Burmese Overview AoE2

hey guys spirit of the law here the civil review is all about the Burmese [Music] now they're a monk and elephant civilization though as we'll see those labels could have been pretty much anything except archers I think it says a lot about the civilization that in my top five Civ Renken series they've been brought up in comments on the infantry and cavalry videos many times and I think the consensus would be that they deserve a spot on a top five unique unit or monks list as well so they just good at everything well let's check them out [Music] to start things off the team bonus is that relics are visible on the map for you and your allies from the start of the game I think we can all agree relics are worth the effort and investment to pick up in fact we know we should be getting them every game and yet it's one of those things it's easy to forget about once the fighting starts seeing them from the start takes away the process of finding them and helps to remember to collect them indirectly securing you more gold for the entire game if you're a bit of a clever player though this bonus also helps you guess starting locations dark patches on the map are good candidates for enemy positions since relics aren't generated within a certain distance of a town center that's most useful in a one verse one if you're looking to get aggressive early or just scout what your opponent's doing on the other hand it can also be misleading that's the joy of randomly generated maps unlike what you might expect though once someone collects the relic that revealed spot doesn't move with it it's just their starting locations that have a permanently revealed spot on the map next up their first sabonis is that all lumber camp upgrades are free in total right off the bat that saves 550 food and 350 wood already a pretty solid bonus but keep in mind that more than half of that is coming in the Imperial age in feudal age it's just a hundred food and fifty wood double bit axe is a very common technology to get as soon as possible since it gives so much value so ultimately those resources free you up to get another eco upgrade as well like gold mining or horse-collar that's also the same amount as two and a half spearmen or about two Scouts worth of resources giving you a bit of a military boost alternately you could instead get an upgrade like men-at-arms for a similar value there's a lot of flexibility and freed up resources and it's up to you to decide what you want to do with it by early castle age these savings are up to 250 food and 150 wood which is roughly the equivalent of an extra building and three Scouts that you could afford up to that point which a generic civilization couldn't if they wanted to get the lumber camp tax those are upgrades you should get at some point as any civilization since together they increase your wood gathering rate by a combined 44 and the imperial age would bonus is the most expensive and ironically the least important since it costs more than the other to put together while increasing it the least in total you end up collecting about 58% faster over the Dark Age collection rate even before adding in the effects of wheelbarrow and sappers everything considered I think the biggest impact is in the early Castle age since that's a period where you're trying to put down Town Center's and get out villagers as well as take advantage of your military power spike with better units so your resources are usually stretched pretty thin as it is it's easy to postpone bow saw either intentionally or by forgetting so there's peace of mind and just focusing on your strategy while knowing your long term what efficiency is handling itself which I think gives a lot of practical value I think we've all had a game at some point where we realized after an hour or more that we've missed some really basic eco upgrades and cringe to think about how many resources we've lost their second Civ bonus is that their infantry get plus one attack per age starting in feudal that sounds a lot like the Aztecs Garlin wars unique tech except it's free and starts working much earlier in the game so I'd consider it a better version even if it only maxes out at +3 keep in mind your militia are completely generic but as soon as you hit feudal age it's like an instant free attack upgrade making men-at-arms significantly more dangerous for example picking off villagers goes from 8 hits to 7 which is enough to end up giving you an extra kill now and then the nice thing is you can still get the normal attack upgrade as well and take them out in six hits think about how often you attack with infantry and can't quite finish a villager off suddenly with burmese a decent portion of those normal close calls actually become successful it also means they're going to have an edge over enemy infantry by usually taking them out one hit sooner now in Castle age it's even more interesting because at that point it's +2 and you have the long swordsmen which is a pretty rare unit to see online that's because the castle age is usually dominated by crossbows and now crossbows in Castle H are good against long swordsman except maybe if you're the Malians with extra pierce armor that's debatable but Knights especially after bloodlines are just so cost effective against them that long swordsman just aren't normally a winning play even without bloodlines Knights still end up with about a third of their HP left with equal resources spent on both sides there's other advantages that are happening here too like faster movement speed for raiding a more balanced cost of gold and food as well as Knights being better against ranged units but even ignoring all of that and just mashing them together we can see why Knights are hands-down the more powerful unit with generic civilizations but the question is how much does that change when you give Burmese long swordsmen an extra to attack if we do the test again with Burmese long swordsmen against Knights without blood lines they can nearly hold their own though not quite and still lose convincingly against Knights with blood lines that means while they do measurably better I would say even with the Burmese attack bonus long swordsmen are still a questionable unit in castle age compared to other options now when it comes to champions in Imperial age they're up to plus 3 extra attack from the bonus bringing them to 20 just one behind an Aztec champion now the actual benefit of this to your infantry really depends on what you're up against you might think this is great for pikes and halberdiers for instance who should now be amazing against cavalry but actually compared to a 32 attack bonus an extra 3 attack isn't very impressive to put some numbers to it a faster attacking Japanese halberd ear in for attacks does 148 damage to a cavalry unit with full armor to get the same damage output from a Burmese halberd ear in the same time period it would need plus 12 attack because it would have to be able to cover the bonus damage from the Japanese fourth hit in fact even with +3 attack they end up taking out paladin's in the same number of hits anyway likewise it doesn't make a big difference against ranged units like archers hand cannon ears and scorpions since the big issue there is in closing the distance other bonuses address that with more HP more armor more speed or negating some kind of bone looking at the Burmese extra attack in comparison again doesn't really do a lot here the time the bonus shines is when there's no bonus damage or ranged advantages going on and you're just in straight melee combat against similar units like halberdiers or champion at which point the Burmese become arguably one of the best infantry civilizations in the late game the difference is particularly noticeable with halberdiers given their normally low attack and at 10 verse 10 against generic halberdiers the burmese consistently survive with nearly half their HP left against Vikings who of course only have pikemen Burmese do even better Aztecs also miss access to the halberd ear which garland Wars can't make up for in this case these are normally solid infantry civilizations and Burmese are just cutting them down even Japanese halberdiers don't win with equal numbers meaning they'll need to rely more on skirmishers or something else to take effective fights now Slavs can go either way because drew Xena is such a finicky tech that relies on the density of the battle but with moderately sized groups the Burmese can at least keep up if not have a slight edge the only civilization that can consistently beat them with halberdiers is the Goths assuming that you give both sides equal resources and unequal numbers which might not always be possible in practice with population limits so while I downplay the effect of the bonus on halberdiers against cavalry it seems obvious that they require a non melee solution in the really late-game unless you're Malay in which case you have nothing to worry about so overall I think some the commenters were onto something the bonus just gives your infantry a lot of unexpected punch through the whole game especially later on you might be missing some of the traditional anti infantry units but this bonus almost makes up for that all on its own the last set bonus is that monastery techs are 50% cheaper if you haven't checked the price of some of the monastery techs in a while that's a pretty big bonus assuming that you get everything that saves over 1400 gold and almost 400 food don't forget you're also more likely to find relics to help pay off your monk investment if you're going for a monk rush you'll prioritize redemption to convert buildings in siege as well as sanctity for more P already you're saving about 300 gold for those two right there if you want to throw in faster movement rate and the ability to convert enemy monks you spend and save another 233 obviously an imperial age you'll eventually want everything except for maybe faith which is another 260 what that means is the bonus should be valued somewhere between 300 and 800 gold for a typical game that you go for monks which end up being fully upgraded aside from heresy of course it does have to be said that monks aren't necessarily everybody's favorite unit but with so many discount to technologies it's the perfect sieve to start with if you're a little bit monk curious since monk bonuses don't really get more accessible than this one so those are their sieve gonna tsa's it's easy to see why they're called a monk civilization with a good reputation for infantry but so far we haven't seen much for the elephants or why so many people consider them a good cavalry sieve to get a more complete picture let's move on to their unique unit via Ram by looking at its stats I think there's a natural comparison here to the conquistador as a high attack low accuracy ranged cavalry unit they're 80 Wood and 60 gold which is just a little bit more than a manga die and unlike the conquistador don't cost food which is nice to free you up for easier booming and researching tax the do pierce damage like an archer and are upgraded by stable techs and the archer armor upgrade but not fletching they take bonus damage as if they were cavalry archers from anti Archer and anti cavalry units but unlike cavalry archers are not affected by parking tactics if you know the conquistadors upgrades they're actually quite similar in a lot of these cases though a ramp I do benefit from ballistics they're not quite as tanky as conquistadors when it comes to armor and compounding that they only have the first armor upgrade available which they make up for with higher attack and a faster attack rate that puts their theoretical damage output significantly higher than what is already a very powerful unique unit so what's the catch and why do conquistadors win with equal numbers the catch is a ram by have low accuracy to get a sense of how poor it is a crossbow without thumb ring at its maximum range is 92% Elite conquistadors at their max range are quite a bit lower at 76% accurate elite Iran by our 47 percent and castle each Iran by hit infantry units just 32 percent of the time from their max range those are stormtrooper numbers the elite upgrade does help a bit but the point is a lot of their implied damage is actually landing harmlessly on the ground unless they're standing right beside their target now that explains their poor performance despite looking better on paper and how I actually kind of rigged the test I ran by an conquistadors are basically evenly matched when put up close now poor range isn't actually such a terrible thing when you get enough of them and if you're against another large army since stray shots become much more likely to encounter something which they'll still do half damage to in fact you could argue it helps counteract the waste to damage from overkill to have such low accuracy making it feel like an area attack when you have a lot of enemies clumped together for example one-on-one against an R blast the fight can really go either way with a slight advantage to the around by but on a large scale with the are blast bunch together they ran by will always win against equal numbers with about half their HP left this also might be one of the rare cases where staggered formation can be a good call to reduce some of that inevitable straight damage and hopefully magnify the effect of unlucky shots for your opponent now the elite upgrade is fairly expensive in terms of food which your economy might not be geared toward since the unit normally cost wood and gold it's definitely worth it for the better accuracy though on top of a bit more HP attack and importantly one more pierce armor that pierce armor is especially important given your shortage of archer armor upgrades one thing I find interesting to note is that the Iran bite has had a lot of patch work done to it in the form of nerfs with reduced speed and attack as well as losing a natural resistance it once had two anti cavalry archer units the fact that at one point it was clearly an overpowered unit I think also adds to its reputation as for hidden attack damage there's not a lot going on to have a small attack bonus against battering rams but not to other siege or even Rams once their upgrade you can give them an attack bonus against buildings though with their Imperial age unique tech mana / cavalry that tech gives cavalry and a ram by +6 attack against buildings this is Age of Empires though so all you can be sure of is that it's not actually a straightforward +6 in practice it's six extra attack if your opponent hasn't researched any building upgrades the problem is as soon as they research masonry it cuts it in half to three extra damage that's a three hundred and twenty five resource tech half negating one that costs over a thousand architecture further reduces that damage by one but keeping it at the same +3 bonus the point is if you never research masonry it might be worth doing so now and then especially against the Burmese also not stated but important to know is that against castles towers and walls the tech does nothing don't go thinking that you can fight castles and other defenses with Iran by the point is you're getting +6 as a best-case scenario and more likely plus three against non defensive buildings if your opponent is diligent enough to get their castle H upgrades one cool feature though is this applies to cavalry as well and that elephants count as cavalry which is a unit we haven't really seen a bonus helping yet but speaking of the battle elephant there other unique tech gives them an extra one of each type of armor now this used to be an extra to pierce armor which admittedly was maybe a bit too good against archers taking 320 Arvelo shots to bring down that's been reduced to a still impressive 160 hits instead of the normal 107 in terms of resistance to their major counters this doesn't do a whole lot as pikes and halberdiers still have their massive attack bonuses and armor doesn't help much against monk's good thing the fade technology is half-price you'll also want to make sure you prioritize the regular cavalry armor techs first as they give a better price for the same effect so those are their unique units and techs you have a lot of choices in the mid game with a mobile high at unique unit as well as a castle each tech that helps out a mid game elephant strategy on the other hand you could ignore those and go for all sorts of early aggression whether its infantry archers cavalry or monks with a variety of direct bonuses but also a solid underlying economy bonus that helps all of them to get a sense of the large variety of options you have at your disposal let's move on and take a look at their tech tree starting with the archers things actually start ok in feudal age with their wood tech bonus giving arguably and above-average archer rush but the tech tree really throws on the ebrake in castle age of the only civilization without at least the second armored tech and also lack thumb ring making the cavalry archers a questionable choice especially with these superior rambhai available considering you also have some of the worst skirmishers in the mid to late game as well as no are blessed or hand cannon err there's not a lot of good things to point out I sometimes hear I don't give out enough FS in these grades so I'm gonna give them a c-minus for the archery range sorry guys like I said they're not completely useless in feudal age that being said archers are something you should actively avoid using in the mid to late game if you can in contrast and on a slightly better note let's take a look at their infantry this is actually one of these strengths of the civilization you have all the blacksmith Tech's and upgrades plus the attack bonus that scales is you age the extra attack is actually quite good against other infantry civilizations and Burmese seem to do quite well in head-to-head matchups though keep in mind they're not really improved against their weaknesses like archers and the effect is diluted in matchups where they already have a large attack bonus overall I give their infantry in a - as a solid option both early and late with halberdiers in particular going to be useful against a variety of units besides just cavalry and speaking of cavalry let's take a look at the stable all the technologies are there with the only big thing missing being the Paladin that's offset a bit by being one of only four civilizations with battle elephants giving them a nice alternative from a late-game population efficiency stamp the Scout rush is okay but not great because of no Dark Age bonus but you do have the savings from double bit axe in there the night rush is good again it maybe not top tier but certainly respectable I don't mind the lack of camels especially given how much you're pushed towards monks anyway which can also fill that defensive role against Knights just as well elephants can be good too though you probably won't get the unique tech until pretty late in the game if you're building a castle you might as well make a ram buy at that point following those things up in the late game there's still a lot of variety including fully upgraded kazars and Cavaliers keep in mind there's also the unique tech for more damage against buildings for all of these units overall I'd say it's another a - though keep in mind that's without any one incredibly strong stable option they just do a bit of everything which I like but can also make it hard to decide which unit to use sometimes next up is their siege overall it looks pretty good even without any direct siege bonuses the bombard cannon is nice but most often you'll probably gravitate towards the Manganiello line since you'll find going for a ram buy or infantry you run into a lot of massed range units the lack of siege Ram isn't a big deal in this case since where your cap trims might take out towns a bit slower any cavalry you have will also contribute a bit more than usual they feel to me like a b-plus and while you won't base your strategy around siege you also rarely feel like you're missing anything important moving on to the Navy normally I see what bonuses and get excited about water maps because I assume it'll lead to more ships but this time I considered the most important part of it actually just that it prevents you from forgetting those upgrades a lot of other sibs would bonuses end up saving significantly more in the feudal and Castle age whereas the Burmese are primarily saving food that reason I wouldn't consider them above a B in the early game for the late game you also end up lacking a lot of Imperial aged naval Tech's including the all-important shipwreck bracer and to Manso lets you hit Imperial age with a bit of moment but overall I just think a lot of civilizations are going to outpace you on the water I'd say they dropped to a c-plus in the late game for an overall B - taking a quick look now at the monks they're definitely talked here some people are gonna like the Aztecs relic bonus better but the potential for more gold doesn't really help if the Burmese player got them first likewise Aztecs getting more HP for each Tek is great but Burmese again are probably able to afford them earlier ultimately the Aztec monks have a higher cap so I'll slide Burmese in with Saracens at Spanish at and a switching now to defenses their towers aren't really anything special and they're missing cording but the University is pretty good otherwise monks can be useful defensively as well although they're missing some of the other units that can be nice to the pinch like hand cannoneers camels or a quickly created unique unit overall they're a solid b4 defenses but not really ideal for a defensive oriented player and wrapping up with their economy you have all of the text there except for stone shaft mining which isn't a huge deal guilds is also nice to see for those really long drawn-out games again getting all the wood upgrades for free it means it becomes a lot easier to prioritize a farm upgrades which indirectly helps save wood in the long run as well plus longer lasting farms with more upgrades to help you maintain your sanity and keep your stress level low by not forcing you to hear that sound we all hate there's nothing worse than being in the middle of doing something and so yeah I'll give them a solid b-plus for economy so overall I guess the big takeaway is that the Burmese are good for a lot more than just their monks and elephants I'd really consider them more of a monk and raiding civilization with the ability to get aggressive with infantry early along with their unique unit and unique tech for cavalry bonus damage against buildings whatever level your app is going to be a good option for you if you're a more experienced player with good micro then you have monks and a Rambo and if you're more of a player that just likes to wait until Imperial age to attack and his mass units together the infantry and elephants will probably have more appeal the main trick at any level is just working around your weak archery range and Navy meaning you'll have to be a bit creative sometimes in dealing with units like the Mameluke Genoese crossbowmen or on the water those are just my thoughts on the burmese though thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Spirit Of The Law

Views: 404,608

Rating: 4.9463215 out of 5

Keywords: age of empires II, aoe2, aoc, aoehd, strategy game (genre), burmese, arambai

Id: jBuUieb_0_I

Length: 22min 36sec (1356 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks so much!

[u/laguardia528]

I feel like he undervalued the free lumber upgrades just a bit, it’s more than just not having to spend the res to research them, there’s also the research time saved and no delay the moment you age up, which absolutely snowballs your wood eco.

[u/urge_boat]

Solid video, just bought the expansions and I'll have to keep all this in mind crunching thru the 'new' civs

[u/LadiesAndMentlegen]

Even after nerfs I feel that they are one of the best civs in the game. Even if they were nerfed further they would still be among the best civs in the game by virtue of their design. Every one of their bonuses and unique techs synergizes with the other and is incredibly useful in the current metagame. They have a fast, cheap (until the last patch), and incredibly hard hitting unique unit that only grows stronger the more of them you make. This unit alone could honestly carry them but they do so many other things well that playing against them is completely unpredictable. This is my favorite civ just because of the simple fact that I like winning haha.

[u/GetADogLittleLongie]

I'm glad Burmese got nerfed. It was crazy how strong howdah was. 320 shots basically made them into rams in terms of how much arrow fire they soaked up vs archers.

[u/notnorther]

does the +6 atk bonus v buildings also work vs rams? idk i might be mistaken but iirc that tech allowed arambia kill rams very effectively

[u/Frere-Jacques]

Bad time to upload the video given the Arambai cost was just increased. Still some interesting points though