Boyars or Knights?

[Music] hey guys spirit of the law here in this video we're going to take a look at what you get when you cross a teutonic knight with a regular knight the bowyar all the speed of a knight with incredibly high melee armor as well but is it really that simple slavs of course have perfectly good nights so should you always go with the bowyard or is the nightline better maybe it depends so let's check it out we'll start off by looking at the comparison in the castle age in terms of cost it's a bit messy to compare with the boyar at 50 food and 80 gold and the night at 60 food and 75 gold you might instinctively zero in on the gold cost but i'd argue in castle age gold actually isn't a huge concern as there are lots of easy sources on the map the fact we're also talking about slavs means the extra food cost of knights is fairly easy to handle and i wouldn't say either unit feels more expensive to produce grabbing some cast leach gather rates and creation times as well two stable knights need around 9 farmers and 12 gold miners while one castle boyars makes the same amount of units with 7 or 8 farmers and 13 gold miners so practically speaking they should feel about the same cost to produce with the same number of villagers of course distributed slightly differently notice that boyers are created in half the time of nights helping them offset the fact that they're much more expensive than stables looking at their actual stats the bullard brings more to the table having two more attack and two more melee armor hence the teutonic knight comparison not shown here though is the attack rate is ever so slightly slower for boyars it's not a huge difference but it does mean that knights are a bit better at sneaking in an extra hit here and there especially when the two units match up against each other another hidden difference is their speed with again knights being ever so slightly faster this one makes some intuitive sense if the boyar is thought of as a heavily armored version of the knight but again the difference is fairly modest a boyar with husbandry for example is gonna be faster than a night without other than that the two units don't have any secret bonus damage to speak of even against buildings so in that respect the comparison is fairly straightforward in a head-to-head fight 10 verse 10 boeyers of course come out on top with around half their hp left in this case that should be expected given their two more attack in melee armor so against generic knights at least they're a fairly strong counter even against bulgarian knights with 33 faster attack the boatyards still have a decisive edge trying against another strong knight civilization with the berber's discount giving them potentially more knights with equal resources we still see the boyars doing well traditionally the burpers discount makes them one of the strongest looking knight civilizations in these sort of tests so this actually says quite a bit the only civilization that can best bears with knights that i found was the lithuanians with four relics which on paper at least should be evenly matched given they offset two armor and two attack but in reality the slightly faster attack of knights gives them the edge if we take away even just one of those relics though the lithuanians lose outright to bowyars all this to say that boyars and castlage are gonna trade very well in the vast majority of cases against knights even against civilizations with good bonuses but now let's look at some other common units that they might run into i'm not going to give any special weighting to gold here and i'll treat knights and bulliers as roughly equivalent in resources as given you have enough castles the same economy can produce almost exactly the same number of each unit over time starting off against pikemen with equal numbers boeyers end up doing considerably better keep in mind that while the pikes attack is completely negated by the boyer's armor their 22 bonus damage against cavalry goes right through with balanced resources they're nowhere close to cost efficient against pikes but they do handle that situation better than knights against camels we see something interesting which is that knights lose with equal numbers whereas boeyers actually end up fairly equal this isn't cost effective as the camel is 15 resources cheaper but it's a useful fact to know against camel civilizations that voyage with a numbers advantage can do quite well so far boyers are doing pretty well in melee situations but how far can we push this normally knights don't hold up well to battle elephants but again we see a dramatic improvement to the point boyers actually win on a small scale with equal resources for an even more epic showdown i tried them against teutonic knights both have high melee armor and maybe surprisingly boyars actually win with equal numbers in castle age while costing just five resources more the difference comes down to the fact that teutonic knights have one more melee armor but 40 less hp obviously they're a much slower unit as well depending on how much you want to value gold this might look like a bad trade for the boyars but again since we're focused on castle age i don't think gold should be given a lot of extra weight now there is one melee unit that boyar's really struggle against which is the lithuanian's lightest the fact it completely ignores armor means the boyer loses a lot of its advantage over the night the lightest actually ends up looking very similar in stats to the bowyard but has functioning melee armor and of course can be powered up with additional relics again the boyar performs a bit better than the knight because of its extra two attack but as you'd expect it's not a great fight for them even here where relics aren't involved and finally when it comes to ranged units in definitive edition boyers have the same purest armor as knights their two extra attack means they can be treated as basically equivalent to persian knights against archers this is slightly different in hd but they have one less pure summer so in that case they are a bit worse than the nightline now that said unlike the cataphract or the lightest which give up a bit of pierce armor for some specialty in melee and definitive addition the boyar is completely fine against archers in relatively small numbers putting it together the main takeaway in castle age is that in all ways they're basically a knight plus the only downsides either created at the castle are a tiny bit slower than night and cost more gold if that's something you're concerned about what you get back is a unit that's very similar to a knight that holds up significantly better against camels elephants and can handle most civilizations nights even with a slight numbers disadvantage of course there's no reason you can't also go for knights as sloths as long as you have a castle i don't see a downside to creating boyars alongside knights that you're already creating especially in a team game setting where you'll likely be seeing a lot of enemy nights another way you can think of it is that you have regular nights at your stables and top tier nights at the castle so far this is all just focused on the castle age though next let's move on to the imperial age right away you'll notice their upgrade cost is significantly higher than cavalier which raises the question if you've been making bulliars and knights and castleage then is it worth upgrading to elite boyar and going that route or is it better to focus on cavalier well the higher upgrade cost does end up giving more to the boyar especially in the case of armor considering they were already stronger than knights and are getting a larger power spike in imperial age it shouldn't be a surprise that they beat cavaliers with equal numbers quite easily as we're talking about imperial age now though gold is a consideration though if we rebalance to reflect their higher gold cost it's still a landslide the point is if you have the castles elite boyers are giving you significantly more than cavalier and remember slavs don't have access to paladin to give a sense of how they actually compare to paladins though i have an assortment of different units here and notice they beat all but the lithuanian paladins with two or more relics you may have the downside of castle production and five more gold per unit but it's at least giving slavs access to a unit that can match up with top tier paladins like tutans and franks in that light the upgrade cost actually looks pretty reasonable as they're skipping over cavalier and going straight to paladin level strength now the two units aren't exactly the same as elite boyers have significantly less hp and are being carried here mostly by their extra armor let's see again how they stack up against some of the other common units that they'll run into in imperial age probably the most important to know how they do against is the halberdier just looking at even numbers compared to the slavic cavalier elite boyers look great in comparison with cavaliers actually losing with equal numbers thinking about the value lost on each side though the boyars aren't cost effective even with equal numbers and obviously if we think about gold it's a terrible trade since the hubba dearest bonus damage isn't reduced by the bullior's armor in fact they end up being essentially the same as paladins against halberdiers the numbers work out in such a way that both units deal the same damage to the halberdier and both have the same attack rate while taking the same number of hits from halberdiers it's one of those situations where you might intuitively think bulliers have an advantage because it's melee but in reality they perform functionally the same it's a similar idea against heavy camels they take the same number of hits and deal the same damage so you see the same losses neither are cost efficient and if anything boyars are slightly worse for being more gold intensive the pattern i noticed is that boeyer's higher armor matters less against cavalry counters as you go further into the game and the bonus damage of those units is increased though again remember they'll perform much better than cavalier which is really what the slobs have as an alternative the point is just that their castle age advantage over some of these units doesn't translate to post-imperial it's actually a very similar story again against the teutonic knight whereas in castle age boeyers handled teutonic knights with equal numbers they perform roughly the same as paladins in imperial where both actually lose considering bull yards are also the most gold intensive unit here this is a fight they shouldn't be taking and just to wrap up with rbls we have yet another important advantage for paladins which is that their extra hp allows them to take more shots from archers and defensive buildings so overall i did find the elite bow yard starts to look a little more disappointing in imperial age while they initially outpaced the nightline in castle age and are of course a stronger alternative to cavalier overall they only seem to keep pace with generic paladins and even underperform against range units and defensive buildings that makes them worse at raiding and for that role i would lean more toward the slav hazar i see the bowier as a good inclusion in castle age though to combine with knights and i think it's overlooked too much in that role they're also fully capable of performing the heavy cavalry role in imperial age team games at least as well as generic paladins in melee they're much better in that role than cavalier for example assuming you have the three or four castles needed for one versus ones though the high gold cost makes it a major investment in imperial age and in that case i leaned more on the slaw of siege discount and top tier infantry rather than such a gold intensive unit but those are just my thoughts on the bowie are thanks for watching guys i'll see you next time [Music] [Music] do you

Channel: Spirit Of The Law

Views: 224,269

Keywords: aoe2, age of empires 2, definitive edition, aoe2de, sotl, spirit of the law, aoe2 de, aoe2 definitive edition, boyar, slavs, knights

Id: hefK6kgQhYM

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/whoareyouguys]

Seems like they're under utilized. I'm going to play some games with FF scouts into immediate castle in Castle Age full push and hopefully win before imp

Edit: won my first game. Cheap siege helped the castle age all-in even more

[u/Frotron]

I was today years old when I found out Boyars exist

[u/thedboy]

Good analysis, although it's immensely amusing to me how he spends so much time on Teutonic Knights but doesn't even mention their main castle age counter, Monks, once.

[u/human_learning_9]

The part that confuses me the most was when he mentioned the number of vils needed for 2 stable constant knight production. It requires only 9 on food and 12 on gold? I’ve always been told that we need 7 on food and 7 on gold for 1 stable knight. Even with all the castle age eco upgrade (wheels barrow, heavy plow, gold mining), the numbers still sound too optimistic to me. Can anyone confirm?