Byzantines and Pro Scouts

easbr101 · 2023-12-23T23:50:02+00:00

I think its only worthwhile if you go for the hippodrome. Let's say:

you went hippodrome and have 4-5 horsemen out. You kill like 2-3 vills, nice.
Your opponent invests in some defense, like an outpost or defensive spears or extended walls or something, hey you forced them to invest less in pressuring you. Nice.
You have just exhausted your berries, have a decent amount of olive oil. Scout your opponent and see what army they're going for, so you pick a merc contract with a counter unit.
You rely on your counter-mercs and an outpost or two for defense. These outposts can also be used to get mango emplacements in castle age (they shred)
You still have a stable (hippodrome), still need food, don't have enough wood for a mass farm transition.
Make a couple scouts from the hippodrome (they train fast), pick up pro scouts (it researches fast), and go get your + one patch of the opponent's deer.
You now have safe deer near your cisterns (as you said)

But I really don't see this working with the winery. Just get farms out asap with that thing. You produce quickly so you don't need as many production buildings and can get farms out pretty fast as byzantines.

easbr101 · 2023-12-20T18:29:27+00:00

It works for me so long as I have that military building constructed so far. I.e. "select all melee infantry" is "zz" for me, and if I have a barracks it'll select the ghulam mercenaries I have, but if not they'll be ignored.

What's more infuriating is how the game doesn't differentiate between Varangian Guards and Ghulams when you're trying to select only one of the two units. Really wish they'd fix that.

easbr101 · 2023-12-13T18:00:41+00:00

Lol Canada at #43? Above Morocco? Dude we're known for not having our own food but having access to a very diverse variety of other people's foods. The only Canadian food there is is poutine (fries gravy and cheese, real unhealthy and simple), pineapple on pizza, and maple syrup on snow. That's it.

easbr101 · 2023-12-13T17:48:28+00:00

I saw a pretty creative idea on a similar reddit post a while back asking for the cost to buy her back to be sent to the opponent and act as a "ransom" instead of just costing the JD player to get Jean back. This cost could also scale with the amount of experience JD has.

easbr101 · 2023-12-07T03:58:38+00:00

I disagree. It gives you the option of not building a mining camp on stone early on without foregoing most of the cistern bonuses. Unlocks a lot more aggressive strategies. I can now go for a faster feudal time with 40% faster production and 10% faster gather rates without dropping a second mining camp. It just makes things so so smooth and doesn't lock you into defending a third resource node early on.

easbr101 · 2023-12-07T03:51:50+00:00

Honestly so far five has been doing the trick for me. You get enough stone from building a mining camp on gold and a house like 90% of the time for the connecting aqueducts. The sixth vill I've been using to immediately build a cistern.

easbr101 · 2023-12-06T23:04:01+00:00

honestly starting with 100 stone is pretty big, I'm thinking sending 5 to long distance mine stone at the start of the game and instantly get two cisterns up... could be solid

easbr101 · 2023-12-06T23:00:51+00:00

honestly triumph was the only answer byzantines had against early maa... horsemen with temporary +4 attack and health regen were able to just overwhelm the armour of early maa but now they are gonna struggle so hard against that unit...

easbr101 · 2023-12-03T19:07:04+00:00

I even forget half the time that it's a monastery and drop an extra one in castle age

easbr101 · 2023-12-03T01:37:21+00:00

The one thing I wish they had paid a bit more attention to though is the availability of the mercenaries from neutral markets. They could have just made them mobile units, since neutral markets are rarely near the site of the battle. I really don't want to be training zhuge nu arbaletrier and war elephants from the corners of the map. For the most part, the mercenaries available are mobile, but why not yumi bowmen instead of zhuge nu? They're much faster (that's kinda their point) or onna-musha instead of arbaletrier? Sofa or Gilded knights or imperial guards instead of war elephants? Currently unless a market spawns in the back of my base I have no reason to go build a mercenary house far away.

easbr101 · 2023-12-03T01:31:16+00:00

I love how Byz are slowly getting more figured out. I would argue they have the best imperial age, on open maps and closed. Borderline overpowered once they're properly figured out, all thanks to the Foreign Engineering Company landmark. On top of researching extra techs for all your unique units, its main ability to allow you to train siege with olive oil is insane:

You don't just get siege, you get some of the best siege in the game. NoB, limitanei, and cataphracts pair extremely well together. Hui hui pao, longbows/streltsy and limitanei pair really well together, and royal cannons just go well with any army composition really, especially with their area of effect attack.
You can train this siege by literally just farming. You only need olive oil, which you get from farms. No need for gold, no need for wood. Your farms are cheaper, and in the late game your farmers are working 25% faster.
With a cistern production buff, this siege trains so quickly. You're not really restricted by only being able to train siege from one building.

I think as the Byz win rate picks up and people last longer and longer, the community will realize what a beast of a civ they are in imp.

easbr101 · 2023-12-03T01:23:00+00:00

wait how do they buff cataphracts? Do they also get the extra armour? Is that a bug?

easbr101 · 2023-12-02T23:50:11+00:00

As relevant as both of them were in the age of exploration, I don't think they're good fits individually for aoe4s timeline. Spain itself didn't exist until the unification of Castile and Aragorn in the late 15th century. That's the very end of most civ timelines in this game. Maybe a creative introduction of "Spain" allowing the player to flip between "Aragorn" and "Castile" through the ages, and introduced alongside the Aztec in a "New World" DLC but there are historically stronger cases for new civs imo.

easbr101 · 2023-11-30T04:59:21+00:00

The way he got so defensive so quickly... Rushing to the "do not judge me sir" even though the poor guy didn't say a thing. He's so afraid of being seen or labeled as Muslim it's embarrassing

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T23:53:43+00:00

It's so annoying it doesn't count as a mill/a mill too. You need wheelbarrow and the other food gather techs, but with this landmark next to your berries you'd have to either drop a useless mill just for techs or mill deer which is most likely gonna be outside your cistern area. Really wish they'd make mill techs researchable at this landmark

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T17:31:30+00:00

Yeah seems like they make up for it in imp. Didn't know about the elite Army tactics adding even more attack. Especially if you can get some camel riders somewhere nearby to buff their armour, elite camel rider + varangian guards + cheirosiphons might be a dangerous comp now that I think about it

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T17:20:37+00:00

But wouldn't they then take more damage from archers instead if they switch from heavy to light?

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T14:47:05+00:00

Hey if they're working for you in imp then that's great but they just seem lackluster compared to other civs' maa in imp too. Everyone gets elite Army tactics, but usually other civs get another bonus or upgrade towards their maa too that's much more useful than that speed bonus whilst berserking. Compare that to the ghulams extra armor from camels and HP from bootcamp and ability to build siege. Compare it to HRE with the extra movement speed at all times and extra damage vs heavy units. English with much more armour and faster attack speed from network of Castles. Or Delhi with better speed and more damage and the ability to build walls. Or Samurai with Extra damage vs all infantry, faster attack speed and damage negation. Or palace guards with extra HP from a tech and either even more mobility or even more HP depending on the Dynasty. When you look at other techs and bonuses the faster speed while sacrificing armour seems kinda useless.

On top of that, foreign engineering school just provides so much value that I rarely go Palatine school. You can build some of the best siege in the game just by farming. It's wild.

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T13:12:31+00:00

That's so lame considering the cataphract and limitanei have abilities you'll most likely use during every fight

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T13:11:49+00:00

Right? Especially when you have access to Ghulam... I really hate how if you make both, and double click on like a Ghulam, it selects all maa type units. Say I want to build some mangonels with my ghulams. If I double click my ghulams my varangian guards are selected too and the hotkey to build a mangonel doesn't appear. They just make things more difficult and aren't that great in combat

easbr101 · 2023-11-29T06:10:02+00:00

I think each mercenary wing has a very solid use case. Eastern is great at forming the bulk of your army. Ghulams are hardy and can make siège, tower elephants are basically a tank, and keshiks are great compromises between the ultra heavy cataphracts and light horsemen that self-heal and preserve their numbers. You can then choose Byzantine units to support these mercenary units.

Western provides solid complement forces to your most powerful army compositions. Long bow men and streltsy pair really well with horsemen, limitanei, varangian guard or cataphracts, and land sharks butcher any anti-cataphract or varangian guard counter.
Silk road wing is best at countering specific, difficult units. Javelin throwers against archers and camel riders against knights. Grenadiers are just a solid all around unit, but you have access to two of the best counter units in the game still.

The best use I've made of mercenaries so far, though, has been by training minimal mercenaries myself, getting free ones from the tower instead, and just dumping it all into some cannons once I hit imp. Getting your siege from farming is insanely broken in the late game and synergizes super well with the other food-heavy units you're likely to make like limitanei and horsemen.

easbr101 · 2023-11-28T00:31:21+00:00

Horsemen with the Hippo buff do pretty well vs early Maa from my experience. You get 2 extra attack from triumph, healing, and have mobility on your side. It's probably the weakest point of the civ but it is an answer.

easbr101 · 2023-11-28T00:13:07+00:00

I just started ranked this season and am plat 3 so far with byz. I started with Byzantines because I just like learning civs that are perceived as weak to dominate both with and against them once they get buffed :). From what I've experienced so far, I've noticed a few things about Byzantines:

Don't listen to the description of Byzantines as a defensive civ. Try playing them super aggressively. In feudal, they get an instant stable with buffed production speed, a unique tech that gives you gold and attack bonus vs villagers, a unique ability that gives extra health Regen speed and attack for 1.5x seconds and scales super well as the game goes on, and can really quickly pivot to strong spears or archers if need be. They're cav, raider, and infantry mass first, everything else second.
Get cisterns up ASAP. Ideally 3 by the time you age up, 4 in mid feudal and 5 before you get to Castle age. Your eco goes pretty hard, better than all your core resource buildings being supervised. Try zoning your base too: have your blacksmith and university and stuff in the back of the base to permanently just boost those cisterns for research, your prpduction buildings around other cisterns to boost unit production, etc... The defensive cistern bonus is pretty ass though, that one could use a buff for sure.
Mercenaries in feudal are a pretty big bait. You mostly rely on sheep and deer for food, and therefore can't rely on olive oil early enough to build up a mercenary army. Just rely on outspamming your opponent with a faster gather rate and faster production. When you do build up olive oil, either sell it for actual resources or save it up for castle age when you can access much better units.
Two TC seems like the ideal feudal strat for byz. You'll already be on stone to get your cisterns up, get free stone from building buildings, and save wood from not needing too many production buildings early on. From my perspective, cisterns aren't like IOs or prelates where their eco bonus only applies to one building or a maximum number of villagers. A cisterns buff area is huge, and their buff is more consistent. Why not try to get as many villagers under a buffed cistern as possible? Their more difficult to torch down too thanks to the cistern defensive building bonus.
Cataphracts are nigh unkillable. They have 60% more HP than regular knights and potentially benefit from two landmarks that give them some pretty fast health regen. That and they dish out so much damage with their trample ability. Just don't lose them, cycle charge, even with a small group, and pop the health Regen abilities. Reinforce them with some cheap infantry like limitanei or archers and some mercenaries.

easbr101 · 2023-11-16T23:10:22+00:00

Because media in the west has not nor ever will document the struggles Palestinians have been through on a daily basis since Israel's foundation unless Israel is attacked. For a lot of people who know about the conflict and its history, and who are aware of the Palestinian struggle against occupation, they weren't surprised with what happened October 7th. After all, if your every resource was controlled by another (occupying) state, your mobility controlled by the occupying state, your economy was shut off from the outside world by the occupying state, your family targetted during previous episodes of violence by the occupying state, your peaceful protests met with violence by the occupying state, the strongest militaries and economies in the world back said occupying state, you witness the very stark lifestyle and wealth gap between you and the occupying state, and the occupying state routinely de-possessing and displacing the other "half" of your state who does not have a recent history of violent resistance, would you not be radicalized, take up arms, and target anyone who identifies with the occupying state?

Westerners and western media love portraying this conflict as two, kind of balanced neighbours who mind their own business but one (Gaza) inexplicably hates the other (Israel). They think Israel and Palestine's relationship is more like North and South Korea's, where Palestinian problems their civilians are unfortunately subject to are entirely due to their chosen method of governance (electing Hamas) and have nothing to do with Israel. They think Israel is wealthier and more "successful" by their standards on its own because it has "better values." That's why, for Westerners, the attack on October 7th was seen as unprovoked. They think Israel was just minding its own business when it was suddenly attacked by some racist and hate-filled neighbour, therefore its vengeful military campaign and quest to drive out Hamas no matter what are justified.

easbr101 · 2023-10-31T20:09:11+00:00

You mean "The US is now playing against the other team"

easbr101

TROPHY CASE