Zealotry (Age of Empires)

This article is about the technology in Age of Empires. For the campaign scenario in Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, see Jihad!. For the technology in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors, see Zealotry (Age of Empires II).

Zealotry
Availability
Introduced in	Age of Empires
Civilization	See table
Age	Iron Age
Research
Researched at	Temple
Gold	120
Research time	60 seconds
Effect
Villagers' +7 attack, +0.11 speed, +40 hit points, -8 carry capacity

Zealotry (named Jihad before the Definitive Edition) is a technology in Age of Empires. Researched at the Temple, it increases the combat abilities and movement speed of Villagers, but reduces their gathering capacity by 8.

Zealotry is not already researched in Post-Iron Age matches.

Civilizations

Available	Unavailable
Assyrians Babylonians Carthaginians Choson Egyptians Lac Viet Palmyrans Persians Phoenicians Romans Shang	Greeks Hittites Macedonians Minoans Sumerians Yamato

Zealotry Villager stats

• HP: 65
• Attack: 10 (Shown in-game as 3 + 7)
• Speed: 1.03 (1.58 with Wheel researched)

Team bonuses

• Palmyrans: Researching Zealotry is 30% faster.

Changelog

Age of Empires

• Jihad increases the movement speed of Villagers by 0.3 (27% of base) and reduces all gatherer capacity by 8.

The Rise of Rome

• Jihad increases the movement speed of Villagers by 0.11 (10% of base) and reduces all gatherer capacity by 7.

Definitive Edition

• Zealotry (formerly named Jihad) reduces food gatherer capacity by 6, wood/stone capacity by 8, and gold capacity by 10 (-8 without upgrades).

Return of Rome

• Villagers' speed was decreased due to client changes from 1.1 to 0.92. Since Zealotry provides an additive increase instead of a multiplicative one, the speed buff is increased to 12%.

History

“	The word jihad can mean a crusade or struggle, and comes from the holy war of Islam directed against all that defied the word of God as written in the Koran. The equivalent of jihad can occur in any society brought to a peak of emotion by religious fervor or other means. The value of the jihad to society is that the people caught up in the emotion of the enterprise place their best interests, even their lives, second to the purpose of the crusade. The jihad was especially effective at a most desperate time when survival of the group hung in the balance.	”
—Age of Empires manual

Trivia

• The former name of this technology, Jihad, in Arabic literally means "struggle", viz (in Islam) "striving or exerting oneself for God". It can have different shades of meaning, like betterment of oneself and society, though sometimes it is misunderstood to exclusively mean religious warfare, and is strongly associated with extremist groups.
  • In the Definitive Edition, the name may have been changed to Zealotry in order to shake off these misconceptions and in part because of the negative connotations surrounding the term.
  • The name may also have been changed due to it being anachronistic, as Islam started in the beginning of the 7th Century AD, which is significantly after the end of the Iron Age or the Classical Age, and after the fall of Rome.
• The current name, Zealotry, was probably derived from the Zealots, a Jewish rebellion that fought against the Roman Empire. The group's name was from Greek zelotes (ζηλωτής), meaning "one who strongly follows [God]", itself translated from Hebrew kanai (קנאי), meaning "one who is zealous for God".

Bugs

• Zealotry also provides a denerf of two carry capacity (means instead of decreasing by 8, it decreases by 6) for some Villagers. However, this denerf is inconsistent. It claims that it affects food gatherers, but only affects Foragers, Farmers, and Hunters. Also, in Return of Rome, female Villagers were introduced, but the technology was not modified to denerf the equivalent female roles.