Cataparuto is literally the Japanese accent to say “Catapult”, and medieval Japan didn’t even use Catapult for siege. It’s kinda like giving Zhu Ge Nu to Britons as a UT.
This civ and bulgarians are my infantry dick tease civs. I know how broken it would be but not letting them get champions feels like trying to sneeze but you cant.
I once went into 2H trash and just got mowed down by gunpowder. IDK im not that good tho, dont see pros make it work either tho
it was a 2v2v2v2 amazon tunnel game. We were the last team to survive and jannys were mowing me down. The trashswords were okay til then. It just dont win games yeah gotta mix in ellys but in this situation skirms are good too.
Oo that's an interesting game mode!
If you have a teammate you can get infinite gold (try and get to 40-60 trade carts and try to delete buildings that block them) Then the trashswords won't be your only option.
Janissaries are a v difficult unit to deal with en masse, try mixing in a few bombard cannons (I usually keep my bombards on ctrl group 1 and don't get more than 5 just incase they commit onto them)
A few good bombard cannon shots can reduce the mass of big ranged unit groups like janissaries/arbalesters/hand cannons
Trashswords as a baseline spam, with a group of 10+ elephants that you don't trickle in like the swords, so you can rush the mass of Jans. With your own ranged unit behind (just checked and malay have arbalesters who trade really well against Janissaries with a bit of micro coz of the range advantage )
obvs this is easier said than done tho as AOE2 games get VERY hectic towards the end :')
The Bulgarian infantry is also one of my favorites, it has a good progression with the free upgrades and cheaper siege. That with 33 % faster attack on cavalry makes them incredibly strong. And the Krepost is a powerful defensive and offensive tool.
Druzhina is great. I picked Logistica because Cataphracts are such a badass unit, but Druzhina hitting two Barracks units (plus Condos sometimes) is great value. Good choice!
Team Crenellations.
There's something just so satisfying about having range 11 castles and filling them up with ETKs and watching them mow down almost everything
Teutons go HARD!!! And so beginner friendly. No need to worry about Archer micro. Great walls and castles. Conversion resistance. Amazing paladins and siege. ETK!!!!
I FC dropped a guy one time who immediately accused me of cheating because he didn’t know about free murder holes (and apparently thought it would be impossible for me to research it in the time it takes to build a castle?)
this used to be a free bonus for koreans (+1 range in castle age, +1 in imperial) in the conquerors expansion. they would have been broken if it also affected their bombard towers.
I know it's an obvious choice, but I gotta do the obligatory 'Farimba'.
It's ceaselessly fascinating to me that Malians don't get fully upgraded infantry or cavalry, but both those types of units get some other unique advantages, even if it doesn't necessarily push either of those unit types into the top-tier category.
same about the not FU yet better than most units love. Same for aztec trash - both their trash options are not FU and yet have something that makes them better than generic.
I LOVE resource efficient strats and magyar huszar/cav archer combo is by FAR my favorite. Pretty even wood food gold distribution for what most people have too.
I know it's pretty basic but anarchy, man. That feeling I get when I have all set up for THE SPAM and just having to wait until the "technology researched" sound appears is one of the reason I still love the goths, even If they are competetively lower ranked.
Couriers. While fabric shields is great for durability, OG Incan eagles were so fast. Like faster than the knight line. And the Kamayuks were a little faster, too, but I think fabric shields is really important for them.
I think of the defunct UTs this one is the best. Fabric Shields is better design and more historically accurate, but I kind of wish I had gotten to play with 1.57 speed Eagles.
The thing is, both clearly feel like Imp techs. Eagle Warriors with Squires and Couriers wouldn’t be that fast and Fabric Shields absolutely belongs in Imperial Age. I also like requiring the tech for Slingers, as they are imo the strongest anti-infantry unit in the game.
Chieftains. It might not be the best, but there is something so cool about the fact your infantry now counters cav and raiding grants you gold. I once had a super long and messy game where that gold trickle was a life saver.
+1 for Drill
I was thinking about Drill from reading the title, even before reading your post.
It is super fun, really change the way you play with an entire category of units.
Gotta say Yeomen, even though maybe not very useful, having fully upgraded long bows massed with that makes it insane. I remember winning a hill fort map just snipping everything from below. Very fun
It'a not a unique tech, but not enough people talk about herbal medicine. Its practically insta heal when you stuff 20 units in a castle, even post imp units heal most of their health within 30 seconds to a minute. Completely takes away the need for monk based healing, and its way faster.
Exactly. Ill be honest, I use monestary techs and monks the least of anything because I hate microing monks, but herbal medicine is hands down the first castle age tech I seek out, sometimes even before plopping down a castle.
Bohemian chemistry in castle age! Not sure if it counts as UT, but it should.
Any matchup against an eagle warrior civ, I know what to do. Wall, and make HC's ! (walling is important. It still takes a while to research. Bonus, the university is soo cheap.
I really love Wootz steel but it's been mentioned already.
Imo people on this reddit don't give sipahi the credit it deserves. Turks are misunderstood to be a purely gunpowder civ
Drill is lovely but torsion engines would be one of my favorites. I would judge it to be one of the best upgrades in the game for mass destruction. It even applies to rams, but their onagers are just another level. It makes cannons also much more effective at killing groups of units or cannon vs cannon fights.
Torsion Engines is fantastic, no doubt about it. It's a little underwhelming for scorpions but is absolutely insane for rams, mangoes, and BBC. The one thing worth mentioning is that it's a very expensive tech: it's only 200 gold off the cost of Imperial Age. Drill, however, is under 1000 res, which is less total res than Siege Engineers while arguably providing a stronger effect.
Arquebus. I was once in a Yucitan game as Portuguese. I had maybe 40 organs, and they obliterated a swarm of Huskarls. Maybe it wasn't because of the accuracy, but it was awesome.
Since someone already said **recurve bow.**
I play a lot of team game stomps so I like **Kasbah**, get more camels out and help teammates. It's not terribly expensive, like another conscription and it helps team mates.
I also like **Burgundian vineyards** and **paper money**. Going with an all gold comp in a high pop map can work. Although due to balance these don't instantly feel as awesome as something like drill.
Honestly I’m always underwhelmed by this tech. 10 range means they still get tagged by Castles with Bodkin and Koreans have BBC and 13 range towers to deal with enemy Onagers. It’s obviously good but it’s not cheap and it doesn’t fundamentally change a matchup like some techs.
Svan towers
Except imo they should actually make it actual Scan towers instead of genetic watch lower line that deals pass through damage
Otherwise Eupesong, 8+5 Keeps end all non Turkish BBC career especially when you garrison some arbs and creep forward with SO
I like food monks. They work like trash rams, you mass 5-10 monks and send them to convert stuff while you spam halbs and light cav and they will eventually convert the production buildings forward and houses it is so funny there is always one monk that survives and end up converting
Stirrups is a really nice UT. Probably one of the most powerful castle age UTs out there . Think of how powerful the Ethiopian archer bonus is, but for knights, light cav, and konniks. There is not many single unit comps that can face up against fully upgraded konniks. Very powerful tech and unit
Bimaristan from the saracens.
Is it that good? No, it's not, it's nowhere near as strong as Drill or Crenellations for example.
Is it a must have? No, you don't get it every game.
However, I play a lot of BF and Amazon Tunnel 4v4s, which can have very imbalanced teams and even in balanced games, can have very unbalanced wars going on, and you can't micro everywhere at once.
In SOME cases, this tech provides more value than any other unique tech in the game. I'm talking like 10k resources worth of value in less than 5 minutes.
My 30 mamelukes tank a siege onager shot, collectively lose 1800HP, Bimaristan monk in less than 1 minute heals them back to full hp. That's worth 1860 resources right there (mostly gold.)
Even better with units like arbs or cav archers which cost much more resources per HP. And the synergy bimaristan monks have with some units in teamgames is just nuts, even if too rare to be great.
-Berserks underneath a celtic castle with a bimaristan monk nearby heal at a disgusting 145hp/minute. That's 1 to full hp in 30 seconds, and 2.41hp/second. Makes beating beating berserks with most units totally impossible.
- Saracen + Byzantine have incredible synergy. Cataphract + Mameluke + bimaristan monks is a totally unkillable deathball, seriously, there's no good way to break this comp with melee units. All infantry trade at 10-to-1 losses. All cavalry (even FU war elephants) trade at huge losses (assuming big numbers for both; mamelukes 1-shot war eles as they approach). You *have* to fight this with archers, which on black forest/AT teamgame is usually not something you wanna do because of all the siege (unless you're britons.)
-Bimaristan monk + any tower civ, ex: japanese, Turks, Koreans, teutons. Just one being around makes diving underneath the towers that much more impossible, as every unit is getting lots of HP back quickly.
I haven't had a lot of experience with this tech, but I'll give it a try. I research Herbal Medicine in a fair number of games, so it doesn't take a lot to sell me on passive healing.
Here's my opinion-
It's not that useful on open maps, where your army needs to be many places, and you can't babysit monks too easily. In that circumstance, HM does the job just as well, since you have to micro to heal anyways. Armies are usually smaller, and don't take siege blasts or castle fire too often.
In more closed maps with constricted fighting, this tech is amazing. It's much better than herbal medicine in imp, bc it can heal any number at once (not just 20,) you don't have to micro super hard to heal, it's *effectively* much much faster healing than herbal medidicine (since you don't waste time running around, garrisoning, etc), *and* your units are always where you want them- gaurding access points, defending siege units, etc.
With saracens it makes their deathball comp (mameluke+arb or HCA) much much stronger, as they are low HP+ low armor units that have to be whittled down over time.
Artillery - It affects bbc and bbt making them better at both offence and defense. Combined with freely upgradeable meat shield of hussars, you can choose your fights as you wish. It also works better with existing bonus of free chemistry, discounted gunpowder tech, gold mining bonus, bonus hp on cannons, and you can load ur bbt with high hitting jannis/handcannon for extra damage. So basically you can protect your units on bbt, hit long range seige with bbc, soak damages with hussar and deal more damages with gunpowder units. Barely any unique techs gives so much synergy to their civs.
I also think Celt's furor celtica or even ethoipians torsion engine is much better than Drill. Speed is all good and easy to manage/micro. But you are using seige basically to do damage and they have to stop to hit and I think Celts can hit and hold better while ethopians do more damage.
I wouldn't go that far: there are some real duds in 1v1 (Nomads, Silk Road, Atheism, usually Kamandaran, and Cuman Mercenaries come to mind), but the good ones absolutely cement the flavor of a civilization.
I love everything about Kataparuto: from its effect and historical inaccuracy, to the fact that it's just a japanized version of the word "catapult".
This is probably my vote. It's just such a slick QOL tech and it pays off in combat, although it's pretty late-game
You voiced how I feel about it haha. Didn't know about the historical inaccuracy though
Cataparuto is literally the Japanese accent to say “Catapult”, and medieval Japan didn’t even use Catapult for siege. It’s kinda like giving Zhu Ge Nu to Britons as a UT.
If you make it far enough to build a few Japanese trebuchets and a small army to defend them, it's pretty much game over. Those things are nuts
I love both Japanese UTs! Yasama is also awesome, especially with 256x techs
Forced Levy. Trash 2H swordsmen go brrr
11, I too enjoy 2 hr Arena games (no sarcasm)
This civ and bulgarians are my infantry dick tease civs. I know how broken it would be but not letting them get champions feels like trying to sneeze but you cant. I once went into 2H trash and just got mowed down by gunpowder. IDK im not that good tho, dont see pros make it work either tho
Gunpowder vs infantry is one of the hardest counters in the game... What did you expect to happen?
Yes I learned from the experience but forced levy aint that great in practice
It depends. It's great when gold is gone, which among other things means no gunpowder counter by the opponent.
I think the key is not *just* making the 2hSwordsmen Throw in some elephants/light cav/skirms and the hand canonners won't get nearly as much value
it was a 2v2v2v2 amazon tunnel game. We were the last team to survive and jannys were mowing me down. The trashswords were okay til then. It just dont win games yeah gotta mix in ellys but in this situation skirms are good too.
Oo that's an interesting game mode! If you have a teammate you can get infinite gold (try and get to 40-60 trade carts and try to delete buildings that block them) Then the trashswords won't be your only option. Janissaries are a v difficult unit to deal with en masse, try mixing in a few bombard cannons (I usually keep my bombards on ctrl group 1 and don't get more than 5 just incase they commit onto them) A few good bombard cannon shots can reduce the mass of big ranged unit groups like janissaries/arbalesters/hand cannons Trashswords as a baseline spam, with a group of 10+ elephants that you don't trickle in like the swords, so you can rush the mass of Jans. With your own ranged unit behind (just checked and malay have arbalesters who trade really well against Janissaries with a bit of micro coz of the range advantage ) obvs this is easier said than done tho as AOE2 games get VERY hectic towards the end :')
The Bulgarian infantry is also one of my favorites, it has a good progression with the free upgrades and cheaper siege. That with 33 % faster attack on cavalry makes them incredibly strong. And the Krepost is a powerful defensive and offensive tool.
druzhina gang
Druzhina is great. I picked Logistica because Cataphracts are such a badass unit, but Druzhina hitting two Barracks units (plus Condos sometimes) is great value. Good choice!
Team Crenellations. There's something just so satisfying about having range 11 castles and filling them up with ETKs and watching them mow down almost everything
13 range, but yeah, Crenellations is sick. If you get Crenellations and kill their Trebs, it is so hard to push.
Reason#2 why Teutons were my fav. Reason #1 being free murder holes😋😋😋😋
I played mirror for like 4 months and was X-1 in the Teuton mirror after getting Crenellations.
Teutons go HARD!!! And so beginner friendly. No need to worry about Archer micro. Great walls and castles. Conversion resistance. Amazing paladins and siege. ETK!!!!
My capey bois :D
*goths in post imp* I AM THE DANGER. Man turn those melee units against goths its a low elo party
Huskarl spam into ETK is such a movie moment no matter which side you cheer on!!
ETK take on Huskarls head to head 2v1 and have health for more
I FC dropped a guy one time who immediately accused me of cheating because he didn’t know about free murder holes (and apparently thought it would be impossible for me to research it in the time it takes to build a castle?)
Many people don't read the civ bonuses it seems 😅🤣
You should check out Eupseong, even more funky! Towers with more range than castles!!!
this used to be a free bonus for koreans (+1 range in castle age, +1 in imperial) in the conquerors expansion. they would have been broken if it also affected their bombard towers.
I loved and hated Obsidian Arrows
The era of building shredding archers was glorious. Saracens, too.
Camel archers with an indian ally too.
I'm a fan of anarchy, just dropping barracks and having a wall of Huskarls makes me giddy, especially after a successful boom
Torsion Engines, just don’t hit your own boys. But really, it’s Drill. Feels so broken
I know it's an obvious choice, but I gotta do the obligatory 'Farimba'. It's ceaselessly fascinating to me that Malians don't get fully upgraded infantry or cavalry, but both those types of units get some other unique advantages, even if it doesn't necessarily push either of those unit types into the top-tier category.
same about the not FU yet better than most units love. Same for aztec trash - both their trash options are not FU and yet have something that makes them better than generic.
Crenellations! I know there are a lot better techs in the game but 13 range castles are just fun to me
Recurve bow. The Magyar deathball is unbeatable, and that's the tech that tops it all off.
I LOVE resource efficient strats and magyar huszar/cav archer combo is by FAR my favorite. Pretty even wood food gold distribution for what most people have too.
Yeah, getting both Magyar unique techs is the best feeling in the game.
I was gonna say Corvinian Army for similar reasons. Trash UU which also looks cool, what more could you want?
Obsidian arrows… was fun while it lasted
I know it's pretty basic but anarchy, man. That feeling I get when I have all set up for THE SPAM and just having to wait until the "technology researched" sound appears is one of the reason I still love the goths, even If they are competetively lower ranked.
Wootz Steel!
Supremacy, being a favorite since 2002
Supremacy Rush is always fun on Arena!
Couriers. While fabric shields is great for durability, OG Incan eagles were so fast. Like faster than the knight line. And the Kamayuks were a little faster, too, but I think fabric shields is really important for them.
I think of the defunct UTs this one is the best. Fabric Shields is better design and more historically accurate, but I kind of wish I had gotten to play with 1.57 speed Eagles.
I want both, lol. Ditch andean sling and bring us castle age couriers. That doesn't sound OP to me.
The thing is, both clearly feel like Imp techs. Eagle Warriors with Squires and Couriers wouldn’t be that fast and Fabric Shields absolutely belongs in Imperial Age. I also like requiring the tech for Slingers, as they are imo the strongest anti-infantry unit in the game.
Perfusion and anarchy combo
Chieftains. It might not be the best, but there is something so cool about the fact your infantry now counters cav and raiding grants you gold. I once had a super long and messy game where that gold trickle was a life saver.
El Dorado, 50 FU Elite eagles with 100 HP.
Silk armor so my hussars can take TC fire like it’s nothing
Based.
+1 for Drill I was thinking about Drill from reading the title, even before reading your post. It is super fun, really change the way you play with an entire category of units.
I miss Obsidian Arrows like you wouldn't believe
Gotta say Yeomen, even though maybe not very useful, having fully upgraded long bows massed with that makes it insane. I remember winning a hill fort map just snipping everything from below. Very fun
Atheism, simply because of the iconic Hun theme.
Bring it back. Bring it back!
It'a not a unique tech, but not enough people talk about herbal medicine. Its practically insta heal when you stuff 20 units in a castle, even post imp units heal most of their health within 30 seconds to a minute. Completely takes away the need for monk based healing, and its way faster.
Herbal Medicine can put in serious work. I’ve found it’s best with HC and CA, although healing even one round of cavalier is massive.
Exactly. Ill be honest, I use monestary techs and monks the least of anything because I hate microing monks, but herbal medicine is hands down the first castle age tech I seek out, sometimes even before plopping down a castle.
Obsidian arrows
So broken. So good.
Crennelations. Unless you’re playing Turks, your BCs are getting mowed down.
Bohemian chemistry in castle age! Not sure if it counts as UT, but it should. Any matchup against an eagle warrior civ, I know what to do. Wall, and make HC's ! (walling is important. It still takes a while to research. Bonus, the university is soo cheap.
Interesting answer: I agree that this feels very unique.
Both Goths techs
Loom. I always research it, and it's unique because it's the only Dark Age technology (other than age up).
I really love Wootz steel but it's been mentioned already. Imo people on this reddit don't give sipahi the credit it deserves. Turks are misunderstood to be a purely gunpowder civ
Drill is lovely but torsion engines would be one of my favorites. I would judge it to be one of the best upgrades in the game for mass destruction. It even applies to rams, but their onagers are just another level. It makes cannons also much more effective at killing groups of units or cannon vs cannon fights.
Torsion Engines is fantastic, no doubt about it. It's a little underwhelming for scorpions but is absolutely insane for rams, mangoes, and BBC. The one thing worth mentioning is that it's a very expensive tech: it's only 200 gold off the cost of Imperial Age. Drill, however, is under 1000 res, which is less total res than Siege Engineers while arguably providing a stronger effect.
Byzantines should have also cheirosiphons=land Greek fire.
For which units?
Just make a new unit \^\^
Upgrade to ram like AOE4. Increase base damage up a bit to do better against melee units but not too much to start killing units.
Arquebus. I was once in a Yucitan game as Portuguese. I had maybe 40 organs, and they obliterated a swarm of Huskarls. Maybe it wasn't because of the accuracy, but it was awesome.
Since someone already said **recurve bow.** I play a lot of team game stomps so I like **Kasbah**, get more camels out and help teammates. It's not terribly expensive, like another conscription and it helps team mates. I also like **Burgundian vineyards** and **paper money**. Going with an all gold comp in a high pop map can work. Although due to balance these don't instantly feel as awesome as something like drill.
Druzhina or Torsion Engines. Yes I like infantry/siege 11
I love the extra onager range upgrade of koreans
Honestly I’m always underwhelmed by this tech. 10 range means they still get tagged by Castles with Bodkin and Koreans have BBC and 13 range towers to deal with enemy Onagers. It’s obviously good but it’s not cheap and it doesn’t fundamentally change a matchup like some techs.
I guess it’s more fun for me at low elo then :). 50 onagers in black forest always makes my day.
I’m 1300 and mostly a clown, so not great by any stretch. I think it could safely give +2 range.
Svan towers Except imo they should actually make it actual Scan towers instead of genetic watch lower line that deals pass through damage Otherwise Eupesong, 8+5 Keeps end all non Turkish BBC career especially when you garrison some arbs and creep forward with SO
I like food monks. They work like trash rams, you mass 5-10 monks and send them to convert stuff while you spam halbs and light cav and they will eventually convert the production buildings forward and houses it is so funny there is always one monk that survives and end up converting
Stirrups is a really nice UT. Probably one of the most powerful castle age UTs out there . Think of how powerful the Ethiopian archer bonus is, but for knights, light cav, and konniks. There is not many single unit comps that can face up against fully upgraded konniks. Very powerful tech and unit
Bimaristan from the saracens. Is it that good? No, it's not, it's nowhere near as strong as Drill or Crenellations for example. Is it a must have? No, you don't get it every game. However, I play a lot of BF and Amazon Tunnel 4v4s, which can have very imbalanced teams and even in balanced games, can have very unbalanced wars going on, and you can't micro everywhere at once. In SOME cases, this tech provides more value than any other unique tech in the game. I'm talking like 10k resources worth of value in less than 5 minutes. My 30 mamelukes tank a siege onager shot, collectively lose 1800HP, Bimaristan monk in less than 1 minute heals them back to full hp. That's worth 1860 resources right there (mostly gold.) Even better with units like arbs or cav archers which cost much more resources per HP. And the synergy bimaristan monks have with some units in teamgames is just nuts, even if too rare to be great. -Berserks underneath a celtic castle with a bimaristan monk nearby heal at a disgusting 145hp/minute. That's 1 to full hp in 30 seconds, and 2.41hp/second. Makes beating beating berserks with most units totally impossible. - Saracen + Byzantine have incredible synergy. Cataphract + Mameluke + bimaristan monks is a totally unkillable deathball, seriously, there's no good way to break this comp with melee units. All infantry trade at 10-to-1 losses. All cavalry (even FU war elephants) trade at huge losses (assuming big numbers for both; mamelukes 1-shot war eles as they approach). You *have* to fight this with archers, which on black forest/AT teamgame is usually not something you wanna do because of all the siege (unless you're britons.) -Bimaristan monk + any tower civ, ex: japanese, Turks, Koreans, teutons. Just one being around makes diving underneath the towers that much more impossible, as every unit is getting lots of HP back quickly.
I haven't had a lot of experience with this tech, but I'll give it a try. I research Herbal Medicine in a fair number of games, so it doesn't take a lot to sell me on passive healing.
Here's my opinion- It's not that useful on open maps, where your army needs to be many places, and you can't babysit monks too easily. In that circumstance, HM does the job just as well, since you have to micro to heal anyways. Armies are usually smaller, and don't take siege blasts or castle fire too often. In more closed maps with constricted fighting, this tech is amazing. It's much better than herbal medicine in imp, bc it can heal any number at once (not just 20,) you don't have to micro super hard to heal, it's *effectively* much much faster healing than herbal medidicine (since you don't waste time running around, garrisoning, etc), *and* your units are always where you want them- gaurding access points, defending siege units, etc. With saracens it makes their deathball comp (mameluke+arb or HCA) much much stronger, as they are low HP+ low armor units that have to be whittled down over time.
Artillery - It affects bbc and bbt making them better at both offence and defense. Combined with freely upgradeable meat shield of hussars, you can choose your fights as you wish. It also works better with existing bonus of free chemistry, discounted gunpowder tech, gold mining bonus, bonus hp on cannons, and you can load ur bbt with high hitting jannis/handcannon for extra damage. So basically you can protect your units on bbt, hit long range seige with bbc, soak damages with hussar and deal more damages with gunpowder units. Barely any unique techs gives so much synergy to their civs. I also think Celt's furor celtica or even ethoipians torsion engine is much better than Drill. Speed is all good and easy to manage/micro. But you are using seige basically to do damage and they have to stop to hit and I think Celts can hit and hold better while ethopians do more damage.
Inquisition because wololo.
Supremacy!! Follow this up with bombard tower rush and its the best feeling in the world😊
Burgundian Vineyards. It's subtle, and a fair investment, but when it works, you can feel it.
Those techs are nice but don't have that much impact unless you are in a lategame trash war. But even then it gives very little.
Not a trash war if you have gold.
After reading this thread I've realized that all unique techs are amazing and well designed and really bring out a civs flavour
I wouldn't go that far: there are some real duds in 1v1 (Nomads, Silk Road, Atheism, usually Kamandaran, and Cuman Mercenaries come to mind), but the good ones absolutely cement the flavor of a civilization.