All About Hill Bonuses | Aoe2

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Day 23 of 30! Hope this helped clear some stuff about hills and hill bonuses. 1 week left for april!

[@RealAmnz]

great video hera! really looking forward to your "So you want to play Chinese" vid :)

[@atthadassi835]

Lovely content! :)

[@OniUnleashed]

Always entertaining! I'm surprised you didn't mention some of the in game applications and it's importance in treb wars when protecting castles. That could be a great video all by itself, now that i think about it.

[@El3andro]

Great video! What about cliffs? Aren't they acting like hills as well?

[@unimportantcommenter4356]

What about Hidden Bonuses? Are they affected by Hill Bonus?

[@devagr]

Hera turned into SoTL, SoTL turned into a caster. I'd make a joke here, but tbh it's great to see people in aoe2 community stepping out of their comfort zones.

[@PatataMaxtex]

Imagine now, there would be a caster turnin into a pro-player...Nili: "Hold my sugar water"

[@akapbhan]

Wonder if T90Official will become 2K+ player to complete the circle

[@R3stor]

@@akapbhan new month will Hera be caster, SoTL will be progamer and T90 will do math videos

[@rusael333]

i wanna hear the joke

[@Adam-fs4sx]

@@akapbhan As of writing this, there are only 107 players between him and 2k players on the ladder.

[@MentalMadness58]

I really would love to see a "How to mangonel". I always end up losing Mango fights and just never use them. Same goes for monkas.

[@nemes1s_aoe]

+1 some thumb-rules would help

[@Valkaneer]

My issue is how to defend your mango's without the mango's wiping out your own army.

[@thomazcallado]

I learned 2 things. The mangonel trick and that the hill bonus don't apply to building vs building. Thanks Hera

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

You are welcome!

[@ZeCantaloupe]

Also with buildings; it's very important to build defenses on hills as that'll greatly reduce trebuchet damage!

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Yes agreed!

[@Crushnaut]

The full difference becomes 125/75 = 1.666 or +66.6%. As far as bonuses go, that is a big difference. Take an archer for example. With 4 base attack, adding fletching, bodkin, and bracer gives +3 attack. So a base archer versus a fully upgraded archer is 7/4 = 1.75 or +75%. Fighting with a hill bonus is nearly the same as all three upgrades.

[@peterjordan5947]

I've never watched your vids before. You're an excellent teacher. Very simple and clear explanation, even more impressive as English is not your first language. Thanks much appreciated.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Wow thanks man! Welcome to the channel

[@Valkaneer]

Well, he is from Canada, so English in Canada is either their first language or an almost first language unless you live in Quebec. French is the mother tongue of about 7.2 million Canadians (20.6 percent of the Canadian population, second to English at 56 percent) according to Census Canada 2016. - Wikipedia. I take it the other 23.4% is mostly First Nation, right Hera? I lived right next to Sarnia for years (Port Huron), so us Michiganders get called Canadians frequently when in other states (half my sentences end with *eh*), and ppl from the Upper Peninsula REALLY sound like Canadians.

[@anmolagnihotri3130]

VIVI in 2018 : I NO PIG SOTL in 2020 : I NO JOB

[@LokirofRoriksted]

the deleted mangonel killed the other mangonel on the hill because her spirit was on its way to heaven, being at an even higher ground

[@beardookeashley3946]

I didn't know tower vs tower had no hill bonus. Totally worth the video!!!!!!

[@Odium1002]

Awesome content, most interesting of course was the delete Mangonel thing.

[@Jameshazfisher]

The snowball effect you mentioned is "Lanchester's square law". Spirit of the Law made an awesome video analyzing it.

[@KutaphoneX]

This video was extremely useful, I was searching the way how it works for days :)

[@alexgalleguillos4467]

I love this Hera of the Law videos

[@Gui101do]

Watch out Spirit of the Law! Hera is coming for you, brother!

[@tobiasechwald3058]

now t90 just needs to become a pro and its gone full circle

[@nemes1s_aoe]

Nili : Am I a joke to you?

[@maximilianmusterhans4659]

t90 sucks at the game. Never going to happen.

[@lamegamer4607]

@@maximilianmusterhans4659 Yeah 2k voobly means you suck at the game -_-

[@buckbuckleyson2259]

just needs better farm micro to beat viper

[@tkzsfen]

Hi, Spirit :D One question - I've many casters and players complain from the pathing in DE. What exactly is worse compared to the previous patches?

[@edwardblom2661]

tkzsfen New patch was way better than the previous patches at least. Previous ones made you able to walk through walls and destroyed the path finding. New patch is pretty ok, it’s not perfect but I don’t think it ruined anything.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Well it gets slightly better each patch. Basically melee units just dont hit sometimes when ur trying to surround an army of ranged units. Its why civs like britons and mayans got even more popular now

[@burck6113]

Hera does these videos to show people about common combat scenarios from a pro player's perspective so you can use the information the way others do. Spirit does very thorough experiments to find out all the little details and present them to you to use however you want. It's 2 different styles and both work well.

[@gearben7553]

Hera you missed one scenario: Do units apply less damage when attacking a building uphill (and more when downhill?)

[@antoinelion7654]

Hera stated : No hill bonuses buildings vs buildings otherwise hill bonuses are involved. So your answer would be : yes they do apply less damage to building from downhill (vice versa) Hence put your caslte on higher ground to reduce damage taken from trebs.

[@nemes1s_aoe]

@@antoinelion7654 but he hasn't stated that for any case beyond those featured in this video. Maybe he would like to test it before commenting. Please don't quote him out of context.

[@xericicity]

What about a tower shooting at the archer that is on a hill? I assume it does -25% dmg even though the tower looks to be shooting from higher up?

[@edwardblom2661]

I’m pretty sure he only said buildings VS buildings. Take trebs for example, a siege UNIT, it does extra damage if it’s on a hill vs a castle. Or a men at arm beating a palisade downhill, they do bonus damage. Same vs towers, bonus applies.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

If i didnt specify that it would be an exception then it works like normal. I showed all the exceptions i know about

[@parthn-musicforwork4789]

Hera of the law!

[@SurvivalistAoE]

I'm pretty sure that the towers do 1 damage when fighting on hills because they have 5 attack and 7 pierce armour, so it gets rounded to 1. The reason it was doing 6 when the xbow was garrisoned was because extra arrows have a +5 bonus against stone defense (stone walls and towers).

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Hmm perhaps, idea still remains though that hills dont change damage output

[@SurvivalistAoE]

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 This is true in feudal age tower vs tower wars, but technically speaking, hills do affect towers, it's just that the towers do less than 1 damage since they have 7 pierce armour, so the damage is rounded up to 1. If you do the test with a guard tower with fletching on the high ground and a watch tower on the low ground, you'll see that it sometimes does 2 damage. The damage calculation is: (attackerAttack - defenderDefense) * hillBonus -> (8 - 7) * 1.25 -> 1 * 1.25 = 1.25 Basically, if the defender's defense is greater than or equal to the attacker's attack, then the hill bonus will be multiplied by 0, which we all know will always equal 0. The game always rounds damage less than 1, to 1. Extra arrows will always do 5 damage to towers, and units regardless of upgrades and hill bonus (they do 1 damage to non stone defense buildings).

[@fakepivot]

Hera of the Law :D love it!!!

[@WebaaTheFirst]

Yo hello hera, i heard a few days ago on another youtube channel you're one of the best AOE players so i thought i might check out your channel too. I think you sound very symphatic and have a nice way explaining things :) gonna leave you a sub dude!

[@LJL85]

Spirit of the Hera

[@nemes1s_aoe]

Would like to see examples of taking uphill fights when having counter units or fighting counter units when having a hill. Most commonly xbow vs skirm. Recently say your Ethiopians deathball vid in which you engaged mbl's skirms as you had the hill and faster firing xbows.

[@taowroland8697]

The snowball effect is known as Lanchesters law.

[@Daxter250]

hera being a teacher once again. when he was talking about towers i was like: c'mon man, i know what will happen. no need to chew on the hill bonus again. hera: nope. me: what nope? the tower on top will do more damage than the one below. hera: NOPE. watch the vid! me "watching the vid": ...WHAT THE FUCK?! even though i already knew the mangonel trick and how hill bonuses are used, the tower fight was new for me. even veterans can learn something from his tutorials!

[@rustcohle3088]

hey hera regarding mangonels in one of your recent vids you deleted mangonel to destroy multiple enemy mangonels (i think it was vs MBL) you said you did that to increase spread of mangonel shot. how does that work ? i never heard of it before does it increase spread of shot even while shoting uphill ?

[@Nadie-mb4vw]

its not to increase spread. Its complicated, but the simple version is when a range unit dies while his shot its still on air, all bonuses and penalties are nullified when the shoot lands. So if you are shooting your mangonel uphill against an enemy mangonel, you delete it before it lands so the hit so wont take uphill penalty.

[@hansoskar1911]

two things happen here. usually Mangonels deal dmg in an area but the dmg is lower the farther you go from the center. so if you dont hit the other Mangonel perfectly if will survive on a few hp. if the Mangonel dies before the shot hits is will deal full dmg to the entire area and you also get rid of hill penalties and bonuses.

[@rustcohle3088]

@@hansoskar1911 thanks

[@JK-bw8of]

I nearly finished my 30 days of thumbs up. I've already given 23 so only 7 to go!

[@SamuelHallEngland]

And there was me thinking hills would give you extra range XD! I also suppose Viking infantry could fight well uphill, perhaps also Japanese, but in general it's better to reposition yourself before those fights.

[@Finnatese]

When I played this game as a kid, I had no idea there was such a thing as hill bonus haha, I probably barely even paid attention to hills in general

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Hahaha well thats classic, trust me it was the same for me!

[@steveown7991]

Hera reminds me so much of my chemistry teacher back in school, after showing us a reaction. "Woah what happened here?!" xD

[@daarom3472]

Keep the content coming man. One request from me: could you do a vid on villager pathing/choices after they build a TC or mill/camp. For instance I noticed in HD villagers prefer stone over gold if you build a mining camp just in between. With a TC they prefer gold over wood. If you build it next to wood, what trees do they prefer? Maybe co-op with Spirit!

[@Ahrim565]

i think they get to the resources closest to them when finish the building

[@derekrambo]

Hera is my favorite AOE player. Thanks for sticking with the frequent KZbin uploads. 👍

[@Pyc_Andy]

Derek Rambo my favorite is Donnie O’Sullivan

[@derekrambo]

@@Pyc_Andy is he on twitch?

[@pedro_pinheiro]

Snowballing = Exponential growth. #FlattenTheCurve

[@TDPCMcpho]

Hera is the hill bonus calculated based on the attacking unit's position when the shot was fired, or where the unit is when the shot lands? I understand if the attacking unit is deleted, the shot doesn't have a unit to 'remember' but during tight mango wars on the side of a hill, does microing my mango uphill field less risk? I don't just want to know if I can save my unit by collecting a hill defence after their shot has already been let loose, but also to help predict where my opponent might want to micro their units when I'm attack grounding. Great content! We love you Hera

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

i believe where its fired from

[@StefanoTommasini]

Mystery solved! Thanks Hera

[@tylerfehr7883]

"I'm talking today about hill bonuses, yes! Hill bonuses"

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

I mean the sentence goes on. U try talkig to urself and see how that sounds buddy

[@tylerfehr7883]

​@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 111111111 it's cute KappaPride

[@IanMainBliss]

Hey woah now.. how did you use the editor/play so you could switch teams like that?!?!?!

[@SuperskinnyBLS]

Very useful video, thank you my friend

[@brokentombot]

Ok no one seems have thought of this question: Do bonuses get applied times the hill bonus? Say a halb pokes a knight uphill versus a pike pokes a knight uphill. Does the bonus just do the normal bonus damage and the basic damage is multiplied or does it get the hill bonus?

[@Lexcommentyoutube]

Hera nice vid to start off :) But I think you're wrong with the hill bonus for towers they do get a hill bonus being applied to their damage, it's just not coming into effect in this case. Towers have 7 perice armour (from what I tested) so the tower is doing 5-7=-2 damage which cause aoe gets put up to the minimum 1 damage. So even with the hill bonus (5-7)*1.25=-2.5 it's still less than 1 so it still gets put up to 1. However if you get a watch tower with bracer or a guard tower with fletching it becomes 8-7= 1 damage and with hill bonus you get (8-7)*1.25=1.25 damage and so every 4 shots it deals 2 damage, so the hill bonus is effecting it (far more major with keeps with arrow slits and bracer). So as long as the damage delt by something is less then 1 hill bonus doesn't do anything as it just gets put up to 1 irrelivant of how much smaller than 1 the damage actually is. More importantly it seems hill bonus is calculated after armour but before bumping negative damage up to 1. So for things like shooting rams hill bonus doesn't matter since the hill bonus is applied before the damage is rounded to positive 1 not after so you still get 1 damage rather than 1.25. As for the 6 damage, bonus arrows from buildings get rounded up to 5 damage against buildings and I guess this is applied after hill bonus as well.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Hmm interesting. Well you are probably right. I hope my explanation allbeit wrong can still showcase that in feudal hills dont affect the damage output

[@Lexcommentyoutube]

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 haha yeah it is a bit of an irrelivant point, since tower v tower rarely happens into late castle age. But maybe something to note :) Although that the hill bonus won't effect archers v rams is a good thing to know

[@ryanforgo3500]

i came here for one question, does hell bonus apply to "bonus damage" calculations ? so does a helberdier do over 40 bonus damage with it or no ? nvm i just went in and tested it for heblerdiers and yes it does. "48 dmg to hussars when helberdier is uphell and 28 when downhell" this is interesting because it also means counter units "such as canoneers" care about hell bonuses MORE than anything else.

[@SCDJMU]

Hera should you use patrol or attack? Lot of people say patrol but it has a delay, which attack move does not! It's driving me crazy i can't find a reliable answer

[@StevenYu82]

May I ask how to switch between teams? 2 window? And how about Tatars' bonus? I am not sure how it works. "Hill" bonus from 25% to 50%? "Height" bonus? (+25% at map like highland?)

[@cubsguaco]

when a building is placed partially on a hill and partially on "flat" is it considered on a hill or on flat when attacking/being attacked from the flat?

[@mellowsunset7730]

The hills have eyes

[@magiking96]

Hera, what happens if I place a Castle on a one tile hill? The hill won't cover the whole castle but does the hill bonus apply or not? Thanks as always for the videos. You are a true hero

[@RomaInvictusSPQR]

just 1 tile of the castel has to be on the hill, then hill bonus counts

[@magiking96]

@@RomaInvictusSPQR Thanks!!

[@lavitzthejadedragoon]

Good day, I am curious, although it would be ill advised, does the deleting trick also work with other ranged units such as crossbows or scorpions?

[@nemes1s_aoe]

I think it will work mathematically but practically its of no use as the delete trick is only useful when you can take out equal number of opponent units by deleting equal number of your own units while your own units were going to die anyway from the enemy's attack. If you do it with 1 crossbow, you're only affecting the damage output of it's one shot which probably isn't going to be enough to kill any unit in the game unless of course its a very low HP enemy unit but that kind of micro to check HPs is not done really. Players basically do this trick only with mangonels/onagers but may do it vs other armies such as crossbow when they know they have only one shot and want to make it count.

[@theofabregue6407]

What about the other "hill" the onethat block path and doesn't seem to be upper ?

[@Turbo_TechnoLogic]

Works the same way with ships as well I guess? Like with other land units

[@chispun2]

What about line of sight? It should get bonus for that

[@Lohabquas]

Someone tell Skinny that Malay is the best civ in the game

[@BenjaminNeyse]

Great video!

[@brokentombot]

It's sad that someone has to explain something so simple. Gamers worldwide, revolt! We are not braindead! We are not braindead!

[@RomaInvictusSPQR]

woud also be interesting, that clifs give you +25% atack but didnt minimize enemy atack

[@RolfReibach]

Do a top 20 tier list of pro active AOE II players, please. who is better? 18k boi or silverboi?

[@Poseidon6363]

Do hills give you more firing distance?

[@mosatsoni4324]

Ehh what about castles on hills vs trebs?

[@zakv5057]

To clarify, the hill bonus is added after damage reduction from armor happens correct? @hera

[@mrlove1528]

As far as I can tell, yes. So: (attacking damage - defending armour) * hill bonus = effective damage

[@blakdfje]

Nice video!

[@MajidHASH]

Why you no take facebook money, Also goo Hera goo Hera goo!!!!

[@bluestar0303]

hypee

[@edwardblom2661]

Hera, you forgot about cliffs ;-) like will a cliff or a hill win the bonus damage???

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

This video is only for hills. I dont know exactly how cliffs work so i omitted them

[@SM-bb4hx]

@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 , You get only the attack boost from cliff. No defense boost is there. Also it is for only ranged units vs ranged units (archers,siege) because cliffs are obstacle.

[@ensarunal901]

Good guide

[@peterpeterpeter2226]

hey hera. hope you're doing good my friend

[@ahmxtb]

It would be better if you customized attack to 100, and made knight hp 1000. You could observe decimal precision.

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Ur righttt. How do i do that? Im new to map editor

[@muhittincankorkut6094]

What about tatars?

[@R3stor]

You probably should have mentioned Tatar's bonus

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

I actually wanted to but forgot :/

[@toboalpha_drums]

8:56 really? :))) its so clear

[@humanbass]

I was expecting some tartar bonus demo, leacivng disappointed.

[@nemes1s_aoe]

+1 what's the actual math? 25% more multiplicative (56.25% bonus attack) or additive (50% bonus attack)?

[@16Gym]

i think the delete trick is going to get patched soon, its definitely a bug

[@CptSquirrel]

it has been on for a pretty long time...

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

Been there for 20 years and going strong

[@Alxoholiker]

Would you please stop it? This guy wants to help noobies to get better in this game, and you have nothing more to do, to compare him to spririt. Just shut it. If you want Spirit go on spirits channel and support him. End of the story.

[@Biggun3567]

lol mangonel cheats

[@BartJBols]

No starwars "high ground" meme as video thumbnail... downvoted

[@HeraAgeofEmpires2]

1111 missed opportunity tbh

[@rogerwilco2]

Slow down a little. You talk i these bursts that make you articulate poorly and makes it harder to understand you. Nice video though.