What’s the point of having many options to your unit composition if they aren’t even generic?
Byzantine has a cheap Imp click but people mostly stay in castle age because it’s not like you become that much stronger that you really need to go up as quickly as you can.
I think they should get Blast Furnace so you can have generic infantry in the late game as a good option, also paladins and hussars that don’t absolutely blow chunks.
Bloodlines is a good option to give, but that would just push the players to stick in castle age longer (also camels would become a very worth spam, regardless of the enemy units).
Third option is to just make the Imp click even cheaper (like 40% or even 50%). Historically, it makes sense since Byzantium was an empire way before most civs in the game.
As an added bonus, I think personally that Cataphracts upgrade costs should be lowered a tad bit, since right now the cost is equivalent to upgrading a full generic Paladin, and since this is a castle UU it should be easier to make use of (especially if Blast Furnace is added since that ads to the costs).
And i know its stupid, but they should be given Masonry as an option, since bonus HP doesn’t give bonus damage armor, so for a lot of attacks bulding with architecture fall slower than Byzantine buildings (the DEFENSIVE civ). Maybe change it so they get +10%HP on all buildings and also Masonry and Architecture free, since no civs get those upgrades for free, and on Byzantium it would be the most applicable.
This was my reaction as well, with their cheap camels. However someone in another thread pointed out that Byzantine Camels with Bloodlines would still be missing 2 attack from Blast Furnace, while being 6% cheaper than Berber camels and not having regeneration. That seems worse, so I’m convinced now that the camels might be ok.
We’d have to look at Paladins and Hussars, but my gut feel is that giving them bloodlines would be fine, since they have no discount and no blast furnace.
So that just leaves Cataphracts. This one is easy, since their HP could be reduced to account for bloodlines. -20 would actually be a nerf, because they’d need to spend resources on bloodlines to get back to the same level, so maybe -10 or -15 HP.
Edit: No blast furnace. That would be too strong for their Cavalry and Halberdiers.
Only cataphract need to be buffed due to the insanely expensive upgrades and limited usage.
Bloodline will make camel too op and the Blast Furnace will make halberdier too strong
Clearly you haven’t played as Byz or against Byz. There are too many ppl that think they’re smart when they tell others that a civ don’t need nuthin.
Byzantines are consistently a low win rate civ, in low and high elo.
I think giving them blast furnace would be a great buff. Also, Reducing cataphract set up costs would be good since, let’s face it, why go cataphract when you can go imp and get chemistry? Its a UU cav unit that takes a lot go set up and is expensive to make, and unlike Mangudai, it has very clear counters (Mangudai beats cataphract lol).
They have no eco lead, nor do they have a good late game, so they’re lacking both early and late… Meaning that the civ only shines in a short, in between time-stamp.
Giving them a chance to make default infantry, or bloodline-less cav would be fair.
Logistica for paladins does sound pretty cool tbh.
By the way, if you doubt what byzantines can do you can check here:
Instead of wasting time with stats collected from noobs like me playing on the ladder, you can check why proper players are proactively picking and playing Byzantines over a lot of other civs to gain their livelihood in a tournament on the byzantines worst map.
My favorite civ! Can spam trash units for hours lol! Honestly i don’t think they need anything with the counter units so cheap. OP go check some of Survivalists games and see how he plays with them.
They’re pretty good on 1v1 Closed Maps (Tech Tree + Cheaper Imp mainly) and okay on 1v1 Hybrid/Water (Tech Tree + Faster attacking Fire Ships) , but outside of this both 1v1 and Team Games they’re decidedly pretty meh. They have very little going for them pre-Imp outside of Fire Ships and counter units, and whilst they can dodge this weakness in Closed Maps thanks to the FC focused metagame and cheaper Imp, on Open Maps they have little to help this in regards.
Team Games it’s the same situation but worse, given that atleast one of your opponent’s allies will have the counters to your own counters (Knights for Skirms, Archers for Pikes/Camels). Even in Imp they’re mediocre given the main power of their lategame army is through again countering their opponent, and they lack a single unit with exceptional sheer power, the best they have being generic Arbalester and the second worst Paladins in the game. They’re still okay though given their sheer range of decent options
I say they should be given a slight early game buff (like IDK all upgrades in Barracks, Stables and Archery Ranges cost 10% less) and Logistica gives trample to their Knights (but not bonus damage againast Infantry), so they have a decent power option in Imp for Team Games.
