Goths

The Goths are a major civilization featured in Age of Empires II. The Goths were a collection of Eastern Germanic tribes that constantly warred with the Roman Empire during its later years, known for bringing Rome to its knees and traveling all over Europe, bringing devastation with them, and in game they are an infantry civilization. Following the fall of the Empire, the Goths divided into the Ostrogoths (East Goths) who settled in Italy, and the Visigoths (West Goths) who settled in the region that would later become Portugal and Spain. The leaders of the Goths and their Age of Empires II equivalents were the Huskarls, the Gothic unique unit. As the Goths were known for their raiding prowess, the medium infantry Huskarls have high pierce armor and shrug off damage from fortifications. This also makes them very powerful against archers, and they also move quick enough to chase them down. The Goths were known as flexible nomads with mostly nonexistent formal government, so their castle unique technology Anarchy allows their leaders, the Huskarls, to be trained at the Barracks like normal infantry, as early as the Castle Age. Their imperial unique technology Perfusion allows them to train infantry extremely fast. As the Goths were known for being able to mass soldiers very quickly, the most spammable units already available to all civilizations become even more so thanks to their infantry costing less and their Barracks producing faster. As raiders, Goth's infantry get extra attack versus buildings. Being nomads gave them other distinct advantag: their villagers can hunt bigger game effectively and carry more meat. Finally, the Goths get a higher population limit than other civilizations to reflect their ability to field armies quickly.

Overview
The Goths are an infantry civilization, as a result, infantry is the way to go since the Goths' advantages predominantly focus on their remarkably good infantry. The Goths have an excellent Barracks line, with Champion and Halberdier plus all the upgrades from the Barracks available and all upgrades from the Blacksmith except Plate Mail Armor. To help are found the following bonuses to infantry: much cheaper, attack bonus versus buildings and fast creation. Their unique unit is the Huskarl, a very fast infantry unit with a pretty high attack and arrow resistance, which is usually created from the Castle; however in The Conquerors expansion pack, they can research their unique technology Anarchy, in the Castle Age, which allows Huskarls to be created from the Barracks. In the Imperial Age, they can research another unique technology: Perfusion, which allows all Barracks units to be created 50% faster. With both of these technologies, Huskarls can be created very quickly. It is advisable to create as many Huskarls as possible when playing as the Goths. Their Archery Range lacks Arbalest, but all the Blacksmith upgrades are available. The Goth's Stable misses the Paladin upgrade and Camels, but all the Stable and Blacksmith upgrades are ready for research. From the Siege Workshop the Goths miss the Siege Onager and the Siege Ram. The Dock gets a decent line, making the Goths very capable on the water. The Goths endure a hard time against cavalry civilizations such as the Franks, as the Goths are fairly defenseless to Cavalry raiding, because of their inability to build Stone Walls (having to rely on Palisade Walls for defense) or get any tower above the basic Watch Tower. Generally speaking, the Goths have no trouble against archer civilizations, like the Mayans, because the Huskarl is able to take so much arrow fire.

Unique Unit: Huskarl (anti-archer and arrow-resistant infantry)

Unique Technologies:  Anarchy  (Huskarls can be created from Barracks, available in Castle Age), Perfusion (Barracks create units 50% faster, Imperial Age)

Civilization Bonuses

 * Infantry are 10% cheaper in Feudal Age, 15% cheaper in Castle Age and 25% cheaper in Imperial Age (later changed to 25% from the Feudal Age)
 * Infantry have +1 attack bonus vs buildings
 * Villagers have +5 attack bonus vs wild boars and carry +15 food from hunting
 * +10 population cap in Imperial Age
 * Team Bonus: Barracks work 20% faster

Changes in The Forgotten

 * Infantry are 35% cheaper starting in the Feudal Age
 * Treadmill Crane removed

Campaign
The Goths are featured frequently during the Barbarossa campaign. Many of the enemy teams are of the Goth civilization during the first part of the campaign, although during the later missions the enemy tend to be Teutons, Saracens, and Franks. They are the primary enemy (Saxons) in the Hastings scenario of the Battle of the Conquerors campaign, where they have stone walls despite the fact that when playing in random maps they don't. They're also featured in two of the Genghis Khan scenarios.

The Goths are also seen in the Attila the Hun campaign on the "Catalunian Fields" scenario as the divided Ostrogoths and Visigoths. The Ostrogoths are allied to Attila, however the Visigoths are on the opposing team, allied with the Western Roman Empire (blue/Byzantines).

In The Forgotten expansion, the Goths finally feature in their own campaign, following the exploits of Visigothic king Alaric I around the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Language
Their in-game language is Old or Middle High German, which is also spoken by the Teutons. Historically, however, they spoke their very own Gothic Language, which was related to Old Norse and Old High German.

Trivia
Despite being portrayed as an infantry-rush civilization in Age of Empires II, contemporary authors characterized them as fielding large amounts of heavy cavalry, supported by light cavalry and horse archers.