| “ | Jurchen unique Heavy Cavalry with durable armor that can completely block melee attacks. | ” |
| —In-game description | ||
The Iron Pagoda is the unique unit of the Jurchens in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - The Three Kingdoms. It is a heavy cavalry unit that can be trained at the Castle once the Castle Age is reached.
Iron Pagodas can be upgraded to Elite Iron Pagodas in the Imperial Age.
Ability[]
It can ignore one non-projectile attack every 60 (50 for Elite) seconds. Non-projectile attacks include the blast damage caused by suicide units. Their shield completely negates the damage from suicide units such as Flaming Camels and Demolition Ships.
When the Iron Pagoda is attacked by an enemy with a charged melee attack (which includes both regular, like the Coustillier's, and area attack, like the Urumi Swordsman's), the Iron Pagoda first receives and blocks the regular attack, after which the enemy unit uses their special charged attack. Hence, the Iron Pagoda's ability cannot be used to cancel out enemy units' charged special abilities. When facing Urumi Swordsmen, the Urumi Swordsman uses its charged attack once without losing his charge, but depleting the shield of all nearby Iron Pagodas, then it uses its charged attack again to deal its area damage, following up with regular attacks.
Tactics[]
The Iron Pagoda is a heavy cavalry unit, just like the Knight line, which the Jurchens do not have. It is trained in 14 seconds, which is on the faster side for cavalry unique units. Considering the Knight line's training time of 30 seconds, it can be seen that one Castle Iron Pagoda production will produce more units than two Stable Knight production. The Jurchens do not have any heavy cavalry units at the Stable, so training Iron Pagodas to fulfill that role is of utmost importance. The Iron Pagodas cost +20 food, -20 gold compared to the Knight line, which is the same total resources, but much more heavily inclined towards food. This makes them tricky to sustain in the early Castle Age, while also considering the Castle requirement, but much easier to train in the later stages of the game.
The non-Elite and Elite Iron Pagodas have a unique ability to block melee attacks every 60 and 50 seconds respectively. There are different ways to think of this ability. One of the ways is to imagine that the Iron Pagodas gets extra hit points which equals the damage dealt by the enemy unit. This makes them relatively stronger against high-damage units compared to low-damage units. Another way to think of the ability is that the Iron Pagodas performs one round of its attack sooner than the enemy unit. This way, this makes them relatively stronger against low-hit-point units. However, this ability takes relatively long to recharge, so it will not impact more than one blow in a battle. Iron Pagodas will win otherwise close melee engagements, but the hard-counter-units will remain hard counters. This ability does not work against projectile attacks.
Their statistics in the Castle Age are much more comparable to the Cavalier, just like other heavy cavalry unique units, like the Centurion and Boyar. Even when comparing to the Cavalier, their statistics do no align, with some statistics being marginally better for either unit, and the most important differences being the +1 Line of Sight, -1/+1 armor, and +0.05 speed of the Iron Pagoda over the Cavalier and the former's unique ability to block out one melee attack. While this ability does not work against projectile attacks, the Iron Pagoda has one more pierce armor to make them better against archers anyway. However, neither of those work against ranged melee attacks, like those of the Mameluke (which hard counters the unit), and the Gbeto.
In the Imperial Age, when comparing to the Paladin, most of the statistics align. Both units have the same Line of Sight, reload time, and armor. While the hit point difference in the previous stage was merely five, it has now grown to 20. The Elite Iron Pagoda has -1 melee attack compared to the Paladin. They remain faster, and their ability recharges 20% faster as well. However, the most important difference at this stage is that the Elite Iron Pagoda upgrade is slightly cheaper and much faster to research, akin to other cavalry unique units' Elite upgrades. Moreover, since the hard-counter units become stronger, viz the Heavy Camel Rider and the Halberdier, the Elite Iron Pagoda's ability gives is more effective.
To offset their common counters, Iron Pagodas can be paired with the Spearman or Fire Lancer (which also benefit from the 20% attack speed bonus) against Camel Riders and stronger cavalry units. The Grenadier and Rocket Cart can handle the infantry and Skirmishers better. While both units deal friendly fire, one of the Jurchen civilization bonuses helps reduce that by 50%. Even the player's own Skirmishers, which are fully upgradeable, can be used to handle Spearmen and tricky archers, such as the Genoese Crossbowman and Composite Bowman.
Unit comparison[]
 Iron Pagoda line
|
Generic  Knight line
| |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | 80 food, 55 gold | 60 food, 75 gold |
| Time | 14 | 30 |
| Speed | 1.4 | 1.35 |
| Other | Armor class: Unique unit | |
 Castle Age
|
Iron Pagoda
|
 Cavalier
|
| Hit points | 115 | 120 |
| Armor | 1/3 | 2/2 |
| Attack | 12 | 12 |
| Reload time | 1.9 | 1.8 |
| Line of Sight | 5 | 4 |
| Other | Ignores one non-projectile attack every 60 seconds | |
| Upgrade cost and time |
950 food, 750 gold 45 seconds |
1,300 food, 750 gold 170 seconds |
 Imperial Age
|
 Elite Iron Pagoda
|
 Paladin
|
| Hit points | 140 | 160 |
| Armor | 2/3 | 2/3 |
| Attack | 13 | 14 |
| Reload time | 1.9 | 1.9 |
| Line of Sight | 5 | 5 |
| Other | Ignores one non-projectile attack every 50 seconds |
Further statistics[]
| Strengths and weaknesses | |
|---|---|
| Strong vs. | Infantry, archers, siege weapons, light cavalry |
| Weak vs. | Boyars, Pikemen, Kamayuks, Berserks, Genoese Crossbowmen, Teutonic Knights, Mamelukes, Heavy Camel Riders, Monks, War Elephants, Battle Elephants |
| Technologies | |
|---|---|
 Hit points
|
 Bloodlines (+20)
|
| Attack |  Forging (+1) Iron Casting (+1) Blast Furnace (+2)
|
| Armor |  Scale Barding Armor (+1/+1) Chain Barding Armor (+1/+1) Plate Barding Armor (+1/+2)
|
| Conversion resistance |  Devotion (+1 min, +1 max) Faith (+4 min, +4 max)
|
 Movement speed
|
 Husbandry (+10%)
|
| Creation speed |  Conscription (+33%)
|
| Upgrading | Conscription (+33% faster)
|
| Team bonuses | |
|---|---|
| Attack |  Wei (+2 vs siege)
|
| Conversion resistance |  Teutons (+3 min, +1 max)
|
| Upgrading |  Portuguese (+25% faster)
|
Team bonuses[]
Bulgarians: Researching cavalry armor and attack technologies at the Blacksmith is 80% faster.- Huns: Researching Bloodlines and Husbandry is 20% faster.
- Lithuanians: Researching Devotion and Faith is 20% faster.
- Portuguese: Technologies that benefit Iron Pagodas are researched 25% faster.
Trivia[]
- The base attack speed of the Iron Pagodas is slower than those of other non-siege cavalry units in the game, with a reload time of 2.28 seconds; only mounted Konniks have a slower attack speed at 2.4 seconds. However, their civilization bonus making all mounted units attack 20% faster brings their reload time back in line with other cavalry unique units to 1.9 (in the same way Stirrups boosts the attack speed of mounted Konniks to 1.8 seconds).
- At 80 food, the Iron Pagoda has the highest food cost of any non-elephant heavy cavalry unit. It is joined by the Scout Cavalry and Magyar Huszar lines (the latter after researching Corvinian Army) for the title among all non-elephant mounted units.
- The regular and Elite Iron Pagoda's in-game weapons seem to be zhanmajian (斩马剑) and zhanmadao (斩马刀) - literally "horse-chopping sword" and "horse-chopping sabre" in Chinese, respectively. The difference is that the former's blade is two-sided while the latter's is one-sided.
- However, zhanmajian/dao were historically traditional Chinese weapons used by infantry to counter cavalry, with a notable example being its use by the Song infantry against the Jin dynasty's Iron Pagoda.
Gallery[]
Video[]
