Aha, I actually do know something on this! He's right that the towers don't reload until all arrows have been launched. You can confirm this by modding in a crazy high garrison cap to a tower, and adding like 100 archers. The tower shoots a super long barrage of arrows, then waits a short moment before it restarts again. If there was no wait, it would never stop shooting.

You forgot perhaps the most important aspect; Towers have substantially more raw damage, meaning they do far more damage to high armor units. Against fully upgraded paladins, for example, 3 arbalests will do 12 damage, but garrisoned, they will do 16.

Many people here don't even play aoe2 but still watch your videos...it's amazing

Good overview but a very IMPORTANT point is missing! Extra arrows (not the first one) has a +5 bonus damage against stone defense. Which is critical in tower versus tower fights, 5 ungarrisoned (and unupgraded) towers will deal 5 damages total (5x1) each 2 seconds to another watch tower (7 pierce armor), while a fully villager-garrisoned (and unupgraded) tower will deal 21 damages (1+5x4) each 2 seconds to another watch tower. In short, garrison your towers (with vils or archers) if you go into a tower versus tower fight. EDIT: In my original post I thought tower's arrows were ignoring pierce armour (which would have led to the same numbers and conclusion in the example I choosed) but is technically wrong! Thanks to Jineapple for pointing it out.

Missed opportunity to mention teutonic bombard towers. 1 Tower full of Elite Genonese Corssbows fires 4 canon balls at once! :D

The fact that tower with villagers gets weaker as you upgrade its attack feels like an oversight, same for the Chu Ko Nus.

I just started playing aoe2 and i am amazed with how complex this game is. Game from 1999 you would think that it would be so limited in every aspect of gameplay yet it is mindblowing how much work has been put into it, putting new gen rts to shame.

The effort, the math, the intro. I love these videos.

There is one thing you forgot to mention: Bombard towers

Your tenacity to keep going with this theme is fantastic. I keep finding myself going back to this channel

I love the concept of advancing through the ages , the look of the farms , the sounds of the wood chopping and rock mining....... My 1st love of computer games was the AOE series. And yes I still have nightmares of those red monks chanting on the cliff from the SP campaign even 25 years later

I always loved playing as the Teutons and using their garrisoned infantry gimmick. Now I finally understand how they work.

The moonwalking elephant at 1:18 xD

I love how you explore the game in depth in a very scientific way, asking questions, testing and working with actual numbers and stuff! Cheers!

Nice mathy video which i love. You could consider about hand cannoneers as they are archers and interaction with bombard towers as well.

I’m always amazed with how you think of new interesting topics to talk about, hats off to you sir

Another little detail is that Towers/Castles shoot individual units all at one time, rather than potentially dispersed across different enemy units when the archers are on the own not garrisoned. When busy doing something else on the map, this could help a lot as automatically the garrisoned units will try to eliminate enemy units one by one, without us having to click and direct them to do so.

Can you rework the Teuton civiliation overview ?

Wow, a new video. Binge watched all your Civ comparison videos in the last few days, finally I get more of that good stuff.

Hey Spirit, are we ever going to get a new road to 1800 video? The last one was from over a year ago, and you promised the next one won't be so late xD

Always looking forward to your videos. Great work, man. You're very attentive :))

Always love it when one of your videos pops up in my feed

Just 27 years left until Supremacy movie

I used to skip your intro because it was so long. But now I love the song and always watch the whole thing ❤️

I love your intro video/song. It's literally the only intro on YT that I never skip!

I just wanted to rewatch one of your vids, perfect timing for a new one.

Wow I was just the other day thinking about this topic and you made a video on it almost the exact same day. Great!

Was wondering about this for soo long!!! Thanks my man 👍

I wondered this question about 2 decades ago, and today I chanced upon this awesomely curious explanation. Thanks! XD

Great research and testing! Thank you!

Another interesting video yo. Keep up the good work! :)

Speaking about Teutons, we need top 5 Defensive Civs!

Love the video-- extremely user friendly and lots to see!

Finally after months of waiting im glad you made this video and included the teutons tech becose i rly wanted to know becose when playing got overhaul i usally play as p4 and i always wonder should i garisson archers or mele units i decided on mele units since they have more uses and i cant compere to the p3s archers anyway thx alot

The fact that I'm still learning new stuff I had never even considered before about a game that's been out for two decades blows me away

Finally, a tower topic! Great video, Spirit!

I wondered this for years. Thanks for making this video.

god damn im gonna enjoy watching your vids on the definitive editions!! I sure do hope you'll make vids on them!

Excellent Choice!

Nice! so much detail this was a cool video

What about a video about Civilizations voices?

Quality video as always!

Great video as always!!! I'd love a episode about relics. At what point should you focus on them for example. Anyways please keep on creating fantastic AoE content!

It is amazing how much thought went into this. Especially when I remember as a kid thinking just build a bunch of fortresses and cramming a ton of guy in would equal a win.

Excellent information, thanks for the video

Thanks for the upload, Spirit

I really could've used this analysis 20 years ago!

Oh hey this was released today! So used to old Spirit of the Law vids appearing in my recommendations I didn't even notice lol. Also one thing you failed you mention is if all the arrows have the same accuracy.

I've always wondered why the game treats garrisoned units differently - skirmishers and cav. archers for example. And I always assumed that it's because skirms are a trash unit. Either that or their cost. So cool of you to explain how it actually works, thanks!

Awesome Spirit! Keep it going!

No way! I was debating about this! Thank you for making this vid

Those siege onagers sweet shot on those cavalry on the intro still gives me a awesome feeling of satisfaction.

I think you can split the arrows into different directions (especially with castles when fully garrisoned with archers) when you click on to another enemy unit halfway through the castle's firing.

Great video. You did forget to touch on Bombard towers and the interactions of different ranged units, e.g. hand cannoneers and janissaries.

Oh I have never been so quick to watch before.

next video, "is it worth to put 10 jennisar on a teuton tower and have 3 canon balls instead of 1?" :D

Waited for this topic for a year, finally addressed :D

Great video. As always.

HOLY SH*T :D i never even thought about how much work has been put into this mechanic. I just sorta assumed it worked... somehow :D

If I'm not mistaken didn't the intro song go away for a few videos? Glad its back if thats the case.

Interesting stuff. Thanks! (Obligatory unsolicited idea for future video: in depth look at Persian TC work rate bonus?)

i dont know why i'm watching this. i havent played this game in 17 years....

Spirit of the law, the channel whose videos nobody asked for, but are needed anyway

Awesome video mate! (Again) Best AOE II KZfaq channel ever!

I was chomping on the bit to write, "hey what about the Teutons?" But you were on your A Game. Good show! :)

I'm from Brazil and I'm just on a huge LOL with the meme at 2:06. (it's from here). Nice video, btw!

Hey guys spirit of the regular uploads here xd

i only ever think about this while in game lol thank you for the breakdown

Wait, Greg Street worked on AoE2!?!?! The Blizzard / Riot guy!? Wth cool!

So, what about the elevation bonus?

Bit off topic, just wondering if you or any other subscribers may want to pitch their thoughts on a particular game style my friend and I have decided to try out. It’s a simple home brew, but takes a while to explain so I apologize for that. Basically, we will be playing on an even map with nine sections of land connected to one another by bridges. We will have identical defensive structures on our own plots of land at opposite sides, and a fixed amount of resources to build defenses on the other three plots of land we each own. Then, on a separate island, we will each have a fixed number of villagers (unless Chinese, who we will allow an extra villager but less first-turn building resources.) The villagers can be assigned to whichever resource we believe we should divide them to, and after 15 minutes we call the villagers off and spend our new resources however we please on upgrades or troops. Then, we fight over the middle plot. Whoever wins will now hold 5/9 of the plots. The loser will try to assault that plot to take it from the defender after another 8 minutes of both sides getting to put their villagers back to work. Then, use the new resources to buy/build as they please, then the fight ensues. Regardless of who wins, the other player (after a 6-minute resource gathering time, which will be the gathering time for every turn from then on) will be on the attack next. The attacker and defender will go back and forth indefinitely until one player has control of all 9 plots of land. There are more minute rules, like one-castle limits, but they’re not super important for the sake of the explanation. So, now that I’ve explained the homebrew game a bit, I’m curious what people think the best civs will be? I think Britons would be good when you’re on a defending turn, since you could build walls with longbows behind them. But they might be a bit weak for attacks. (Trebuchets are turned off.) Celts would probably be great for when it’s your attacking turn, but when it’s time to defend what you took over they might not do so well. Byzantines, maybe? What do you think?

This makes me want to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If I'm not mistaken, you're the first subscription I had to KZfaq. Still can't get enough. Hope you continue this with AOE4 since we're running out of content with AOE2.

Perfect weekend with a Spirit of the Law video -w-

You can also read up on it here: www.aoe2sheet.info/knowledge_base.html#multiple-arrows There's a couple of additional points to mention: - It's explained in the video, but the formula is not expliciately mentioned: It's (total unit dps) / (building dps), rounded down. And dps is the ranged attack divided by the reload time (The theoretical one in data, the delay for extra arrows is not taken into account). Just to clarify how exactly that works. - Attack bonuses are not considered for this calculation. If you have genoese crossbowmen vs. cavalry, garrisoning means you lose out on their anti-cavalry bonus. Same for Skirms vs. Archers etc. - However, the extra arrows of towers have a bonus vs. stone defense (stone walls, towers). Against those, garrisoning thus results in more total damage - Accuracy is not taken into account. As a result, units with low accuracy but high attack are great for garrisoning (Arambai and Janissaries are the best units for this). - Only the first arrow is affected by hills/cliffs. That's why in a tower vs. tower war, elevation does not matter. - Chu Ko Nu's doing so badly is a bug (probably). It only counts their secondary arrow (which does 3 damage). As they have a base fire rate of 3 (not counting the delay that the extra arrows cause) that results in a measly 1 dps, obviously lower than what they actually do. - Bombard Towers can also fire multiple shots (theoretical maximum of 3 extra), though you can only notice this with Teutons in-game. Due to a difference in the data, you actually need to add dps for 2 extra shots for the first extra cannonball to appear. After that the increase is linear again.

its amazing, there are less people playing aoe2 than viewers on your videos which consist of competitive level aoe2 things. I don't play either. Good job!

Love your videos

This is the exact question I needed answered

Still learning things about this game!

The blacksmith upgrade question was actually quite interesting and never really noticed such behavior before due to focusing super hard on military rather than falling back on villager defense

hey Spirit , can you please make a top 5 navi civs overview....

I have no idea why I enjoy those so much, I mean, I would never be good enough to actually be using this knowledge.

I wished you would have talked a bit more about in-depth applications like how archers in towers are way better against ships or how extra arrows do bonus damage to stone defense. But other than that, good video. :)

Lmao I sent this to my niece just to be random and to test if she would watch it and she goes "is this for a game? I don't play this game" but then like 20 minutes later she texts me back like "sounds like it's better to garrison" guess your videos are irresistible 😂

@Spirit Of The Law The reason for the arrow lag in the towers, is probably due to the processes having different logic. There could either be A) a longer process thread, leading to a few milliseconds here and there, that eventually become noticeable, or B) a slightly different tick rate, between the two processes. A is most highly likely, and can be partially tested, to determine some of the logic used in the programming. Because the towers are a static emplacement, but they have to attack, they are likely processed like an individual unit, and if the towers have to store the units individually, to track the health of each unit, it would then have to individually count each archer, between each volley. In which case, the more units in the tower, the longer the process thread. The easiest way to test if the first part of the logic exists, about the tower tracking individual units, is to garrison an archer at 1% HP, with one at 100%, and un-garrison them immediately. If they're both at 100% hp, they don't track individuals, if they aren't both at 100% hp, then they do track individuals.

This is quite insightful. I often tend to turtle myself with Koreans, but the Teuton's 8 arrows are quite tempting. 👀

Ghostcrawler! That guy has been part of my gaming life since I started playing Rise of Rome as a kid. Between that and WoW... been sneakily in the background, that guy has.

for games that do a volley of projectiles, there's usually a code for "delay between each projectile of the volley", which should be the cause for delay in this case. a lot of it is for animation purposes, so a chukonu doesn't shoot one thicc arrow, and instead shoots a volley.

Can you please list all the background music(s) you use in your videos pls pls pls

I noticed that towers fire rate is slower when garrisoned too. I thought that was intentional, great research and methodology as always!

wow! getting a dev in again, awsome!

I really like this feature in age of empires 2. It lets you put your villagers and other units inside buildings while the healthy army fights the tough battles and when they need healing especially in feudal age, the town center and any towers become handy in this situation. Then the monk comes in castle age but still good to prevent an army of knights from taking out archery range units easily. In multiplayer fights this feature is used less often, but you will find it very useful in campaigns. archery range units are great in towers when they get upgrades, sometimes just 4 and a villager (to repair the tower as needed). Then there is the amazing but glitchy moving buildings mod where you can move any building and this makes the town center able to move anywhere on the map including on water and through forests and to get full map explored with just the town center that can go through cliffs and mountains and rocks and anything that is blocking your path in the game.

I was hoping you'd go deeper in how the extra base attack of a tower would help against Pierce armor (e.g. against pallisade walls)

Hey Spirit, it would be awesome to dig a bit further into the towers topic: how does this calculation work for bombard towers? And how about the extra arrows for Japanese towers? Cheers!

Good to know towers are still dissapointing, thanks Spirit!

2019, now we know. Thanks SotL!

Heres a question : can ya do a video on Hold Ground vs agressive vs defensive stances. I wanna see their effects in battle.

Deepish mathematical insight into the technicalities of a great video game, what a fantastic channel.

6:09 OMG that is the greatest image ever.

Oh wow, a question that isn't just fascinating and super fun to watch being answered, but also very useful and one I actually wondered about in the past! However, now the real question is: If I have one castle/tower, would it be beneficial to build a second castle/tower or rather invest the resources in archers that I put inside the existing one?

I feel dumb. I never noticed that putting them in the towers will shoot more.