Monk

From GenieWiki

The Monk unit in Age of Empires II: Age of Kings (AoK) is expensive, slow and easy to kill--and is probably among the topmost favorites.

Monks can heal friendly units and convert enemies.

Monks can also capture (pick up) a relic and deliver it to a monastery, creating relic gold and possibly winning with a relic victory.

The monk unit ID is 125. It's a member of the Monk class, ID 918.

Contents 1 Training 2 Movement speed 3 Hit points and armor 4 Healing 4.1 Healing Tips 5 Conversion 5.1 Conversion Time 5.2 Conversion Range 5.3 Conversion Recovery 5.4 Conversion Targets 5.4.1 Conversion Tips 6 Relic gold 7 Relic victory 8 Monk improvements (research) 9 Archbishop and Friar Tuck units

Training

Monks are trained in a monastery. Monk units are enabled by researching the Castle age. The resource cost is 100 gold. It takes 51 seconds of game time to train a monk.

Movement speed

The monk base movement speed is 0.7. This can be increased by researching Fervor.

Hit points and armor

The monk base Hit Points is 30. This can be increased to 45 by researching Sanctity.

The monk base Melee armor and Pierce armor is zero. There is no Research to change these.

Healing

Monks can restore Hit Points to injured units, except for buildings, ships and siege weapons. Healing is continuous and is faster than recovery by garrisoning. In addition, several monks can heal the same unit.

Monks can heal the units of an ally, as well as their own.

Idle monks will heal other units automatically and will move toward injured units within their vision range. However, automatic healing is sporadic. It's not uncommon to see most or all of group of monks standing idle for awhile after a badly injured unit comes within range. In critical situations (e.g. an ongoing nearby battle), micromanagement is often needed to revive badly injured retreated units. Micromanagement is required if monks are to keep a unit alive that is actively engaged in combat--the monks do not seem to have any priorities, and will start healing the first injured unit that comes to their attention.

Healing Tips

Tip: When micromanaging monks during combat, be certain that the injured friendly unit is clicked--otherwise, the monks will start trying to convert one of the enemy units (clicked unintentionally), while the poor friendly unit is slaughtered. Sometimes this is hard to do--it seems that computer player attacking units like to move around to block the player's view of their target. (Does anyone know if this is a deliberate tactic on the part of the Tactical AI?) If the help tips option is enabled, the tip will say "Right click to heal this unit to its full hit points." Clicking the heal icon for the monks or using the heal hotkey does not seem to matter--if a hostile unit is clicked instead, the monks start trying to convert it.

Tip: Keep an eye on idle monks near a battle. They will move toward the danger zone to reach injured friendly units. If attacked, they will start trying to convert the first attacking unit. Once that starts, they will continue, pursuing the unit if necessary, until they are killed or the unit is converted or escapes.

Conversion

Monks can convert enemy and neutral units. If the conversion is successful, the unit is now controlled by the monk's owning player. This is better than killing enemy units (especially Villagers and Fishing Ships) because they can be put to work.

Conversion is not restricted by the housing cap or the population cap. In fact, one can increase population well beyond the population cap by converting enemy units. However, converted units do increase the population, which may interfere with plans to train new units.

Monks that are not already attempting to convert an enemy unit will automatically attempt to convert an attacker if they are hit--and if they can. Computer player monks will automatically attempt to convert enemy units that they can see.

Conversion Time

Conversion time is random. There seems to be a minimum time before conversion can occur at all, and on rare occasions a monk can still be trying to convert his target while other monks that started later are done. It has been observed that loading a game that was saved while conversion was ongoing may result in a different conversion time than occurred during continued play after the save.

More than one monk may attempt to convert the same unit, increasing the chances that the conversion will be successful in a shorter time. Apparently, the increase is not linear. That is, two monks will be more successful than one working alone, but not twice as successful. No number of monks seem to make conversion immediately successful.

Certain units (notably light cavalry) are more resistant to conversion. The Faith Research increases Conversion resistance. This means it will take longer, on average, to convert the more resistant units.

Conversion Range

Most conversion can be done from a distance (the monk Conversion Range), except for buildings and the Trebuchet and Mangonel line siege weapons. For those conversions, the monk(s) must be right next to the target.

The basic range for conversion is 9. It is extended to 12 by researching Block Printing.

Conversion Recovery

After a successful conversion, the monk must recover before being able to attempt another conversion. Hit points are not affected, and the monk can still move or heal while recovering.

Researching Illumination increases the recovery speed.

Conversion Targets

Monks are able to convert most non-allied units that are able to move, including villagers, trade carts, all soldiers and all ships. Allied units can never be converted. Hero units cannot be converted.

The Atonement research allows conversion of monks.

The Redemption research allows conversion of siege weapons and most buildings. Monks can never convert a Town Center, Monastery or Castle.

Converted units keep whatever attributes they had when converted. For example, if a Man at Arms is converted, with +2 attack and +1 armor, it will always have those attributes.

Conversion Tips

Tip: Converted villagers will assume the same attributes as other villagers once they are assigned to a different villager task than they had at the time of conversion. This is most obvious if they are converted from a Civ that has not researched Loom and the converting Civ has; they will need to be healed to bring them up to 40 Hit Points. More subtle is other attributes, such as resource carry capacity. If one is concerned about losing whatever resource they are carrying, a momentary assignment to repairman or builder will preserve the resource while "initiating" them into their new Civ, then they can be sent on to the appropriate drop point and reassigned to wherever they are needed.

Tip: Converted monks will assume the same attributes as other monks if they pick up a Relic. As with villagers and Loom (see above) this is most obvious if they are converted from a civ that has not researched Sanctity or Block Printing and the converting civ has.

Tip: Converting a Tower is a real exercise in micromanagement and requires up to four monks to keep healing the one doing the conversion. His "support team" cannot be counted on to keep him alive without close supervision. (This assumes that the tower's owner has researched Murder Holes.) Even if Murder Holes research is not a factor, approaching the tower in the first place is delicate. A tougher (or more agile) unit can approach first to draw fire, allowing the monks to approach. Once conversion starts, the tower will usually start dropping arrows on the converting monk and the decoy unit can go elsewhere.

Tip: Attempting to convert a Bombard Tower if the owner has researched Murder Holes seems like an exercise in stupidity. Perhaps if a whole bunch of monks moved in at once, one might survive long enough to convert the tower. Or perhaps two or more monks could move in to convert, if the player is quick to move a monk out from under the cannon balls, at least enough that it is only injured.

Tip: A micromanaged multiple monk conversion is a good idea against Cannon Galleons, Bombard Cannons and the Mangonel and Scorpion line siege weapons. If they attack from far enough away, and are well separated from each other, the player has a chance to react to an attack, moving the targetted monk while continuing the conversion with others. A "support team" of other monks standing by (but not too close) can heal an injured converter.

Relic gold

Each Relic garrisoned in a monastery contributes a small but steady increase of gold to the player's stockpiles. Like trade gold, this can be important late in the game, when gold mines are scarce or non-existent.

Relic victory

In random map and deathmatch games with standard victory settings, capturing all of the relics (and holding onto them during a countdown) results in a global victory.

Monk improvements (research)

All research is done at a monastery.

Atonement allows a monk to convert enemy monks.

Block Printing increases conversion range and line of sight by +3.

Faith increases conversion resistance by +50%. This affects all units, including monks.

Fervor increases monk movement speed by +15%.

Illumination increases monk rejuvenation by +50%.

Redemption allows a monk to convert enemy buildings and siege weapons.

Sanctity increases Hit Points by +50%.

Archbishop and Friar Tuck units

The Archbishop and Friar Tuck Hero units are available in the map editor for use in custom scenarios.

Both look just like a monk and can do everything that a monk can do. However, if they pick up a Relic, they turn into the monk with relic unit and become normal monks after depositing the relic in a monastery.

The Archbishop has 70 Hit Points, Melee armor 2 and Pierce armor 0.

Friar Tuck has 60 Hit Points, Melee armor 4 and Pierce armor 2.

The armor and increased hit points make these units tougher than a regular monk, and their Hero status means that they will self-heal (slowly) and cannot be converted.

Vasterror 04:33, 13 January 2010 (UTC)