“A wise choice…”
Quick Card
- Monks healing range 2X
- Towers garrison 2X units
- Murder Holes free
- Farms cost -33%
- Town Center +5 Line of Sight
- Unique Unit: Teutonic Knight
- Unique Technology: Crenellations
- Team Bonus: Units Resist Conversion
Analysis of bonuses
Monks healing range 2X
This bonus has more allures of “free candy” than it has as a powerful boost to your armies. In an early monkrush the teutonic Fathers can heal the support units or each other from a longer distance, which allows them to operate in a wider scope for action. Later, they can heal the slow but powerful (and not to mention: expensive) units from a relatively secured place, which make it easier to take care of them when the enemy wants to slaughter your wololos. Let’s say it compensates for their slow units, which don’t have to run back as far to be healed.
Towers garrison 2X units
This bonus is handful in both defensive and offensive situations, especially in the earlier ages. You can hide 10 units in a tower instead of 5, giving significant power to this type of building. If your base is flooded with a bunch of early castle units, but you have a few towers there, a swift garrison can save your ass. But don’t forget to send the villies back to work!
Late game, this bonus also comes with a nice gimmick: if you fill a bombard tower with gunpowder units (janissaries or hand cannoneers), it will fire two cannon balls!
Murder Holes free
Exactly, 200 food and 200 stone spared in the Teutonic stocks. This bonus actually works without building a University, since it comes up immediately when you hit the Castle Age. Which is also the real strength of this bonus. A lone tower can now stand a chance against a unit, while otherwise, even an archer could technically kill a tower once it sheltered in its shadow. A rather specific, yet strong bonus.
Farms cost -33%
One of the greatest economy bonuses has arrived! Farms for 40 wood instead of 60? Yes, please! This bonus allows you to apply fewer villagers as lumberjacks or make much more food for a nice scout rush. If the opponent trushed your woods, with chopping wood near your TC you can still go on like if nothing happened. Your boars and/or sheeps kidnapped? It is a trouble, but not that big, if you can make cheaper farms. The Teutonic boom is clearly among the bests. With more wood you can make more Town Centers earlier. The longer the game, the greater the benefits of this bonus. There are several possibilities to profit from this: you need fewer villagers to maintain your economy, therefore you are able to hold more military units, which is a great advance. With equal numbers of workers you can spare more resources and this helps to keep continuous pumping of units. On a sea map you can boom at home without problems while making enough ships for naval fighting. Or to conclude this bonus with a quote from the old school players: “With Teutons, you can pretty much skip Feudal Age”.
Town Center +5 Line of Sight
A very good thing to have is a greater line of sight from the beginning: you can bet, you will find your 4 first sheeps immediately, this reduces the odds for a bad start to almost zero. Back in AoK-times Teutons had extra range and attack from their Centers, hence they were extremely good in pushing with TCs. (It was even possible to take down castles with them!). Since this lead to Teutons being banned from RM games, they were fixed and only their extra line of sight was kept intact.
Team Bonus: Units Resist Conversion (+50%, cumulative with other resistance abilities.)
A bonus against monk rushes and heavy-on-monks defense. It is clearly harder to stop Teutons and their teammates with wololos, especially if you dare to involve a monk vs monk combat. But note again how it is a team bonus: amazingness ensues for Persians and Koreans, those heavy civs that really don’t want to see their beast-like units being converted.
Teutonic Knight
- Cost: 85 food, 40 gold
- Attack: 12 (Elite: 17 )
- Armor: 5/2 (Elite: 10/2)
- HP: 70 (Elite: 100)
- Elite Upgrade: 1200 food, 600 gold
Through the Middle Ages, the Order has had very few members, but their knights in battles were priceless. They fought at several places in Central and Eastern Europe with great success. Their name “Teutonic” comes from a barbaric German tribe, which was legendary by its bravery. According to Florus, their matrons once slaughtered their own children and committed suicide because of an unsuccesful request from a Roman consul to set them free from slavery in the late 2nd century BC.
Indeed, these brave and heartful beasts tear up everything easily in close combat, even the mighty Paladins! With an attack bonus against buildings, the showing up of the Order near an enemy village means the whole population will dine in hell! They cost a lot of resources, but regard to this, they are the fastest to train among infantry units. They move and attack slowly, but the high normal armor makes them invulnerable to close combat units, while their high HP means a lot against archers. We have to say, the elite upgrade is a must-have, if you plan to fall back on Teutonic Knights. The price is fairly high (cheaper than the Elite Throwing Axeman upgrade, though), but gives a Big Boost to the Beast. It donates a whopping +30 HP, doubled normal armor and almost +50% attack points to our precious nobles.
Hard to counter them, if you allow a Teutonic player to mine enough gold for an action with Elite Teutonic Knights, you are going to have a hard time to stop those monsters. The best solution is start to mass archers early enough, but a wisely escorted Elite Teutonic Knight army can be unstoppable, as you can see in the record of _Daut_ and Myst_IORI below. Let’s see, how ETKs beat Huns at the latter’s “Sweet home Arabia”.
Recorded Game
Crenellations (+3 range Castles; garrisoned infantry fire arrows)
This technology is incredibly expensive with its price of 600 food and 400 stone, and not even worth every rubble paid for it. (Sure, there is no gold attached to this tech, but the even rarer stone instead) This tech aides your Teutonic Knights or halberdiers in defending positions even if they’re hiding in a castle – in a castle which has 13 range! It can reach even the Bombard Cannons, forcing the opponent to use trebuchets instead. With all upgrades on their own trebuchets, the Teutonic castle is one of the ultimate solutions to stand ground if supporting trebuchets and infantry are around. It is great in a defensive position, and maybe viable for a castle push in imperial age, if you got enough rock on. Then again, the stone cost is immense and with bombard towers at their disposal, Teutons could just do like everyone else and push with BBT. Even if they are not fully upgraded. All in all, this means there is no rec available to prove the value of this tech. See it as a challenge to find us one!
Dominance through the Ages
An oversight about dominance through the ages can be found in this article.
Dark Age
We have to say, Teutons’ performance is average in the Dark Age. The easier start from the TC’s extra line of sight and a few cheaper farms are good stuff to have, but won’t give a head start compared to civs with direct Dark Age economy bonuses.
Feudal Age
The Teutonic economy bonus starts to work harder in the Feudal Age, when Mother Nature’s goods were collected already. Teutons got every units for a good flush with nice economic boost. And much more! It is time to build some towers and garrison 2X more units in them, if that’s the case! Wanna go for a trush? And this chapter obviously brings us back to the early days of AoC. The days where the likings of The_Sheriff ruled the scene of tactical thinking. And he’s not only famous for his Saracen Monkrush. Here is his infamous Teutonic superdrush. Totally outdated nowadays, but an inevitable part of AoC history nevertheless.
Recorded Game
Castle Age
The farm bonus carries the Teutonic economy pretty well. Their knight pumping can keep up with the Franks, while booming can still go on. The free Murder Holes appears, make the castles and towers slightly better. Teutons may face the problems of a heavy on gold military for the first time here, however. Soon, they have to choose wisely between blacksmith upgrades.
Early Imperial Age
They can advance to Imperial Age with a decent time, if everything goes well for them, despite their gold and food heavy units. The war machine needs time to roll, the upgrades are expensive. The Teutonic economy still shines, but they can not bring Gold Shaft Mining from Castle Age with themselves, this slows them down a bit. But with such an extended tech tree and the possibility to make gunpowder armies, they do stand a chance to defend themselves here.
Imperial Age
The Teutonic technology tree is quiet good, filled with the strongest units and siege. They blessed with Paladins, Siege Onagers, Bombard Towers and they also got the Siege Engineers technology to make sure, as long as the gold is coming in, the slow but powerful army can do its best in a population effective way.
Imperial Age (no trade)
Without gold and forced to train trash units, Teutons are sentenced to death. Slow, but certain death it is.
The lack of Bracer hurts their skirmishers badly, while the Teutonic light cavalry is a total catastrophe. They are stuck with Scouts, Bloodlines make them slightly better, but they are still worthless in trashwars. In fact, they are the 2nd worse light cavalry unit in the game. The worse is the Viking light cavalry, which Teutons beat narrowly one-on-one. The only one usable Teutonic trash unit is the fully upgradeable Halberdier, but with these units they aren’t going to make the cut.
Post Imperial age (with trade)
With perfect siege, Paladins and Bombard Towers, combined with exceptionally awesome Castles, Teutons are among the best civilisations in late gold-laden wars. They can choose from a wide range of the strongest units to invent devastating combinations.
Economy
The Achilles heel of the Teutons is their serious addiction to gold. While other gold heavy civilisations got bonuses (Turks) or at least Gold Shaft Mining (Franks) to support their military actions, Teutons have cheaper farms, but later it won’t be enough to hold on without gold. Luckily the Guilds are there to support the unavoidable transactions. Otherwise Teutonic economical technology tree combined with the farm bonus is really strong.
Military
Infantry
Teutons got the title of “infantry civilisation” by the creators, although they don’t have any single bonus that directly supports the infantry line. Their Unique Unit is infantry, Crenellations tied closely to infantry and the farm bonus with the slower gold mining also suggests that we should rely on these guys, instead of ponies. On the top of that, this section of the technology tree is flawless.
A highlight goes to their champions in this case. Not only do they have the best anti-trash unit, namely, the Elite Teutonic Knight, which can take 100 beatings of ANY trash unit. Teutons also have Champions in their ranks, so they have an anti-trash backup unit. You hear me coming, time for another AoClassic. A 1h20 showdown between DreaIVIs and ralber on the plains of Arabia.
Recorded Game
Archery
Teutons can compete with the Franks and Spanish on the field of weakness regarding to the archer-line. Teutons lack Arbalests, Heavy Cavalry Archers, Bracer, Thumb Ring, Parthian Tactics. But at least they can train Hand Cannoneers.
Cavalry
Although the lack of Husbandry can be annoying, these somewhat slower Paladins are still mighty Paladins with all of their power. The scout line doesn’t give us opportunity to celebrate, virtually the light cavalry line is nonexistent in later ages, especially without Husbandry: they aren’t the best for harassing the opponent, but apparently the Teutons have nothing else for the dirty job. At earlier stages the Feudal Age Scout Rush is a pretty good option for the Teutons, as an outcome of the combination of the economy bonus and Bloodlines.
Siege
The best part of the Teutonic tech tree is maybe the siege section. They got almost everything: Heavy Scorpions, Siege Onagers, Bombard Cannons with the +1 range and plus attack points by favour of the Siege Engineers. The capped rams are good enough, especially when they are filled with Teutonic Knights or Champions, Halberdiers. But obviously in trash wars, where siege rams play a crucial role as meat shield and bulldozer, Teutons fall short again.
Monks
As we mentioned earlier, Teutons got a bonus for their Monks, and an even better bonus against other civlisations’ wololos. The important Monastery Technologies are all available, only Herbal Medicine is missing, but that is dispensable anyways. Sure, they’re still no competition for the Aztec monks. Who are the #1 monk civ by a landslide. But maybe it’s time for a Crusade against these heathens, under the brave leadership of TheViper of Norway against Drinking Monkey Ares.
Recorded Game
Navy
The Teutonic navy can get along till the Imperial Age. They don’t have Bracer, Dry Dock, Shipwright nor the Elite upgrade for Cannon Galleons, this means they are not meant to be played on large surface of water for a long time.
Structures
Our Eastern European Conquerors built up several very good fortresses and castles through the centuries. The Teutonic buildings only lack the university technology of Architecture, otherwise they have Bombard Towers, a cool Unique Technology, and a garrisoning bonus to make them even better and to forget the missing Bracer.
Conclusion
The Teutons are a lovely civilisation to play with, not only for top players. The reliable start and the easy to use, really strong units with several bonuses make it easier to handle. They do their best especially on closed maps, such as Black Forest and Arena where manoeuvring speed isn’t an issue, but they can prove on open maps too, let it be a team game or a one-on-one. And since we already had two classic games in this article, let’s make it three. DriNkY_T vs PL_PeEl in yet another classical game of AoC!
Recorded Game
Owê war sint verswunden alliu mîniu jâr?
(Alas, where have they gone to, year on weary year?)
-Walther von der Vogelweide