Byzantines is one of the original 13 civs from 1999 and the ONLY civ representing 1480 years of Eastern Roman history. But now:
Elite Cataphract: 14 attack, 150 HP, 2/1 armor, costs 1600F 800G to upgrade. Too expensive and too fragile to be the heaviest cavalry in history. Playing Byzantines without Cataphract has no soul.
Greek Fire: +1 range for Fire Ships only. Useless in current Longship meta. Historically it was the most terrifying weapon of the empire.
Varangian Guard is now shared with Vikings, Danes, Saxons, Varangians - Byzantines has no unique bonus as the legitimate owner.
Suggestion for historical accuracy and balance:
Elite Cataphract: HP 150→170, Armor 2/1→3/3. Keep 14 attack but make it a true iron tank.
Rework Greek Fire: Keep fire ship bonus but also give Cataphract +5% HP/armor or anti-infantry splash.
Byzantine Varangian Guard should be 10% cheaper or +10% HP to represent the true Imperial Guard.
Eastern Rome lived from Ancient Rome to Middle Ages. It deserves a stronger, more unique design. Not paper-thin.
Even if we take 1071 AD as a cutoff point, the Eastern Romans remained a formidable power for 600 of the 1,000 years that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Yet, in the game, this empire is depicted as pathetically weak in direct land combat. This is not a balancing decision—like the one applied to the Chinese civilization, where access to printing and gunpowder units was restricted because the civilization was already sufficiently powerful—but rather a clear instance of bias and malice directed against the Eastern Romans.
Cataphracts aren’t supposed to be general-purpose heavy cavalry, they are anti-infantry cavalry and also resistant to anti-cavalry damage (so they laugh at Camels and win against Genoese Crossbowmen). They must be weak to pierce damage. They seem to be balanced as they are now.
This would make them too good against civs that can only make Halberdiers with ranged units in front against them.
Probably the devs have this as an option (cheaper Varangian Guards) to buff Byzantines in case they need to, but it’s not necessary at the moment.
I would prefer to have the Greek Fire effect on Bombard Towers to be buffed, it’s mostly cosmetic currently.
Legitimate owner? Heavy infantry with big axes isn’t Viking to you? Gee we should check who worked in the Varangian Guard.
Members of the Varangian Guard called themselves “Væringi,” meaning “sworn companion.” in old Norse.
The design of the Varangian Guards in the game are closer to the Væringi working in the Hird of Scandinavian kings than they are to the less uniform and less professional Væringi that worked for the Eastern Roman Emperor. The emperor had to scrape the barrel after Scandinavian kings, jarls, and companion groups like the jomsvikings had taken their share. The Væringi in East Rome was an elite force, because they’re in East Rome. Your average Scandinavian farmer, was better described as an elite warrior trained from childbirth in most of Europe.
The AoE franchise gave everyone the idea that cavalry counters archers. In history this was reversed. Cataphracts had better protected horses but were slow, knights had a fast charge but less protected horses. Light cav charging archers is a suicide charge. Mildly resisting arrowfire is the best cavalry ever did.
In the first 3 AoE games (1, 2 and Mythology), the human units were classified mainly as Infantry, Archery and Cavalry. Mounted archers are both Archery and Cavalry units.
But historians and military scholars doesn’t have this same classification system, it’s just Infantry (foot units) and Cavalry (mounted units). In AoE 3 and 4 this system is used.
Archers are ranged light infantry and mounted archers are ranged light cavalry.
In real life, heavy cavalry is good to charge on infantry lines, and this is specifically more effective against light infantry troops — and those include ranged infantry.
Note: Pikemen/Halberdiers don’t cost gold for balance reasons, because they’re actually expensive to equip and train well enough to resist cavalry charges. But archers don’t have this advantage.
I actually included water-burning style effect to my custom dromakion (replacing dragon ship) for my naval mod project Empire of Sails and will probably consider making this feature a custom tech for all fire-ships of the Byzantine when I’ll do the custom techs.
With the siphon combo, just using regular dragon ship stats makes this napalm style fire ships epics and terrifying !
For the technical aspect, I’m just making a custom projectile, duplicate of the fire-ship one, but adding the same dead_unit as the mounted trebuchet projectiles have to make their fire-spots.
One thing to know about the fire-ships is that their original design inspiration, I mean the model, is based on byzantine dromon ship hull designes that existed and can be seen in some museums on miniature models replicas. But it was given to many civs for a gameplay balance reason.
Very true, and a good catch on the archer armor class. The challenge of cavalry isn’t to do damage once they have engaged archers, it’s to engage without the archers killing their horses before they get there. If three lines of horses fall quickly the horses behind them won’t trample their own, and the charge will break.
In defense archers also commonly deployed traps, caltrops, or spikes in the ground to break the charge, but traps need prep time. Cavalry can fight archers, but their advantage is speed. An element of surprise or superior positioning can be decisive, but even knights did not have good odds charging head first into a concentrated wall of sharp sticks traveling at 50 meter per second. Medium to heavy infantry is better at resisting arrows.
AoE2 is an old game. You can’t hide in forests, you can’t take cover behind hills, and you can’t hide behind buildings. Removing range advantage by using the terrain reward mobility plays.
The funny thing about Byzantines is Dromon and Fire Ship would have made a lot more sense as unique units, cataphracts aren’t uniquely Byzantine. Idk why Ensemble went with Cataphract as an UU (which should have gone to Persians, if it were to be unique) and Knight and Fire Ship as generic units.