Byzantines buff september suggestion

Byz actually feel in a pretty good place to me 1v1. They are super versatile and the win / pick rates are in good shape particularly at 1650+ elo.

I don’t mind adding bloodlines and either keeping Cata HP as is or -10hp, but I think they need to lose Paladins. I don’t see them ever used currently but I don’t think they should start inching towards FU paladins though they would still be missing blast furnace

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Byzantines are the civ, that I understand the least. They are classified as “defensive civilisation”, they have durable buildings and cheap counter units. So I suppose, the idea is to just survive and boom. But as they don’t have any eco bonus, the enemy will most likely have a better boom. So unless the byzantines play aggressive (which they don’t have any bonus for), they will be behind.

Then they have the cheaper imperial age, which saves around 600 ressources. That seems to be a lot, but since the enemy has most likely an earlier eco bonus, the byzantine player will only reach the imperial age slightly earlier (if at all).

In this short time window, they have a power spike. What unit should they go for as their main unit? Knights get only the cavalier and armor upgrade, but with lacking blast furnace and bloodlines, that wouldn’t be a very big power spike. Champions are rarely a good idea. So they have to use arbalesters as their gold unit, which doesn’t seem to be very flexible to me, but predictable.

In the late game, their trash is cheaper, but (besides the skirmisher) worse than average, so the discount just seems to compensate for the missing techs.

So I just don’t understand the civ. What is going for it that makes it competitive to civs with eco boni? If someone could explain the byzantines to me, that would be great! From my point of view, they don’t have any really bad matchups, as they have good counters to everything, but they seem to be always slightly worse than most other civs.

I think extra pierce armor is not needed.

I like that. For a team bonus this is a really situational bonus as well. I’m usually not the guy to point out win rates but Byzantines have the 2nd lowest win rate civ in team games. And that is a consistent problem through all elo levels.

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I would love to see the +1P armor on Cataphracts but I don’t think buffing them is a good idea given how good they already are.

Would it be too OP to give Byzantines architecture and masonry for free and half their free HP? I am not familiar with how building armor works but it always struck me as odd that they get massive HP but lose the building armor since they cant research these techs.

Or they could even put the building armor on slowly with the HP gain per era. This would give them more time to get the very expensive upgrades for Cataphracts.

I assume there is a very good reason they don’t get the armor but if anyone can give me an idea how that would change their effective HP I would be interested in knowing

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Byzantines are unique because of that, lack both masonry and architecture but their buidlings are the hardest to take down, look at the Franks with their tankier paladins even when they lack bloodlines as comparison.

Byz buildings are slightly weaker against some units that deal bonus damage to building (depends whether their damage is blocked by masonry armour) but they are more resistant to siege weapons, which is way more important.

@CactusSteak2171 and @FurtherLime7936 I really should have checked if Spriit of the Law did a video on this before asking how building armor works, thank you for your responses though. I still dont have a sense for if +2N/+2P/+6B armor would make Byzantines too hard to siege but at least I know what it does now. For anyone else interested in the mechanics of building armor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3yDAPvv_tM .

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I do find the nature of the free bonus but missing relevant technology kind of weird though. Frank Paladins have like 12 more hp after bloodlines which is like 6% or so? Similar to Celts / Cumans with their speed bonuses, after squires / husbandry, it’s like a 5% speed bonus.

It’s like free technology in my opinion - just feels kind of lazy / neuters the bonus. I generally prefer free techs in situations where there is a game reason why it is interesting, e.g. town watch free for Byz given they are a defensive civ or Parthian tactics / thumb ring for Tartar fast cav archers

Small boosts can matter. The Franks extra HP might be only 6% but it translates to taking 1 more halb hit without dying. Also, bonuses replacing techs can take effect before the tech in question is available, for instance Celts can have faster militia thanks to their bonus.

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I always have mixed feelings about byzantines tbh. They are not a bad civ by any means, but they aren’t particularly good at anything either. I think they are supposed to be a civ with a broad tech tree, very flexible and powerful in the late game, but they are missing a few very important techs:

-No bloodlines and no blast furnace hits really hard cavalry, especially in late game. Sure, you can still go knights in castle, but then what? Cavalier (or even worse paladin) without bloodlines and blast furnace? That’s a waste of resources. Camels can still work fine in castle, but in imperial they are just garbage. Moreover you have cheper halbs, so why waste res in something like heavy camels?

-No parthian tactics and no bloodlines means that cav archers are no good.

-No siege engineers is kinda bad for onagers, but I think that’s ok given that they both siege ram and bombard cannons. However once again, their siege is good but not amazing by any means.

-No blast furnace means subpar champions. They got handcannons at least, so i guess it’s fine.

-Greek fire UT is useless in practice. This needs to be reworked. Maybe something like fire ships move faster.

So what’s left? Arbalests and cheaper trash, which means that in practice byz are played like an archer civ.
And what about catas? Even with upgrade cost reductions, they are barely seen. Everyone says how good they are, yet nobody uses them. The truth is, while their stats are good, they are still too expensive to both produce and upgrade for what they do. Plus they are produced only by castles, a further bottleneck.

I would try to give byzantines blast furnace, so their melee units become more viable in the late game. Right now they are played like an archer civ in practice. This also wouldn’t change anything until imperial, as they will still struggle with their lack of eco bonuses in the early game.
Would this make they cavalry units OP? I don’t think so. Camels are discounted, but still lack bloodlines, which makes them not that great. If needed, discount can be decreased to 15%. Paladins become more viable, but probably won’t be seen in 1vs1. They are already very expensive, and missing a critical tech like bloodlines really hurts. If catas damage output get too large, I would just tune down a bit their attack speed, though tbh I don’t think that would be necessary.

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Attack is not the point to the counter units like camel and spearman-line.

Add bloodline as well as free town patrol would be more helpful in my opinion.

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I know it sounds bad when you put it that way, but the combination with their tech tree and bonuses, they do make for a very solid 1v1 civ that many civs struggle against. Currently they have 51% winrate in 1650+ and almost 50% at 1250-1650 which is not underpowered at all.

In TGs they’re underpowered and that’s okay, they get generic arbs, their UU is situational. Cheaper camels in particular paired with faster imp can seriously put you to advantage against pocket

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The point of counter units is countering cost effectively some other units. Attack is part of what determines the effectives. Do the math and you will see that the lack of blast furnace corresponds to one extra hit necessary to kill a paladin for both halbs and heavy camels. I would say that this matters, especially when you want your population space to be used effectively.

Bloodlines would be more useful, I agree with you. I purposely suggested blast furnace because I think bloodlines would be too strong. Could be fun though, cav archers would be situationally viable at least.

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Oh, don’t get me wrong, they are not a bad civ by any means. But they are not great at anything either. As I see it (though I may be wrong), byz were designed to turtle up until imp (extra bulding hp, cheaper trash), where they can take advantage of they supposedly broad tech tree. Problem is, several critical techs are missing and the tech tree is not as good as one would think. I think giving them just one of those techs would help them shine in the situation where they were designed to be strong. Remember that byz are paying for that by having no eco bonus except cheaper imp.

Also, I think we can all agree on free town patrol. I seriously have no idea why that has not been implemented yet.

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They need free Town Patrol, that’s it, Byz are fine.

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Fixed

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It can but it’s very situational. Franks may take an extra halb hit but they only take a couple more arrows. It depends on what type of army you are fighting

That’s true for the Celts but again, once it’s the Castle Age 2/3rds of the bonus is essentially gone. For the Cumans it translates to 5% extra speed in Feudal and Imperial but no change in Castle Age. Additionally, squires / husbandry aren’t expensive techs either so it’s not like it’s a large eco bonus in essentially getting those techs for free with some extra effect. I would have preferred a flat 10% boost to speed but they both get to research the tech so there is still a noticeable advantage in the late game but in any case, it’s more my opinion than any expected change that will be made

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Are you serious ? Byzantines are borderline broken now and you wanna buff them that way. Just no. Really no. No teuton like bonus for no reason and cataphract having less PA is all what it makes a counterable unit… You really want a byz vs byz meta ?

Care to explain how are they broken?
Arbs civs, ethiopians, vietnamese, mayans, etc, well even vikings outperforms byzantines if both going arbs+ram so goodbye to the cheap skirms.

Cavalry civs, too many civs outperform them and berbers have cheap units on all cavalry units, camel archer is way more useful than cata.

Town watch sure guys, that is going to make them a better civ, they can defeat indians and britons as well with that unused tech, 95% of all games played in rm doesn’t even upgrade that thing, that shows how useless it becomes in the competitive game play, korean extra view on villagers is way more effective for feudal and castle age.

If you don’t want to buff the civ, do not suggest town watch it is waste of resources and even of a civ bonus, it would be second worse civ bonus along with the inca team bonus.

Byzantines were ok in aok, decent on aoc and meh in the next expansions, the main point of giving something is to make them playable vs the new civs, while cata is ok it can’t be massed or help them when its necessary, spanish and saracens have better tec tree, just saying, stop saying that they have the widest tec tree options, cause the other two civs have complete blacksmith upgrades, vital upgrades and stronger UU’s, even the newer civs have also great tec trees, spanish blacksmith saves more gold than byz cheap imperial…

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And yet, aside of Vietnamese, all those civs have bad winrates vs Byzantines. Also good luck reaching imp before Byzantines and pushing them

Yeah sure because that’s how you compare eco bonuses, it’s not like reaching imp before your
opponent helps closing the game or anything

It’s not, it’s something that completes their design without buffing them further because they don’t need buffs

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