Something worth mentioning is that because the Serjeant's are a military unit, when tasked to build or repair a Donjon they do not flee like a villager would when they get hit, this avoids the issue of having to spam click villagers to build/repair while under pressure, which i've seen in many a pro game.
@@CBRN-115 Not really. Serjeants were professional medieval soldiers that were reasonably well-armed, but didn't have the estate or the social status that came with landed knighthood. The naturally falling role of serjeants in training and leading the levy in times of war later led to the development of the NCO title sergeant where the duties were formalized, not assigned by natural convenience. In short, serjeants were quite comparable to huscarls, or somewhat poorer and less appreciated than men-at-arms.
It's also worth mentioning that serjeants don't get interrupted when taking damage while building which let's you force up a tower where villagers might fail to do so.
Historical fact: in Sicily there are a lot of towers along the coast, that were built during the Norman-Arab era and during the spanish era for defensive and comunications purposes (using fire and smoke).
Defense against Barbary pirates, who caused coastal settlements in the Mediterranean to almost completely disappear for _centuries_ and were one of the main causes of what is currently called the Dark Age. Of course, they did not operated in areas conquered by the various Islamic empires.
@@RaynmanPlays The Barbary pirates were not operating at anywhere near that level of influence until hundreds of years after the Dark Ages. They have NEVER been considered a major cause of the Dark Ages. Maybe you should be paying more attention to your Zoom classes.
Donjons are extremely well balanced for their uses, Sicilians opness comes from 50 percent bonus damage reduction which essentially makes all of their knights to cataphracts
They are all about defense and being tanky af. Their searjants are basically equivalent to militia, but with additional archer resistance. Their Halbs are archer resistant spam units, that allow you to take down a solid block of archers by simply flooding them like goths, but without having to fear cav. Their knights are all purpose killing machines. They take down archers, they take down infantry, they take down camels, the only thing they fall to are better knights. On paper, I do not know how to counter a fully boomed and teched out sicilian player, everything outside of siege is being countered, and even siege is restriced to a mass of scorpions which they can soft counter with onagers (they don't get bbc or siege onager). And if they want to, they can easily open with archers into xbows as they rush donjons into your base
@@MrBl4ckY siege weapons seems last option. Also their knights takes half the bonus dmg, turning them into Cataphracts ? They are still far from it. Ok they takes half halbs bonus like but Cataphracts actually have 16 cav bonus dmg armor. Pikemen with +22 actually does +6 against Elite Cataphracts... And they do heavy bonus dmg against infantery, allowing 25 E. Cataphracts to win vs 100 japanese hallbs. All other cav bonus dmg are inferior and so are just negated. Not with the sicilians. Camels seems less viable as they does less and still cost gold. Tho the bonus seems too much, it should be nerfed down as we have a counterpart with the Tatars who do 50% more damage but only on higher ground.
@@sniperloic2904 The higher ground bonus isn't really a comparison though because it's really situational. Also, the sicilians get the bonus on every unit while the byzantines get it just on cataphracts. I think changing the bonus to either 20% less bonus damage taken, or something like 33% more bonus damage dealt would make more sense
Linguistic donjon fun facts : Despite their similarity and etymological closeness, the English word "dungeon" and the French word "donjon" don't share the same meaning. As illustrated in game, a "donjon" is what the English would call a "keep". Under the donjon which was located in the core of a castle were the underground cells called "oubliettes" (related to the verb "oublier" -> "to forget" because you could throw someone there and forget about them) or "cachots" (from the verb "cacher"-> "to hide" because you could just hide the people you didn't like in there) called "dungeon" in English. The similarity between both words lead to some mistranslations*, notably with the game "Dungeons and Dragons" translated in French as "Donjons et Dragons" when it should have been "Cachots et Dragons". This lead to other games translating dungeons as donjon even though the two words shouldn't have the same meaning at all as one is underground while the other is a tall building. Now you might be thinking "Why is this guy talking about French, these are the Sicilians." Well... while the period AoE2 takes place in is vague, this is definitely a French word and the reason it made its way there is because Sicily got invaded by the Normands, basically vikings who had settled in northern France (you've probably heard of Normandy in the context of WW2, that's why the region is called that way) and other bits of Europe. They stayed there, adopted the language and then decided to look for warmer places and better looking beaches. Serjeant is also a French word, although the modern spelling would be "sergent". As you can probably guess, it translates into "sergeant" although the modern meaning as a military rank is probably quite different from the historical one. *Well... Not exactly a mistranslation. See comment by ResusprimeIX below.
You forgot to point that because of this shitstorm, Keep and Donjon ends both being called Donjon in french. Hopefully Sicilians doesn't have Keeps so misunderstanding is avoided
I would like to clarify: *dungeon* and *donjon* _do/did_ have the same meaning as dungeon came from donjon. A dungeon was an inner tower/keep. It _also_ had a prisoner section, so going to the dungeon meant two different things depending on context. www.etymonline.com/word/dungeon www.finedictionary.com/dungeon.html www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dungeon
I think it's worth noting the difference between playing with AI vs playing with other players. The Donjons are incredibly effective when used against AI in tower rushes because it's hard to set up a bunch of towers, keep villagers alive, *and* defend towers from sudden vill rushes. The donjon sidesteps that challenge by having 'vills' (sergeants) defending themselves and donjons easily, and they allow you to easily push into dangerous areas of the AI base. Human players are far better at simply building away from your towers, getting a military, and swinging in after taking a bit of a loss. Similar to how Teutons are great against AI but not humans because humans know to literally just avoid your teutonics and hit your economy.
@@ShahTalks oh, wow, didn't even notice it was him hahah I was all like "hmm, i agree fellow aoe player whose channel I know nothing about" until your comment
Something else to note with the Serjeant: they are not affected by Treadmill Crane, so Villagers can build Donjons faster than them once that tech is researched.
@@ramsesbams I don't think so. If Serjeants were to benefit from Treadmill Crane, they'd be too hard to stop if they spam Donjons. Remember, Serjeants don't run away if you attack them while they're building, while Villagers do.
This is very satisfying both because its historically accurate (army units build their field fortifications themselves or has specialised engineer corps, but not dragged civilian workers into middle of nowhere to build some barracks, walls and towers) and very handy as you dont have vulnerable villagers in army but it still can pop up forward base to receive reinforcements or place defence structures at enemy base
Haven’t played this game in 10 plus years; so happy to see it’s still going strong and things are being added. This was my childhood, just spamming the cars that shoot stones
i think youre missing a very huge bonus wich is that - apart from the very first donjon - you dont need villagers for it, meaning you can essentially create as many additional villagers as you have in the front, because you can replace those with serjeants and send them home to work instead.
Equally though there is then the disadvantage that garrisoning serjeants doesn't give you extra arrows, so if you do send the villagers back you'll lose a feudal age tower war
@@artamir6605 donjon is a French word meaning Keep. In AOE 2 Sicilians are actually normans and normans are culturally and at least linguistically French ;)
@@Arnovita thank you very much. I thought that this might be the reason, definitly that the word is of french origin. But i was unsure if they were normans or directly from scandinavia. I would have loved the developers to introduce the kievan rus as a civ, but i think they are already being represented by the slavs.
why do I keep watching those videos, I don't play AoE2 or plan to either, but damn are they interesting to watch regardless. Kudos, SotL for making great content
@@Tpoleful idk brother, my version doesn't support it but there are other versions that do. I'll try it out this weekend and i'll update you on it if you want. Buying it makes everything easier tho so u made a nice choice i believe
Back in Sicily, there's a way of doin things. Sure it might be a little more than usual, but so long as you pay Don Jon for his... _protection,_ your farmers won't befall any unfortunate accidents. But Don Jon also rewards loyalty; continued investment in Don Jon means you'll find his sergents willing to take an arrow for you from time to time, and goin to the more dangerous places so your villagers don't have to.
This Don Jon fella seems to be quite important in Sicily. And if his sergeants live up to their reputation then i would also pay this Don Jon for his help protecting my farmlands.
Most prominent case for the Donjon Tower rush, is that after dropping the first Don on their stone supply, you can start to replace villagers with seargants and use front villagers to gather the enemies resources faster than what you would with other civs.
I've gotten back into AOE2, I used to play frivolously as a youngster without paying any mind to what I was actually doing or how to be better, but now that I'm older I find it vastly more interesting than I had first thought. So, that said I've done a good bit of research online and hands down SOTL is the literal best at giving you information about the game.
That's the stairwell tower im pretty sure. And i think you pay for the upgrades by paying the extra TAX when you build the donjons. Not even the sicilian builders would give away an upgrade for free, they just make you think you haven't payed for it. Smart buggers.
So much have changed that I thought of during the video now: Donjon cost reduced to 175 stone instead, allowing for repairs. Sicilians start with 300 stone as a civ bonus Longswordsmen have one meele armor now in base armor, manking them a little less bad in comparison unique tech makes 35 instead of 50 serjants incan tower rush is nefed away, and is no longer relevant.
@@cptant7610 the point is that you quickly need to cover enemy resources in a tower rush and higher cost hinders that a bit. If the opponent pre-towers after seeing the 1st donjon you might find it more difficult to build more of them forward
Something I think wasn't covered here - the fact that it takes up 4 squares technically means it has more effective range than the watch tower line, right?
It covers a larger area but doesn't get any range advantage on other units/structures. In addition the additional area it covers is negated when you want two donjons to cover each others melee weakness.
@@hatimzeineddine8723 I'm fairly sure range is from the edge of any building. There is a mod which displays the range on the grid and the indicator is rounded square shape instead of perfectly round.
@@tamaskosa3283 , Well the word Dungeon was derived by the French word Donjon... which was the tallest tower in a castle... and was used as a place to store VIPs... sometimes against their will... as such, it was also one of the best defended locations in the castle. Hence.. "off to the dungeon with ye!" became synonymous with prisons/jails...
It's worth noting that wasn't mentioned in the video that when a serjeant is attacked while building, he won't hop off and walk around like a villager would.
The general assumption is that it's unbalanced in some way and now the question is weather they're underperformers overperformers or have a massive cheese strat.
@@laurenkirby97 that is not the general assumption at all, maybe on youtube comments but certainly not from people at the high level. The only concern is First Crusade pumping out 50 sarjeants
6:55 I think you meant -2 attack for the serjeant. Also, I feel like the cost of the serjeant is a big weakness in feudal age, especially when you consider that they trade evenly with M@A, but are more expensive than samurai. Plus, you have to divert vils to stone in order to build the donjons in the first place, which makes it that much harder to sustain production of serjeants. I feel like if they cost 50f 30g they would be a viable alternative to M@A in feudal, once you factor in the effect of things like supplies, a second barracks, or a stable can allow someone to pretty easily pump out enough units to shut down a donjon rush, without having to deviate to much from a typical feudal eco.
I think the best use of donjons is to snowball after First Crusade. Make a lot of donjons with your 50 serjeants so you can keep production up afterwards.
Bonus against fortifications, extra garrison, and creates infantry that can make more… so it’s an entrenching specialist structure? Lots of aggressive forward fortifications to push the enemy back slowly but surely, deploying more builder soldiers to keep it up and offering a refuge for units if the enemy attempts to counterattack, while blowing apart the enemy’s attempts to entrench themselves. Kind of a weird niche to replicate World War I in Age of Empires, but if it works…
As someone else had said, Donjon is an old Norman word for "keep". Perhaps it is a more modern thing that a "dungeon" of a castle is found underneath. The stories about jails/gaols kept in the donjons/dungeons were referring to the base of a strong keep. Any other historical linguistic enthusiasts want to chime in? This is all speculation.
Dungeon is indeed an English derivative of Donjon. Being the main building of a castle, its' prison would likely be there, so prisoners would be taken to the dungeon. Oh. And looking it up, don't laugh, but there was an old english word 'dung' (pronounces 'dunj' or like the first bit of 'dungeon') that meant a prison, so it got combined with Donjon. Although it's possible that the French also had that intention, with an old French word 'dungjo' also meaning 'prison' (and sharing a common source). That's just from wiktionary though, so take that with the same grain of salt as with anything wikipedia says. I'll try to look into it more though.
@@fyrjefe3928 There was story of prisoner exchange between French and English. The French officers speech fogged the English understanding of where the captives were. He ment the tower and they called it (donjon) whereas the English took it to mean the prison. I may or may not have pulled that story from vol 1 of The history of the English speaking peoples (The birth of Britain) by Winston Churchill. Then again who it was probably a small article that caught my eye. I'm really not to sure. Anyway the idea is that the word donjon was spread by the English it caught on as a word for a holding area for prisoners rather then the tower itself.
Elite Sergeants have Obscene armour and pierce armour. Definately a very different unit. More of a slow advancing unit unlike Champs which are aggressive infantry
I feel like there should be an upgrade for castle age Serjeants. It's a bit BS they get a free upgrade, especially on a UU, compared to the standard militia line, and also Meso civs.
I think they work pretty well during imperial age. Drop them close to enemies, have some sergants attack, some repair it, and the donjon create more sergants. Bring trebuchets from the back to clear out buildings, and drop more donjons as you destroy more.
I discovered your channel a few days ago and already I've watched a ton of your videos and now I want to buy aoe2 definitive edition cus it just looks really nice and is everything I wanted to be better in aoe2 hd and normal editions
Yasama are the only towers that can beat the Donjon without garrisoned villagers/archers. Korean towers can beat them too, although only if they're taking advantage of their greater range... Briton towers are a distant 3rd... they lose 1v1 but at least take more than half a Donjon's health. The most economic way to repel a Donjon is to garrison a single villager or archer inside your own tower. Just 1 garrisoned unit in a Watch Tower can defeat an un-garrisoned Donjon 1v1 in Feudal.
Ah but that Donjon will throw out a sergeant that will tear your tower down. Also, Donjons fire two arrows at a time in Feudal and easily tear down other towers, check your facts first.
@@encoreperformance1081 Sergeants and other infantry don't contribute additional arrows (unless you're Teutons). They can help attack opposing tower though, like you said before.
May be a stupid question, but how do you repair a Donjon with Sergeants? As they are a military unit the usual Hotkey for repairing (E with the DE Hotkey-Config) is the "Follow" order for them.
I think it may have been worth testing the damage a Donjon inflicts on melee units as they attack the base and compare that to the damage a tower does to melee units, also testing the speed at which the Donjon is destroyed compared to the tower line. The larger base means more units attacking it, so it will be destroyed faster, but does its higher attack counterbalance that, or does the survivability of the tower mean it actually does more total damage to the units at its base. It would be interesting to check that I think.
I feel that the donjon rush is more like a teamplay tactic, a mate secures a beachead while you build them up and after that you can take over the attack.
Yes. It's 2x2 instead of 1x1. Spirit mentioned that it's easier to vil rush it down and harder to wall it off with houses, etc. (And of course it's impossible to housewall it off if you send the starting vills back and just use Serjeants to build the rest.)
seems like you would do some strategy and gain map control with some donjons, but then to finish off an opponent, you could use your unique tech and then flood the opponent with serjeants and a late game donjon rush and continue to spam serjeant from the newly built donjons
There is another factor, the psychological one. Donjons are both more intimidating and a lot more rewarding to build. A tower can feel like a dead building if the enemy just avoids it. The donjon however is also a military production building. This lets you ramp up infantry production, and lets it respond to sige like rams on its own without support. Honestly, building donjons and luring enemies into their range is the greatest joy of the Hautevilles campaign.
I think that in the tower rush, you should consider that you can have all villagers working so in teamgame maiby its easier to transition from early castle agretion into something else
With the introduction of these new mechanics, can we finally fix Siege tower so that they can in someway, transform into a building next to a wall to allow free flow of units going over a wall?
Hi spirit!! Love your channel. The civilization pick UI is missing 3 spots, how about a video going over what Civilizations are plausibly left for the age of empires 2 timeline.
So if you want to tower rush with this, you kinda need a fast castle timing as well. That's a pretty cool combination - probably not very viable, but tower rushes shouldn't be strong anyway.
2:25 Hot take but I think AoE II should show you all the hidden attack bonuses and other stats that matter. Or at least there should be an option for it. If AoE III could do it, then so can number two!
Would really like to see a video about how to counter mass Searjant! In Imp i really wonder how well Byzantine Cataphacts can do, especially considering the MASSIVE cost difference.
Hmm...feels like they allow for a tower rush where you can retreat the villagers once the sergants trickle in leading into a constant aggressive harrasment siege. Like they are a selfsufficent military outpost that can grow if feed. While your villagers can still boom. How are they against towncenters, Spirit?
The Donjon rush sounds like a shipment card from AoE3 was adapted to AoE2. Hoping this presages that architecture and town design is a factor in AoE4. (Also, that we get engineer units to make some buildings and not have to send villagers to the frontlines.)
Me who didn't play this game in years: "Yeah, how good are the donjons?"
same here i played the game years ago and never even thought about stuff like this.
Wait, you guys play the game?
@@Malusdarkblades11 No worries. the siscilian civilization came to aoe2 this year in an expansion. so you never were given a chance to worry.
Haha same
I don’t even play the this edition. But I still gotta know how good they are
Donjons also look prettier so they will give your base more style points.
This is a massive buff for Low Elo Legends for sure! Can't believe the devs didn't account for that. Broken building.
*the enemy base
Btw you can create an "elite dungeon master" in the donjon,
Its cheap at only 300 gold.
Japanese guard towers are ugly though
This guy plays Teutons
Something worth mentioning is that because the Serjeant's are a military unit, when tasked to build or repair a Donjon they do not flee like a villager would when they get hit, this avoids the issue of having to spam click villagers to build/repair while under pressure, which i've seen in many a pro game.
Serjeant? Is this an Italian spelling of sergeant?
Good point!
@@CBRN-115 It italian it's sergente
@@CBRN-115 Not really. Serjeants were professional medieval soldiers that were reasonably well-armed, but didn't have the estate or the social status that came with landed knighthood. The naturally falling role of serjeants in training and leading the levy in times of war later led to the development of the NCO title sergeant where the duties were formalized, not assigned by natural convenience.
In short, serjeants were quite comparable to huscarls, or somewhat poorer and less appreciated than men-at-arms.
@@TheMorinaiz Just like "Be a person" in Portuguese.
It's also worth mentioning that serjeants don't get interrupted when taking damage while building which let's you force up a tower where villagers might fail to do so.
good point
I assume that also holds true to one monk trick?
it's also a hundred times tankier in late game.
This is actually huge.
The Donjon Rush, not to be confused with the Don Juan Rush
That's the one that happens just before closing time at the singles bar, right?
The one easily defeated by mills you mean?
@@nectismanta8080 You're confusing Don Juan and Don Quixote.
George Takei: Oh myyyyyy...
Ah, yes. One penetrates quite deeply, and the other is an AOE2 strat.
Historical fact: in Sicily there are a lot of towers along the coast, that were built during the Norman-Arab era and during the spanish era for defensive and comunications purposes (using fire and smoke).
I can see why the developers would make them a tower civilization! Great trivia!
Defense against Barbary pirates, who caused coastal settlements in the Mediterranean to almost completely disappear for _centuries_ and were one of the main causes of what is currently called the Dark Age. Of course, they did not operated in areas conquered by the various Islamic empires.
@@RaynmanPlays first the Bronze Age collapse and then that, coastal Mediterranean couldn’t catch a break
Hahaa nice
@@RaynmanPlays The Barbary pirates were not operating at anywhere near that level of influence until hundreds of years after the Dark Ages. They have NEVER been considered a major cause of the Dark Ages. Maybe you should be paying more attention to your Zoom classes.
Another high melee armor unit!
Leitis: It's time to shine.
business is boomin
@@fromfareast3070 50% less bonus damage
@@RickyMuzakki Ignoring armour is not bonus damage, unless I'm missing some arcane knowledge.
Donjons are extremely well balanced for their uses, Sicilians opness comes from 50 percent bonus damage reduction which essentially makes all of their knights to cataphracts
They are all about defense and being tanky af. Their searjants are basically equivalent to militia, but with additional archer resistance. Their Halbs are archer resistant spam units, that allow you to take down a solid block of archers by simply flooding them like goths, but without having to fear cav. Their knights are all purpose killing machines. They take down archers, they take down infantry, they take down camels, the only thing they fall to are better knights. On paper, I do not know how to counter a fully boomed and teched out sicilian player, everything outside of siege is being countered, and even siege is restriced to a mass of scorpions which they can soft counter with onagers (they don't get bbc or siege onager).
And if they want to, they can easily open with archers into xbows as they rush donjons into your base
I love when the enemy tries to cut down sicilian knights with Spearman and they're left scratching their heads when my knights end up winning
@@MrBl4ckY siege weapons seems last option.
Also their knights takes half the bonus dmg, turning them into Cataphracts ?
They are still far from it. Ok they takes half halbs bonus like but Cataphracts actually have 16 cav bonus dmg armor. Pikemen with +22 actually does +6 against Elite Cataphracts... And they do heavy bonus dmg against infantery, allowing 25 E. Cataphracts to win vs 100 japanese hallbs. All other cav bonus dmg are inferior and so are just negated. Not with the sicilians. Camels seems less viable as they does less and still cost gold. Tho the bonus seems too much, it should be nerfed down as we have a counterpart with the Tatars who do 50% more damage but only on higher ground.
@@sniperloic2904 Also the fact that Chapharats have splash damage which makes then infinitely better vs infantry.
@@sniperloic2904 The higher ground bonus isn't really a comparison though because it's really situational. Also, the sicilians get the bonus on every unit while the byzantines get it just on cataphracts. I think changing the bonus to either 20% less bonus damage taken, or something like 33% more bonus damage dealt would make more sense
Linguistic donjon fun facts :
Despite their similarity and etymological closeness, the English word "dungeon" and the French word "donjon" don't share the same meaning. As illustrated in game, a "donjon" is what the English would call a "keep". Under the donjon which was located in the core of a castle were the underground cells called "oubliettes" (related to the verb "oublier" -> "to forget" because you could throw someone there and forget about them) or "cachots" (from the verb "cacher"-> "to hide" because you could just hide the people you didn't like in there) called "dungeon" in English.
The similarity between both words lead to some mistranslations*, notably with the game "Dungeons and Dragons" translated in French as "Donjons et Dragons" when it should have been "Cachots et Dragons". This lead to other games translating dungeons as donjon even though the two words shouldn't have the same meaning at all as one is underground while the other is a tall building.
Now you might be thinking "Why is this guy talking about French, these are the Sicilians." Well... while the period AoE2 takes place in is vague, this is definitely a French word and the reason it made its way there is because Sicily got invaded by the Normands, basically vikings who had settled in northern France (you've probably heard of Normandy in the context of WW2, that's why the region is called that way) and other bits of Europe. They stayed there, adopted the language and then decided to look for warmer places and better looking beaches.
Serjeant is also a French word, although the modern spelling would be "sergent". As you can probably guess, it translates into "sergeant" although the modern meaning as a military rank is probably quite different from the historical one.
*Well... Not exactly a mistranslation. See comment by ResusprimeIX below.
En temps que français, merci pour cette leçon d'histoire!
Well, this is a passionate comment to say the least.
Really interesting. 👍
You forgot to point that because of this shitstorm, Keep and Donjon ends both being called Donjon in french.
Hopefully Sicilians doesn't have Keeps so misunderstanding is avoided
Very interesting! I’ll donjon this all in mind!
I would like to clarify: *dungeon* and *donjon* _do/did_ have the same meaning as dungeon came from donjon. A dungeon was an inner tower/keep. It _also_ had a prisoner section, so going to the dungeon meant two different things depending on context.
www.etymonline.com/word/dungeon
www.finedictionary.com/dungeon.html
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dungeon
I think it's worth noting the difference between playing with AI vs playing with other players. The Donjons are incredibly effective when used against AI in tower rushes because it's hard to set up a bunch of towers, keep villagers alive, *and* defend towers from sudden vill rushes. The donjon sidesteps that challenge by having 'vills' (sergeants) defending themselves and donjons easily, and they allow you to easily push into dangerous areas of the AI base. Human players are far better at simply building away from your towers, getting a military, and swinging in after taking a bit of a loss. Similar to how Teutons are great against AI but not humans because humans know to literally just avoid your teutonics and hit your economy.
I love your Videos and I didn't expect to see you in Spirit of the Law's Channel
Aoe2 video coming when?
Oh wow. That's a name I didn't expect to see lol.
Nice to see you over here
@@ShahTalks oh, wow, didn't even notice it was him hahah
I was all like "hmm, i agree fellow aoe player whose channel I know nothing about" until your comment
"The guard tower also has it's own upgrade cost, that requires building a university."
Me, a koreans main:"Huh?"
Something else to note with the Serjeant: they are not affected by Treadmill Crane, so Villagers can build Donjons faster than them once that tech is researched.
The tech says *villagers* build faster so kinda makes sense.
that kinda sounds like something they overlooked and should fix
@@ramsesbams I agree, but how often is Treadmill Crane going to swing a game? (And do Sicilians get it in the first place?)
@@ramsesbams I don't think so. If Serjeants were to benefit from Treadmill Crane, they'd be too hard to stop if they spam Donjons. Remember, Serjeants don't run away if you attack them while they're building, while Villagers do.
Reminds me of the Norse in AoM. Always liked that some of their military units could also build structures.
This is very satisfying both because its historically accurate (army units build their field fortifications themselves or has specialised engineer corps, but not dragged civilian workers into middle of nowhere to build some barracks, walls and towers) and very handy as you dont have vulnerable villagers in army but it still can pop up forward base to receive reinforcements or place defence structures at enemy base
Haven’t played this game in 10 plus years; so happy to see it’s still going strong and things are being added. This was my childhood, just spamming the cars that shoot stones
i think youre missing a very huge bonus wich is that - apart from the very first donjon - you dont need villagers for it, meaning you can essentially create as many additional villagers as you have in the front, because you can replace those with serjeants and send them home to work instead.
Basicly a Donjon snowball effect. More Donjons built leads to more Donjons to train leads to more Donjons to be built.
Equally though there is then the disadvantage that garrisoning serjeants doesn't give you extra arrows, so if you do send the villagers back you'll lose a feudal age tower war
@@Peelioka Will you? With 6 tankier M@A under their towers?
How many more vils are needed to mine stone to keep Donjon production going, even with serjeants building the subsequent Donjons?
@@legion2590 don't think it is possible past third with normal set up.
The word "Donjon" triggers my brain to think of the old "Oh Long Johnson" cat meme
"It's done, Jhon!" - T90 Official -
I'm triggered because it does sound neither norse nor italian (except for the don part)
Dong John 🤔
@@artamir6605 donjon is a French word meaning Keep. In AOE 2 Sicilians are actually normans and normans are culturally and at least linguistically French ;)
@@Arnovita thank you very much. I thought that this might be the reason, definitly that the word is of french origin. But i was unsure if they were normans or directly from scandinavia. I would have loved the developers to introduce the kievan rus as a civ, but i think they are already being represented by the slavs.
Let's be honest, this was just SotL flexing Japanese as the superior civ again
Superior towers folded 1000 times
Player: "Alright Serjeant, since I converted you, build me one of those donjons!"
Serjeant: "A what?"
Player: "...CRUD."
Does that work? Can you convert a Serjeant and make Donjons with it?
@@13lackout360 nope, no donjon building abilities. you just get one of those tanky serjeants.
The Imperial Age Serjeant is the Missing link Between the Housecarl and Teuton knight, Change my mind.
you mean huskarl?
@@joeyterheide5426 Housecarl is actually the closest word, ethymology speaking
“He’s crossed orcs with goblin men.”
@@joeyterheide5426 I think he means the Casacarlos
@@jefffinkbonner9551
"Whom do you serve?"
"SARUMAAAN!"
*wololooo*
"Oh um... well. I guess not"
why do I keep watching those videos, I don't play AoE2 or plan to either, but damn are they interesting to watch regardless. Kudos, SotL for making great content
Same here xD
I was just like you until I bought it last March near the begining of lockdowns. I played the game as a child though.
@@Tpoleful you can crack it for free broo
@@flonn_ I know. Does the cracked version multiplayer suport though? I bought it to play multiplayer primarily.
@@Tpoleful idk brother, my version doesn't support it but there are other versions that do. I'll try it out this weekend and i'll update you on it if you want. Buying it makes everything easier tho so u made a nice choice i believe
Back in Sicily, there's a way of doin things. Sure it might be a little more than usual, but so long as you pay Don Jon for his... _protection,_ your farmers won't befall any unfortunate accidents.
But Don Jon also rewards loyalty; continued investment in Don Jon means you'll find his sergents willing to take an arrow for you from time to time, and goin to the more dangerous places so your villagers don't have to.
This Don Jon fella seems to be quite important in Sicily. And if his sergeants live up to their reputation then i would also pay this Don Jon for his help protecting my farmlands.
This got a churtle out of me, well played
0:48 this is from my game the other day hahaha, I cannot believe I am featured on the channel! I have to learn my lesson and wall my donjons.
Most prominent case for the Donjon Tower rush, is that after dropping the first Don on their stone supply, you can start to replace villagers with seargants and use front villagers to gather the enemies resources faster than what you would with other civs.
BRING BACK OLD INTRO!! Not gonna stop until its done! Great video as always keep it up
Ya Spirit! My light in the tunnel of pandemic blackness! Thanks for all you do!
I've gotten back into AOE2, I used to play frivolously as a youngster without paying any mind to what I was actually doing or how to be better, but now that I'm older I find it vastly more interesting than I had first thought. So, that said I've done a good bit of research online and hands down SOTL is the literal best at giving you information about the game.
Without seeing the video I leave a like, thats how much confidence I have in the quality of your content.
Anyone noticed that little tower attached to the Donjon?
So it's still a Watch Tower but without needing to pay their upgrades
This is fancy watchtower town.
That's the stairwell tower im pretty sure. And i think you pay for the upgrades by paying the extra TAX when you build the donjons. Not even the sicilian builders would give away an upgrade for free, they just make you think you haven't payed for it. Smart buggers.
So that means the Donjon is just a low-end apartment building with a watch tower just thrown in there
So much have changed that I thought of during the video now:
Donjon cost reduced to 175 stone instead, allowing for repairs.
Sicilians start with 300 stone as a civ bonus
Longswordsmen have one meele armor now in base armor, manking them a little less bad in comparison
unique tech makes 35 instead of 50 serjants
incan tower rush is nefed away, and is no longer relevant.
I always die to a decent tower rush, so I was surprised (and proud) when I beat my first Donjon rush. They definitely aren't OP.
"decent" "1week in" - one could argue the donjon rush u survived was in fact garbage by a guy who didnt know how to do it properly :p
@@thomasmuller546 don't rain on my parade, dammit!
You can get 3 towers for the price of 2 donjons and have res left over. So yes the Donjon rush may not be the strongest strat
@@kartiksaraf4676 But 2 donjons obliterate the towers.
@@cptant7610 the point is that you quickly need to cover enemy resources in a tower rush and higher cost hinders that a bit. If the opponent pre-towers after seeing the 1st donjon you might find it more difficult to build more of them forward
@ 6:55 I think it's supposed to say -2 attack instead of +2
Good video man, as always :)
Something I think wasn't covered here - the fact that it takes up 4 squares technically means it has more effective range than the watch tower line, right?
It covers a larger area but doesn't get any range advantage on other units/structures. In addition the additional area it covers is negated when you want two donjons to cover each others melee weakness.
No, since range is measured from the center of the building I think
@@hatimzeineddine8723 I'm fairly sure range is from the edge of any building. There is a mod which displays the range on the grid and the indicator is rounded square shape instead of perfectly round.
Yes
@@hatimzeineddine8723 Wrong
1:25: I appreciate that all the Serjeants are hammering in unison. It's the little details that make the video :)
Now that the donjon is here, where is the dragon??
Ah...I see what you did there...
Well if we could get Dragoons that would be interesting
DnD? Donjons and Dragons? :D Get out
You sir, made my day.
@@tamaskosa3283 ,
Well the word Dungeon was derived by the French word Donjon... which was the tallest tower in a castle... and was used as a place to store VIPs... sometimes against their will... as such, it was also one of the best defended locations in the castle.
Hence.. "off to the dungeon with ye!" became synonymous with prisons/jails...
It's worth noting that wasn't mentioned in the video that when a serjeant is attacked while building, he won't hop off and walk around like a villager would.
The Sicilians are that weird new civ that people collectively narrow their eyes at wondering if it's OP or not.
The general assumption is that it's unbalanced in some way and now the question is weather they're underperformers overperformers or have a massive cheese strat.
@@laurenkirby97 that is not the general assumption at all, maybe on youtube comments but certainly not from people at the high level. The only concern is First Crusade pumping out 50 sarjeants
@@emilhult3394 I think Sergeants are too tanky in castle and imperial age tbh.
Me: havent played the game in more than 10 years and havent watched anything about it
RUclips: Here's a video about The Donjon in aoe2. Take a look.
>Donjons are very powerful in Imperial Age
Me: "Imperial Age tower rush is a go."
I wonder how they are called in the french version.
Since Keeps are already called Donjons in french.
They're both called Donjon in the French game. It's not an issue because Sicilians can't build Keeps anyway.
In the spanish version we have a similar issue with knights and cavaliers. Both are just called "caballeros".
@@davidvalderrey9385 i thought knights were "jinetes"
@@TWUGH It was, before DE
@@TWUGH so what did they call light cavalry?
that has to be one of the best anti-trash units in the game.
The third best, arguably.
Just behind the beserk( regen and bonus against hussar)
And the champion (especially Malay)
@@sebastianpijov8708 Flemish Militia are beastly.
6:55 I think you meant -2 attack for the serjeant.
Also, I feel like the cost of the serjeant is a big weakness in feudal age, especially when you consider that they trade evenly with M@A, but are more expensive than samurai. Plus, you have to divert vils to stone in order to build the donjons in the first place, which makes it that much harder to sustain production of serjeants. I feel like if they cost 50f 30g they would be a viable alternative to M@A in feudal, once you factor in the effect of things like supplies, a second barracks, or a stable can allow someone to pretty easily pump out enough units to shut down a donjon rush, without having to deviate to much from a typical feudal eco.
Thank you spirit for the amazing work all those years, you are incredible
Love math, love your videos
Just keep doing it, you're a monster
7:00
Should be -2 attack though
I hope you cover the bonus damage aspect as well maybe
PS: The movement speed is also same for both units
I think the best use of donjons is to snowball after First Crusade. Make a lot of donjons with your 50 serjeants so you can keep production up afterwards.
Serjants should have been called "Donjon Keeper"
or the Donjon Master
Underrated comment
Have a pokemon as your username it's now mystery donjon
Man, feels like I haven't seen any of your videos for ages. I blame YT's recommended letting me down.
Bonus against fortifications, extra garrison, and creates infantry that can make more… so it’s an entrenching specialist structure? Lots of aggressive forward fortifications to push the enemy back slowly but surely, deploying more builder soldiers to keep it up and offering a refuge for units if the enemy attempts to counterattack, while blowing apart the enemy’s attempts to entrench themselves.
Kind of a weird niche to replicate World War I in Age of Empires, but if it works…
Donjin, Donjen, DonJohn, Donjan, or my favorite: Dungeon.
As someone else had said, Donjon is an old Norman word for "keep". Perhaps it is a more modern thing that a "dungeon" of a castle is found underneath. The stories about jails/gaols kept in the donjons/dungeons were referring to the base of a strong keep. Any other historical linguistic enthusiasts want to chime in? This is all speculation.
Dungeon is indeed an English derivative of Donjon. Being the main building of a castle, its' prison would likely be there, so prisoners would be taken to the dungeon.
Oh. And looking it up, don't laugh, but there was an old english word 'dung' (pronounces 'dunj' or like the first bit of 'dungeon') that meant a prison, so it got combined with Donjon. Although it's possible that the French also had that intention, with an old French word 'dungjo' also meaning 'prison' (and sharing a common source). That's just from wiktionary though, so take that with the same grain of salt as with anything wikipedia says. I'll try to look into it more though.
IIRC, the French version of Dungeons & Dragons uses 'Donjon' instead of the comparable version of Dungeon in order to keep the alliteration
Dun GEE uhn
@@fyrjefe3928 There was story of prisoner exchange between French and English. The French officers speech fogged the English understanding of where the captives were. He ment the tower and they called it (donjon) whereas the English took it to mean the prison.
I may or may not have pulled that story from vol 1 of The history of the English speaking peoples (The birth of Britain) by Winston Churchill. Then again who it was probably a small article that caught my eye. I'm really not to sure. Anyway the idea is that the word donjon was spread by the English it caught on as a word for a holding area for prisoners rather then the tower itself.
2 years later youpudding make history with the all in fc donjon and sargeants rush
At 6:55
I think you compared the Champions and Elite Serjeants but Champions have 2 more attack.
Elite Sergeants have Obscene armour and pierce armour. Definately a very different unit. More of a slow advancing unit unlike Champs which are aggressive infantry
No one pointed out yet that it should be -2 attack at 6:52? Ok fine, I'll do it myself then
the Don Juan, notable for rising up as tall as a tower but being even larger and more impressive.
+200iq with every Spirt Of The Law video watched.
Desperatly needed, since I always lose 50 IQ when forgetting my boar villager
I haven't played AOE II in forever. But I find myself watching all of these videos and competitive gameplay from T90 obsessively the last few months
Hey SOTL when you are going to do Burgundian and Sicilian civilization overview?
Probably in a couple of months, after the devs finish seeing how OP they are and make the needed adjustments.
What's the unit at 4:47? Not the monk, the one being shot by the donjon.
6:52 +2 attack?
isnt it -2 attack compared to the champion?
Sicilians: *litteraly has a military unit able to build.*
Other civs: what kind of witchcraft is this !?
Burdundians with a one shot cav unit and all their vills can transform into soldiers: Hold my beer.
Vikings: "We used to do that in the other game, but we forgot how."
The donjon reminds me of that onyon video where its someone just saying dungeon wrong.
Man your vids always brighten my day.
I feel like there should be an upgrade for castle age Serjeants. It's a bit BS they get a free upgrade, especially on a UU, compared to the standard militia line, and also Meso civs.
Think it like a civ bonus. Bulgars get longswordsman free as well. I don't think Sicilians are OP.
@@xhmaah Militia line is considered underpowered in the meta and this is a strong UU unit.
Law guys! Spirit of the Hey here.
I think one other advantage of Donjon rush not mentioned is that you don't have to send any vills forward, so no eco sacrifice.
6:52 i think there is a little error. Serjeant's attack compared to champion is -2, not +2.
i feel like serjeants should do extra damage vs buildings. Kind of like a sapper unit that can build foward post to siege defenses
What is that red unit on the right at 4:37??? it looks like an Orthodox version of the Monk????
That bird at 3:33, lol!
3:48 Sorry, I'm confused, in the stat screen the tower has more attack, yet the donjon wins with +140% dmg? What am I missing?
3:14 I see the devs made a pretty nice damage balance there
4:25 which unit is that on the right?
I think they work pretty well during imperial age. Drop them close to enemies, have some sergants attack, some repair it, and the donjon create more sergants. Bring trebuchets from the back to clear out buildings, and drop more donjons as you destroy more.
I discovered your channel a few days ago and already I've watched a ton of your videos and now I want to buy aoe2 definitive edition cus it just looks really nice and is everything I wanted to be better in aoe2 hd and normal editions
Yasama are the only towers that can beat the Donjon without garrisoned villagers/archers. Korean towers can beat them too, although only if they're taking advantage of their greater range... Briton towers are a distant 3rd... they lose 1v1 but at least take more than half a Donjon's health.
The most economic way to repel a Donjon is to garrison a single villager or archer inside your own tower. Just 1 garrisoned unit in a Watch Tower can defeat an un-garrisoned Donjon 1v1 in Feudal.
Ah but that Donjon will throw out a sergeant that will tear your tower down. Also, Donjons fire two arrows at a time in Feudal and easily tear down other towers, check your facts first.
@@encoreperformance1081 Donjons fire 1 arrow in Feudal. They gain +1 in Castle, +2 in Imperial. Didn't you watch the video?
@@Imperiused I did, my bad got that mixed up. I meant if you put a sergeant inside.
@@encoreperformance1081 Sergeants and other infantry don't contribute additional arrows (unless you're Teutons). They can help attack opposing tower though, like you said before.
@@Imperiused Your wrong there. They do. Test it. I did.
Put the intro song as an outro and everybody gonna watch till the end
I've been wondering if Serjeants can repair or build other buildings, or is it just the Donjon?
First crusade is awesome. You can get 250 in a 200 pop game, and all of the sergeants appear simultaneously.
Wow I didn't even think of trying that at max pop. That's broken as hell.
May be a stupid question, but how do you repair a Donjon with Sergeants? As they are a military unit the usual Hotkey for repairing (E with the DE Hotkey-Config) is the "Follow" order for them.
Right click...
@@kakan113 No that garrisons them
@@noradrenalin8062 pretty sure you're going to have to check your hotkeys for that
Good video about the Japanese. What was the other civ you kept mentioning though?
Battering ram battering a field is the quintessence of RTS games. 0:14
so you mix a TK with a Huskarl and get a Serjeant, that 7-8 armor is scary as hell
I think it may have been worth testing the damage a Donjon inflicts on melee units as they attack the base and compare that to the damage a tower does to melee units, also testing the speed at which the Donjon is destroyed compared to the tower line. The larger base means more units attacking it, so it will be destroyed faster, but does its higher attack counterbalance that, or does the survivability of the tower mean it actually does more total damage to the units at its base. It would be interesting to check that I think.
I feel that the donjon rush is more like a teamplay tactic, a mate secures a beachead while you build them up and after that you can take over the attack.
Shouldn’t the fact that donjon is larger, makes it cover more area than a tower?
It does
Yes. It's 2x2 instead of 1x1. Spirit mentioned that it's easier to vil rush it down and harder to wall it off with houses, etc. (And of course it's impossible to housewall it off if you send the starting vills back and just use Serjeants to build the rest.)
seems like you would do some strategy and gain map control with some donjons, but then to finish off an opponent, you could use your unique tech and then flood the opponent with serjeants and a late game donjon rush and continue to spam serjeant from the newly built donjons
@6:59 -> shouldn't it be "-2 attack"?
There is another factor, the psychological one. Donjons are both more intimidating and a lot more rewarding to build.
A tower can feel like a dead building if the enemy just avoids it. The donjon however is also a military production building. This lets you ramp up infantry production, and lets it respond to sige like rams on its own without support.
Honestly, building donjons and luring enemies into their range is the greatest joy of the Hautevilles campaign.
I think that in the tower rush, you should consider that you can have all villagers working so in teamgame maiby its easier to transition from early castle agretion into something else
With the introduction of these new mechanics, can we finally fix Siege tower so that they can in someway, transform into a building next to a wall to allow free flow of units going over a wall?
What? No SOTL theme music? :/
Hi spirit!! Love your channel. The civilization pick UI is missing 3 spots, how about a video going over what Civilizations are plausibly left for the age of empires 2 timeline.
So if you want to tower rush with this, you kinda need a fast castle timing as well. That's a pretty cool combination - probably not very viable, but tower rushes shouldn't be strong anyway.
I have a kid's mind, I basically bought the dlcs because I saw this building.
Ooooh cool little fortress, I want it.
2:25 Hot take but I think AoE II should show you all the hidden attack bonuses and other stats that matter. Or at least there should be an option for it. If AoE III could do it, then so can number two!
So, I just wanna confirm this, the Tech says, "land infantry units take 50% less bonus damage" that includes cavalry?????
Would really like to see a video about how to counter mass Searjant! In Imp i really wonder how well Byzantine Cataphacts can do, especially considering the MASSIVE cost difference.
At 0:12 i had to replay 3 times because I was sure he said "How does it hold against Japanese tower, the King of defensive buildings"
Hmm...feels like they allow for a tower rush where you can retreat the villagers once the sergants trickle in leading into a constant aggressive harrasment siege.
Like they are a selfsufficent military outpost that can grow if feed. While your villagers can still boom.
How are they against towncenters, Spirit?
I'm amazed how well balanced the new civ is.
Eagle at 5:50: oh sh*t I'm in the video...
The Donjon rush sounds like a shipment card from AoE3 was adapted to AoE2. Hoping this presages that architecture and town design is a factor in AoE4. (Also, that we get engineer units to make some buildings and not have to send villagers to the frontlines.)