers it turns out after researching treadmill crane we have to build another 20 houses 20 barracks and three castles with 10 Builders just to recoup a third of treadmill cranes cost in the form of villagers getting back to work sooner and still need another 400 or so Farm receipts just to break even with two and a half seconds save during each of those receipts eventually adding up it seems an economic argument for the tech just isn't really here meaning we have to fall back on its benefit for Castle drops and wonder races friends personally I think would be more interesting and helpful if it improved repair speed as well giving it other use cases like in treb Wars but as it stands I consider it pretty Niche and optional next up at number seven we have the bombard Tower this is a case where you don't see them all that often on Arabia especially but can be dangerous in a team Black Forest game for example it excels in situations where you want to slowly push forward and entrench where they can give you solid Firepower without using a population space the problem is just while they have great damage output they're incredibly expensive costing gold in addition to Stone and are also locked behind a university Tech in chemistry again back in the day when bomber Towers did melee damage and could obliterate ramps this would be a different story and even as it stands in the right situations they can be amazing but practically outside of a few specialized civilizations like Turks and Portuguese you just don't see them that often so this feels right in about the middle of the list moving on though at number six we have murder holes now certainly in a campaign setting this is a must grab as the AI loves to attack your castles with knights and infantry but outside the campaigns the problem is this doesn't help against the most common things that people use to attack castles at the same time it has a bit of a meme reputation or is thought of as a noob trap though personally I wouldn't go that far the 100 stone cost means it's not worth grabbing as soon as you can against every enemy composition but sometimes players charge your castles with knights villagers or infantry and that would certainly happen much more often without at least the option of grabbing murder holes so even if you don't research it it can still influence in-game behavior simply by having that threat maybe even more so Towers can benefit a lot and prevent villagers from rushing them down or having archers Camp Out Below them next up at number five we have fortified walls which is another tech I think is probably more useful than it gets credit for stats Wise It's a good Tech and almost double Stonewall HP while greatly increasing melee armor and even throws in a bit of hidden building armor to resist Siege units bully stonewalling isn't always a given incompetitive Arabia games but it's undeniably helpful on Arena or even team games to protect a trade line especially compared to the cost of a stone wall if you've already built one it's almost a no-brainer to pick up if you actually have a Stonewall and are worried about raiding I might even go as far as to say that stonewalls are a little underused or overly stigmatized at some levels as they're just so much better than Palisades especially at a level where you don't have the actions per minute to deal effectively with constant raids moving on to number four now somewhat related I'm gonna go here with masonry and architecture which improve all of your building's durability except for walls and Farms masonry especially is cheap to pick up and gives a ton of value for its cost but let's look at what each Tech is giving you the HP increase is pretty intuitive and so is the increase in melee in pure Summer by one but there's also a plus three building armor thrown in that's a little more unclear and refers to bonus Damage Done by many but not all anti-building specialist units the units on the left here including Siege tarkins elephants ships and villagers among a few others have some or all of their bonus damage blocked by masonry and architecture in contrast the units on the right including infantry with or without arson saracen archers and Korean War wagons don't have their bonus damage prevented as confusingly it's a different type of anti-building attack a sort of related question you might then wonder is if these texts are worth picking up before or after hoardings if you're worried about your castles and it turns out it gives the same HP boost for a very similar cost the thing is though of course hoardings doesn't give the armor benefit and only affects castles and dungeons so I consider masonry and architecture strictly better and a higher priority another sneaky benefit you might not immediately think of with these texts is when it comes to repairing while villagers repair at the same speed here after one trebuchet shot it costs 33 Stone to repair without masonry and architecture and 27 Stone to repair with those upgrades making them roughly 20 more cost efficient to repair the same amount of damage that's because the cost to repair is based on the percentage of HP repaired so the same 500 ish damage from a trebuchet shot is cheaper to pair if it's out of a larger total in fact trebors are probably the most impactful use case for both the total HP increase and repair efficiency but no matter how the game plays out you really can't go wrong with at least masonry when you can afford it moving on to number three we have Siege Engineers which has two different effects the first is plus one range for almost anything related to Siege including blister elephants Turtle ships and Cannon galleons and the second effect is 20 more bonus Damage Done by Siege against buildings almost like an anti-masonry and architecture counterbalance this greatly helps onagers more consistently reach juicy targets like our ballisters but even bombard cannons scorpions or trebuchets can benefit a lot from a little extra range on the other hand Rams don't have the range increased but dealing 20 percent more damage on its own is already pretty fantastic the main problem is just the tech is a little expensive and for balanced reasons it seems a good number of civilizations don't have access to it but if it's available it's worth getting at some point if you're making any amount of siege that isn't just The Siege Tower moving on to number two now we have chemistry which adds plus one attack to pretty much anything that fires arrows javelins or bolts and also unlocks gunpowder unit I would say this should usually be one of the earlier attacks you pick up in Imperial age depending on your strategy to an extent but even if you aren't making our blasters you still have Elite skirmishers Town Center fire and castles that are being affected technically bracer is the higher priority as it increases range as well and admittedly plus one attack from chemistry might sound pretty modest but especially if you have archers or lead skirmishers it can be the difference between dealing one versus two damage per shot depending on enemy pure summer effectively doubling your damage output for a pretty reasonable price also who doesn't love fire arrows and flaming rocks thrown by your trebuchets and onagers though as a side note I think it would make more sense if heated shot gave that particular cosmetic change but it is what it is but finally we come to number one ballistics this allows all sorts of archers mounted units galleys and defensive buildings to track moving targets shooting at where the enemy is going to be instead of where it is and apparently this needs to be researched also just as an aside don't let the icon confuse you as this Tech does not help your bombard cannons against castles now if you told me a game ends in Castle age and only one Tech from the University was researched it's almost certainly this one as it's so critical for cross suppose players will even build a university in Castle age just for this Tech if they're making ranged units despite costing comparable to two Town centers that's how important it is especially if your opponent is also using ranged units it's a massive leg up and you become far more likely to be able to pick off villagers when raiding as well while crossbows are most closely associated with it even as a Cavalry civilization while it's a lower priority it's still a commonly researched University Tech given its benefit to castles and any skirmishers you might throw in as counter units so that's my ranking of the University tax class dismissed and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Spirit Of The Law

Views: 147,583

Keywords: aoe2, age of empires 2, definitive edition, sotl, spirit of the law, aoe2 definitive edition, new, beginner, gameplay, tutorial, guide, aoe, age of empires, university, tips, tricks

Id: C098gE1MrpY

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023