We need a updated version of this video for DE

Ayyy that elephant fact has returned! And I love that adorable elephant there

So it _does_ make sense that a slacker and procrastinator like me really should prefer the Byzantines

I don't think Byzantines and celts should get the same Cavalry grade. Both miss bloodlines and get paladin, but celts are missing the last armor upgrade, whereas byzantines are missing the less important blast furnace. Further byzantine get a cavalry UU and a bonus for their camels, which celts are lacking entirely.

Why place less weight on economy? I think most people would say that is just as or more important than any military tech advantages.

Just wanted to say that lately I've been rewatching most of your videos. I love how you structure and narrate everything. Also the fact that AoE has so much depth and content makes it great to refresh my knowledge on it. So thank you for putting so much effort into your videos, it doesn't go unnoticed.

Well it'll be fun to watch you re-go through some older civ overviews. I love rewatching them in my pastime. Love the work, effort, humour and enthusiasm you put in all these videos, you're amazing Spirit

I remember those early civ overviews! Thank you for putting these very entertaining and informative videos together. PS: I appreciate the economy grades and overviews too :)

Glad to see someone like u who is still so passionate abt AOE I just found ur channel and loving ur vids

I have been hoping you would make a video like this. Thank you for the early Christmas present!

I fall asleep to you talking, it's really relaxing. Your choice of music is also on point! Good job!

SotL, you've done a lot for this game, which is my all-time favorite! Thank you!

30 sec in and I'm already enjoying, happy and liking the vid. Thanks spirit, you're an awesome helper.

As always, its a great pleasure to see your videos. Thank you very much.

your commitment to being an excellent information provider on the topic of aoe never ceases to impress me, thx spirit. also an interesting idea for a video from my subjective opinion, top civs for cba-since there is quite a large community of cba players out there, anyway, keep up the great work and merry xmas spirit.

Wow, this video is the perfect cherry on the top for your overview series. One of the greatest assets AoE2 has is your amazing mathematical analysis of every minute detaul of the game. I would so love you to make a video sugesting fixes for AoE3 in the re-edition they promised. The game setting for that game is hands down my favorite time period, but they somehow missed the mark on gameplay and balancing. An expert numbers-oriented mind like yours is bound to have tons of sound advise to improve it. I saw a great suggestion video in 'HarvestBuildDestroy' but I'm sure yours can be even more detailed.

The video we have all been waiting for, thanks SOTL.

Oddly enough, I've found myself finding economy bonuses more important when I started playing again recently. Then again, that's partly because I was more of a turtler back in the day and have been trying to pick up the pace since watching your vids.

Hey, I'm about to watch you in the t90 stream. Thanks for your awesome videos and merry Christmas :D

It's always a good day when Spirit uploads a video.

I've really enjoyed you talking about the faction weekesses and how to counter them or exploit them.

Spirit Of The Law, I noticed you played Lords of the Realm 2! It would be great if you could upload some videos. That is a legendary game and one of my all time favorites. I played it nonstop as a kid long ago, and still occasionally play it today. Truly a gem of a game. Another great video, as usual...

Yay now I don't have to go back and look through a bunch of 16 minute videos just for grades. 10/10 will watch again

I would put Byzantine cavalry a little higher just because they have the best Castle Age camels of them all. I feel like that sets off the lack of bloodlines quite a little. Same really counts for siege in which I feel like Siege Rams should be valued much more cause they are so important. I personally think Siege Ram and BBC pull Byzas up to a 6, especially considering Goths and Spanish having a 6 without having siege rams and just generic BBC.

great to see a new vid. go on you do great.

I've not played AoE in a long time but your voice is just soothing

Me: *spends days compiling Spirit's grades into a beautiful spreadsheet* This Video: *exists* YEARS OF ACADEMY TRAINING WASTED

Another great video - I hope that this being your total comparison video doesn’t mean your wrapping up with these!

Great job cocasting with T90 today, Spirit! It was waaay better than the last time! Also, great video as always, of course

I'm a simple man. I see Spirit of the Law's video, I click.

I still think your intro music needs to be apart of all your videos. Love the intro

Merry Christmas!

Best Christmas gift ever!

You've made me go back to playing AOE2. After watching a series of your videos it's just too hard not to play this game again

Felices fiestas, Spirit and all!

Interesting rankings. My fave top 2 are Mongols and Japanese. Based on your latest rankings I want to try out the Persians more.

It would be greatly appreciated an update of this video. BTW I'm a huge fan of your work!

Appreciate the ranking. We can always say the lower overall rankings just mean the civ are more specialized civs, where are the higher rankings mean they are more general. However, general could mean a better late game civ given the amount of options you have, where as specialized civs means you're more likely to be a rush civ. All in all, always appreciate your videos! :D

I just love the Mayans archers and maybe the best economy bonus mix. It just suits my play style and iv always stayed away from Calvary anyway so it’s never been an issue for me.

Very impressive work, well done spirit of the math*

This Video is soo good. Thank you!

A man after my own heart lol, I've literally made spreadsheets like this myself!!

We really need someone like u playing league of legends and making some of those analyses! Very nice video!

I missed your wonderful background music yesterday in t90 24h stream ;)

This is what I've been waiting for

Nice video man

Anyone remember back in the good old days when Teutons had +5 Range on TC?

Merry Christmas :3

i never saw anything other than your AoE2 videos, i didn't know you did Lords of the Realm 2 also

Great video. I hear you talk about how knight rushes are so important, and surely they must be in certain scenarios but I have something to say. I’ve been playing age of empires for well over 13 years and my father even longer, not one single time in my life have I Knight rushed, or played with someone who knight rushes. I’ve played hundreds of multiplayer games and hear of all these must perfect tactics, but only ever see people playing calmly, building up, and enjoying a nice game with large presented battles. Maybe I’m in the wrong crowd and don’t see it often, but...who knows?!

Hey, I know this video is pretty old but this seems like the place. Sometimes in your civ overview videos you show a graph for the civ showing their probability of winning on the Y axis and length of game on the X. I would be forever in your debt if you could make a video either showing them all off or maybe a series for top 5 Early Game Civs and so on for for mid and late game. I love your content SOTL, I know you probably get this a lot but you're the reason I'm competent at this game so thanks for everything man.

Certainly is interesting when data doesn't seem to align with results. Tells me there is something causing the discrepancy. God I love it.

Fuck me, in terms of passion for AoE2 and inspiring people to play, SOTL is a genius. Wow - it's crazy to think that his civ overview vids had just 100 odd views when they were first released. Now they are through the roof! Where they belong. What a work of art

I think you should do an update on this particular video(after the game is out) before diving into new civ overviews... and separate ones addressing meta changes(like free tracking for everyone and the new techs)

As I was going through your civ overviews the past day (since I'm just now able to start playing this DE online after months of waiting for the proper computer hardware) I was filling in a spreadsheet exactly as the one you displayed, and even changed your letter grades to numerical ones in the same fashion What I came up with as an additional metric is that if you take the pre-weighted averages and calculate their standard deviation you can come close to an estimate for how focused on a single strategy. By that I mean, if you have a civilization like the Persians (SD=2.92) or Celts (SD=2.90) it shows that they are geared more towards a specific strategy as they have a very high score in one or two categories but lower end scores in most of the others. But the more adaptable "jack-of-all-trades" civs like the Portuguese (SD=0.89) and Japanese (SD=1.07) as expected are lower. So in gameplay terms, this can be sort of used as a mathematical value of civ adaptability vs. predictability, with the lower scores being more adaptable, and the higher scores being more predictable (or specialized) For the single digit number of weirdos who are into this, the values I got for that are as follows (bearing in mind again, these were based on the scores before SoL weighted them): Portuguese:0.89 (Highest jack-of-all-trades) Malians: 0.99 Vietnamese:1.04 Saracens: 1.06 Japanese: 1.07 Chinese: 1.16 Spanish: 1.28 Incas: 1.35 Turks: 1.46 Berbers: 1.73 Britons: 1.73 Khmer: 1.77 Indians: 1.81 Byzantines: 1.85 Malay: 1.85 Ethiopians: 1.91 Italians: 1.96 Teutons: 2.07 Burmese: 2.07 Mongols: 2.19 Lithuanians: 2.36 Vikings: 2.38 Mayans: 2.44 Koreans: 2.55 Franks: 2.59 Aztecs: 2.64 Goths: 2.71 Huns: 2.77 Magyars: 2.83 Slavs: 2.88 Celts: 2.90 Persians: 2.92 (Most specialized) This is the type of thing I'm able to do during a virus quarantine

I hope someday youll remake Huns's review. That clip tell us lots of thing we all know (how laking choices the Huns is, and how much they are reliable on Cav when go to Post-Imp) but not that we want to know about like their Unique unit, their strength and weakness, etc.

Great work

That Japanese fast-treb bonus should count for more IMO

With the right strategy, every civ can defeat any other. That's why this game is timeless

I'd love to see a tier list for adaptability and all-roundness.

What a Christmas present from SOTL

Spirit we need a new version of this :)

I love the elefant facts!

Spirit of the Law, On voobly there are many mods that add more civ to the game and are unofficial expansions, if you want to continue the series feel free to check those mods out

you missed an important metrtic- the strength of the villager mob attack! Spain FTW!!!

Excellent Choice!

At 1:33 think for a moment that, we were arguing over with you of persians cavalry is A- in comment section (pers overview you can even check it was 3-4 years ago) after all those time, it turns out I was right! lol man still loving you. P.s: hope you remember the argument tho!

He's done it Some actual statistical data and analysis

This video is the best Christmas present for me... because the elephant facts! xD

Have you ever considered Age of Mythology or Age of Empires 3 overviews or even an entirely different RTS like Starcraft and Command and Conquer. I enjoy your videos and analysis style so much I would hate for it to end. Merry christmas and Happy Holidays.

Top Elephant Facts video please

I would like to see you cover AOE I and III as well. If you really don't like AOE III then maybe a video explaining why.

*This Game, Bmx and WC3 its what keeps early 2000's alive for me...*

First one to see the video, while eating ! That's what I call a good evening ! Kisses from belgium !

This channel is so dank bruh.

I need this video with the new civs

funaly a video man

And there concludes an epic saga! Sayonara!

I think cavalry archers should be considered apart from the archers since some civ are specialized in them rather than archers in general and vice versa (Huns, Mongols, Britons, Mayans)... by the way, your one of my favorite youtuber, i stopped playing AoE2 some years ago and then i discovered your channel, it brought back my love for that gave and i bought it on Steam with all the expansion, thank you for your great work!

Battle elephant is good for one particular strategy. And that is the all-in fast castle 20-elephant push.

Hey, Spirit, great cocasting with T90 today.

Great Video. I don't agree with the cavalry choice for the meso civs, because missing cav is the main point I don't like playing them. Their remaining techtree is of course buffed in the other cathegories to make up for that which inflates their grades. But hey, my choice is already made.

Spanish stayed at or near the top on all those lists.....I'm so happy to see my favorite civ get objective verification!

Ok, now take those ~500 1v1 combinations and do the statistics on which civ is most likely to win in each 1v1 combo, based on your raking system. I'd love to see that!

Best christmast present

You could weight lower and higher grades a little stronger as you are far more likely to give a neutral grade (B- to B+). You could try to analyze your bias in grading to account for this. Their could probably be minor categories such as gun powder, trash and cav archers.

The Khmer rating shocked me ngl, I really like that faction due to the karambit spam you can do in mid to late game and it's rly fun to play like that

Shoulda had a column on those lists for Unique techs and Civ bonuses

Never clicked on something so fast

Woah you posted 2 vids

Hi, very good video. Could you do a video about desync, and how avoid players desync on purpose?

Camooon give us a looong video

Love the video but there is a glaring problem here: the Saracen team bonus elicits at least an 11/10 for its Archers

The biggest takeaway from this video - you can never go wrong with Spanish! xD Good solo, great on teams. Strong on land AND water. Powerful offense, capable defense. No matter how you adjusted and weighted things, you just couldn't keep the Spanish Inquisition down. :D

A big thing to verify the accuracy of your analysis is to compare it to win ratios at 2k+ levels. If it correlates, bam you're a confirmed genius. It'll be interesting to see, and I do believe you have the math skills to do this properly, so I don't need to explain.

This calls for a new quiz :)

Interesting video Spirit ! Though I feel is doesn't completely factor in the impact of some techs on a civilization's grade. I'm thinking about the Turks here mostly and their Artillery tech. They bombard canons become insane when it is researched, and so do their bombard towers. In the same fashion (but to a lesser extent), their archer line is rather weak for sure but their gunpowder units on foot are among the best of any civilization in the game, and are categorized as archers. It's a very specific and late game-oriented civilization for sure, but I feel their siege and archers deserve a better grade

Thanks spirit. Can you share some tips about battle strategies / micro managing units, etc?

Sarracens should be higher in navy

I think Persians had A- because they don't have a significant eco bonus that help them in Cavalry, like Goths for Infantry and Mayans for Archers.