Mantlet

From Warbirth Wiki

‘They will move towards our inner wall, protected by their tortoise shields. Successive waves of attacks will breach our walls. You know what will be done to the city. Even the rats will not be spared.’

— Amish Tripathi, Scion of Ikshvaku (cap 25)

In game[edit | edit source]

Mantlet WBI.png
Mantlet — Vital statistics

Light siege unit specialised in suppressing attacks by Towers and Forts. Impervious to missiles but vulnerable to melee attacks.

  • Strong versus archers and buildings
  • Weak versus siege weapons, elephants and melee units.
Prereq: Build time HP LOS Attack Attack speed Movement
speed
Upgrades to
Level 3: Heraldry and Code of Honour Military
11.3s
(169t)
225 4 1 11.11 hrs
(9999t!)
20 Siegetower WBI.png
Cost Created from Armour Weapon range Specialty
Base Ramp Pop
Food.jpg: 80;
Timber: 60
Food.jpg: 1;
Timber: 1
1 Assédio.png 5 None
  • Highly resistant to most missile attacks, especially against buildings.
  • Defensive penalty versus elephants and siege weapons.
  • Can entrench itself after 5 seconds of inactivity.
  • Not buildable to any faction with Siege Towers (see below).

Overall strategy[edit | edit source]

The first siege unit you can create, the Mantlet is in essence a moveable meat shield, endowed with lots of hitpoints, and resistant to fire from archers. Just remember to keep melee infantry, especially axemen, away from them, as they will make short work of them. Mantlets, when not moving, will immediately entrench themselves, just as how Hoplites, Speutagardaz or Argive Long Spearmen will do.

In the Heroic Age, you can upgrade Mantlets into Battering Rams. They will lose their ability to entrench, but in turn will gain a devastating anti-building attack.

Unit summary[edit | edit source]

  • Siege Tower — While it can't entrench, the Siege Tower is a far more destructive and harder hitting version of the Mantlet and is capable of defending itself from other units. Understandably, factions that build Siege Towers — China, Rome, Greece, Egypt, Carthage, Saka, Dacians — do not have access to Mantlets.

Notes[edit | edit source]

Tests with Rise of Nations show that the AI isn't really prepared to deal with units that have very bad attack against buildings and units. Having an Attack strength of 1 won't stop the AI from using these units to swarm your cities, and while it is a viable tactic (somewhat) given that Mantlets are resistant to damage from buildings.

The reason for this is because the Mantlet's attack strength was set to 1, because if it were set to 0, the unit would be incapable of having varied appearances.

In truth, there are three different Mantlet units in Age of Empires; they all have the same stats but have different variations (to accommodate the unique appearances of Persian and Indian faction units).

  • Mantlet 1 - is complete but Indian version is used by Aksum.
  • Mantlet 2 - used by Persia and Xiongnu. But the Xiongnu use the Chinese model.
  • Mantlet 3 - used exclusively by India.