The Byzantine Empire

I can admit that the pikes are very easy to come by. Knights are two (if I remember correctly:confused:) techs away and takes forever and you (at least I) starts to miss the techs that you could have had. But sure, if you really wants to.

Can't say that I have gone for the knights straight a head in any game or seen an AI done so either (they seems to like the melee line and Longswordsmen). Although I have gone for the Pikemen and some AI also seems to like them.

Pikes really should come after Knights historically. Knight dominated the battlefield in Europe from about 1100 to the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, when a large number of French knights were defeated by a bunch of Flemish peasants wielding pikes.
 
Pikes really should come after Knights historically. Knight dominated the battlefield in Europe from about 1100 to the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, when a large number of French knights were defeated by a bunch of Flemish peasants wielding pikes.

I always found it kind of odd that in civ pikes are one of the first units you'll get when you reach medieval era, while historically they were more of a late middle ages/renaissance thing. But I guess that there's some reason gameplay wise, maybe the gap between spearmen and pikemen would be too big.
 
If they haven´t changed the civilopedia´s style then we can see the cataphract won´t have the city penalty and will have terrain bonuses, but won´t be able to move after attacking. (You can see in the picture that under the horseman´s symbol there comes nothing so there wont be any special promotions)
So it would just be a faster and bit stronger swordsman.

Hmm that's interesting. A couple of units seem to do this in this expansion - sort of shift a role in your army sideways. The Pictish Warrior and Battering Ram essentially take the role of a swordsman but replace a spearman instead, and now the Cataphract will essentially fill the role of the Swordsman of a strong mainline infantry unit but require horses instead of iron.

And for all everyone's saying about the Knight replacement, I didn't really feel the situation was THAT bad. Keshik and Camel Archer are ranged and function extremely differently, and the Siamese Elephant is like the last paragraph, sort of a shunted sideways Longswordsman. The Mandekalu Cavalry is about the only bland knight replacement - it didn't used to be since its bonus vs cities traded up, but now its just missing a penalty its a bit worse - you can't pass up a city attack bonus to Tanks any more. The Conquistador is a bit of a weird one, since it came in a DLC and one of its bonuses is being invalidated by a G&K mechanic alteration. I actually kinda felt that as a +strength horseman replacement, it strongly overlaps with the Companion Cavalry.
 
I found it always kind of odd that in civ pikes are one of the first units you'll get when you reach medieval era, while historically they were more of a late middle ages/renaissance thing. But I guess that there's some reason gameplay wise, maybe the gap between spearmen and pikemen would be too big.

I'm not sure about the gameplay reason. Yes, Knights would overrun every other unit on the battlefield, but they have a handicap against cities. Having Knights before Pikemen might actually lead to some proper medieval style sieges, specially now that in G&K units are harder to kill and defensive buildings seem to have improved.
 
Then of course we can discuss that it is far too easy to use narrow researching and head away towards pikes and knights in this case. But that tactics has its pros and cons.

hmm, not likely in GaK.

According to the previews of the tech tree, Civil Service is much harder to get now. So horsemen and their replacements should be 'safe' from evil pikes for a long time.
 
After resigning myself to the fact Byzantine's get beefier Horsemen and a quirky Trireme, and realizing that the Byzantine UA is likely not as poor as I think (surely there will be some sweet combos), I'm perfectly fine with the Civ as a whole. I think they'll be fun. If pikes really are going to be harder to get, then that only makes Byzatines better and able to press their early military advantage. Maybe it's a little strange being contempary with Rome and Greece, but I'll get over it.
 
Top Bottom