The real annoyance about rams is that their sound effect AND attack animation do not sync with their damage output.

The transition to inspecting the game files was perfection

My mind set is... *Buildings important* *Armour good* *Technology increase armour on building?* *Technology good because building good*

It doesn't get more overcomplicated than this.

me: alright, time to research arson! infantry: what's arson? me: basically means setting buildings on fire infantry: but we already set buildings on fire by hitting them with our swords. me: yeah, but now you'll be able to do more damage to the buildings per hit! infantry: so why is it called arson if it has nothing to do with buildings catching fire? me: because there's only so many scary words relating to buildings that we can use for research names, okay?

Well, that was shockingly complex

Nice to see you going into the game files to get more technical information and 100% confirmation on these more complex things, even if it may be excessive seeing how the developers laid things out is interesting. You already seem to be the most in depth explainer of all things AOE2 and you are only getting better versed in the inner workings as time goes on.

Video: _Is 30 seconds old_ Comments: *_LOVE IT!!!_*

Yes... Finally an explanation about building armor... I've been waiting for this...

SotL: Hey guys, Spirit of the Law here Me: Spirit of the LA HIRE

I honest believe that once AoE II DE is released, Spirit of The Law will spend 2 to 3 years making videos about every single aspect of the game's mechanic.

Lately, I don't get my opening song. Where is my intro!!!

Teacher: The test it's not that confusing The test: *this video*

Video showed elephants, but no elephant fact. Unsubbed.

My daily schedule stops when spirit uploads a video

Holy shit that was complicated. Might have to rewatch this one in a week.

What about cannon galleons, demolition ships and turtle ships? Do they have any bonus damage vs buildings?

Anti-building units in AoE II: Scorpions, mangonels, Tarkans and.... villagers XD

I so miss your intro. Gotta watch it before every new video.

You are litereally our only source to understand the game and thanks for that.

Wow. Architecture and Masonry are way worse than I thought... and Obsidian Arrows is way better! Excellent video, I learned a lot.

I thought SOTL had covered all the juicy parts about AOE numbers already, but this one absolutely blew my mind...

After your "Spirit of the La Hire" pun, I keep hearing it every time you start a new video xD The advance Genie editor was really cool to look at! :D

A legitimately interesting video behind these mechanics. I've been playing so long and never knew how those techs and armour actually worked. Cheers!

"But now you know what's going on behind the scens" No, I don't, I didn't understand much, and I'm sure I won't actually remember anything when it matters the most xD

So... The building armors types are: -Stone vs swords and spears -Stone vs arrows -stone vs 6 wheeled wooden carts -stones vs multiples rocks thrown -stones vs big rock launched from too far for ours arches range -stones vs pyromaniac cavalry. -stones vs ivory armed cavalry. -stones vs big arrows launched from wheeled bows that walk by their own. -stones vs big arrows launched from somewhere on the deck of ships. (Really, where these arpoons come from???) -stones vs canons dragged by one really strong person. -stones vs poison darts. -stones vs balloons thrown from ships. -stones vs flamethrower attached on ships. -stone vs smooth monk talk. -stone vs rocket launched from Shelby Cobras. -stone vs the low class enraged by economics conditions of their empire. -stone vs "torpedo#" ??? Did I miss any armor type?

Teal Teutonic Knights are majestic. Thanks for the great video! Very informative.

I always though obsidian arrows didn't make any sense (wanna do more damage to buildings ? shoot glass at them !). It should be 1 bonus damage against infantry or something like that.

i dont know half of what spirit of the law is saying usually but i feel super smart when i watch his videos, i love it

I have been waiting for explanation of these mechanics for like 20 years. Not even joking.

for this one, good old zero empires actually did a really good explanation in his chukonu video

I'm gonna roll petards way more often, or at least a control group of them, when attacking from now on. Thanks for the vid

I'm a simple man: I see a Spirit of the Law video about Building Armor/HP, I click ''Like''

All Building armours are equal, but some building armours are more equal than others....

I now understand why this video has taken so long! I've wondered so long and know I see it's just a mess of armor classes!

Excellent Choice!

Early for a SOTL video? My, my.... good things must be happening. 😍😍😍

Researching Architecture and Hoardings has a huge psychological effect too. If I click a castle and see it has 7028 hp, I will definitely think twice before trying to attack it, not so much if it has only 5280 hp.

I swear, I cannot your videos enough. I'm so glad we have someone like you doing videos for such an amazing game~

Love the deep dive into the data and how this works out in the end!

First time I've ever been early for a video and I am glad it is yours

It's amazing how you can show us something new 20 years after game release.

Thank you for the video, man. Not only I watch it, but so does my father (he's a fan since the first game, back when it was new). He probably has more hours in this than I do in most games combined :P Now we're both waiting for AoE2 DE, I hope it will be worth the wait :D

Dude, miss the intro

"Indulge this spreadsheet loving nerd" I'm kinda surprised you didn't give us a spreadsheet of units, buildings and damage types. Good video regardless.

Wow, 14 minutes! Can't wait to watch this on the bus home

13:40 teal capes look so great on Teutonic knights.

I don't need to think twice about it... SOTL uploads new video = I click + I like...

Easily one of your best videos.

I always love destroying buildings with gunpowder units. There's something cathartic about cannonballs destroying a medieval kingdom.

I love these videos! Even if I didn't play AoE2 i'd still watch them. The math in them and your way of breaking it up, i love it!

Imagine a scenario where all units get class 11 armor. Siege rams would be so op.

Nice video! On obsidian arrows: I'm fairly sure that it's a bug. In the original FE mod when it was released, I think this was introduced to offset the building armor of walls. However, because they used class 21 damage, it wasn't affected by that anyway. HOWEVER, originally the archer-line had pierce damage and 0 building damage, but no entry for stone defense. The +6 vs stone defense didn't register because of that, so in testing they would the same amount of damage to walls as to regular buildings (as probably intended). At some point later, it was pointed out that the stone defense part of obsidian arrows didn't work, the devs fixed that, with the result being +12 damage vs stone walls - but that probably was never the original intention, and when fixing it, the devs didn't think about original intentions.

Another fun fact that I missed: if you do the 'Hoardings' upgrade before 'masonry' and 'architecture', you get extra HP on your castle :).

Spirit uploaded, wow nice

So that's why the Saracens team bonus is considered garbage.

Very nice video. Interesting to see the game files and how that relates to the game itself. My only small criticism is that I found the numbers at 6.11 a little confusing. Before and after that, when you have numbers next to buildings it's the building's armour, but for that part it's the damage scorpions do, which is kind of inverted compared to the other examples.

If you watch some of the footage for DE (or are in the beta) you can see the building armor values in game when hovering over them in the build menus. Only shows melee and pierce armor though.

So you're telling me If someone is walled use archers with obsidian arrow

devs should really check the obsidian vs walls thing

2:33 Wait... lumber camp and mining camp doesn't change appearance.🤔

Watching this video gave me +3 to my class 42 armor.

Masonry/architecture is something I always never research. I forget it exists half the time like arrow slits and sappers

Crap, I missed this video during to T90's 24 hour stream. Anyway, SOTL you should've made a cameo appearance in the stream man. It was amazing.

Your videos are a great resource for modders! Thanks for breaking down how these damage systems work

@6:50 holy nostalgic reference, batman!

6:43 You had me chuckling for a long time.

Most mind boggling video ever..

So armor classes actually are visible in-game: A Voobly/Userpatch install has additional information in the tech tree, including every unit's attack bonuses and armor classes; a Steam Workshop mod exists to provide the same information for HD players. So you can see (and possibly comprehend better, or possibly not) most of this in-game, including that Masonry/Architecture does not block infantry bonus damage and that it does block half of Manipur Cavalry's. It's still somewhat confusing.

The "base armor" is used for attack types that have no corresponding armor type, which has default value = 1000.

Ram: *poke* Villager: stop it! Ram: *poke*

Thumbs up just for the Batman transition. all other info was just a bonus. PLZ KEEP BATMAN TRANSITION!!

6:43 completes my life

I'm now stuck with his intro as Spirit of the La Hire since the Joan of Arc campaign videos. :P

Obsidian Arrows it's the perfect example of the shit we don't ask for, but we need it

Thank you Spirit. I will go use this information to lose to someone who doesn't know it right away.

Age of Mythology added crush damage and crush armor, with units being almost unaffected by crush damage, and buildings getting the most damage out of it. It was much simpler and better.

Made a video about non unit armor. Did not made a single reference to trees, their hp, their resistance to siege and chopping. Hello?!?

been waiting for a new vid for a while!

Would be interesting to include wonders in the mix Still another great video though!

Wow, I am so glad Osidian Arrows is gone. The devs must have been smoking some high quality weeds when they came up with that tech.

Honestly the difference can be fairly huge, with or without these techs, with certain units, there is a mile of a difference in razing a town with cavalry in imperial of someone with and without building armor techs. Without them it feels like your army is literally cutting through butter at times and with them it's pretty much a slog without siege equipment. Sure for a lot of units you are technically reducing the attack by just 2 damage, but that can be fairly significant percentage of anywhere between 20% - 67% damage reduction per attack. I'm honestly surprised at the amount of people who outright ignore these techs when under pressure when it can buy you quite a nice chunk of time.

Makes the team bonus of the Saracens seem even worse.

Hey, i gotta say this topic really interested me, but this doesn't really help make the issue more clear. Perhaps a bit of an overview of what is, and what is not or partially stopped by masonry would have been nice. Revisiting this video after a day made me realize i remebered very little actual facts from the video, since it was more focused on the process than the outcomes. Just my bit of feedback, love the vids.

Loved 6:40, thank you! :D

I think Byzantine's building HP bonus really shines with walls

Is armour used to determine which buildings Korean vils build faster?

Hey, out of curiosity what is the track that you use in the background for going into the game files? I hear it a lot in your videos but I can't find it anywhere else, not even on Epidemic Sound's website.

So basically if i fill a capp3d ram with bowmen who have obsidian arrow tech, then...

If anything, 6.42 makes this video worth watching :D

I'm to wasted to followw any of this I'll watch it again tomorrow. Maybe again, the next day.

Byzantine building HP bonus also affects walls, unlike masonry and architecture, so i would say it's superior to those payed teches.

Just a random idea for a future video, but maybe you can do one talking about what a player's favorite civ says about them.

Thankfully in the latest update (Dynasties of India, maybe even the one before idk), they at least display the buildings armour now

We need an in depth video about the eagle warrior line!

You say Byzantines come out about the same, but I wonder though more hp vs more armor, wouldn't that mean you would have to repair with more villagers and use more stone when under attack by similar amount of enemy fire?

WHY?? Why is there a building class numbered 52?

Hey spirit, in the video where you show the units attacking the buildings you say a lot "you can see that this building has x armor" but I cannot, since you didn't show the damage being dealt in real time

Me: Yeah i will finally learn how to do properly damage to buildings. SOTL: Let’s calculate 25 types of different armors for 1 wall.

Alright, 6:40 got me 😄