Hello gentlemen and Constantinople lovers
I played a lot of Byzantine since it’s release and i enjoy the civ in it’s current statement.
However, there is a thing that i dislike and don’t understand : The palatine school.
While the Foreign Engineering Company has a real utility and is an active and attractive monument as a super siege shop, the school is just a chance to get one unit offered while you pay for another. This is not an accomplishment at all. I mean, when you play other civs there is only Dehli that have the same system with the Palace of the Sultan, but it creates a totally free unit (and a very powerful).
This building could be so much more to synergize and hype the Byzantine native units (i’m not saying we need more OP buffs on cataphracts).
RNG has nothing to do in a RTS game (while you play a civ, the map is the map) and the 30% chance to spawn a unit is a mistake. It’s not fun, and i don’t want a passive monument only interesting if i can spam cataphracts (which is rare until you play in team games (and i don’t care to get an extra maa or limitanei, this is ridiculous).
What i propose :
- A bunch of units that only can be trained here for a mixed cost of gold and olive five by five. The units could be as the Wynguard Palace units (in a Byzantine style).
or
- An upgrade researchable to improve one of a regular unit in a “palatine unit”.
Ex 500f 500gold: light cav become the Vigla, which gains the teardrop shield and +1attack +1armor melee
Ex 2 500wood 500gold: archers become the Noumeroi, which gains a fire rate bonus and +1dmg if fighting in the area of an allied forum, wall, or castle.
Ex 3 500stone 300gold: villagers become Optimates, they don’t need a building to drop their collected ressources.
or
- A new special unit, the siphonarios. Based on the Greek fire, but on land. It works like the chinese grenadier.
These are some ideas that could be very cool to replace the Palatine School and give a bit more complexity and fun to the Byz age 4. What are your thoughts ?