The New & Improved Royal Heirs! (AoE2)

One of the upcoming changes in the next patch I'm most interested in is the new "Royal Heirs" effect. What sounds like an innocuous -3 damage taken from mounted units may be a much bigger deal than it sounds when you start looking into it. That's exactly what we'll be doing in this video!

0:18 Previous effect
1:05 Shotel Warrior overview
1:45 Shotel Warrior in Castle Age
5:55 Shotel Warrior in Imperial Age
8:45 Camel Riders in Castle Age
11:03 Heavy Camels in Imperial Age
12:45 Final thoughts
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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition

[laservsvecchiette]

Arrow comes from a standing guy
Gasp!
Arrow comes from guy on a horse
It's Shotiln time!

[JJBeauregard]

I think it's a really nice and strong buff for the lesser used units of the Ethiopians, what I don't like about effects like this is that they're not shown anywhere in the stats or with visual indicators or anything. I feel like there's already too much going on "behind the scenes" in AoE2 and adding to that really doesn't help.

[NeonofMoravia]

3:25 Japanese mentioned in a positive way in a video about whole different civ ✔️

[devangnivatkar]

Finally! The 'Mangudais have no counter' meme is dead!

Some weird interactions I found:

1 - Royal Heirs blocks armour piercing attacks. Elite Leitis without Relics do 15 damage to Shotels, instead of the expected 18

2 - Royal Heirs does not block Cataphract trample damage. The Shotel attacking from behind takes 5 damage irrespective of the tech

3 - Royal Heirs does block Elephant type trample damage which accounts for armour. The reduction is factored into the base attack of the Elephant before the trample damage is calculated. A Shotel consistently takes -1 trample damage compared to an Ethiopian Halb for example

[grammaton]

Cav and archers dominate the game now but devs are trying to get infantry up there. I am still waiting for SotLs 6 hours long video about how last patch changes the meta. Realy looking forward to it.

[lenovowhite]

I don't play AoE2 but dude the way you present the game and it's changes make me get a dopamine hit everytime I see you uploaded something new !

[thepersonwhocomentz]

Important to note that this is coming in the context of swordsmen being made into a more meta-friendly option for army composition in general. So while Shotels are getting one hell of a buff, their most obvious counter is also going to come more into relevance right alongside them.

Not to say that anything the swordsmen line is getting is going to make them better against Shotels, but rather that you're going to be more likely to be making swordsmen *anyway* for a variety of contexts, so having Shotels become stronger isn't one of those things where your hand is going to be forced into pumping out a counter unit that's not useful for anything else other than *just* countering Shotels.

[nicolasdragas]

this technology should add the hero glow to the shotels

[da_BemBem]

Thanks for going over the Cataphract! That's what I was most curious about.

[vaxfantomen]

Watched your videos for years and for some reason that "like a good infintary civ, like japaneese" sounded so personal. 3:22
Old Sotl bias!

Love your videos as always man : ]

[garbagegarage]

What is also interesting to me is how they implemented it and if it is going to be available in the scenario editor

[Krecikdwamiljony]

Hera is going to be pretty upset once he notices this

Edit: although, to be fair, at least this comes in pretty late in the game but also, on the other hand, Ethiopians already have good archers so idk

[llSuperSnivyll]

It would have been interesting, just for curiosity's sake, to see how this tech makes the Konnik matchup change, whether it's Mounted or Dismounted the one that is easier to deal with.

[CallofDutyBlackOps]

It feels nice that; as much as you'd think trying to protect your archers with a squishy melee unit is bad, i find Shotel wars are really fun to use, being that they run the gap to situations that a slower unit might not save a straggling archer, or maybe avenge it.

[hawkticus_history_corner]

Oh. Oh my. I love Shotels so this is nutty. This is gonna be great

[JAKEATO]

The Scary part of Shotel is how the civ have the Economy for do the unit, still players gonna mix with pikes against mounted units for maximum damage and archer/siege support for possible counters.

[Hestorios]

Great video as always! Didn't think the impact would be this huge.
Does anyone know when the new patch will be released?

[mikelivingood]

I know you go into great detail, but is it possible to see how they match up against the top tier civs. For example, shotels vs Frank knights or Bulgarian knights with stirrups. You did this for camels and it was greatly appreciated.
Ethiopians certainly seem to be a much stronger civ than before with archers to counter strong camel civs and shotels/camels for strong cavalry civs.

[Valchrist]

Looking forward to seeing the shotel vs conq matchup.

[dustyacer]

results are kinda what i expected. it fits in with them in that its a strong castle age tech but does fall off a bit in imperial/lategame. The weird thing is now that ethipians has 3 good counters vs calvary. They get the pike upgrade for free, along with the new camels and shotels. Ofc each have a bit of pros and cons with that.