Best civilization bonuses in Age of Empires 2: Return of Rome
If you just started playing AoE2:RoR or want to improve your gameplay, I might be able to help you out.
I have been playing AoE1:DE quite a lot in the past years, and these are the best civilization bonuses you can find in Return of Rome!
Please consider that in general, having solid bonuses does not mean winning more easily. You will need to choose the right combination of units and strategies to defeat your opponent!
Table of contents
1) Minoans: Composite bowmen range
The Minoans have a bonus that grants +2 range points to composite bowmen. This means that in the Bronze Age this unit will have a range of 11, making it the one with the highest range, rising to 12 in the Iron Age.
The downside is that in the Iron Age composite archers are very slow compared to other units and you will need to have quite a lot of them to do any damage. They're not very comfortable for raiding your opponent's base, however they're great when you've researched ballistics.
It is also true though that a large group of composite archers, especially Minoans, could also decimate groups of centurions, provided you can control them well. In short, they are certainly an excellent unit, very economical and efficient, but obviously it is good to be careful how you use them.
2) Yamato: cheaper horses
The Yamato have the advantage of being usable in all ages: the less expensive scouts allow us to make a Scout Rush opening, or we can much more easily produce cavalry units to raid the opponents as soon as we get to the bronze age.
Perhaps best of all, this bonus also applies to horse archers in the Iron Age, allowing us to create very large armies with far fewer than average resources.
On the other hand it should be kept in mind that the Yamato are not very strong on siege and infantry. However, they have centurions, which allow us to possibly respond to an opponent who is creating camels, elephants or chariots to counter our cavalry.
3) Hittites: Warships range
Hittite warships (exploration and galleys) are great on maps like Islands, where the increased range of our ships can really make a difference. Both units have a base range of +2, thus producing scout ships in the Tool Age that, with even just the first upgrade of the wood cutter, already have 8 range, surpassing in this any other Tool Age unit.
On the other hand, this civilization does not have triremes, in any case the galleys reach a total range of 12, exceeding that of many towers and siege weapons.
Also, on RoR their wheel costs 50% less and is researched 50% faster than other civilizations! This will allow us an excellent opening with chariot archers, also considering the +1 attack bonus of all archers.
4) Carthaginians: academy units, elephants, camels
The Carthaginians have bonuses that increase the hit points of elephants and academy units by 25%, and the hit points of camels by 15%. Also on RoR they have free Nobility upgrade after building the government center.
This can probably be defined as the anti-cavalry civilization par excellence: we could produce camels to counter the Yamato, but also centurions to annihilate our opponents' base.
5) Choson: Tower range and infantry hitpoints
The best bonus I personally think is the "Choson one" (got it? yea? right...). Their towers have +2 range which makes them really dangerous especially for a tower rush or to fill your opponent's base with towers, but also to take control of the map. Combine this with ballistics and alchemy and you will have real snipers who in many cases manage to defend themselves even from siege weapons such as normal catapults and helepolis.
Don't forget that towers have a default +1 range bonus. However with the Choson we will not be able to research the ballista towers.
But that's not all: the best bonus of the Chosons is the one that applies to infantry units: axemen have +5 hit points, but above all swordsmen will have +15 and +20 life points for short sword and broad sword, and even +60 and +80 hit points for longswords and legionnaires.
If we combine this with Logistics, which halves the population space occupied by barrack units, this means that we can get to produce a very dangerous number of legionnaires.
Conclusions
Now that you know some good civilizations bonuses, try them out and let me know!
If this guide was useful to you please share it, follow me on Facebook and subscribe to my Youtube channel!
Also read: