| “ | Grants no immediate bonus other than advancing to the next Age, but contains many unique economic and religious technologies. | ” |
| —Age of Empires IV description | ||
The House of Learning is a technology landmark available to the Delhi Sultanate in Age of Empires IV in the Feudal Age. It contains many unique technologies.
Abilities and Influences[]
Mosque Influence: (Influence): Also referred to as Scholar Influence. The House of Learning generates a 6 x 6 tile influence area. All buildings except those that do not have any available technologies (such as Houses or Markets) extend the influence area by one tile beyond their footprint, and the influence area can be combined with that of other Mosques, Madrasas, or Docks. All buildings within this influence (including the House of Wisdom itself) have their research speeds improved based on how many Scholars are garrisoned in Mosques, Madrasas, or Docks.
Available technologies[]
Strategy[]
The House of Learning is notable in having strong synergy with the Hisar Academy, as it increases the number of technologies a player can research, leading to higher food production. Tranquil Venue also synergizes with the Dome of the Faith.
Generally, players should research Hearty Rations as the first technology, as it increases all Villager carry capacity by 10, and because all the other technologies don't do a lot in the early Castle Age. Honed Blades requires switching into Castle Age units to be effective, which takes time. Lookout Towers, Reinforced Foundations, and Tranquil Venue require a lot of disposable wood to be used for great effect, which the player is unlikely to have in early Castle Age, even more so if they are doing the strategy of making multiple research buildings to increase effective research speed due to Delhi's free technologies which take a long time to research.
As for strategy, the most important technology is Reinforced Foundations, which makes forward Villagers building Houses generally better than them building Outposts. Houses and Outposts have the exact same hit points by base, meaning after Reinforced Foundations, Houses have +50% hit points. The technology gives Houses the same garrison arrow damage and range as base Outposts, though -1 range compared with Outposts with Lookout Towers and -10 fire armor with Slow-Burning Defenses increasing the fire armor of Outposts. Houses also have exactly a quarter of the construction time and cost exactly half as much wood. This means it is easier to make more of them and construct them near or in the battlefield. The major downsides are cavalry cannot garrison in them, they have less Line of Sight, they do not get the emplacements Outposts get, and they don't benefit from other unique technologies of the Delhi Sultanate.
Reinforced Foundations and Lookout Towers have pretty strong anti-synergy, as Lookout Towers incentivizes players to build more Outposts, but Reinforced Foundations strongly incentivizes players to build Houses instead. Since neither cost resources, players will end up getting both of them anyway. Overall, it is probably best if the player builds Houses when speed and number of defenses is important, and Outposts when the quality of defenses is important, regardless of whether the static defenses are used for defense, offense, or so units can garrison for safety.
Honed Blades incentivizes players to go into units the Delhi Sultanate usually does not go into, which could be useful in some matchups. The bonus is pretty weak as far as bonuses for those units generally are in other civilizations, either in upgrades or in replacement unique units.
Tranquil Venue incentivizes players to build forward Mosques to heal their out-of-combat units. This is a lot more viable as the Delhi Sultanate has a civilization bonus which makes Mosques cost -50%. For reference, it takes exactly 60 seconds to fully heal a fully upgraded Ghazi Raider, 39 seconds for Spearmen, 23.75 seconds for an Archer, and 18.75 seconds for a forward Villager. It heals at 57.14% the speed a Scholar heals out-of-combat units, but cannot stack with other Mosques. Tranquil Venue is by far most useful when there are a lot of damaged units, as the Mosque can quickly pay for itself in health restored, costing 28.57% less than Ghazi Raider, only 25% more than a Spearman or an Archer, and 100% more than a forward Villager. Tranquil Venue can also be used to heal Villagers in the economy in-between enemy raids.
Notably, Mosques actually have surprisingly high hit points, more than a Palisade Wall, albeit with the major downside of there being a lot more space for units to attack it from. They can be part of a wall, though ideally in a position the opponent will be less likely to attack. Mosques also have a surprisingly low construction time at 25 seconds, lower than a Barracks at 30 seconds, meaning forward Villagers can rush one up to heal units pretty quickly. It takes 5 forward Villagers 10.75 seconds to build a Mosque, which seems slow to do in a battle, but pretty fast for doing between battles.
Further statistics[]
As the House of Learning is unique to the Delhi Sultanate, only technologies that are available to them are shown in the following table:
| Technologies | |
|---|---|
| Hit points |  Court Architects (+30%)
|
| Aura enhancements | |
|---|---|
| Research speed |  Scholar Research (Increased with every Active Scholar when inside the Scholar Influence area)
|
Changelog[]
- With patch 11.1.1201, Lookout Towers was removed from the House of Learning and replaced with Paiks and Mahouts. The House of Learning also provides Scholar Influence.
Gallery[]
