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Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors Tactics & Guides -> Civilization -> The Mayans -> Page 2

The Mayans

Unique Unit - THE PLUMED ARCHER

As mentioned above, the Mayan unique unit is the Plumed Archer. Available only from the castle, it has more hit points and is better armored than other archers, but does not do as much damage as the elite British Longbowman for instance.

The elite upgrade for the Plumed Archer costs 500 food, 1000 wood. The key thing to note here is that it costs no gold. This makes it accessible fairly early in Imperial Age and comparatively "free" compared with other elite upgrades with an associated gold cost.

The elite Plumed Archer itself is a very robust unit. Despite not dealing out as much raw damage per shot as the elite Longbowman, it is in fact a stronger unit. Its additional hit points make it more resilient to attacks from melee units and archer fire alike. Its base piercing armor of 2 makes it much more resistant to other archer fire also (as well as skirmishers for that matter). Finally, the Plumed Archer fires 25% faster than other archer units and as a result it is capable of dealing out damage faster than other archer units.

When tested against what until now has been the best archer unit in the game, the Post Imperial Elite Briton Longbowman, the Mayan Plumed Archer demonstrated its strength. In several tests of 20 Elite Longbowmen vs. 20 Elite Plumed Archers (a valid situation given their comparable cost), the Plumed Archers arose victorious with roughly half their number remaining, completely decimating the Longbowmen ranks. A new king of archers has arisen.

Unique Technology - EL DORADO

The Mayan unique technology is named "El Dorado". It only affects their semi-unique unit, the Eagle Warrior, giving it an additional 40 hit points. This has an enormous effect on the strength of the unit, making it much more efficient in its roles as the paramount difference between cavalry and Eagles is the smaller amount of HP given to the Eagle. The additional hit points along with the base piercing armor of 2 allow the Eagle to survive a significant amount of time under piercing fire (both archer and scorpion), which in turns makes it much more capable in archer and siege killing roles (those usually carried out by cavalry when using other civilizations). Last but not least, it makes the Eagle able to stand up to building fire, allowing the Mayan's the ability to knock out protected trebuchets.

Relatively expensive compared with other unique technologies; El Dorado costs 750 food, 450G. However, this can be considered an essential upgrade by Mayan players, as the Eagle Warrior is the unit required to fill all cavalry roles, and is vastly more successful doing this once the unique technology as been researched.

As a test of this, 20 Eagle Warriors were set against 25 Elite Briton Longbowman several times, and each time the Eagle Warriors won with roughly half their number remaining. The Eagle Warriors were also tested against 16 Celtic heavy scorpions (benefiting from Furor Celtica), and again the Eagle Warriors won comfortably.