Call me crazy: Give Byzantines stone walls in the dark age!

Yes, this is a serious suggestion.
Byzantines are described as defensive civilization. They were known for being much more advanced when other civilizations were still in their dark age (reflected in their faster/cheaper advance to the imperial age) and for their strong city walls.

Now, currently having a low average win rate of only 46.49, they should get the buff every noob has always dreamed of: the ability to build stone walls in the dark age!

Building stone walls takes a lot of villager work time. Therefore no advanced player would actually want to build stone walls in the dark age because it would delay their uptime.
However, Byzantines are a beloved civilization for beginner players due to their defensive capabilities and hard to counter unique unit.
And beginner players love to stone wall.
But even for higher level play it might could lead to some fun “wall in your opponent” strategies.
In my opinion they are the perfect civ to give such a unique bonus to.

Do you agree or disagree?

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Actually pros already build palissade walls if necessary, as a dead villager is always going to be a worse loss than a villager spending time building walls. I guess the stone cost might be a detterent

And they hate getting trushed. Which is what this bonus would encourage their enemy to do each and every time they see a Byz player, since besides Cuman rams (that work best when supported with towers) there isn’t much to do against such a turtle strat. Not to mention Byzantine already have +10 HP on palissade and houses right from the start, which makes the strat of repairing your buildings under attack that much stronger. And I have yet to see a player fail to do so.

Many people would call that laming at best.

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Literally never dreamed of this. Furthermore Byzantines winrate is 50.65% (1650+). You don’t balance around what everyone can do, you balance around what the best can do. This is simply because they can use stuff to a much better potential then everyone else.

For example if archers were to be valanced around noobs you’d have to increase their damage because noobs don’t micro. This means archers would lose to anyone who can attack move. Now imagine if archers did more damage and you gave them to viper. It would be a nightmare.

Not really, its only 4 seconds longer then a palisade wall.

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I wasn’t careful about the time. +4 second on one segment sure isn’t much, but it can quickly snowball. I guess what people would do for maximum turtling power is first build palissades to hold of a fast attack, and then stone wall behind to make sure whatever the enemy has is going to become useless. Tbh I guess this bonus could work, but it would be less interesting than making cata upgrades somewhat cheaper.

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Look any pro level game, and hear the caster day the phrase “they forced a tower” forcong a tower in feudal age is already a victory :your opponent won’t be able to build 2 tcs in castle age. Now imagine using the stone in dark age: you can’t even put a counter tower to a trush. Even more, stone wall takes forever to build. Building them in dark age guarantees you 100% to be way behind in eco for all the game. 100% useless

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Think of all the stone the Byzantines player spent on walling. They won’t be able to tc either

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I agree that this suggestion is a little bit controversial, but I still think it would be a good addition to the game.

By beginner players I actually meant people who just started to play. And believe it or not but there are actually more players playing singleplayer against the ai then ranked.

1650+ players would not consider to build stone walls in dark age as the build time is painfully slow compared to palisades. You would probably need about 5+ villagers to quickly stone wall yourself on a map like Arabia.
However, a 1650+ player might still like that bonus on a messy nomad game with enemy TCs nearby, villager fights and limited space to expand.

Mid level player might want to try a “Byzantine fast imperial” strategy in a teamgame without getting rushed by Scouts.

And beginner players could start to wall early to keep those standard ai feudal archers out of their town.

I just think this “gimmick” would make the ultimate defensive civ even more interesting for everybody.
Yet, and that’s important, it’s a “gimmick” and not a buff → meaning it will not alter the Byzantine win rate in high level games.

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the point is that byzantines winrate isn’t as low as you are showing it to be, and that changes aren’t neccesarily needed for them.

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But to be honest, I liked the Byzantines when I started to play the game many years ago. But now they feel a little dull. I would just love if they got a little bonus that would give them a little more flair. Yes, perhaps a bonus that is a little bit of a meme. But that is actually how many people have a lot of fun in the game: playing with your friends and surprising them with unusual strategies.

Many thanks for your input on this topic :slight_smile:

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Were did you get your winrates from? :slight_smile:

I got mine from here:

It’s from more then 2000 games on the current patch (across all skill levels).

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same site you did, the only thing is, i don’t care what the winrate of joe nobody is.
joe nobody doesn’t micro his units or use his civ to his full potential.
i care what viper, yo, themax, etc can do. sort for 1650+ and see what happens to Byzantine winrate.

you don’t balance games around low skill players for a reason.

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Well according to this criteria for instance the ele archer is fine, you can mass them and the AI won’t be able to counter that most of the time 11 And stone walls in feudal work just fine, and people who play vs extreme AI (that can drush iirc) will know how to house walls and repair them.

I still think that if this was implemented for noob games, basically those who want to attack early will get frustrated by all this camping, will look up how to counter that and will just start trushing all the time. And other noobs wouldn’t enjoy that.

Well maybe “joe someone” microes and all, but he and his buddies aren’t playing enough for good data. I don’t think Byz truely are a perfect Khmer counter while always losing to Portuguese.

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that may be true, but my point being that you don’t balance games around what “everyone” can do. you balance around the top.

can you imagine the changes you would have to make if you balance for people who don’t use build orders or micro? people who don’t attack until imperial age?
15 year old me thought champions were awesome and skirmishers and halbs were useless for example. (actually it was probably 13 when i started this game, point stands).

i also didn’t use siege. like at all.

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Oh indeed, but after all above 1000 ELO hopefully players aren’t doing that anymore. Anyway the 46.49% rate mentioned in the OP is low but not below 45% so it sounds fine to me. However I really think that camping and trushing are two things that will cause a lot of frustration for low level players.

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i mean frankly, i’m not some multiplayer powerhouse or anything, god knows my reactions are too slow for it, but i like to think my game knowledge is pretty solid, and i watch a lot of pro games.

the only thing i would really like to see going forward outside of my changes listed over in the other thread, is spend more time between patches. or maybe continue monthly patches, but don’t adjust a civ that has been adjusted in the last month (unless something is obviously wrong one way or another).

so for example if in January you nerfed Franks and buffed Cumans, neither of those civs could be considered for balance changes until the March patch, that way you got at least a few months data.

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Besides Tatars and Teutons no civ got chnages that close from each other I think.

Goths. 3 patches in a row.

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I agree, civs should get a two month break after they have been changed so the player base has some time to figure out how to deal with them best.

However, I disagree that the game should be >only< balanced around high level games.
The developers stated that they talk to expert players like the viper to balance the civs for the pro games, but they also try to get the civ winrate for the average “Joe” players balanced to close to 50%. They want everybody to have fun and fair matches.
And so far, I think they have done a pretty good job. When looking at the average Civ winrate across all skill levels most Civs are at about 50%.
And do you remember the pro games 8 years ago when every match was an Arabia Hun war? I am glad that changed…

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and right now that literally exists. balanced is considered 45-55%. the only civs outside of that at all levels of play are koreans (who everyone agree needs love) and malay, who are suffering from a bug.
for the average player this game has literally never been better balanced.

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Oooops forgot 11

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