After 100 games with Byz i have found that the civ is in fact, Balanced. Well, kinda…
The most glaring issue isn’t it’s complexity in use, but it’s lack of tactical variety.
After getting used to an effective way to open, every match up ramped up nearly the same way, against every civ (except a mirror).
Even with proper use, Byz will be a very predictable civ. The meta against byz will be to simply force them to spend on defense. That’s it. But even still, china and ottomans put Byz on the offense (litterally MUST be aggressive).
The only fun of the civ is the abilities of the units, but over time, people will find this mechanically complex civ to be rather dull in strategic variety.