| “ | Incendiary camel loaded with flammable hay and brush. Self-destructs when used. | ” |
| —Age of Empires II description | ||
The Flaming Camel is the second unique unit of the Tatars in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, added with update 36202. It is a mounted Petard that can be trained at the Siege Workshop* in the Imperial Age.
The Flaming Camel has the appearance of a Bactrian Camel carrying heaps of straw that catch fire whenever it moves. When it attacks the enemy or is killed, the Flaming Camel disappears in an explosion while dealing melee damage to any enemies nearby.
Tactics[]
A Petard and Flaming Camel being used to blow up an enemy wall.
Flaming Camels are not classified as cavalry units, but just as mounted units. As such, they benefit from neither Forging nor Scale Barding Armor. They are also unaffected by Silk Armor. There is no method to increase their armor.
It is advisable to use Flaming Camels against large contingents of mounted units, despite the fact that they explode when used. Their bonus damage enables them to kill most kinds of mounted units in two or three blows while also dealing splash damage to all enemy units nearby.
Flaming Camels are one of the best counters against packed groups of War Elephants, Battle Elephants, Ballista Elephants, Elephant Archers, and Siege Elephants, with each blow dealing at least 200 total attack against said units (though armor and blast distance can reduce the damage dealt). So, it is highly viable for a Tatar player to make use of Flaming Camels against civilizations that have access to an elephant unit. When used against mounted units, it is advisable to support them with Heavy Camel Riders so they can finish the units that survive the detonation.
Like Petards, Flaming Camels are a single-use unit. Nevertheless, Flaming Camels are inferior to them in the anti-building role. They also cost gold and have only one use: their course of action must be chosen wisely and/or with adequate support of other units. As expected, Pikemen and Elite Skirmishers can be cost-effective against them.
Flaming Camels have no pierce armor and do not benefit from armor technologies, so they are destroyed quickly by ranged units. Researching Husbandry can greatly compensate this, and pose a big threat towards big groups of Cavalry Archers when left unsupervised by the opponent. This is what gives them an edge against Petards as a unit killer (in a fashion like the Heavy Demolition Ship, but land-based). Similarly, making use of the Flaming Camels' speed overshadows their relative ineffectiveness against buildings, minimizing arrow fire taken from defensive structures like Castles, thus avoiding wasteful deaths.
Flaming Camels perform moderately well against buildings, as they deal +200 bonus damage to the building armor class. Being a siege unit, they must be used as a support unit for weakening or finishing an opponent settlement, but they are not very effective. In comparison to the Petard, the Flaming Camel does only 40% damage to buildings. In other words, the Petard does 250% damage to buildings compared to the Flaming Camel. Considering the latter costs +23.5% resources (+50% gold), it does not even come out as cost-effective against buildings. For reference, a Keep can be brought down with 4 Petards, or 10 Flaming Camels. The numbers get worse against Walls and Gates, since the Petard has additional 900 attack against those.
Comparison to Petards[]
 Flaming Camel
|
 Petard
| |
|---|---|---|
| Age | Imperial Age | Castle Age |
| Cost | 75 food, 30 gold | 65 food, 20 gold |
| Building | Siege Workshop | Castle |
| Training time | 30 seconds | 25 seconds |
| Hit points | 75 | 50 |
| Speed | 1.43 | 0.8 |
| Attacks | 20 melee +200 vs Building +130 vs War elephant |
25 melee +500 vs Building +900 vs Wall and gate +100 vs Castle +60 vs Siege weapon |
| Blast radius | 2 with tapering damage | 0.5 with 100% damage |
| Armor | 0/0 | 0/2 |
| Armor classes | Camel and unique unit | none |
| Line of Sight | 4 | 4 |
Both units are "suicide units" and are strong vs buildings. In this regard, the Petard is a better specialist in taking down stone defenses and defensive structures, dealing huge amounts of damage to Town Centers, towers, Castles, and walls. On the other hand, the Flaming Camel deals significantly less damage than the Petard to all buildings. Neither unit is cost- effective against buildings, and should only be used as a surprise tactic.
Petards can also counter siege units with ease, while Flaming Camels have a smaller bonus vs siege units. Flaming Camels are better used against cavalry, Petards do very little harm to cavalry. Flaming Camels have 50% more hit points than Petards after Bloodlines is researched, but Petards have pierce armor, making them more resilient against arrow-fire than Flaming Camels. Flaming Camels also move much faster and have a larger blast radius than a Petard while costing more food and gold.
The only four technologies that benefit the Flaming Camel are Devotion, Husbandry, Bloodlines, and Siege Engineers (as the Tatars lack Heresy and Faith), while Petards from a standard civilization benefit from Devotion, Faith, Heresy, Conscription, and Siege Engineers.
Further statistics[]
| Strengths and weaknesses | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Cavalry, especially elephants |
| Weak vs. | Foot archers, Monks, infantry, defensive structures |
| Conditional matchups | Mounted archers |
| Technologies | |
|---|---|
 Hit points
|
 Bloodlines (+20)
|
| Attack |  Siege Engineers (+40% bonus against buildings)
|
| Conversion resistance |  Devotion (+1 min, +1 max)
|
 Movement speed
|
 Husbandry (+10%)
|
| Civilization bonus | |
|---|---|
| Attack |  Tatars (+20% damage {+50% instead of +25%} when detonating downhill)
|
| Team bonuses | |
|---|---|
| Attack |  Hindustanis (+2 against standard buildings)
|
| Conversion resistance |  Teutons (+3 min, +1 max)
|
| Creation speed |  Celts (+20%) Gurjaras (+25%)
|
Team bonuses[]
Huns: Researching Bloodlines and Husbandry is 20% faster.- Lithuanians: Researching Devotion is 20% faster.
- Malians: Researching Siege Engineers is 80% faster.
- Portuguese: Researching technologies that benefit Flaming Camel is 25% faster.
Changelog[]
The Last Khans[]
- Initially, Flaming Camels were not available to any civilization, being a campaign and Scenario Editor unit only. With update 36202, they become available to Tatars after researching Timurid Siegecraft with most of their statistics being overhauled as a pre-requisite.
- With update 36906, the Indian team bonus benefits Flaming Camels. The Flaming Camel button no longer conflicts with the "Go back to work" button in the Castle.
- Initially, Flaming Camels have a +80 attack bonus against the elephants, and a blast radius of 1.5. With update 39284, the attack bonus was increased to +130, and blast radius was increased to 2.
- Flaming Camels deal 100 bonus attack against buildings.
Dynasties of India[]
- With update 61321, Flaming Camels deal 25 bonus attack against siege units, and 200 bonus attack against buildings. However, the attack bonus increase from Siege Engineers was unchanged, so the percentage boost was reduced to 20%. With update 73855, it was fixed to 40%.
Victors and Vanquished[]
- With update 107882, the Flaming Camel no longer requires Timurid Siegecraft to be trained at Castles, but now becomes instantly available at the Siege Workshop when reaching the Imperial Age. Flaming Camel train time increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
Flaming Camel before being trainable[]
Flaming Camels at release were Scenario Editor-exclusive units and were quite different in statistics. They were merely decoration units used in the Sultan of Hindustan scenario of the Tamerlane campaign in which eight Flaming Camels were used against the charging Indian Elite War Elephants in order to scare them and make them turn on their own side. This is based on a real stratagem used by Tamerlane during his conquest of Delhi in 1398.
This version of the Flaming Camel did not benefit from any technology, like Bloodlines or Husbandry.
Trivia[]
- Flaming Camels are the third Scenario Editor unit to become a regular unit. Genitours and Siege Towers preceded them, Legionaries and Dragon ships succeeded them.
- As Flaming Camels were trained at the Castle before update 107882, the Tatars were the only civilization that could train two different unique units naturally in the Castle.
- The Flaming Camel was the first unique unit that required a technology to be unlocked (Timurid Siegecraft). They were followed by the Flemish Militia (Flemish Revolution). With Victors and Vanquished, they lost this status.
- The Flaming Camel is one of the units with fewest possible technologies, being only affected by Bloodlines, Devotion, Husbandry, and Siege Engineers.
- With update 36202, the 'Create Flaming Camel' button occupied the same slot in the interface as the 'Garrison' button if Villagers were garrisoned inside the Castle. This blocked the ability to produce Flaming Camels, even if the default hotkey for the unit was re-binded. This bug was fixed with update 36906.
- Sicilian Flaming Camels are affected by the hidden damage resistance bonus, since the bonus affects Petards. Hence, contrary to its description of the bonus, it affects a siege unit in non-standard games.
- With the release of Dynasties of India, Flaming Camels are made immune to armor-ignoring attacks, even though they do not have any armor to begin with.
- Flaming Camel are one of three military land units that do not make the usual military sound when created, the others being the Camel Rider line and Trebuchet.
- When a Flaming Camel is used to blow up a structure or unit, it does not count in the player stats as a unit lost.
- Since update 107882, the "cameleon" cheat code turns all of the player's camel units into Flaming Camels.
- Even after many changes, Flaming Camels are still some of the least used unique unit, as its main role is to counter cavalry and elephant units, which can be done more conveniently by Halberdiers. Also, being a suicide unit makes them too expensive and fragile for general use.
Gallery[]
Video Overview[]
Notes[]
- ↑ Stated damage values are applied relative to the center of explosion (i. e., center of the unit). In a realistic scenario, Flaming Camel colliding with a target head on will deal at maximum 87.5% of the damage due to collision size of the unit (circle with 0.25 tiles radius) and maximum blast radius of its attack (2 tiles). The same mechanic/issue is applicable to Demolition Ships but not to Petards (the later always deal full damage within 0.5 blast radius).
