Why cannon galleons do +4 vs mamelukes

[@Thescott16]

Now we know why Mamelukes cost so much gold; to make up the salaries it took to code them.

[@satyakisil9711]

Meanwhile mangudai started out as broken and remains broken to this day.

[@SIGNOR-G]

@@satyakisil9711 like the real history counterpart

[@ethanpappas2502]

@@satyakisil9711 Well its one of the Mongols only good late game tools and has a stupidly long creation time, so I think its fine as it is.

[@theclipclipper]

Also it costs a lot to carry enough scimitars to throw at your enemies.

[@CragHack]

@@ethanpappas2502 One of the only? They don't need more than one to be strong, do they? Especially if it's that good. 😂 In fact, they actually have one more, their Hussars have extra HP. Combined with Mangudai they form one of the best late game compositions in the game. Oh, and they have another one. Unique tech making their siege faster, another key component to an already OP late game composition. Mongols are a late game powerhouse.

[@StriKe_jk]

I love game development backstories like this.

[@wingshad0w00982]

Man age 2 is such a wild mess of programming at this point. I love these kinds of stories that appear after 20-+ years of existing. I love it

[@michalsturc7063]

It's called technical debt and it's beautiful.

[@edwardblom2661]

And somehow the devs seem to remember it all still… crazy

[@XzMondayNightzX]

"I don't know why." - A Random Randy Camels are Boats. - An AoE2 Andy

[@emmettraymond8058]

"A rat has self tamed" - Also a Random Randy

[@firockfinion3326]

I think this is easily my favorite SOTW thumbnail so far. XD

[@CULatte]

Thanks, kind of puts into perspective how complicated things can get when you want to implement something new

[@robbylava]

I might have to start saying "bonapodes" in everyday conversation.

[@michaelblosenhauer9887]

I wish we got a daily dose of Spirit of the Law.

[@BigPapaKaiser]

GRANTED.

[@JamesonHuddle]

Nice follow up, thanks spirit

[@Daxter250]

all those bonus damage types get a bit more complicated than they should be i feel. at the end it doesnt matter much anymore what the stats of your unit are, and more what your hidden bonus damages for certain unit types are (which you cannot look up ingame).

[@Ymgarl]

Even without the bonus damage, there's way too much nuance to the way units interact and play out for the stats to be a useful way to judge units: Knights and crossbows for example don't have much bonus, but comparing their stats together really doesn't tell you much at all.

[@RKBock]

well, they had 3 options: 1) no bonus damages, just one dmg and armor class. result: all units are very similar, stuff like "rams are secretly op unit against everything" will crop up everywhere. 2) display dmg and armortype everywhere. might be doable (like in warcraft 3), but most likely would lead to clutter and confusion 3) what they did

[@dojelnotmyrealname4018]

I think it's important to remember this is a 23 year old game. A lot of this is technical limitations as well as design choices. All in all, the bonus damage does a lot to help the devs make sure that counter units actually counter what they're intended to without having to make the numbers absurd in the backgroud. If you focus on the details it can be overwhelming but if you go back to the point of "Halberdiers counter Cavalry despite the listed attack value" it's a lot clearer. In short, read the tooltips and don't worry too much about the details.

[@mennymoto]

@@dojelnotmyrealname4018 yeah, in the original game there were no such things as "skirmishers do 33% more bonus damage starting from castle age", and simply introducing civilizations without cavalry made necessary several changes in the combat system.

[@VK-sz4it]

@@RKBock It is possible to do classes that are easy to understand intuitively. And they should tell about benefits, not weaknesses. For example camel class has bonus vs cav, polearm class has bonus vs cav, armored has 50% dr on top of dt, gunpowder negates "armored" bonus. Conquistador would be armored, gunpowder, non-mele cav.

[@vicu_ducky]

The strangest thing is that cannon galleons do no bonus damage against camels, while doing bonus damage against almost everything else

[@suddenllybah]

do they get anti-boat bonus damage?

[@vicu_ducky]

@@suddenllybah No, but they do bonus damage against infantry, cavalry, archers, siege, and buildings; plus Mamelukes of course

[@kirklandcig5513]

To survive in the desert, camels evolved over eons to have humps on their back, and kevlar plating on their sides. This is to protect them against their natural predator; the Toyota pickup truck.

[@Weldedhodag]

They should though, I don't think camels are very good at living with their legs blown off by a mass of hot iron

[@peterpeterson4800]

Well, it's of course because camels and ships used to have the same armor class.

[@apopet]

That's what I thought when I saw the last video, that the explanation would be something along those lines. I had already noticed a similar thing with the Cataphract-Condottiero duo: the latter has some added infantry armor to counter the anti-infantry attack of the hand cannoneers, which would then negate part of the Cataphract's own anti-infanty damage. The appropriate difference that would restore things for the Cataphract is added as anti-Condottiero damage.

[@Binarokaro]

I had no idea that boars have siege armour. I guess that means rams have a pretty strong matchup against them then

[@khamulthewack4732]

Honestly, I feel like a fun way to make the Saracens more competitive would be to remove a lot of the bonus damage that goes towards mamelukes. It would be cool if they were one of those civs that could/ should rely on their unique unit a lot from the castle age onwards.

[@Tocaraca]

Hell no. The unit is already broken en masse

[@mbvglider]

Mamelukes are one small buff away from being completely broken. I don't know how you make a unit like that be viable in small numbers without making them be impossible to counter when massed.

[@whydoyougottahavthis]

It's my favorite unit and I only play AOC but admittedly the gold cost makes it almost undoable. It's nearly 100gold per unit essentially, when going for Mammylukes I have to give up on either a lot of techs or lean entirely into just two or three units. I admittedly give myself extra gold just to buy Mammylukes cause otherwise I'd rarely be logically going for them. I even tried to suggest an OP upgrade where they dual weilded skimmys and could engage hand to hand or longer range. Also let's be honest, their attack is weak.

[@jordivermeulen2519]

Saracens have already really moved away from "that meme market civ" to just a very well-rounded civ without many weaknesses. They're plenty strong already, and don't need a buff.

[@LeicaFleury]

@@mbvglider Just go full TK. You will never kill mamelukes but they will never kill your TKs either. Edit: I'm just kidding by the way

[@demiserofd]

A brief linguistic sidebar, Boni would actually NOT be correct, despite that being a Latin conjugation. The trouble is that in Latin, Bonus is an adjective, while in english, it's a noun; not only that, they have completely different meanings! Bonus(the adjective) in Latin means 'good', as in, 'a good thing'. You wouldn't tell someone you're getting a good! The latin word that actually does come closest in meaning to the english word is 'Bonum', which would instead conjugate in plural to 'bona'. Because bonus in english has a completely different meaning to bonus in latin, despite having a Latin origin, and despite having identical lettering to the latin word, it would be conjugated using english rules, as 'Bonuses'. Conjugating it as 'Boni' would be roughly like conjugating the plural of 'Fart' as 'Farter', just because Fart means Speed in Swedish, and you pluralize in Swedish by adding 'er'. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[@maskofketer]

Hello, thank you for the TED talk. I just had a few nitpicks that I had w/ your explanation, so here's my own TED talk: 'Bonus' is an adjective in Latin. As you said, it means 'good'. The adverbial version of bonus in Latin is 'bene', which means 'well'. Latin has grammatical gender, so adjectives have to match the gender of the noun they modify. The masculine singular for 'good' in Latin is 'bonus' while its plural is 'boni'. 'Bonum' is the neuter (neutral) singular form for 'good' used for neuter gender nouns, equivalent to nouns in English that use the inanimate pronoun 'it'. The plural for 'bonum' is 'bona'. For completion's sake, the feminine singular is 'bona' and the plural is 'bonae'. Technically, Latin adjectives/nouns also have to take on different forms depending on what role the noun is supposed to fulfill in the sentence/clause (declension, similar to conjugation for verbs), but English has dropped that system in favor of relying on word order (w/ the exception of personal pronouns which still have different forms for subject v. object (e.g. 'he' vs 'him')), so we mainly default to using the subject (nominative) form of foreign words. There are words in English that have a plural form based on how they're pluralized in their original language, like how 'data' is the plural of 'datum' (Latin), how 'genera' is the plural of 'genus' (Latin), or how 'theses' is the plural of 'thesis' (Latin transliteration of the original Greek). The inclusion of 'bonipodes' is clearly a joke based on the debated pluralization of 'octopus' in English, which, despite its '-us' ending typical for Latin words, is actually from Greek and would be 'octopodes' based on the original instead of the Latinesque 'octopi'. Alternatively, one could use the English 'octopuses'. Most of these original plurals for Latin words in English is just a result of Latin's historical status as an international prestige language, w/ English plurals cropping up over time that either replace or exist alongside their original plurals in standard English (e.g. 'indexes' vs. 'indices', 'antennas' vs 'antennae', or 'cactuses' vs 'cacti'). While we could use 'boni' instead of 'bonuses' (like how 'nuclei' is the standard plural for 'nucleus'), it simply isn't the standard for English speakers, since most use 'bonuses' and not 'boni'. Often times, how the language is actually written and spoken is what defines what is correct, or more accurately, standard for that language. Thank you for coming to my TED talk about your TED talk.

[@MadnessTW]

I will never understand people who invest so much time into a smartass comment without bothering to inform themselves first. MaskofKeter is correct.

[@demiserofd]

​@@maskofketer Great comment, thanks for the corrections, I was remembering what I learned from many years ago! That said, the one crucial difference between, say, Datum/Data and Bonus/Boni/Bonuses is that Datum/Data have the same meaning in both languages, while Bonus has a completely different meaning in each language.

[@maurocamerini90]

Today in warlords mbl's eagles ate nicov's ballista elephants, now I understad why, great video!

[@raihanrusli2720]

Even the Holy Roman Emperor rose from the grave to give correction 🤣

[@skipperxiv9401]

0:18 "Bonipodes" is now the official plural for "bonus;" I have decreed it

[@demiserofd]

Fun fact, that's actually the correct plural for octopus! Octopus is Greek, and podes is the greek pluralization! But because everyone's thought it was latin for so long, and because it's *also* an english word, it's one of the few words with THREE acceptable plural forms; Octopuses, Octopi, and Octopodes.

[@skipperxiv9401]

@@demiserofd Yep, I actually knew that! That's why I loved the extrapolation of "octapodes" to "bonus" even though it doesn't really track fully lol

[@satyakisil9711]

@@demiserofd that's wrong, the plural of bonus has to be boni, it cannot be bonipodes. Bonipodes can only be applied to creatures or things with physical projections as the word podes means feet. But of course, English is a non-language at best.

[@demiserofd]

@@satyakisil9711 I was talking about octopuses, lol. Or octopi. Or octopodes. The proper plural for Bonus in english is always Bonuses, never boni or bonipodes. Unless you have the unfettered power to decree otherwise, like Skipper XIV above!

[@satyakisil9711]

@@demiserofd well, my point is that boni is a valid word while bonipodes is not. Just that boni is not really used(maybe except in Diablo). The "proper" plural is a matter of naughty semantics (which unfortunately matters in language). Antisemitism might as well refer to opposing Arabs. Intercourse can mean a road crossing or simply traffic. The verb of screenshot can be screenshoot. Being proper wasn't what I was trying to convey.

[@GraniteGhost778]

I can begin my workday happy now.

[@shujinkoMK]

I mean, a camel taking a canon ball to the face would hurt a lot

[@hbarudi]

Even with the bonus damage, it takes a lot to kill the fully upgraded 130 hp on the mamlukes where an army of them beats the campaigns very easily with a little struggle in saladin #6. An army of mamlukes beats anything except ELITE teutonic knights.

[@ahmedsaeedmob771]

You get cav archers against those TKs. Against AI in aoc, whenever i was matched against teutons i had fun teching into cav archers and microing them to destroy tks. That was fun

[@gletscherminze9372]

@@ahmedsaeedmob771 Honestly a lot of campaigns (the older ones) give you options to go for CA because they are so cost effective against most melee units. And the AI doesnt adapt and throws tons of units at them that just die. I even went for goth cav archers at some point

[@hbarudi]

cav archers, yes there is always the full tech tree archery range that sarecens enjoy, but I am commenting about how great mamlukes are and can defeat all but 1 unit in the game and they have options to deal with that 1 unit.

[@unusual9026]

Daily dose of AOE2 trivia 😂 spot on. Thank you SotL.

[@josephfisher5833]

SOTL: "bonapodes" Me: "Huzzah! A man of QUALITY!"

[@Davtwan]

Man, imagine if they still didn’t have the space for new armor types.

[@ericquiabazza2608]

Interesting So it all comes back to very OLD decicions and balances made that needed to be kept to today in round about ways to get over its old round abaout way that was meant for limitations. This is a clear example of spaghetti coding and how developments sometimes need a complete rewrite as new technologies made previous improvisations unecesary, yet, the spaghetti is kept sometimes, where it for maintaining the structure of the product or just hinability or lack of resources by part of the coders. Same happens with story writing and art, sometimes you just have to star all over so the thing looks better and WORKS better. Make me also wonder how manny other of this earlier decision have to be spaghetti once again to kept the perception of the game as similary as posible. And i wonder how a complete rewriting would afect balance, small details and even performance.

[@eristaviserbia]

Well, this is the first time I've been early to a Spirit of the Law video.

[@ms9001]

the bigger question is why does mameluke's sword starts flying before it even starts to swinging?

[@Oakenlix]

That's 10000 hours of practice for you

[@jordivermeulen2519]

Same with Mangudai. They shoot before they've notched an arrow!

[@satyakisil9711]

No frame delay. The time to "aim" before firing is set to zero in certain units. Like mangonels which shoots even when the lever is not fully swung. Of course, this only works with the first shot. The subsequent shots are impacted by the "reload time".

[@HazmanFTW]

1:44 hey guys did you hear? We're ships of the desert. shut up and keep moving

[@SilverMaxy]

1:44 also add a note that they can moonwalking on the desert

[@FizzleFX]

Trivia? This is a literal core mechanic you have to know to understand why you go 99:0 !

[@felixstep2066]

Those things that you share with us, it's like a weird thing, because those facts are not that useful, but still, at least in my case, wakes up my curiosity and I have a lot of interest, precisely, in the last video I got a Question about why the cannon galleon has +4 against Mamelukes, and honestly I was thinking about some werid as factor like Mamelukes have a secret +0 building armour or something like that. I really appreciate those kinda weird facts

[@timii072]

I think it deserves its owm video

[@derikaem8021]

interesting. now i can also see why ballistas perform a bit worse against eagles than i wouldve expected

[@Reaper_03-01]

The eyes on that thumbnail though.

[@ivan55599]

Coders had surely interesting times when thinking about different armor/attack types...

[@helllife0210]

A question i never asked myself but now i need the answer

[@ValerietheLovelyDeadlyItalian]

Lol the lil cannon galleon eyes

[@gletscherminze9372]

Are you that guy I always notice in T90s chat?

[@davidgood840]

I'm just here because of the hilarious thumbnail 😆

[@SamSGLM]

Getting high on this much aoe2 trivia

[@hugovanpayns9557]

You got a like, just for the thumbnail.

[@davidfuller581]

I mean, I thought that it was just "because we can, that's why"

[@APIEngineering]

You guys, I need help. I was messing around with Advanced Genie Ed, and wanted to make gray look a little more visible. Well, I screwed up, and now, in game, Green team looks orange when I actually look at it on the game map, (mini map they look normal green), and Orange team looks green. Somehow, I messed the colors around under that color tab. Does anyone know a page on the internet somewhere where it lists the defeault color numbers? EDIT: I fixed it, I just restored on of my BAK files, back to before I messed with the colors. I wish there was a mod with a better gray color, maybe a slightly blueish greenish gray?

[@hansenhartono7426]

Hey, Spirit of the Law. Do you have plan to continue AoE vs History series?

[@kwdblade4683]

Sheep too OP, nerf now.

[@ahmedsaeedmob771]

I recently played the aoe2 beta in that game with some skin and stat differences the Saracen mameluke unit is an infantry with cavalry armour, i believe that's why mamelukes were classified as both cavalry and infantry. In an earlier beta the mameluke doesn't exist but a unit with the same skin exists as dervish, can't remember the stats, as i think its only in scenario editor, but i think thats where the mameluke started in aoe2.

[@anirbanchatterjee4794]

As a software engineer in this field I can ensure that, the main limitation is the changing of legacy code. By legacy I guess known people know that how difficult is it to change something that is working for the past15 years. So yeah I can surely say that the reason for not changing code is backward compatibility

[@ericquiabazza2608]

I will put it more into fidelity to old decicions, even improvise and bad ones. One can only wonder if thing was rewriten correctly a over how manny of this little mixes will change gamplay, performance and balance

[@hamzaboss100]

Agree which is also hard to test, since it introduces hidden cases that QA(testers) can miss (example in the video).

[@loganfong2911]

Except AOE II DE is the third iteration of the same game and they didn't bother to rewrite the code from ground up.

[@Falcon0BR]

Dota 2 is a remake with new and improved code, it was hard to code the perks of the original game, but they did it much better then it is much easier to code the game right now

[@TheKobasen]

"Camel and spear line deals more damage to mameluke to balance things out." Isn't mameluke already balanced by having the highest gold cost of non siege unit? Is mameluke really that powerful?

[@sauravtripathi4128]

Yes the Mameluke is a real deal. You cannot beat it with Infantry, Cavalry, Skirmishers or Siege. Cavalry Archers can be overwhelmed by Cavalry and are hard countered by Siege and Skirmishers.

[@John_C.]

I am suffering from insomnia at the moment... so I came here.

[@CrnaStrela]

Hmmmm suspiciously a lot of mameluk contents, incoming updated Saracens civs overview?

[@abdallahyoussefahmedzahran3837]

Hi there , I'm Abdullah youssef Ahmed , from Egypt , I want to ask you a question , what is the best site that could help me to download age of empires II definitive edition dynasties of india for free , and I will be very grateful for you.

[@RichyArg]

now the real question, is, althought it's from a civilization that hails from egypt/the levant/arabia, why is it that the mameluke rides a bactrian camel, which isn't native to those regions? while central asian countries have dromedary camels, which are not native there either

[@0pvo0]

Are you a trivia channel now?

[@lucasrobin2788]

Because camels are allergic to cannonballs next question

[@VRichardsn]

So this is why Heated Shot did what it did.

[@bare_bear_hands]

Because anything other than giving every single unit type a specific armor type isn't industry standard.

[@JamesFodor]

This game is so weird... I love it.

[@musAKulture]

they really should have cleaned shit up but the complications just keep piling up...

[@fajarn7052]

Aaaah, so that is why ships strangely enough are vulnerable to pikemen? I always use them against any AI ships that is hugging the shoreline. Is this still in DE?

[@hartmutwaldemar9122]

I alway thought camels and ships had the same armor class was some kind of easter egg. Because camles are consideres as the "ship of the desert".

[@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts]

B O N I P O D E S

[@tizioita]

Massive video

[@ElendilAOE]

You should try casting games like T90

[@Obreten-Obretenov]

"Daily dose of AoE trivia" would allow one to assume that such daily dose exists. Therefore it would harm many people if sotl doesn't post daily...

[@nicklindberg90]

Sometimes you just need to send a message

[@EveloGrave]

Should this stay in the game? Considering reporting it now that you made this video, never noticed this interaction.

[@bmqww223]

nice video, it would be great to see you cover other rts like rise of nation , there are much of analysis to be done at that game with lots of civilizations and units.

[@Dan0Dead0Or0Alive]

Why isn’t the game called AGES Of Empire since there are multiple ages to research?

[@jordivermeulen2519]

Because there's only one Imperial Age.

[@resurgam_b7]

It's an armor and attack bonus matryoshka doll 😂

[@ny_teotc]

pikeman jesus

[@andreashummelshjj.8165]

"Bonipodes" rofl Latin: Bonus, boni English: Bonus, bonusses But ... english doesn't have -us as a (proper) ending, so I'm going with boni. As for "octopodes" ... I'm going with octopi or oktopodes. I mean, mixing english and russian just looks messy, right? Or latin and greek, in this case.

[@rafsan1578]

Because the mamlukes takes damage from everybody. The programmers wanted to make mamlukes weak, so....

[@Gaius__]

Hehe, +1 bonus against each other, not themselves. I really hope there are no self-harming units in AoE 😁

[@Oakenlix]

Petards...

[@mekelius]

Bonipodes 😂. I'd subscribe a 2nd time just for that joke if I could.

[@CalmTempest]

Ayy shorter format

[@Ratciclefan]

Oh

[@St3v3NWL]

No, it all doesnt make sense. Give mameluls camel armor class and tweak some armor, hp, damage values. No need to over complicate it

[@traianfilip616]

Are these bonus damages a joke or a mod

[@Lumpy_Peter]

Man, I didn't understand a word.

[@ScudForEver]

Oh! I get it. ... ... ... I don't get it.

[@MCN1212]

The Damage Spears do against Mamelukes seem a bit crazy. Why add the Damage of Cav and Camel 😅

[@Voliharmin]

So the answer is 11? 11

[@abdallahyoussefahmedzahran3837]

Can not could , I'm sorry

[@DYWYPI]

The "podes" plural is from the Greek, so the pronunciation would be "po-deez", like Hercules or Achilles.

[@apopet]

Either way it sounds wrong to my Greek ears :D. Also, the singular should end with -pous, in order for this to make any sense, not just any word in -us.

[@jordivermeulen2519]

I believe it's more like "po-des", like "police" and "destitute".

[@Zeoinx69]

I think Spirit of the Law might be running out of proper topics here...We really need to get him a few new civilizations to break down in an expansion pack

[@Salnax]

He hasn’t even done overviews for every civ, he’s got plenty to work with.

[@Zeoinx69]

@@Salnax Shhhhhhhhh shut up! WE NEED NEW CIVS TO BREAKDOWN IN AN EXPANSION PACK!!! THATS IT!!!

[@project_swift]

He he Bone-i

[@ThisIsMyRoad]

It's very cool and exotic, talking about Mamelukes, yet completely ignoring the Camel in the room, I mean, the Elephant in the room- Mamelukes are not a viable unit regardless the bonuses, we're having an overly theoretical discussion which has little to no relevance in game. Until this single-dimensional ill meta won't be changed, Saracens are still going to be played generically, like every other civ these days, a boom (3/4 TC) and Crossbows. Next on our show- The bonus of Genitours against Siege Towers.

[@kylejenson6607]

This is a useless comment, we aren't talking about the relevance of mamelukes in the game we are talking about the interesting coding behind the scenes that happens to involve the mameluke.

[@ThisIsMyRoad]

@@kylejenson6607 This is lovely, not being sarcastic. But avoiding a real discussion about the current condition of the game strategically makes these all discussions impotent to a greater degree. We can't approach this game intellectually yet dodging any sense of criticism.

[@satyakisil9711]

@@ThisIsMyRoad relevance > meaningfulness. You could have at least phrased your comment better and made it a bit more polite.

[@kylejenson6607]

@@ThisIsMyRoad This video isn't avoiding discussion about the strategy of the game, in truth, its not really talking about the game at all, merely using it as an example.. The relevance of this video outstrips age of empires II entirely. Mamelukes and age of empires II are more coincidental, the main star of the show here is coding and how it worked back in the day. This video can be a jumping off point to discuss all the other RTS games and their quirks such as starcraft and Warhammer III. Really it can look at the success and failures of coding and how a remaster affects it. Your talk of strategy and what not is best left on a video talking about that. This video is looking at history. Your comment is like looking at a history documentary of Rome: its culture and influence and being critical that the documentary isn't talking about the Parthian tactics in detail. The documentary isn't even about Parthia or even tactics, its about so much more.

[@shardulmanohar512]

Second

[@jonasbollesser6592]

What a horrible mess this whole bonus damage system is.

[@satyakisil9711]

Since you mentioned it, plural of bonus is boni, bonipodes is incorrect. If you are thinking about octopus or platypus, the -pus part means foot and the plural would be -podes. Extinct creatures like saurapod use the singular Greek -pod instead of the latin -pus.

[@dinod687]

First

[@scintillam_dei]

See my video "ATHEIST PROPAGANDA in Age of Empires."

[@satyakisil9711]

no

[@garlicohen960]

Wololo

[@VieneLea]

That's a lie! I browsed dozens of your recent videos and not a single one concerns AoE.

[@garlicohen960]

@@VieneLea Narwini

[@blacklabel130]

when i heard about the ship of the desert, imagine if you couldnt use any other units because desert kill your units gradually

[@abdallahyoussefahmedzahran3837]

Why you didn't reply ? I swear that I searched all websites that I could , and all of them don't work better anymore , and some of them don't work completely , I renew my call to you to help me to download this game : AOE2DE:DOI

[@Thought_Criminal]

Second