Byzantines Buff

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
163

Yeah? and? For one, does every unique unit need to be seen in every game? if so we need to buff a ton of unique units, or find ways to slow the game down so that we get to the point where UU can be reasonably fielded. For two, the cataphract should be expensive to field, it literally has built in resistance to standard cavalry counters. your best bet is to either overwhelm it with numbers or archers. it wrecks pikes and camels. halbs need a huge numbers advantage to even win. 20 fully upgraded elite cataphracts beat 65 japanese halbs that literally attack faster.

not really - their army tends to revolve around trash and arbs. fairly gold cheap compositions frankly.

no one in serious games tries to run both paladins and cataphracts, you’re standard 1v1 game rarely sees paladins even on civs where paladins are a solid option (Franks, Lithuanians, Teutons), because its such a huge investment. and you’re more likely to see a gold unit paired with a non gold complimentary unit in most 1v1 comps.

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Byz are by no means bottom tier. They do get picked in Tournaments (both solo and team), but they arn’t contested. Their winrate is at 52% for 1650+ elo, although thats just a few hundred games. Viper ranks them as B Tier, Hera as C. So they are pretty middle of the road, not weak, not strong.

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7 out of 31 (not considering meso and Indians) lack bloodlines, so it’s that few civs who lack FU knights in castle age.

It would, their camels are already the most cost efficient on countering cavalry thanks to their discount, with BL they become even more cost efficient. Their cataprhacts would become an almost-paladin with trample damage.

Would they? I don’t think that 170HP paladins would necessarily lose to 180HP paladins, especially if you factor in the trample damage, then 10HP isn’t a big deal.

Also, all paladins take a huge bonus damage from anti cavalry units, while cataprhacts take half of it, if not even nothing, so basically you would have a unit with almost the HP of a paladin that you can’t counter with any anti-Cav unit.

They already have the tankiest among castle, with +40%HP bonus for free, making them arguably the better castles (on pair maybe with teutons, but you must pay for crenelations).

But why both paladins and cataprhacts, you tech into either one of the other. Hell you usually use just one gold unit per game (without considering siege).

Not much, but that’s the ““downside”” of having a huge tech tree with a lot of options, some units will inevitably be seen rarely.

Paladins even without BF and BL still have 160HP and 3 base PA, so in a team game against some archers civs can become useful to have them, and they would perform better than cataprhacts for sure.

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Do these actually get used?
I thought Paladins with with 2 important technologies missing were more symbolic than anything else.
I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of Byz though, so I could be wrong.

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realistically? paladins don’t see a lot of 1v1 use period. and Byzantine Paladins see less use then most civs with paladins (which doesn’t take a lot, considering the civs that have them, usually are built around them to an extent).
they are an option they can call upon though if needed. they don’t get used often, but if i’m in a team game and my team needs something to soak arrows, you could do a lot worse then a 160 hp unit with 7 PA. they still take 54 shots to take down (From fully upgraded arbs), which is only 6 less then a normal paladin, and 10 less then a Frankish Paladin. still a very reliable meatshield.

other then that - if there melee is weak to archers - then every civs melee units are weak to archer, with a few exceptions.

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168

If cataphracts got all the buffs people on these forums wanted, they would be an unstoppable death unit.
Bloodlines + 1 extra PA + 1 more attack +2 more resistance to cavalry damage + cheaper to tech too. and thats just the past week or so.

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As long as the byzantines take advantage of their team bonus and heal their palladins regularly and use hit’n run before they die, they’ll work exceptionally well, same for their cataphracts

Mat they would only need 1 bonus to their cataphracts out of that list to be a generally complete unit, the only buff I’d advocate for there is the +1 pierce armor, but that’s me

170

The leitis was literally just nerfed to 1 PA because people felt it was too good against too much and the Cataphract makes the Leitis look like a joke on that front. good luck getting 1 PA.

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I would add a +2 range on the attack, then a bonus vs siege, and since we are buffing it, let’s trow in a resistance to conversion too


No but seriously, I don’t get why people are asking crazy OP buff for this civ.

I mean, if you want to give the bizzantines some adjustments, some minor buff, it’s fine in my opinion, there is some room to work.

For example, I heard some serious and logical proposals like:

  • giving free Town Patrol (with town watch)
  • further decreasing the cost of elite cataprhacts and/or Logistica by another 200 food or gold.
  • unlock the Partian Tactics tech from the tech tree

Those are reasonable buff, that would improve the civ without making it OP (maybe not all 3 though
). But then I hear that they should get BL, BF, and a nerf on cataprhacts, or lose hussars


Onestly, that’s caos
 it’s a mix of buff and nerf that won’t balance themselves.

For example, if you give them BL, then camels and cataprhacts become a lot more strong, but if you reduce the HP of the latter, then at the same time it becomes a nerf.
Meaning that in pocket team games bizzantines would just go for their broken units that it would be so powerful and impossible to counter, but on 1v1 they would never see the chance to use because they would have to pay even more resources for more upgrades


Same for hussars, you people see the immediate gain on buffing their other cavalry units, but then they would be left without a trash unit for their late game raiding. And for what? For having camels that are even more cost effective when they already are the most cost effective among all civs? And I could go on with the examples


Chaos, that’s what it is


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this is fine if you ask me.

honestly i would only go with 1 or the other at this point on that front, but even then i don’t think they need a late game buff.

honestly with the civ lacking bloodlines i don’t see their cav archers getting much use so this would be useless imho. also they don’t need late game buffs.

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Yeah I don’t see any harm either.

Yeah those are just a bunch of random suggestions, I didn’t meant all of those, just that in general they could remove some more resources on the upgrades of catapracts.

Well, they have HCA, and with FU atk and armor, so with PT they would get max armor and bonus damage vs pikes, I think it could be fine, they would be a glass cannon, good for their damage output and mobility, but fragile since they lack BL, a bit like their camels, and most of their units.

But they don’t need it, the unit’s stats are fine. Why do they need +1PA when you have paladins, Onagers, siege rams and FU skirms. The cataprhacts doesn’t have to be good-vs-everything kind of unit, and bizzantines have better options to support their UU vs archers that buffing their PA.

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Even with +1 pierce armor they’ll fall before their palladins do when against even grazing non-microed arrow fire. Currently that situation is hard to manage, but you’re not wrong.

To compensate, I wouldn’t mind them being as weak to conversions as the persian war ellephant.

175

Yes, they would be weaker than paladins, but +1PA it’s actually still huge, it means taking 8 more shots from a FU arbs in imp, and 10 more hits from an xbow in castle age.

They already are on the same level of elephants as conversion resistance.
Elephants aren’t weaker to monk because of some hidden meccanics, but only because they are a slow moving units, and that give more time to the monk to convert. They are also ridiculously expensive, so when a conversion happens, it have more value.

The only 2 units that have a conversion meccanics of their own are the scouts and eagles. For all the others units the mechanics it’s the same.

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What I meant by that is for them to lose Faith and Heresy. Or just heresy if they need faith for being the roman empire but still convertable.

When I face byzantines as teutons I want some cataphracts of my own the same way I want huskarls of my own when facing goths.

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Meh, it wouldn’t change a lot
 in early castle age they are and would be still weak to conversion, since heresy cost a ton of gold, and it usually delayed.

In late castle and imp then conversion isn’t used anymore, because there are a ton of units and it became impossible to micro (with the exception of elephants and siege
) so again cataprhacts wouldn’t be that much weaker.

It wouldn’t be a nerf at all, while giving +1PA would be a buff.

I mean, you are suggesting to give them a buff to a unit that a counter (archers) and to balance it with a supposed weakness vs a units that isn’t a standard counter for them (monks), so it’s basically a buff


Again this is caos, it’s not how balance work

178

I use monks in late imp for both healing and conversions with the healing fortress formations, works pretty well.

Bind each monk up to 10 on the numpad and have the rest of the formation set to the normal hotkey 1. Manually select the formation to move it and easily manage conversions with the numpad.

Since the monks won’t have to move to flee while converting from a generally safe place their conversion timer will not reset unless they move from their spot for whatever reason, making conversions more stable and in some cases quicker and more efficient.

179

Good for you, but that’s not the meta. You can’t balance around the strategies of just one player that deviate from the general game style.

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People can have a healing fortress formation with just 5-10 monks and 13 melee units, I think that’s rather affordable for protection on the monks and a good frontlines healing source and a helpful conversion unit.

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Sorry if i may appear rude, but we arn’t talking about your scenario editor fantasy here, but about real games. In real games, you dont go for mass monks in late imp. You dont go for healing fortresses, and you dont use up 10 hotkeys just to controll monks.

Show me a real game where monks are used in late imp (and not just to convert siege), then we can talk. Until proven to exist, that strategy doesn’t exist.

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11, all you need is to recognize the usefulness of a basic fortress formation and 60 units, 20 each on 3 other hotkeys, for instance 20 teutonic knights, 20 palladins and 20 palladins/siege mixture, and how they can be healed while battling to reduce losses and used to counter eachother’s weaknesses and healed consistently to reduce losses.

Numpad hotkeys generally go unused, so might as well give them a specialized use that makes monks more manageable. Conversions become a breeze with the minimal time and effort it takes to bind said monks, and healing on the front lines is priceless for both you and your allies.