Byzantines feels off. Not a balance thread

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I don’t mind a statistically bad civilization, as I seek fun in other ways when playing AoE4.

But, something feels off about Byzantines aside from that. I want to like them so bad, but the fantasy isn’t quite right. Something about their cool units being hard to mass and unlocked only in Castle, in conjunction with other “special” features being more bothersome than fun to play with.

Aquaducts are straight up a less fun way with than Imperial Officials. They are super clunky with lots of build restrictions, take forever to set up and require an absolute fortune. Whereas one Imperial Official can take care of multiple things and can be microed meaningfully due to the 150% speed in research and production from the get go. With Aquaducts, there is barely a reason to ever change their setting more than once. In fact, I find their bonuses uninspiring and boring, being a copy paste of Imperial Official with the addition of Damage Reduction. Couldn’t these bonuses have been something different?

Greek Fire does not strike me as being an actual meaningful part of Byzantines at all. Cheirosiphon are underwhelming and costly, Dromons are ironically worse at countering their Archer Ships (and are more costly) and Fire Trebuchets are literally worthless. How is this a significant part of Byzantines?

Mercenaries also feel off. I’m not a fan of how much of your army is composed of Mercenaries. Instead of adding to the Byzantine feel, it makes me feel like I’m playing half a civilization rather than 1 and then some. Having more Unique Units of another civilization than my own Unique Units really hurts identity. Why wouldn’t I just play Mongols rather than spam Keshiks as Byzantines? I don’t get this at all, and it just doesn’t feel right.

Funnily enough, my favourite parts about Byzantine are rather mundane. Mangonel Towers are somehow the most interesting thing about them so far. That can’t be good. You might say, “what about Varangians and Cataphracts?” well, as I mentioned above, these units realistically come online too late. They are both extremely gold heavy and compete with each other in that space–In fact, I tend to have more Mercenaries at times than I do of either Cataphracts or Varangians. How does that add to the “Byzantine” feel?

Sorry for the rant, but I was wondering if anyone else is having this issue with them. I find that they did a wonderful job with Japan, and my favourite civilization so far is in fact Mongols. I think they’ve done a great job at making most civilizations fullfil their own fantasies, but Byzantines just feel off for me. What do you think?

3 Likes
2

Played just a bit with them, they have a very strong feudal push with horseman + pikes.

Their pikes can tank well town centers and archers firing.

Despite that, they feel slow. Some of the best players said they are a bit overtuned but they are great, counterpart is they are so so difficult to play (even more than chineese).

3

To me, the flavor of civs like byz and delhi are invalidated once i face Japan for the first time.

Here we have 2 civs doing all these crazy things to field a regular army when Japan can just make a farm and call it day, plus Japans units are better than Byz units - dont let anyone tell you otherwise

4

They just feel off to me

5

To me the Mercenaries take too much space in the Civ, in fact I usually go for the Byzantine half of the Landmarks, rather than focusing on the Mercenary ones. I suppose their Unique Units and Techs should get more focus, usability, so that Mercenaries really feel like that 15-25% of the army.

6

I feel that Byz play unit a bit different than other civs:

  • Spear: while other civ is only for increase dps against Cavalry, Byz can also tank ranged atk.
  • MAA: other use to tank damage but Byz is half tank hard damage from berserk
  • Knight: other is half tank and charge/deal damage; Byz is pure charge to kill as hp per cost isn’t worth it.

In total, I feel like Byz lower unit is taking some role from higher unit but worse, but since lower unit is cheaper so mass in larger amount, and use leftover resource from training cheaper unit to train very expensive unit.

As for Merc, I think it meant to fill gap that occur from only fill low rank unit to hold the fight better, result in Merc seem too important for civ.