Unfair Costing Advantage for Byzantium

[Azrael]

Hey Guys,

A topic similar to this appeared in the Main Hall, but we have our own Forum now.

Personally, I feel that the Byzantines have an unfair costing advantage against the other factions.

What it costs the enemy to field an army with quality spearmen, Order Footknights etc..., the Byzantine player has enough extra cash to max out the valour on his infantry and still have florins left over to give valour bonuses and weapons and armour upgrades to missle & cav troops.

I have honestly never lost a game while defending with Byzantium.

I have beaten 2 armies with 1 Byzantine army twice (that's once after my ally dropped at the start and we said, hey let's play for fun anyway, and once when my ally was routed).

I'm not that good. I have no delusions of being an MP ace. I play with them because I like to win, but get fed up and use different factions to try and make things more challenging.

What do the rest of you think? Are some of the Byzantine troops a little too much on the Cheap side?

Azrael

[Cheetah]

Azreal, how much florin do you use?

[Kraxis]

It all depends... low florin the Byzantine Infantry is very weak due to the Morale. High florin this is overcome and the Varangians become even better comparably.
Also it depends on period.

So no vote from me yet.

[Dune]

I have done a lot of testing with byz infantry , and for equal florin cost i can not find a unit to match them .
How long will it be before games will say no byz faction ,
are they turning into mtw's 1'st super ashi unit ? .

[LittleGrizzly]

have u ever seen byz inf in a long game ive seen 83 of routed by 5 prono allagiony (forgot how to spell it) this was with units of both sides routin pretty nuetral for both they didnt rout off the cav charge they were both facing each other it was a long game and byz inf morale and fatigue combined makes em hopeless in a late game

[Azrael]

Cheetah,

I'm talking about a 15K Florin game.

Azrael

[Orda Khan]

They can be beaten...

.....Orda

[Dionysus9]

Sure, late in the game Byz Inf are awful, but there should be no "late in the game" if they are used properly. The Byz Inf should tear the crap out of the enemy line fairly quickly and then the enemy should be chased off with Cav. Meanwhile Byz inf. should be resting to tackle the next enemy. They are not good at running around the map, but in terms of brutal charges I'm having trouble finding any better units.

[baz]

i agree with bacchus they are pretty good and thats not just in the early period

[Postino]

Byz inf and Byz cav....practically unbeatable in the right hands. cheap too. the Byz are an easy faction to use in MP.

[LadyAnn]

Yes, I did find people play Byz a lot these days.

Even in the desert ...



Annie

[1dread1lahll]

Hehe well null my vote as i said dont tell anyone. but really... the byz have the best inf......but not the best cav....and they really s%$^ on desert maps.....but on a competive map they are a bit much......this would be ok if spears were given a greater bonus aginst cav........(rock-paper-siccors) cav could have some bonus aginst sword armed troops........but dont think it will get fixed any time soon

[Swoosh So]

Too much for too little? cav 105 nah i think its balanced early they are strong later they are weak

[bosdur]

Quote[/b] (Swoosh So @ Dec. 05 2002,02:18)]Too much for too little? cav 105 nah i think its balanced early they are strong later they are weak

Ugh...I dont think so as long as it's valor 3-4 I'd say it's still strong, can you elaboratre ?

[AMPage]

The only thing that bothers me about the byzantine is the 100 unit size of byzantine infantry. I wouldn't mind them being a unit size of 60 and powerful enough to take on any unit 1vs1, but it's the 100 unit size that gets annoying.

It's a pain manuvering around 100 unit size units especaily ones that can be use in egage at will. If you drag them out in a line then it's even worse.

I know some people will just say use small unit size, but that's not for me. I use default unit size, because small unit size it just to small and with bigger unit sizes it becomes just one massive head on rush, with litte or none manuvering.

I have abused the byzantine infantry lots of times. I have lost badly with them and one realy easy with them. Given the proper attention, keeping moral up, and not playing careless with them, it becomes cake work to win.

[Nobunaga0611]

Yeah I'm getting pretty tired of so-so players taking the Byzantines and then just rushing me when I'm trying to field a fun army, like one with at least half missle units And yeah, I could still beat them if I play perfectly, but I'm looking to play a fun game, not one where I get rushed, beaten and then have to sit there while this other person talks trash. grr But I don't think we need to start banning the Byzantines. I think something like gang-banging the person who takes them would work fine

[Swoosh So]

Hmm theres always a way to beat anything you remember that peep on shoggy that took 8 guns 8 monks Was a laugh

[Puzz3D]

You could raise the cost of Byz Inf to bring them more into balance, but for MP a reduction to 60 man unit would be preferable. I don't see any way to match the combat strength of the Byz at equal florins. You have to use a delay and flank strategy to beat them, but good players guard their flanks well. Right now the biggest thing working against the Byz is that most players rush forward at some point allowing the flanking maneuver, but that will change as players gain experience.

[Coach]

play in the snow...it seems to counter it a little bit...especially their superior cavalry.

[Nobunaga0611]

Their cav aren't really superior imo, only the Prollonai (however you spell it) are the only cav that aren't available to other factions. But combined with the Byz Inf. they have very effective cav. The thing thats worked the best for me so far is to get at least one 'pumped up' melee unit, and try to use it to tear apart one of the byz units in order to get the rest to rout along with it. Like for instance, when your enemy attacks your front line w/their byz inf, first have a line with good staying-power, like some order foot with at least v/2. Then use a unit like chiv. men-at-arms at at least v/2 with a few weapon upgrades to attack one of the units through your line, like back in Shogun when you'd line up your lower valour units behind higher valour ones and have them attack while not being attacked to increase their combat value. Well I think you guys get the idea, its explained better by tootee at the academy.

[Kocmoc]

i agree with puzz.

the question is, if u make this unit 60 men strong, than this faction is useless
no spears, not the best cavs..... this makes this faction near useless, or lets say....less powerful.

imo, we wont find a good solution, maybe we lower it to 80 men? or make the infantry slower? or bit less effectiv?

koc

[Magyar Khan]

ofcourse for everything there is a way to beat it/them. just the new total war game makes the units and faction u pick before the game more important. there is less room to excel with your own army to ebat the other army if it "picked" in a decisive way.

if u know whats comming u can prepare, if u dont know whats comming it can either way be a rock, a scissor or some paper. if your army is the scissor and the other man has a rock than u have a major problem, bigger than in old shog.

to limit risk of a lost game u balance it a bot, some rocks some papers and so, but imo if teh enemy gambles on all rock (so to speak) than its very hard to beat him with a balanced army. more than in old shog.

so in theory u can loose several times in a row against a bit less skilled player if he is lucky in picking his rocks scissors and papers.

it makes competition with free armies more like a gamle.

[Puzz3D]

Kocmoc has a good point that 60 men might make the Byz faction too weak, and 80 men may well be a better choice. Overall faction balance complicates the problem of unit balance. As we see with LongJohn's adjustments to spears in the v1.1 patch, it's easy to go too far and unbalance the opposite way. You could improve the existing balance with cost adjustments which wouldn't affect the SP game. I understand that cost adjustment alone can't solve all the MP issues, but it would help make more units usefull and you would be able to inprove overall faction balance as well. If CA would be willing to make some cost adjustments to units in MP, I'm sure the players could make some good suggestions with 6 weeks of experience with the v1.1 behind them. Minor cost adjustments do not impact the SP game, and no rewrite of code is necessary.

[Magyar Khan]

well teh whole charge morale bonus system could be highly improved as well for mp.
and archery.... man they are weak.

[Puzz3D]

That's true. The low morale and weak archers can't be fixed with cost changes.

[Kocmoc]

i full support, that we need to balance serveral units.
we should also create a nice MP-area, like the "high"

we could bann the arbas, or make other missles better and the arbas stay at they are right now.

+2 moral, we all agree about this.
better missles, we all agree as well.

i decrease the cav a bit, the chargebonuss is too big and gives too much advance.


if we go and change something, we should also think about a max of2 or max of3.
this would solve some or many problems, u cant buy more than 4 of some kind, and im sure with max2 u will go and buy mostly jsut this 2. so we will see more average of units. if u pick 8 diff units, this alone will bring some balance, as u will pick some weaker units as well.

whatever, something must be done, at this point we all agree.


koc

[Dionysus9]

1) +2 morale
2) increased # of arrows or accuracy for non-arbalesters
3) decrease chargebonus from cav [+2 morale might be enough]
4) increase cost of byz inf
5) 3 max rule/rush tax (instead of 4 max)

I think all of these are needed and agreed upon by the vast majority of MP players. WE NEED AN MP STAT SET

Also, highly elite cavalry (lancers, teutonic knights, etc.) are too cheap at v0. You can get a v0 teutonic knight and by the end of the battle endup with valor 3 (although you might only have 10 men left in the unit, they will fight to the last--which isnt what you paid for). You should have to pay for the expected increase in valor at the beginning.

Pronoiai are well balanced, imo, and are a good benchmark to judge the proper cost/balance of other cavalry. Of course, 4 base honor is lower than most elite cav, but after you increase valor to 2 they have 8 morale like the others. At v2 they are tough to advance to v3. If v0 lancers are easy to advance to v2, their cost should reflect this.

(they are easy to advance).

[CeltiberoMordred]

the question is, if u make this unit 60 men strong, than this faction is useless
no spears, not the best cavs..... this makes this faction near useless, or lets say....less powerful.

imo, we wont find a good solution, maybe we lower it to 80 men? or make the infantry slower? or bit less effectiv?




IMO, byz inf must keep in 100 men and the same stats. I think that is better to raise the price to 250-300 florins to balance.

[bosdur]

Decrease to 60 and decrease the cost as well, 125 ? How bout this ?

I think byz infantry's power relies on its unit size (100), If we chunk the size down to 60, it will start to suffer -2 morale at 6 kill per animation cycle, compare to 10 previously. Makes it even easier to rout them. The decrease in cost is 25 decrease for 0 morale compared to FMAA, and another 25 decrease for only base attack value of 2 compare to 3 of FMAA.

[baz]

this is a hard topic to answer because they may have the best "all round unit" but they haven't got much else if you choose to be byz then you almost tempted to start picking spearmen lol... really tough decision

nb. i am quite fed up of facing 3 byz armies when playing 3v3 with like 24 units of byz inf out of 48