big thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this video hey guys spirit of the law
here in this civ overview we're going to be taking a good long look at the byzantines
now byzantines are special for being basically every player's favorite civilization at some point
whether it's because they're the romans they have a cool unique unit cheap counter units a flexible
open tech tree or their focus on a defensive play style there's reasons they appeal to both
new players and veterans alike by online win rates they're actually pretty middle of the road
though and below average on closed maps despite having a good reputation and are unfortunately
also not particularly well set up to execute the modern meta which tends to be full of crossbows
and knights neither of which they specialize in for a historically orthodox civilization i
have to admit they're very unorthodox in age of empires too you have to get a bit creative
with byzantines which can make them a very fun civilization to play so let's check them out
to start with their team bonus is that their monks heal a hundred percent faster
that's enough to fully restore a castle age night from one hp in 20 seconds and
a post-imperial cataphract in 30 which can actually be quite a smart move an optimistic
way to look at it is it's saving resources to replace those units where a monk healing can
add anywhere from 12 to 30 villagers worth of economic value the pessimistic viewpoint though
is that time spent healing loses map control and initiative depending on the situation something
worth noting is that swapping out knights for an equivalent resorts worth of byzantine monks
can actually be advantageous even just based on healing and without any conversions at all
there's a similar positive effect in pikeman battles as well where swapping out a few units
for monks to heal is a winning play when looked at in isolation whether it's between or even during
fights in my view this is a surprisingly useful bonus though not one you see used all that often
moving on to their proper civ bonuses the first is their buildings have increasingly more hp as
you move up through the ages this helps in lots of small ways but to highlight a few this makes
their town centers significantly more resistant to manganese pushes with over 700 more hp and castle
age than usual meaning they survive 10 extra manganese shots the bonus also affects walls and
gates stalling enemy units and giving you a better chance to repair or build behind them the real
question though is whether this is better than masonry and architecture which byzantines lack
and together gives 20 more hp as well as a bit of extra building armor to put it in perspective it
will compare viking castles with hoardings masonry and architecture to a byzantine castle with
hoardings running the numbers a byzantine castle it turns out should survive roughly 10 to 15
longer against most units than a comparable fully upgraded viking castle meaning byzantines are
getting something better for free than what other civilizations are having to pay for another less
obvious implication of more building hp is that their towers are 20 stronger in feudal than other
civilizations which makes them a little extra annoying to deal with and you'll sometimes see
byzantine players exploit this their next if bonus is their camel riders skirmishers and spearmen are
25 percent cheaper or you can think of it as you get 33 percent more units for the same cost
in feudal age it's really not uncommon to see people capitalize on this by opening with spearmen
and skirmishers admittedly that combination isn't ideal at rating as both units have low attack
but it can still apply some early pressure more commonly though you see this used in castle age
to mass skirmishers against crossbows or camels against knights in imperial age it goes without
saying in trash wars this gives some great long-term value with byzantine halberdiers even
beating an equivalent resource worth of generic enemy units despite missing the final attack
upgrade on their infantry i do have to point out though that japanese faster attacking halberdiers
are actually a little stronger partially because again byzantines lack a notable final upgrade
their next bonus applies to the water and is that their fire ships attack 25 faster fire ships even
in small numbers are great at destroying fishing ships and can be hard for galleys to deal with if
they haven't reached a critical mass given the popularity of a fire ship opening on water this
bonus alone puts byzantines in discussions as a very strong water and even hybrid map
civ despite having an otherwise slow start to their economy whether it makes them top tier i
think is debatable simply because 25 more ships beats 25 faster attacking ones in small numbers
so theoretically a good economy bonus should give many civs a fighting chance against byzantines
helping out even more in castle and imperial age you can add one more range with a unique tech
making them significantly harder to deal with as they're able to get more units involved in
combat at once helping especially in tight spaces in this test for example with equal
starting resources and even a modest choke point byzantines end with about half of their hp left
thanks to faster attack and getting more units involved at once with their longer range
their next bonus is that advancing to the imperial age is one-third cheaper this directly saves about
600 resources which even with a fully boomed economy is a significant savings it also opens
a fast imperial strategy as with 30 villagers that's about a minute worth of gathering that
you don't need to do and you'll certainly see fast imperial into gunpowder on arena for example
even on a standard open map finding that right moment to advance to imperial age can be tricky
a lot of games have been lost by players prioritizing imperial age over military units
costing them map control and likewise there are situations where hitting imperial age first can
lead to a massive advantage by being first to access trebuchets in both cases the byzantine's
cheaper cost means often getting to imperial faster with also less disruption to the other
things you're balancing at the same time and finally their last bonus is they get town watch
and town patrol for free this directly saves 375 resources and you can see it also reveals a much
greater portion of the map with four extra line of sight added for each of those tanks
this applies to all of your houses camps and other buildings except for farms walls and gates
all that extra sight makes you much more likely to see enemy castle drops forward siege workshops
extra piles of gold and stone as well as just keep general tabs on enemy units to give you a bit more
time to either intercept or retreat from threats it's not a flashy bonus but is definitely helpful
so that's the byzantine's bonuses and you can really see the defensive civ label isn't
arbitrary with really all of their bonuses being directly useful for defending or getting a lot
of value out of your units now let's take a look at their fan favorite unique unit the cataphract
i recently looked at this unit in depth as its own video breaking down all the exact numbers and
details but at 13 minutes long on its own here we'll just quickly summarize the key takeaways
at first glance they're very comparable to a byzantine knight with nearly identical stats and
only a slightly higher cost the main difference is they're basically built to counter spear units
or to put it simply they're an anti-anti-cavalry infantry cavalry not only do they have significant
bonus damage against infantry in castle age comparable to the hand cannoneers bonus but
they also ignore up to 12 anti-cavalry damage in many cases that's enough to mostly if not
fully negate incoming bonus damage from things you would typically think of as anti-cavalry
the result in castle age is that they're cost effective against not just spearmen but
even pikemen in camels the catch is they take fewer attacks from crossbows than the knight
and are cost effectively beaten by knights head to head especially civs with bloodlines given
the popularity of both crossbows and knights that can cause a bit of an issue another drawback is
they require castles and while their creation time isn't too bad at 20 seconds per unit the knight is
unquestionably easier to mass jumping ahead to imperial age they have an expensive but quite
strong set of upgrades including their unique tech logistica with that tech they deal a small
amount of damage to nearby units each time they attack though they can still be beaten in melee by
generic paladins elephants or other strong cavalry unique units the cataphract is quite expensive
relative to even the paladin but does much better against cavalry counters even being cost effective
against halbedier's camels and nearly any infantry unit practically speaking while being an
incredible counter to infantry though cataphracts aren't actually used all that often in practice
the fact they're soft countered by paladins and arbalesters is a significant drawback especially
in team games and traditionally they've been seen as too costly to work against pretty much anything
except infantry civs or to stop a halberdier siege combo in some select situations against goths or
evil warriors it can be a great tool and even just knowing you have it available can sometimes force
players into avoiding infantry altogether just to quickly follow up on a couple of exceptions i
overlooked in the dedicated cataphract video first against gurjara heavy camels instead of receiving
plus two they take plus nine bonus damage as of the upcoming patch meaning heavy camels actually
counter cataphracts with equal resources in imperial another case you may wonder about is
the japanese halberdier though it turns out even with 33 percent faster attack elite cataphracts
still win comfortably with equal resources and certainly with equal numbers the cataract is gonna
be very effective the japanese samurai is another interesting case as they have a bonus against
unique units that isn't blocked by the cataphract though they also take bonus damage in return
it basically ends up being a quick but even fight with balanced resources though again the
cataphract is at least doing better than byzantine paladins in the same situation so that's their
unique unit and that we've touched on both already let's also take a brief official look at the
unique tacks the first is greek fire again giving fire ships plus one range it's actually pretty
cheap and also pairs nicely with the byzantine's faster attack rate on fire ships meaning you're
very incentivized to pick this up on water maps the imperial age unique tech is logistica
as mentioned already giving a couple of extra benefits to the cataphract it's a notoriously
expensive tech and in my opinion is less important than the elite cataphract upgrade here for example
we have elite cataphracts against halberdiers with different combinations of the elite upgrade
and logistica assuming all other blacksmith upgrades are in for both sides without both of
those upgrades the cataracts lose out number two to one so clearly you want imperial upgrades even
if the unit itself is technically anti-infantry if instead we give the cataphracts logistica but
without the elite upgrade they can win against roughly twice the number of halberdiers but
just barely and it could really go either way if instead we gave them the elite upgrade but not
logistica they went with about a third of their hp left emphasizing the elite upgrade may be more
expensive but is generally better than logistica of course adding both texts we get the best
result in this particular trial with about half their hp left despite being heavily outnumbered
so that's the unique unit in text though it feels like we've only tangentially hit so far on one of
the byzantine's greatest strengths which is their flexible tech tree let's take a look at that now
starting with the archers immediately we have their discount on skirmishers fully upgraded r
blasters on top of hand cannoneers with even a bit faster imperial age to give a nice r blaster power
spike on the other hand their cavalry archers are missing bloodlines and parthian tactics
so they wouldn't be an ideal choice generally ranged units are often mixed into a byzantine
army one way or another and here you can see why with a solid b-plus and a lot of good options
next up for infantry the big drawback here is missing the final attack upgrade which isn't
ideal but i think it's more than offset by the spear unit's discount lacking the two final attack
on your champions also isn't a deal breaker and i'd consider their infantry overall to still be
useful in the late game for me it's an a minus but i admit i'm partial to the halberdier and anything
that helps produce a lot of them moving on to the cavalry again they're lacking blast furnace but
critically here you're also missing bloodlines that hurts especially for knights and paladins but
even the scout line as well though on the plus side you have access to discounted camels and
their heavy upgrade which can make for a nice combo with their knights to offset missing
bloodlines you also have the cataphract which as we saw can really mess with the traditional
counter system you have lots of options but without any one standout that you can always
fall back on so to me it's a b plus for cavalry propped up by the total number of options but
always a step behind against top tier cavalry civs next up for siege siege ram onager and
bombard cannon generally cover what you need though heavy scorpion is sometimes nice to have
the biggest thing holding them back here though is lacking siege engineers which i consider very
important to me this is just a bee for siege though the faster imperial times can be very
helpful to get out trebuchets and bombard cannons making for a temporary but very strong window
moving on to the navy generally you look for a strong eco or dock bonus to identify a civ that's
good on water though in this case the faster attacking fire galleys can be just as useful
i'd give them an a minus on water early later on at the dock you have access to
every naval tech bracer and 40 more range on your fire ships making them extremely well rounded
in this case i think it's an a in the late game for an a minus overall taking a quick look now
with the monks their better healing rate gives you a little extra incentive to work them into
your army and all the important techs are there that said there's no equal bonus or direct bonus
to help make them so there's other civilizations where i think they can make more sense it's still
an a minus for me and they're always worth keeping in mind especially to heal your expensive cavalry
units moving on to defenses as we saw they get these strongest buildings in the game a counter
unit discount early imperial age trebuchets more line of sight and faster healing everything about
the civ is built around holding out under pressure and while they are missing a few techs it's still
an a-plus in practice if for no other reason then they're the only official defensive civilization
finally for their trash units that is units that don't cost any gold initially you might think the
discount would throw them into a plus territory but honestly the huzzahs aren't that great and
even the halberdiers aren't fully upgraded personally i would still take byzantines over
generic fully upgraded units like the spanish but i'm not sure everyone would agree with
that especially when you think about population efficiency i'd give them an a minus as they're
definitely solid but there are civs i think perform better if we include bonus points for
making feudal trash armies viable though i think you could give them an a now while that was a lot
of high grades back to back i think that reflects the byzantine's wide tech tree rather than that
the civilization is overpowered in fact given their lack of an early economy bonus byzantines
have rarely been considered a top-tier land civilization and instead have to lean on finding
good unit compositions and making strategic use of their discounts while they're not top tier at
most things in the game byzantines are perfectly capable of executing any of the common strategies
with a lot of powerful units like arbalesters paladins cataphracts and siege rams in the late
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domain so hopefully that was a useful refresher of the byzantines and also gave you some ideas
for the next time you play as or against them thanks for watching and i'll see you next time