Haha don’t twist his words… Even after you have spent 35 units worth JUST ON UPGRADES the cata can still be countered by those archers. Whatever you’re spending on the cata of course the opponent could have spent on pikes /hussars (or some other meeatshield) and his archers on top of the fact that whatever you do kill can be replaced much faster due to multiple archery ranges and stables,compared to low count castles. The cata isn’t the war or battle elephant but you’re making it out to be like they are…
They’re simply too expensive and trained too slowly for what you get out.
To re emphasise… What on earth is the enemy doing while you amass enough res to tech catas AND mass them? Sleeping?
Cataphracts do not train slowly at all, and just smash through Trash like Hussars and Pikes.
They take 10 seconds less than Paladins to train and upgrade in 50 seconds (170 for Paladin).
The only thing holding Cataphracts back is the extremely expensive upgrades, otherwise they are one of the strongest UUs in the game, and have no direct counters. Even Arbalests take around 30 shots to kill them.
except Paladins can be produced from 10-20 or whatever number of cheap stables you want. The possibility of 6+ castles is unlikely without trade or buying stone in a gold heavy map
Also they also don’t really smash through hussars, their individual strength is nothing special because of the lack of blast furnace, only after logistica and mass fights, they really shine
Again for the umpteenth time. I didn’t claim Cataphracts to be OP… they’re not OP precisely BECAUSE they’re expensive. Reducing their cost would make them OP however, which is exactly my point.
The generally agreed solution here is 1200f 800g which is still expensive combined with logistica price (which should remain unchanged). Its like a status quo of non meta units shouldn’t be seen seriously
This post while a bit weirdly worded is very important.
There for sure are civs that will simply die against FU Catas. Thats the same for many expensive strong units tho like Mangudai, Camel archer, Paladin etc…
But most civs will have teched into something strong themselves, if they allow the Byz player to mass FU Catas. So even if you get there its not an “auto win”, except for some civ matchups.
I agree Elite Cataphract and/or Logistica should be cheaper.
Then minor changes like free town patrols would not break them, so why not?
As a more general issue I have with this civ: Byzantines were of course a defensive civilisation, but also one which would rely on an elite army, which the “cheaper trash units” theme does not quite capture. Heavy cavalry and infantry would be the bulk of their army, and although their is the cataphract, the knight and swordsman line do not quite capture that. So I don’t have the idea to change that, and most people will argue it is better to have historical inaccuracy than to break a civ – which I understand – but trash units is also not very fun to play. I mean, the Teutons were buffed not because they were weak (or at least not very weak) but disregarded as too slow. Similarly, Byzantines are very defensive, which is accurate, but they don’t have incredible options other than cataphracts.
One idea to change that a bit would be to appoint the Teutons’ cavalry armour bonus – which is OP to me – to the Byzantines. Perhaps then it should be capped to stable units and not apply to cataphracts? It would make stable unit an option, as they really don’t have that many reasons to go for them.
Cheap trash doesn’t really represent the smaller elite armies of Byzantines but frankly this game has always put gameplay and balance before realism/historical accuracy.
Only thing I would like to see for Byzantines at the moment is free Town Patrol. Because it’s odd for them to not have it when they already have free Town Watch, and I see a lot of people are also okay with the much more powerful free TC tech bonuses of free Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart so I do not see how free Town Patrol would break Byzantines.
I like so much your Greek Fire unique tech idea. It may ease my indecisiveness on another concept; What would be a possible second unique unit for the Byzantines: I was between two proposals, a siege unit that spits liquid fire, the Cheirosiphon (“hand-siphon”) and of course the well known infantry unit, the Varangian, in favor of the latter.
In conclusion, a. Town Patrol free, b. Cheaper Cataphract upgrades (became true in July patch), c. the full utilization of their iconic secret technology “Greek Fire”, on water and land, are always my top recommendations.
