Historycally, Byzantines hire the almogarabes to fight against the turks, a infantery that never was defetead. Insteand having strealsy that byzantines never know (Streltsy were units created in 1550) cos the eastern roman empire was desintegrated in 1453.
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I think you’re referring to “Almogavares” from the Kingdom of Aragon, Spain.
Yeah, they recruited them between 1300 and 1305.
Why Bizantines didn´t have more historical mercenaries in the game?
The reason is simple (but awful):
In my opinion, they even wanted to “save” as much as possible even when making a new civ, and that’s why they reduced the mercenaries to the civs already present in the game, instead of considering “theoretical civs”.
So, when Relic released Sultan Ascend and the Byzantines appears, the first Mercenary civ, they used ALL the unique units available from the civilizations that were present in the game up to that point, not because it was “historically correct,” but because they didn´t make any new model for mercenaries.
- The Silk Road contract, for example, is the excuse to add Chinese and Malian units, but in reality, none of these civs allied with the Byzantines.
- The Eastern Mercenaries contract is the excuse to include the Delhi Sultanate, because of the War Elephant.
- The Streltsy shouldn’t have them either; they’re from 1550, they used them because they were “European” (contraro Europeo).
- The Lansknechts don’t either; they’re from 1470 onward (contract European).
- The Byzantine Empire fell in 1452, so having mercenaries after that time is bad.
At least with the Templars in Knight of the Rose and Cross, they’ve been very careful with the unique Templar-allied units and chose units that at least existed before 1317, or whose armor hasn’t evolved too much outside of that era. They even lack gunpowder units, which is a detriment to historical representation.
How can we improve the situation?
1) Create a new contract
Let’s say “Mediterranean” to add new units:
- “Almogavar” (II)
- “Genoese Crossbowman” (III)
- “Condottiero” (IV)
Another would be “Balkan”:
- Alan Cavalry (Alan)
- Kipchak Horse Archer (Cuman-Kipchaks)
- Gussar (Serbian)
There are others as well. In fact, the book “Late Byzantine Armies 1118-1461” by Osprey lists all the participants:
- Albanian, Armenian, Bulgarian (Horse archers), Catalans (Almogavars), Cumans (Skytykhon: horse archer), Cretans, Franks (mostly French Knights), English (Men-at-arms for the Varangian Guard), Georgian (heavy cavalry), Hungarian (cavalry), Mongols (cavalry), Russian (Varangian Guard), Scandinavian (Varangian Guard), Serbian (cavalry), Turks (horse archers), Uzes, and Wallachians (Vlad Dracul II was even an officer in Byzantine service).
2.- Replace some existing units with more historically accurate ones.
In fact, Englishmen like Longbowman were hardly allies of the Byzantines, but their men-at-arms were introduced into the Varangian Guard. I’ve listed other civs above. The ones that should be changed are:
- Eastern Contract: English, HRE, Rus (If possible, remove this entire contract or replace it with other civs)
- Silk Road: They weren’t known to Mali, much less to China. Abbasid is fine. In fact, instead of mercenaries, they could replace them with their own Byzantine versions: Akontistai, Dromedari, Fire-Greek Grenadier.
What will happen in a future expansion if this isn’t fixed?
In fact, this problem will be quite serious if you run a Byzantine campaign, or one involving Byzantines, such as the Ottomans, Wallachians, Venice, etc.:
- You won’t be able to use the current base civ; you’ll have to use a campaign version with a different, more historically accurate type of mercenary.
If the above happens, there will be even more reason to make the change at that time, or to include more accurate contracts.
How to prevent the problem from recurring?
Interestingly, this problem doesn’t occur much with civilizations that had a campaign or appeared in one, such as the French, English, Rus, Mongols, or Chinese. Why?
Because they designed the campaign civ to “better” represent the historical events of the campaign, they couldn’t invent random unique units; they went for historicity.
If they had done that from the start with the Abbasids, perhaps they would have had Turkish horse archers (like in the Campaign), instead of the camel archer.
Therefore, in the future, before creating “any civilization,” they should consider “how” they will run the campaign, or at least think of a “historical scenario” where the civilization uses those units. Otherwise, they will look bad when the campaign comes out and they put in units that weren’t in the original civ, because they only recently learned more about the civ’s army.
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My brother, I’m with you! I hope they changes the mercenaries and took all the ideas u have been captured.
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The Byzantines don’t have Almogavars because they’re going to be added to Castile or Aragon in the next DLC—let’s have faith. 
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I hope so!!! Man the Byzantines need more love
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