I watched a Viper UU rank video and he had Cataphracts S tier which shocked me for a unit that is so expensive and very well countered by Arbs which are available to many civs. Ranged units in general will wreck them. A lot of high end players would strongly disagree with having them S tier so wondering what the community thinks.
Cataphracts would probably only be like B-Tier on every other civ.
But Byz have super cheap trash units and once you forced your opponent out of his own gold, the Catas just clean the rest. And that’s why they are S-Tier on all the Tierlists, cause the Tierliests don’t assess the units on their own butbased on the performance in the whole civ roster.
Likewise if you would give eg serjeants to magyars (or even better mongols) they would also jump 2 tiers.
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What’s the reasoning behind the sergeant part?
Do you have a link to the videoto see what he says ?
I agree that Catsphracts are a B tier UU in itself and A tier to S tier in the hands of Byzantines, as they wreck champions, eagles, Huskarls, and infantry UUs which is what the civ would otherwise strughle against.
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I think the TO actually wanted to ask what’s the “best individual UU” in the game.
Imo arm it’s still the Coustillier.
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That is why I asked for the video. Viper probably didnt mean it that way.
The coustiller is a strong contender for me, along with janissaries, conqs, and organ guns (pre patch).
I never really made the comparison though so I am not the best reference on who is actually the best…
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Here is a link to Viper’s video and he covers Cataphracts starting around the 4:10 minute mark:
His rankings are obviously in context of the civ. Still think S tier for Cataphracts is too high. He says that Cataphracts trade well with almost every unit in the game except War Elephants… I don’t think they trade cost-effectively with Cavaliers/Paladins at the very least and ranged units wreck them more than standard heavy cavalry since they have low pierce armour. And then he’s like you rarely see them… So they are S tier but nobody knows LOL
Putting them in S tier means they are the same tier as like Mangudai. No way…
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There’s a very logistica reason for their high tier ranking.
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Wha do you think that?
Byz without Catas are toast in a lot of matchups. Mongols are completely fine without mangudai.
It’s only that mangudai is such a strong unit that you want to use it, but opposed to byz mongols actually don’t need them to be effective.
Imho catas are good for their job but their logistica tech is bad because very expensive. It should be cheaper, or should also affect the knight line
Even lacking a few key techs like blast furnace and Blood lines I wouldn’t give this civ trample knights.
Such a civ would need to miss out on horse plate bare minimum which is honestly worth more than both of those techs combined if it were missing instead.
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Byz are totally fine except of “standard” TGs where they somwhow miss one of the traditional roles.
They could have a different TB like Incas just got, one of their Civ bonusses could (partally) become a TB.
Otherwise in 1v1s byz are currently one of the best balanced and at the same time unique civs. PLS don’t change!
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That’s the thing. I’m not arguing to change, I’m replying to the idea that logistic should grant knight trample as well with a huge no.
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I also thought Cataphract is bad unit but in fact it is S Tier unit. In late game, mostly 3 trash unit (Halberdier, Hussar and Skirmisher) is created and Cataphract counter all of 3. With Logistics tech, Arbalester also can’t counter Cataphract anymore.
At the end, only Paladin and Cavalry Archer remains as counter of Cataphract in late game and Paladin is easily countered by cheap Halberdiers and Cav Archers countered by cheap Skirmishers. 15 Cataphract is game finishing army because it clean all trash units. Cataphract is S tier unit because trash units in late game is too dominant now and Cataphract counter them very well.
On the other hand, majority of Viper’s S tier is wrong. Only Mangudai, Plumed Archer, Chakram Thrower, War Wagon, Urumi Swordman, Cataphract, Shivamsha Rider (it is nerfed not it isn’t S tier) deserve to be in S tier. Other uunits belongs to A tier.
How in the world can’t Arbs counter Cataphracts? With micro the Arbs easily win with equal resources.
And this Byz dominance is rooted in what exactly? Their win rates are well well below average.
If anything they look like a civ in need of a buff.
Logistica tramples the Arbs. Let’s not pretend the Byz player isn’t microing either. And if your micro is too weak, just get Skirms behind your army, Cataphracts are still more mobile so you don’t even have to fight them head-on, if you didn’t want to.
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I wouldn’t read too much into UU tier lists. It’s usually more about the discussion than the actual placement on a list, and it’s just his opinion anyway. Catas are great when fully upgraded, usually not your best option before then.
Definitely don’t need to dilute UUs any more by giving more of their abilities to generic units.
They’re not outstanding on Arabia but are reasonably good on most maps and don’t have many bad matchups. They are getting a couple small buffs in the next patch (Gambeson, Greek Fire effect for BBTs), but you’d be hard pressed to argue that they “need” much more than that.
people have been doing tests in mass battles you know. Turns out Cataphracts don’t do too badly vs Cavalier, either, once both sides are fully upgraded. Vs Paladin they lose but not horribly, here Logistica helps substantially.
Also this is a strategy game. If you are looking for 1 unit spam, Cataphract isn’t your unit. AoE2 probably isn’t your game, either, because even the mighty Mangudai fall to the lowly Skirmisher, or to something like mass Hussars. All those rankings are intended in the context of the civ. Byzantines specifically like to open counter units, often you will find yourself using something like Crossbow Camel and then Halbs in Imperial Age. Cataphract existing prevents opponents from going full Champion vs the Byzantine trash, for example, or from going Halbs back (Byz halbs, though cheaper, aren’t fully upgraded so something like Teutons Halbs gives you a hard time).
Cataphract also has the mobility to force engagements, doesn’t really have a counter unit, and even the units that come closest to countering it, Paladin and Arbalest, aren’t super lopsided fights for the Cataphract. Perhaps the only true hard counter is Monks which normally aren’t viable in Imp.
in the fact that we have a Knight-Camel-Monk rotational meta and Byzantines get good Monks and cheap Camels.
Also their tech tree is very wide and their tech switches overall easy.
Also their Imp cost is cheaper so they will nearly always be first to Imp where they make the first Treb before opponent, their Castles have more HP too, so that’s 2 advantages in Treb wars, they also get a 3rd one, Bombard Cannons to snipe enemy Trebs.
1 Cataphract killing 1 Arbalest → 20 Cataphracts kill 20 Arbalest.
Obviously 1 pierce armor isn’t ideal but it’s not like you are taking a horrible fight using Cataphracts vs Arbalest, you take 5 damage per shot while Cavalier takes 4, and notoriously Cavalier hard counters Arbalest, I doubt 1 pierce armor difference makes it so that suddenly it’s HORRIBLE for the Cataphracts. Let’s say it’s an even trade, if you make equal resources with no micro in mass battles, probably it’s a slight win for Cataphracts.
winrates aren’t always indicative of balancing, Byzantines is 1 of the harder civs to play, probably a lot of <1700 players get their strengths wrong. They are also slightly weak in Feudal on Arabia maps, then again both sides need to be aware of this weakness, the Byzantine player how to cover it, the enemy needs to be good at playing a fast and aggressive Feudal.
In practice, if you mix all these factors, it means that in mid elos, Byzantines are hard to play and often fall behind in Feudal. This doesn’t mean that they are trash, just a hard civ to play. They are a consistent pick in tournaments, in fact I can’t recall last tournament when they weren’t picked or banned. They are very often a 3rd pick type of civ, too which says a lot when you consider that first 2 picks are normally either OP DLC civs like Burgundians, or historically top tier civs like Aztecs.
Also with Byzantines you can do the following strat:
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very often these days you will face a cavalry civ (not many pick archer civs anymore). Which means you will be using Camels in the midgame.
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since Byzantines Camels are like the 3rd best Camel in the game, often opponent slowly transitions into Monks/Pikes. This is where a few Cataphracts can help you win the game immediately (the fight is Cata + cheap Camel + Monk vs Camel + Pikeman + Monk). Conveniently Cataphracts do FAR better than Knights vs Camels and crush Pikemen.
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if opponent starts adding Archers which are good vs Camels and OK vs Cataphracts, you can go Skirms, or if you wanna stay Stable units without adding Skirm techs, you can conveniently go Hussar (potentially even Paladin).
So everything fits well, idk how experienced of a player you are but from these 3 points what you should notice is that all 3 transitions are super easy to do, while with other civs (say Franks), you open Knights, you see Camels, let’s say for some reason you don’t have enough Monk mass, so you are forced into Pikemen. Knights into Pikemen is a fairly hard transition, you need 215f 90g for the upgrade, 100f for squires, you probably want 1 armor and then extra food for the Pikeman itself. At high level this has a lot of disadvantages, to you 215f might not sound like much but it is a lot in high level games. Likewise being on 2x food unit in Castle age isn’t good because you will be late to Imp and Imp armies crush Castle age armies hard.
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I do not think It would be a problem considering even in a TG environment, when paladin can be a factor, i would take FU paladin over logistica paladin i guess, if anything merely because logistica still costa a ton on top of paladin
But hey, if it’s OP there Is always the option to just decresce the tech cost
people have been doing tests in mass battles you know. Turns out Cataphracts don’t do too badly vs Cavalier, either, once both sides are fully upgraded. Vs Paladin they lose but not horribly, here Logistica helps substantially.
Also this is a strategy game. If you are looking for 1 unit spam, Cataphract isn’t your unit. AoE2 probably isn’t your game, either, because even the mighty Mangudai fall to the lowly Skirmisher, or to something like mass Hussars. All those rankings are intended in the context of the civ. Byzantines specifically like to open counter units, often you will find yourself using something like Crossbow Camel and then Halbs in Imperial Age. Cataphract existing prevents opponents from going full Champion vs the Byzantine trash, for example, or from going Halbs back (Byz halbs, though cheaper, aren’t fully upgraded so something like Teutons Halbs gives you a hard time).
Cataphract also has the mobility to force engagements, doesn’t really have a counter unit, and even the units that come closest to countering it, Paladin and Arbalest, aren’t super lopsided fights for the Cataphract. Perhaps the only true hard counter is Monks which normally aren’t viable in Imp.
Cataphracts are by no means hard countered by Cavaliers but given the cheaper cost of the Cavalier they are not trading well. With Logistica I think they are about even. And against Paladins and super Cavaliers (Mali, Bulgaria) they are losing the trade.
And against Arbalests they are definitely losing.
in the fact that we have a Knight-Camel-Monk rotational meta and Byzantines get good Monks and cheap Camels.
Also their tech tree is very wide and their tech switches overall easy.
Also their Imp cost is cheaper so they will nearly always be first to Imp where they make the first Treb before opponent, their Castles have more HP too, so that’s 2 advantages in Treb wars, they also get a 3rd one, Bombard Cannons to snipe enemy Trebs.
They are very near the bottom in win rate on Arabia.
1 Cataphract killing 1 Arbalest → 20 Cataphracts kill 20 Arbalest.
Obviously 1 pierce armor isn’t ideal but it’s not like you are taking a horrible fight using Cataphracts vs Arbalest, you take 5 damage per shot while Cavalier takes 4, and notoriously Cavalier hard counters Arbalest, I doubt 1 pierce armor difference makes it so that suddenly it’s HORRIBLE for the Cataphracts. Let’s say it’s an even trade, if you make equal resources with no micro in mass battles, probably it’s a slight win for Cataphracts.
With equal resources no way Cataphracts win against Arbs. In terms of pure cost a real comparison is 10 Elite Cataphracts vs. 20 Arbalests but it’s important to consider that upgrading to those units is much cheaper for Arbalests too. Anyways 20 Arbalests beat 10 Elite Cataphracts with focused fire. It takes only 30 arrows to kill one.
winrates aren’t always indicative of balancing, Byzantines is 1 of the harder civs to play, probably a lot of <1700 players get their strengths wrong. They are also slightly weak in Feudal on Arabia maps, then again both sides need to be aware of this weakness, the Byzantine player how to cover it, the enemy needs to be good at playing a fast and aggressive Feudal.
In practice, if you mix all these factors, it means that in mid elos, Byzantines are hard to play and often fall behind in Feudal. This doesn’t mean that they are trash, just a hard civ to play. They are a consistent pick in tournaments, in fact I can’t recall last tournament when they weren’t picked or banned. They are very often a 3rd pick type of civ, too which says a lot when you consider that first 2 picks are normally either OP DLC civs like Burgundians, or historically top tier civs like Aztecs.
Also with Byzantines you can do the following strat:
very often these days you will face a cavalry civ (not many pick archer civs anymore). Which means you will be using Camels in the midgame.
since Byzantines Camels are like the 3rd best Camel in the game, often opponent slowly transitions into Monks/Pikes. This is where a few Cataphracts can help you win the game immediately (the fight is Cata + cheap Camel + Monk vs Camel + Pikeman + Monk). Conveniently Cataphracts do FAR better than Knights vs Camels and crush Pikemen.
if opponent starts adding Archers which are good vs Camels and OK vs Cataphracts, you can go Skirms, or if you wanna stay Stable units without adding Skirm techs, you can conveniently go Hussar (potentially even Paladin).
So everything fits well, idk how experienced of a player you are but from these 3 points what you should notice is that all 3 transitions are super easy to do, while with other civs (say Franks), you open Knights, you see Camels, let’s say for some reason you don’t have enough Monk mass, so you are forced into Pikemen. Knights into Pikemen is a fairly hard transition, you need 215f 90g for the upgrade, 100f for squires, you probably want 1 armor and then extra food for the Pikeman itself. At high level this has a lot of disadvantages, to you 215f might not sound like much but it is a lot in high level games. Likewise being on 2x food unit in Castle age isn’t good because you will be late to Imp and Imp armies crush Castle age armies hard.
I agree that Byz are a strong counter civ. However they aren’t a strong offensive civ. You can defend but taking the fight to the enemy can be tough even in the late game.
The very reason Cataphracts aren’t THAT good is that while they have no hard counters except Monks they are at the very least soft-countered and trade badly with a lot of stock units (Paladins, Arbalests). Given their lower attack and vulnerability to arrow fire, they also aren’t great at raiding and harassing villagers. The only reason to ever build Cataphracts is if you’re facing masses of Champions. Still against Champions and just about any infantry minus Huskarls you can just go Arbalests and clean them up and also beat Halbs better than Cataphracts can. And for a much lower cost.
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