Transcription
As part of my challenge to learn more civs, I've been playing a civ on stream for seven days straight to crash course myself in them. As part of this learning, I'll be doing a breakdown video after my seven days of a civ. So, today is Byzantine.
Byzantine is a fascinating and flexible civ, one that takes a bit of frontloading of their bonuses and how to maximize them. Still, once you do it and understand how to play them, you'll feel like General Balisarius yourself. For reference, at my skill level, I float around 1400 ELO, so Conqueror One. On Biz, I fell a Diamond One and was back to almost Conqueror 2 by my seventh day. Visyine as it currently is constructed is a civ that seems to exist in a tier of civ that I would put China and Abbisonid into, which is a civ that can be really good if you have the skill to unlock them. Now, those three, Byzantine in my opinion, is the easiest to unlock. So let's unlock them, shall we? Let's start first with the Byzantine bonuses and what play style they encourage.
First, olive oil and mercenaries. Olive oil is a unique resource for Byzantine that is automatically gathered with a villager gathering from berry bushes at 15%. Olive gross, which replaces farms, gathered at 20%, and shorefish gathered at 10%. Fishing boats also generate olive oil equal to 20% of food from fish, and traders provide 20% of olive oil based on trade amount. Olive oil gathered is used to buy mercenaries, a unique building called the mercenary house. In the mercenary house are three options of contracts that each give you a three-unit bundle, with each new unit unlocking on an age up. So, un-feudal, you have one option. Castle, you have two. Grill, you have three. These options can be expanded by putting the mercenary house near a trade post, which each trade post having two unique units that can increase your potential roster of units. An important thing to name about these units is that they are the unique units of other civilizations, making them often very powerful. Mercenaries spawn in clumps. So, for example, if you do a longbo contract, you get five longos, each costing 500 olive oil and taking a pretty good amount of time to make. Thus, a key part of the Byzantine gameplay loop is to gather berries, get farms down, or grow all of gross, and get a regular supply of mercenaries, which can give you a military edge, especially as you enter middle feudal. The first two sets of mercenaries often give you the army edge to win the first fight, and then you're rolling from there.
While the olive oil to mercenary mechanic is a powerful one, I would argue the next bonus for Byzantine is the one that truly puts it ahead, and that's the sisterns. At the time of this recording, end of season 7, sistns have the ability to boost the gather rate of nearby villagers by 10% at first. Then, as you add sisterns and connect them, that can rise up to 14, 18, 22, and a 26% gather rate, an insane amount. You think about the atriy aan chapel boost nearby villagers by 40%, but that is just within the radius. You can put sistns anywhere. So that means you can basically have an almost atriy like economy anywhere, as long as you have a sistern. Sistns do cost stone, and their cost rises as you add them, with the max cost being 250 stone. You can make as many sistns as you want, but the max level of the sistern is five. Sistns have two zones of effect. The larger circle is the coverage for villagers and increases their gather rate. As long as the villagers walk through that circle, they will gain the gather bonus for a set amount of time. The smaller square is the building influence. Buildings placed in it gain one of three unique toggle effects of the system. This is where the strategy depth of the biz come in. Depending on the toggle, you can increase the production speed of a building, research rate, or defense bonus. One strategy is to have buildings of different types clustered together so you don't have to think about the system toggles. So maybe you have your blacksmith and all your eco buildings in one system that is always on research boost, and you have all your military and other sistns with production boost on. Often though, you're building on the fly and you're trying to react really quickly, so you're just going to build buildings everywhere. In that case, you want to make sure you're toggling as the need arises. This is finally capped off by Biz's passive stone bonus. Whenever you construct a building, you get a percentage of that building's resource costs returned to you in stone, allowing you to add your systems organically without having to put villagers on stone really ever in the early to mid-game. Sistns make Biz both an economic powerhouse and increasingly flexible one as the game goes on, encouraging a play style that is both defensive and booming. Because eventually, as you add more sistns and add more olive groves, you get more mercenaries, and you just out eco and outmass your opponent. With the boost in production, you don't need to invest as much into production. You can quickly change comps if needed. The Biz economy can get so strong, you can often go toe-to-toe with 2TC builds for a good part of early to mid-game. This is why the most common build for Byzantines is the Grand Winery, which I'll go more in depth on in a second, into defensive units and adding olive groves, which are only 60 wood, but will be 70 next patch. This allows you to build a safe eco that's hard to raid with consistent olive oil production. Your sistns cover can cover then food and wood, which means you're getting more food, which allows you to build more farms, which are once again safe and boosted production rate. So, they're not like other feudal farms, which means you can then drop more production buildings, so you get more stone, and the cycle goes on and on and on. That's where the rub comes in. It's a similar one you hear with English. The weakness of an feudal farm is often that their gather rates are pretty bad. It requires castle and peril upgrades to make farms good. Yet with the sistns, Biz's farms are already really good. So that leads to the question of why throw your army away when you can just sit in your base and eventually you'll just out eco and outmass your opponent. That's what makes Biz really strong.
Next, we have Greek fire. The Byzantine Rams, call Chyrosophons, along with Drummonds, their spring old ship, and trebuchets fleeing Greek fire when they attack, which does massive area effect damage to buildings and also does area effect damage to units as well. Note, while rams and drammons have Greek fire naturally, chbuchets need to research it in Imperial at the siege workshop.
The last bonus for Byzantine is a unique tower upgrade. Byzantines can get a manganel upgrade for towers and castle, replacing the spring. And boy, is this upgrade strong. It makes your tower some of the best in the game, rivaled only by relic towers, and allows you to play even more defensive if you want. You're trying to be uber greedy. A few of these towers really force your opponent into siege, which buys you more time to just do whatever you want in your base. On top of that, adding these towers into your eco effectively ends raids.
Let's now go through the unique units of Byzantines. Limit, the Byzantine spearman replacement. It's a little bit more expensive than a normal spearman, but does have 10 extra health, but most importantly has a special toggle ability called shield wall that slows movement speed and attack speed by 20%, but reduces incoming range damage by 30%. This is huge. Limit are great for burning down towers in a tower rush and can hold great if an opponent goes horsemen and archer. This also makes them really good in raiding, as they can sit in an eco even if it's raided by a tower and just chill with their shield wall up.
Vargaryen guard, Byzantine meta arm replacement. These are unlocked in castle and they have higher damage and more armor than a normal meta arms, but have less health and cost double the gold. They also have a special ability called berserk that allows them to do an extra six damage but reduces their armor by four for 30 seconds. Vengaren are a top-tier men of arms. With Biz's boosted eco, you rarely feel the extra gold cost. They will shred most men arms, and the berserk ability allows them to turn an equal fight into wins. It's very common for Byzantine to run mass varian guard crossbow and archer in castle. In an imp, send vengarian guards everywhere to raid since their attack and armor are so high.
Third are Catifacts, which is the Byzantine replacement for knights. They have more damage and health, but are very expensive and they're slower than the average knight. They have a unique ability, trample, which allows them to charge through groups of enemies and do damage as they charge. While catifacts are very strong and in groups can be devastating, the issue is their cost. It's hard to mass them until you have a late-game eco, and their slow movement speed makes them a worse raiding unit than a horseman or a normal knight. You often see a biz player avoid them completely outside of some unique strategies.
Last is the drumman, which is the Byzantine replacement for a sprinkle chip. Does AOE damage instead of singular, but generally Biz is not played on water.
Let's go through the strategies available to Byzantine based on the age and landmark. Overall, before I dive in, I do want to give a philosophical mindset you should have when using Byzantine. Byzantine is extremely flexible. It can be an aggressive sip. It can be a boom and defensive sip. It can switch between these styles really quickly. Yet, overall, if you want to play the most surefire way, I suggest a more defensive boom as your eco with the sistns and farms will often be better than anyone else's. As I break down strategies, I will avoid doing close build order level breakdowns and keep these more to a broad strategy goal-based view. If you want more nitty-gritty, check my notes in the description where you can look at the build orders I have collected in my notes and how to do them. These notes will also give you my view on how Biz matches up against most cives on the ladder. So, check the description below the video. And while you're down there, feel free to like and subscribe.
Dark Age. You tend to not do any dark age fighting as Biz. This is because your power lies in mercenaries and getting farms up, as well as getting more sistns. So, really, you have no reason to stick around. On top of that, there isn't really a civ where doing a dark age rush to slow them down is important. The most important thing you can do is just go feudal as you scout. The most important thing you can do in the dark age is, as you scout, look at your base and start planning your sistns. You want to divide your base up in a way that ensures villagers are always under a sistern. And as you grow, plan out where future sistns will be effective. The first sistn should always be dropped in a way that shades berry drop-off and, if possible, on other resources. This ensures that if you're doing a fast build or just your normal age up into a berry build, your food and olive oil is effective. Here's an example of how I would choose to set up my sister right when I enter a game. I'm going to set my scout out, shoot my first villagers, and put all of them on the sheet. Then I'm going to look where are my berries? Where can I shade into the nearest resource near my berries? As well as try to not take up space for future farms. Looking at my longer view, I also know that all I really need from my sistern is to cover my berries drop-off. So, I'm going to put my first sistn here. It will allow me to then get this wood right here. When I eventually drop my Grand Winery on my berries, I'm going to have plenty of farm space still, and it's going to cover all of the main farms near the TC as well as the drop-off area near the Grand Winery.
Let's talk feudal. Note, it is well known by now that letting Byzantine do whatever they want in feudal is bad news for people. And as the mercenaries come out, and olive girls are dropped, and systems are built, things will just get tougher and tougher. So many people will try to rush you. So be scouting carefully and responding with units in kind as you see them.
Your landmark options into feudal. First is the Grand Winery. It acts as a mill and a monastery. Provides 60% olive oil production boost to farming villagers within radius. Garrison relics can generate olive oil instead of gold. This is the center of most builds for Byzantine, as it gives you a nice olive oil boost to start your mercenary production. And as you add farms around it, it is a way to keep mercenaries going at a regular clip. When you hit castle, it also allows you to instantly start getting relics, even if you choose to build monasteries for gold instead. It is a way to just have a jump on the relic rush against other civs. Its value is a bit delayed, though, as you have to gather berries near it, and the farms have to be dropped in influence as well, meaning people will try to attack early and tower it or just keep you off the barriers to reduce your eco advantage.
The other landmark is the Hippodrome. This is the center of the fast feudal aggression builds you sometimes see for Biz, as it acts as a stable and also has a special ability called triumph that builds up supply over time. When activated, cavalry gain movement speed, damage, and health back. The Hippodrome is also the center of some pure cavalry builds. An example being a fast castle and a sister of the first hill in catifacts. You then use the healing of those two landmarks to juice your catifacts and raid like crazy. The issue for the Hippodrome is that it pretty clearly signals to your opponent what you're going to do. You're going to make a lot of horsemen, so they can counter that pretty easily. It's also a very all-in landmark. You're losing your eco bump with the Grand Winery, meaning mercenaries will be a lot slower to be generated. Both landmarks are viable, but as you try both, you'll really feel the eco bonus of the Grand Winery pay off over the long term. And the reason why most Byzantine builds are based around the Grand Winery. The Grand Winery also just builds better into the bonuses of the Byzantine. With the passive stone to build sistns, with the cheaper olive groves, with the mercenaries coming from olive groves under the Grand Winery, and your mercenaries just being such a powerful bonus to your military, it just makes sense that you want to increase that mercenary production rather than put it on hold.
Generally in feudal, your goal in most builds is pretty straightforward. You're going to rush berries, get first round of mercenaries out along with other production that you you need compared to your opponent. You start adding all grows around the TC and the winery. You make units to match opponent's aggressiveness. If you match your opponent, you will find you just start to take the lead. Assistance are added and mercenaries are built. Your opponent is faced with a choice. Then they can rush castle, but you can also rush castle to match. And when you hit, your upgrades are faster than theirs thanks to sistns and your production is faster as well. Okay, so they attack you. If they do not damage you enough early, then you just use advantage to take better fights and slowly take the lead. You don't have to really leave your base as long as you secure some basic resources with walls. If they take a bad engagement, you can then go fast castle or just push back and win. At the same time, you can play super aggressively as Biz even with the winery. If I see a Cuan fast castle, I make horsemen to slow their gold gather. Then when my first long boss come out, their gold basically gets shut down. I can then decide to make rams and push or just castle myself and beat them there. If your opponent is 2TC, then you can either match their second TC, which you can get pretty quickly thanks to sisters and passive stone. You can then just play the match up the same with your eco generally just being better, or you can be aggressive. I have beat multiple civs just attacking their second TC after it is placed, as the first two ways of mercenaries give you such an advantage militarily that it's really hard for your opponents to stop the ram push.
Some other considerations in feudal. Lith, your horsemen are actually some of the best rating units in the game with the expilter upgrade. I'm probably saying that wrong, but whatever. It gives the horsemen plus two damage against workers and 20 gold per kill. So, if you're trying to play pretty defensive, getting a few horsemen out and just continuously raiding their villagers is a good option.
House placement. You want as much as possible to use houses as vision for your villagers. This is because your houses have a cheap upgrade called border settlements that gives them seven tiles of sight and 500% build speed. Place them on the edges of your base vision to help you see raids coming. A lot of Byzantine players will just place houses all over the map, specifically on gold, stone, and hunts, so that they can see their opponents movements and catch them with raids.
Sistn and building placement. As mentioned, try to keep like-minded buildings together to make sistn toggle easier. I like to place my blacksmith on the same influence range as my grand winery, as there's a lot of research to do in both. So you can just keep that system on research. My second sister is thus my military production system.
Mercenary contracts. A lot of the contract you pick comes down to your own personal preference. Though I feel there are certain times you want to pick certain contracts. Overall, picking the western mercenary contract with longbows, lanch, and stutely should be your go-to. Long bow scale really well in mass, and lanch are great to add into your varian guard mass. In Imperial, Stretzy are some of the best gunners in the game. Long bows are also great for defense and give you a safety net for booming in feudal. The silk road mercenary contract with javelin thrower, camel rider, and grenadier is generally used against English, as the javelins are a great counter to longbows. The issue is javelins don't scale well in mass and late into the game. But some people like the silkro contract to go against knight cives because they have the camel rider debuff in castle. Eastern mercenary contract with keshik, gulam, and tower elephant is mostly used in hyperaggressive builds or against feudal MMA civs. The kesh can hold their own against mena arms and can also rate of horsemen to keep civs in their base. Gulams and castle can drop springols and manganels on the field, and tower elephants are just good but take a while to mass and numbers to be effective.
Notes on defense. Often as biz, you'll be defensive at first, as opponents will try to be super aggressive to cut off berries or wood. The key is to play smart defensive principles until you hit your power spike. Here are some tips. Go 8 to 10 villagers on wood as you're aging up to feudal, as you have a lot of things you need to build with wood the second you age up. If both your gold and berries are exposed, I suggest you pull vills from gold and send them to wood. That's because you want to reduce the amount of places you can be raided, and by far your berries are more important early game than gold. Set a tower on berries so you can start gathering from them safely, even if you don't have enough units to defend. Set up your second sister in a safe spot for production, usually in the back of your base. Generally, I suggest horsemen, long bows, and archers against most cives except knight cives, who you want to do in a limit longbow archer setup. Use walls to help reduce the areas opponents can raid from, even if the wall is just short to make it harder for units to get to your wood line. Keep scouting to see your opponent's numbers. If you can get a couple rounds of mercenaries out, that will often be all the extra units you need to make a push out of your base. Once your opponent is pushed back, either rush castle or keep making units and see if you can do damage. Don't forget to secure the base of walls and scout. A lot of times you can lose a game if you win the first fight, but underestimate your opponent's commitment and the next wave of units kill you.
Last note to stay feudal or go castle. When I first started playing AoE4, I was a deli main and I still have that mindset of if you're up in feudal, finish the game in feudal. For biz, this is just the wrong mindset. You get a huge boost in castle. From the golden horn to quick upgrades to vagaren guards, it's almost always worth it to go castle when you have an advantage in feudal. My AoE4 world profile is full of losses as biz where I should have just gone castle, but forced fights in feudal and lost.
So, let's move on to the castle age. The landmarks available to you. Once again, we have two landmarks where one is just much more favored than the other because, once again, it kind of just works better with the biz bonuses. First, we have the Golden Horn Tower, which automatically recruits unlocked mercenaries at no cost, both longer training time. If you consider the value free units forever, this landmark is very good. Make sure to build it in the influence of a sister to boost production. And also, make sure it's rally to your other production buildings so the mercenaries actually rally instead of standing by the Golden Horn. There are many games that mid-fight look back and realize I have three rounds of mercenaries around my golden horn cuz I never added it to my rally queue.
Your other landmark option is the Sister of the First Hill. Acts as a sistern, provides healing ability called the pilgrim flask. When activated, each unit drinks a flask that regenerates 25 health in 6 seconds. You can toggle this ability so units will automatically take it at 30% health. Now, this seems strong on the surface, but the problem is is that as armies get larger in castle, units tend to just die very quickly or in one shot, so they don't really have time to even use the flask, or they're just outdamaged by other units, so the flax doesn't do anything. The flask can also run out, which means you have to wait till more flasks are produced in the system. The only build I've seen where this really works is a pure cavalry build with catifacts. With super high health, it allows him to fight spearman mass and win with the extra healing. But once again, this strat relies on being able to build a mass of catifacts, which are very expensive. And if your opponent is aggressive in feudal or early castle, you won't have the eco to even make enough catifacts.
Castle age is where biz really shines for a few reasons. First, you unlock vargian guards, which are an amazing unit in mass. You are starting to hit sister level four and five, which causes your eco to just really take off. The extra sistns also means your production buildings are producing even faster, so it's like you have double the production. I often find myself being able to just use my initial production from feudal pretty deep into castle. When you get the next level farming upgrade, your olive oil production hits a clip that makes your mercenary house working pretty much constantly. And lastly, the golden horn tower gives you mercenaries, so your unit count is just generally pretty high.
Let's talk general strategy for Byzantines and castle. First one is the Vgaren guard spam. The most common tactic is Vengarian spam because by the time you hit castle, your food eco should be taking off and vargen damage and armor makes them super tanky. You should have this whole time been building a mass of mercenaries, either long bows or javelins, and you can attack basically with just Vgarians and those mercenaries. When you fight, make sure to have your long bows or javelins. Target fire the crossbows, as they're your varian guard's greatest threat. You should then start adding in crossbows yourself if the opponent is running more of a night-based comp. If you beat your opponent to castle, send your vengarians to resources around the map or dive their base, as a tower will not easily kill them. As varian push back the opponent, start to gather stone and take mac control with walls and keeps on resources. Don't forget siege. Your opponent's best move is to mass manganos, so go early on spring just in case. Overall, your eco production should be able to outdo most other sibs in castle age. Just make sure to keep adding production and olive grows regularly. And if you're able to push your opponent into their base, you can drop a siege workshop and start making siege to actually, you know, win the win the whole game. Your opponent might be able to hold the first or second wave of units, but they will struggle to match you into the third and fourth wave.
Your other option is an eco boom into kind of a branching path option depending how that goes. If your opponent went 2TC earlier and they have turtled effectively, it is a good idea to rush up your own second TC to help your eco. With the second TC, you can choose one of the following options. One, all-out push varian guard spam with siege and whatever else you need to counter. Or two, macro towards Imperial. Use horsemen and varian to raid and keep the opponent in their base while you tower and wall up. Manual towers are huge to securing space and keeping opponents back. Once again, as biz, you should be able to strongarm most sips, but if your opponent has created a big siege ball, for example, rushing it is a great strat to unlock some counters to that siege ball.
Before we move on, I want to note some important things to think about while in castle. First, we have an important upgrade in the blacksmith called teardrop shields. Looking at this upgrade, it's really good. Venarian guards get 15% attack speed bonus, limit 15% movement speed bonus, and catifacts plus one armor. Just a really solid upgrade to get and makes your varian spam even better. Or if you want to switch into limitair or catifacts, just in general, don't forget your blacksmith upgrades. Arrow defense saves lives.
Relics. It's easy to forget in the flurry of early castle as you mess with sistns, get upgrades, start spamming units, add production that you need to get relics. Grand Winery gives you instant priest production, and you can use them on olive oil in the Grand Winery or just normal gold. Every income helps, and even if you don't really think you need the relics, making sure your opponent doesn't have them is just as important.
Sistns. Do not be afraid if you have map control to be aggressive with your sistns. Even if you already have level five, drop sistns in areas where a lot of villagers are working and connect them to the main line. The ego boost is too good to ignore.
Lastly, let's talk about Imperial Age. Visiting gains a bunch of advantages in Imperial that allows him to go toe-to-toe with most civs in Imperial. Let's go over some unique upgrades and tactics.
First, Nume, which is located in the stable. Enemy units damaged by catact trample receive 15% extra damage for 12 seconds. This allows for a unique imperial comp of catifacts plus sieged or ranged ball. Catifacts trample into the enemy, than a manganel shot or a range ball. Just tear through them with the damage buff. Your Imperial Eco allows you to better mass catifacts, which would make this strategy a lot more effective, but the micro of this can make the strat a bit difficult.
Then we have ferocious speed, located in the barracks. Vgarian guard gate 30% movement speed while berserking. This is huge for siege sniping and gap closing against ranged mass. You hit berserker and rush siege to chop them down. Then vengarians are just destroying range units from there, who will struggle to kite your super fast berserkers.
But your biggest bonus is your landmarks. While both landmarks are good, I have my favorite for sure. Your options. First, you have Palentine School, which has a 30% chance to generate an additional free unit of either in Limit, Vengaren, or Catifact when they are trained elsewhere. This is a good landmark. Free units is always good and really lends itself to a catact spam switch or just continued vagarian all-in.
Foreign Engineering Company. To me, the better landmark and what I lean towards. It allows you to create siege of olive oil, which also gives your mercenaries the unique upgrades for the original civilizations, which is huge if you're heavily into mercenaries. In the foreign engineering company, you have nested beast po trebushche and the royal cannon. And that's a huge deal. So not only are you getting siege without gold and with olive oil, but the siege you're getting is really, really good. This allows you to, if you ever run out of gold or just cut off from it, you can still make siege and keep the fight going. I want to once again focus on the siege you get. Royal cannons are the best bombards in the game. They can do area effect damage. They can snipe other siege and they can go to and they can destroy most buildings really quickly. Nest of bees are the best manganel in the game. And though I'm not really big on the Hoy Po treviche, it is really, really good.
In general, Byzantine imp is the same as Byzantine Castle in a lot of ways. You want to spam vgarians, mercenaries, and crossbows in push with siege. If opponent's walls are down, run vargens into their eco and raid like crazy with the berserk ability, which will make them hard to catch you and will allow you to outrun most pursuers. If the game goes deep into Imperial or you've lost access to gold, go pure limit and horsemen. Imperial and limit are surprisingly good with their shield wall ability. They make a really tanky front line for your siege mass. Fully upgrade Imperial horsemen with their extra damage against villagers and their speed just make them one of the best raiding units in the game and allow you to wipe someone's eco, thus pretty quickly ending the game.
Conclusion. Overall, Byzantine is a great civ to have on your roster. And if you're someone who is looking for ones of domain, its flexibility and power make it a great choice. Once you've improved on early defense needed to survive feudal pressure or fast castles, you'll find that other civs will struggle to fight against you. Your eco will be really strong. Your unit spam will be really fast, and soon you'll become another Byzantine player terrorizing the ladder. Good luck.