Does Byzantium need a boost?

[kaspergm]

Did a bit of testing of this yesterday, and while there still remain a couple of minor bugs to fix, I liked how it played out.

Spoiler :

I did the Palace replacement not as an actual UB (so far, the Dromon and the Cataphract both remain), but as a part of their UA (gets a priest specialist slot in the Palace and can choose an extra belief when founding a religion).

I really like how this plays out, because the specialist means that you can halt growth for the first 5 turns to make (almost - if Celts not in the game at least!) certain that you get the first Pantheon. This obviously will be a huge and important step towards founding a religion, because it lets you choose the Pantheon that's best for you, plus the Pantheon will work over more turns. I do like however, that after founding the Pantheon, it's generally not viable to keep a citizen working the Priest slot, which means that this is by no means overpowered.

 

[Redaxe]

Can you rename the Palace to Grand Basilica? Also what do you think the specialist yield should be?
Perhaps 1 faith, 1 culture, 1 gold, 1 food - this is sort of like a monks that grow their own food.
A second possiblity is 2 faith, 1 gold. You get faster faith but it is more costly to your capital to maintain.

Personally I prefer the first option, the UA should be decent enough that you want to work it a lot of the time except if your prioritizing growth or production. If its too powerful than the 1 culture or 1 gold could be removed.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Can you rename the Palace to Grand Basilica? Also what do you think the specialist yield should be?
Perhaps 1 faith, 1 culture, 1 gold, 1 food - this is sort of like a monks that grow their own food.
A second possiblity is 2 faith, 1 gold. You get faster faith but it is more costly to your capital to maintain.

Personally I prefer the first option, the UA should be decent enough that you want to work it a lot of the time except if your prioritizing growth or production. If its too powerful than the 1 culture or 1 gold could be removed.

You can see it in the uploaded picture. It is 2 faith.

 

[Redaxe]

You can see it in the uploaded picture. It is 2 faith.

Yes I did see the screenshot it looks good. I was thinking about balance and what would work best for the Civ. A 2 faith yield is good but my concern is it could let you found a Pantheon a bit too early, I think by turn 7. I know it comes at a cost to growth but if it quickly gets you access to something like desert folklore (if you have heaps of desert) it could be insanely powerful.
That's why I was speculating over 1 faith but maybe with 1 culture and 1 food so you can't get a Pantheon too quickly but the cost isn't going to cripple your capital either.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Yes I did see the screenshot it looks good. I was thinking about balance and what would work best for the Civ. A 2 faith yield is good but my concern is it could let you found a Pantheon a bit too early, I think by turn 7. I know it comes at a cost to growth but if it quickly gets you access to something like desert folklore (if you have heaps of desert) it could be insanely powerful.
That's why I was speculating over 1 faith but maybe with 1 culture and 1 food so you can't get a Pantheon too quickly but the cost isn't going to cripple your capital either.

I actually think it wouldn't even enough to secure a religion for byzantines, except situationally like youre example of desert folklore. You have to sacrifice 1 pop spending some turns as specialist. And after that you still have a long way to reach 200 limit for a religion. If your pantheon is not faith based, then you still will have to sacrifice 1 pop to secure religion. This will hugely affect your gamestart.

My suggestion would be instead of a specialist 1 faith point from the palace and free religious buildings (shrine and temple) in the capital upon founding the appropriate technology.

 

[Redaxe]

I actually think it wouldn't even enough to secure a religion for byzantines, except situationally like youre example of desert folklore. You have to sacrifice 1 pop spending some turns as specialist. And after that you still have a long way to reach 200 limit for a religion. If your pantheon is not faith based, then you still will have to sacrifice 1 pop to secure religion. This will hugely affect your gamestart.

My suggestion would be instead of a specialist 1 faith point from the palace and free religious buildings (shrine and temple) in the capital upon founding the appropriate technology.

I guess this is the issue with desert folklore being so powerful. If your capital had lots of floodplains, oasis and wheat you could quickly catch up on growth and with your faith income, totally dominate with a powerful religion. In other situations a 2 faith income from the specialist is probably about right.

 

[kaspergm]

I play with this as part of a larger mod, that removes the faith on flood plains for Desert Folklore. This makes Desert Folklore much more balanced because you only get faith from desert hills (desert sheep = awesome), Oasis and resource tiles since you don't want to work flat desert tiles until much later (if ever). As such, I didn't see the very early pantheon as much of a balance problem. Because working the specialist slot from day 1 by default means stagnation, you only want to do this to get the pantheon founded, and as such I think it's fine to have it yield only faith - perhaps +1 Gold could work also.

 

[beetle]

Did a bit of testing of this yesterday, and while there still remain a couple of minor bugs to fix, I liked how it played out.

Interesting work, but I think it only helps already strong human players.

1. Would an AI player take advantage of the specialist slot in order to found a religion?
2. Weak human players won’t know about running specialists, so this would not help them should it become an official patch.

 

[HeresiarchQin]

Tonight I gave a go with Byzantine on Emperor...and completely realized how weak it is.

Weak UA: I was lucky and got a +8 FPT mountain nearby, and got the third religion despite having Ethiopian as my neighbour and the Celt somewhere far away. But Ethiopian's Faith advantage was so much he simply outspammed me with missionaries and converted 2/3 of the continent (there were only me, Ethiopian and China there) and still have extras lurking around. The extra belief (I picked RT) was almost useless because Ethiopia enhanced his own as well, and he simply flooded me with his religion pressure with sheer number of converted cities + missionaries.

Useless UU: China asked me to DOW on Ethiopia which I happily agreed with. I sent in a couple of brand new Cataphracts to sneak attack one of his base. Sadly enough they didn't even attack once as my catapult + CB + spearmen did all the work. 5 turns after getting the city and had a peace treaty with Ethiopia, I immediately realized my shiny cataphracts were obsolete - Ethiopia and China both have pikemen out (well, even I got my own pikemen very soon after).

Weak religion, cont.: I let an Ethiopian GP sneak in and he converted my holy city. All my surrounding cities were converted by his mass missionaries. It's gonna take centuries before any meaningful religion pressure comes back. So my Byzantine basically completely lost its UA. My UUs were both obsolete decades before. China were building a huge army as well. Time to resign.

In conclusion: Because I've got no faith advantage, I must sacrifice things like science or military to build a religion. Fast. That means I won't be able to get horse riding because it has nothing to do with religion nor science. Therefore by the time I can spare time and resource to build cataphracts they were immediately obsolete. If I'm trying to exploit the power of cataphracts I won't be able to get a useful religion. Even if I got a religion it still doesn't mean I can with by it because I still have no FPT advantage to synergy with it. Aaargh Byzantine is weak.

The only saving grace is Dromon. It's ridiculously powerful and can be actually used while I'm dealing with the religion headache. It can even help in city defense or attack.

 

[Væringjar]

@OP

Byzantine is one of the strong factions in game. Their UA is great and also Dromons and Cataphracts are very good too. So, they don't need a boost.

 

[greygamer]

@OP

Byzantine is one of the strong factions in game. Their UA is great and also Dromons and Cataphracts are very good too. So, they don't need a boost.

Troll?

 

[Xahz]

Tonight I gave a go with Byzantine on Emperor...and completely realized how weak it is.

Weak UA: I was lucky and got a +8 FPT mountain nearby, and got the third religion despite having Ethiopian as my neighbour and the Celt somewhere far away. But Ethiopian's Faith advantage was so much he simply outspammed me with missionaries and converted 2/3 of the continent (there were only me, Ethiopian and China there) and still have extras lurking around. The extra belief (I picked RT) was almost useless because Ethiopia enhanced his own as well, and he simply flooded me with his religion pressure with sheer number of converted cities + missionaries.

Useless UU: China asked me to DOW on Ethiopia which I happily agreed with. I sent in a couple of brand new Cataphracts to sneak attack one of his base. Sadly enough they didn't even attack once as my catapult + CB + spearmen did all the work. 5 turns after getting the city and had a peace treaty with Ethiopia, I immediately realized my shiny cataphracts were obsolete - Ethiopia and China both have pikemen out (well, even I got my own pikemen very soon after).

Weak religion, cont.: I let an Ethiopian GP sneak in and he converted my holy city. All my surrounding cities were converted by his mass missionaries. It's gonna take centuries before any meaningful religion pressure comes back. So my Byzantine basically completely lost its UA. My UUs were both obsolete decades before. China were building a huge army as well. Time to resign.

In conclusion: Because I've got no faith advantage, I must sacrifice things like science or military to build a religion. Fast. That means I won't be able to get horse riding because it has nothing to do with religion nor science. Therefore by the time I can spare time and resource to build cataphracts they were immediately obsolete. If I'm trying to exploit the power of cataphracts I won't be able to get a useful religion. Even if I got a religion it still doesn't mean I can with by it because I still have no FPT advantage to synergy with it. Aaargh Byzantine is weak.

The only saving grace is Dromon. It's ridiculously powerful and can be actually used while I'm dealing with the religion headache. It can even help in city defense or attack.

Sounds to me like you just played the game poorly. Byzantium's UA is a tradeoff: they get a more powerful religion than anyone, in exchange for the player having to manually build it from the ground up. Ethiopia and the Celts get early boosts to their religion, but it won't end up as strong as Byzantium.

I don't know why people are still complaining at not being able to get a religion. With Piety being an ancient era tree, it really isn't hard to get a pantheon up outside of extraordinarily unfortunate situations. Grabbing a faith pantheon, shrines and temples in your cities, and maybe a natural or world wonder will guarantee you a religion. Yes, you have to put effort in and make sacrifices. That's what makes them a unique civ with a unique playstyle.

You should have expected some competition going against two religion juggernauts, and adjusted your play to compensate. You can protect your cities from conversion with Inquisitors, which you should have had more than enough faith to purchase. An early DoW on Ethiopia would have let you capture his missionaries and prophets before they entered your territory, and kept his faith generation down by taking some of his extant cities.

Cataphracts are not even close to useless. You shouldn't be ramming horsemen into spears and pikes, that's a recipe for disaster no matter what civ you are. Catas can take a ton of punishment, especially since you can leave them on a hill or forest tile after every skirmish. They're more powerful than anything in their era (and the next one). Why are you trying to take cities with mounted units? It sounds like you're just not using cavalry properly in general.

All it really sounds like is that you had a poor game with a civ that you refused to play to the strengths of. I think some people are exaggerating how much you give up to get a fast religion. There's no reason you can't keep pace with military and science until you get your religion up, ESPECIALLY on Emperor. Keep in mind you don't need to be the first, second, or even third to found a religion and still get heaps of benefit from your UA

 

[isau]

IMO Byzantium should be allowed to ignore the limitation of beliefs being taken by other civs and always pick from the full list. Also, always be able to found a religion even if there are no spots left. That would basically fix them for good. And would allow you to focus on the UUs early and religion later with no risk of "losing" your religion spot.

(FWIW I also modded Piety in my own games so that the opener provides +1 Faith per Shrine in addition to the faster build time, and the policy that provides 1/1 for shrines/temples just provides +3 for temples. Piety is still not amazing but it is much better.)

 

[kaspergm]

(FWIW I also modded Piety in my own games so that the opener provides +1 Faith per Shrine in addition to the faster build time, and the policy that provides 1/1 for shrines/temples just provides +3 for temples. Piety is still not amazing but it is much better.)

I did something similar - moved +1 Faith to opener and changed Organized Religion to +1 Happiness. Problem with Piety, as I realized in my current playthroughs as Byzantium - is that the remaining three policies are almost useless until much later in the game. I'm not going to faithbuy units or buildings until I've gotten my religion well established and enhanced, save maybe one missionary for an early spread, and the Gold from Temples and finisher benefits to holy sites likewise is not going to help me till much later. So I really think Mandate of Heaven and Theocracy needs some sort of immediate boost - like MoH giving you a free Missionary and Theocracy giving some straight gold from temples.

 

[Væringjar]

Troll?

No, sir. I'm not a troll. I think Byzantine is really strong, 1 more belief is just great.

 

[greygamer]

Sounds to me like you just played the game poorly. Byzantium's UA is a tradeoff: they get a more powerful religion than anyone, in exchange for the player having to manually build it from the ground up. Ethiopia and the Celts get early boosts to their religion, but it won't end up as strong as Byzantium.

I don't know why people are still complaining at not being able to get a religion. With Piety being an ancient era tree, it really isn't hard to get a pantheon up outside of extraordinarily unfortunate situations. Grabbing a faith pantheon, shrines and temples in your cities, and maybe a natural or world wonder will guarantee you a religion. Yes, you have to put effort in and make sacrifices. That's what makes them a unique civ with a unique playstyle.

You should have expected some competition going against two religion juggernauts, and adjusted your play to compensate. You can protect your cities from conversion with Inquisitors, which you should have had more than enough faith to purchase. An early DoW on Ethiopia would have let you capture his missionaries and prophets before they entered your territory, and kept his faith generation down by taking some of his extant cities.

Cataphracts are not even close to useless. You shouldn't be ramming horsemen into spears and pikes, that's a recipe for disaster no matter what civ you are. Catas can take a ton of punishment, especially since you can leave them on a hill or forest tile after every skirmish. They're more powerful than anything in their era (and the next one). Why are you trying to take cities with mounted units? It sounds like you're just not using cavalry properly in general.

All it really sounds like is that you had a poor game with a civ that you refused to play to the strengths of. I think some people are exaggerating how much you give up to get a fast religion. There's no reason you can't keep pace with military and science until you get your religion up, ESPECIALLY on Emperor. Keep in mind you don't need to be the first, second, or even third to found a religion and still get heaps of benefit from your UA

Piety doesn't really help getting a religion in the early game, in my experience. To boost your chance to get a religion you need to generate faith more quickly than most of the other players/AI.
Faith generators are:
Pantheons which are luck based (only apply to certain tiles, resources) and you need to get that belief first.
Shrines are one per city so require a rapid expansion, a single faith based ruin can generate as much faith as 1 shrine for most of the ancient era.
Temples require Philosophy and at Emperor(?) and above you are unlikely to get Philosophy before most other AI civs.

Playing on the smaller maps certainly helps though.

Byzantine can be pretty decent in the early game but you will often have to write-off the UA to take full advantage of the UU. The Dromon requires going to the top of the tech tree, delaying Philosophy, Horseriding also requires a detour. Leaving this until after Philosophy means the UU have a very short period of usefulness.

Perhaps you can outline the strategy you employ that makes Byzantine certain to establish it's UA if it uses Piety. I tried that approach and failed, The GL was actually a more successful approach at King level. Stonehenge requires a little luck (i.e. Forests to chop).

 

[greygamer]

No, sir. I'm not a troll. I think Byzantine is really strong, 1 more belief is just great.

I am confused then. If the entire thread is read there have been many reasons given why it can be very difficult to establish a religion at the higher difficulty levels. Without a religion you have no UA, that is what this thread is about.

If someone has a way to ensure you get a religion with Byzantine, I for one am listening.

 

[Xahz]

Piety doesn't really help getting a religion in the early game, in my experience. To boost your chance to get a religion you need to generate faith more quickly than most of the other players/AI.
Faith generators are:
Pantheons which are luck based (only apply to certain tiles, resources) and you need to get that belief first.
Shrines are one per city so require a rapid expansion, a single faith based ruin can generate as much faith as 1 shrine for most of the ancient era.
Temples require Philosophy and at Emperor(?) and above you are unlikely to get Philosophy before most other AI civs.

Playing on the smaller maps certainly helps though.

Byzantine can be pretty decent in the early game but you will often have to write-off the UA to take full advantage of the UU. The Dromon requires going to the top of the tech tree, delaying Philosophy, Horseriding also requires a detour. Leaving this until after Philosophy means the UU have a very short period of usefulness.

Perhaps you can outline the strategy you employ that makes Byzantine certain to establish it's UA if it uses Piety. I tried that approach and failed, The GL was actually a more successful approach at King level. Stonehenge requires a little luck (i.e. Forests to chop).

How does 1/2 production Shrines and Temples along with +1 faith from each not help you get a religion? It should, at the very least, help you get a pantheon (which are not luck based, I'm not sure what you mean). The only civs that should be routinely beating you out are the Celts, Maya, and Ethiopia. You can pick a faith generating pantheon to help get your religion. Yes temples require Philosophy, but you should generally be rushing Philosophy anyways after your lux tech and maybe construction to get the NC. Stonehenge is not particularly difficult to get if you really want it. A hill start and some production tiles are really all you need unless you're against an aggresive religious AI on Deity.

Your argument about their UUs doesn't really make any sense. You could say the same thing about Korea, or England or Carthage or the Ottomans, etc... Are you really trying to say that you can't get Sailing and Horseback Riding after (or before) Philosophy and still have those units remain relevant? C'mon, that's ridiculous. Cataphracts and Dromons are the strongest units in their class until the Medieval era, you have plenty of time to crank them out and get more than your moneys worth.

It really seems like you're just not adapting your playstyle to play Byzantium correctly. There's a good number of civs in this game that are universally powerful and don't have to pay careful attention to the way they tech, what they build, or where they settle. Then there are other, more niche civs like Byzantium that force you to play outside the box and maybe get a little lucky along the way. That doesn't make them bad. If every civ was like China or Poland the game would get real boring, fast.

 

[HeresiarchQin]

Sounds to me like you just played the game poorly. Byzantium's UA is a tradeoff: they get a more powerful religion than anyone, in exchange for the player having to manually build it from the ground up. Ethiopia and the Celts get early boosts to their religion, but it won't end up as strong as Byzantium.

I don't know why people are still complaining at not being able to get a religion. With Piety being an ancient era tree, it really isn't hard to get a pantheon up outside of extraordinarily unfortunate situations. Grabbing a faith pantheon, shrines and temples in your cities, and maybe a natural or world wonder will guarantee you a religion. Yes, you have to put effort in and make sacrifices. That's what makes them a unique civ with a unique playstyle.

You should have expected some competition going against two religion juggernauts, and adjusted your play to compensate. You can protect your cities from conversion with Inquisitors, which you should have had more than enough faith to purchase. An early DoW on Ethiopia would have let you capture his missionaries and prophets before they entered your territory, and kept his faith generation down by taking some of his extant cities.

Cataphracts are not even close to useless. You shouldn't be ramming horsemen into spears and pikes, that's a recipe for disaster no matter what civ you are. Catas can take a ton of punishment, especially since you can leave them on a hill or forest tile after every skirmish. They're more powerful than anything in their era (and the next one). Why are you trying to take cities with mounted units? It sounds like you're just not using cavalry properly in general.

All it really sounds like is that you had a poor game with a civ that you refused to play to the strengths of. I think some people are exaggerating how much you give up to get a fast religion. There's no reason you can't keep pace with military and science until you get your religion up, ESPECIALLY on Emperor. Keep in mind you don't need to be the first, second, or even third to found a religion and still get heaps of benefit from your UA

I do have made several silly mistakes (not using Inquisitors properly was the hugest one), but it doesn't change the fact that:
1. Lack of faith generating advantage forces Byzantine to sacrificing a lot to get a fast religion.
2. Getting fast religion forces Byzantine to tech slower, and must catch up with tech as soon as religion is established.
3. How are you going to squeeze in the tech and resources for Cataphracts in between them? If you go with the seafaring techs or Philosophy, then you won't be able to use Cataphracts too much before pikes come out. If you go with Horse Riding first then you'll lack behind for more important tech such as Philosophy or Theology.

Perhaps a way to play the strength of all the UA and UU of Byzantine to the fullest is to beeline a religion (it isn't that hard actually even on Immortal) -> get sailing -> beeline horse riding -> proceed to aggressively use the catas before they go obsolete (holy warriors could help I suppose). This could be especially useful if a religiously strong civ is sitting close by and you don't want him to grow strong? And perhaps to use Interfaith Dialogue to compensate for the tech delay due to pursuing Horse Riding.

Something funny in my last few games: 5 or so games before I've manually set Celt + Maya + Ethiopia as opponents to test the race for religion as Byzantine. Then I forgot to set them back to random AI until a few minutes ago. No wonder in the last few games I've ALWAYS faced huge competition with religion not to mention "er, it's YOU again??" awkwardness.

 

[greygamer]

How does 1/2 production Shrines and Temples along with +1 faith from each not help you get a religion? It should, at the very least, help you get a pantheon (which are not luck based, I'm not sure what you mean). The only civs that should be routinely beating you out are the Celts, Maya, and Ethiopia. You can pick a faith generating pantheon to help get your religion. Yes temples require Philosophy, but you should generally be rushing Philosophy anyways after your lux tech and maybe construction to get the NC. Stonehenge is not particularly difficult to get if you really want it. A hill start and some production tiles are really all you need unless you're against an aggresive religious AI on Deity.

Your argument about their UUs doesn't really make any sense. You could say the same thing about Korea, or England or Carthage or the Ottomans, etc... Are you really trying to say that you can't get Sailing and Horseback Riding after (or before) Philosophy and still have those units remain relevant? C'mon, that's ridiculous. Cataphracts and Dromons are the strongest units in their class until the Medieval era, you have plenty of time to crank them out and get more than your moneys worth.

It really seems like you're just not adapting your playstyle to play Byzantium correctly. There's a good number of civs in this game that are universally powerful and don't have to pay careful attention to the way they tech, what they build, or where they settle. Then there are other, more niche civs like Byzantium that force you to play outside the box and maybe get a little lucky along the way. That doesn't make them bad. If every civ was like China or Poland the game would get real boring, fast.

Pantheons are luck based in that you may not have tiles that help you with faith generation or that belief has already been taken. With faith ruins that can easily happen.

The first shrine can be built well before you unlock Piety, so the reduced building cost only apply to additional cities. So +1 faith in the capital once you unlock the second policy. Because all the other starting SP are generating extra culture so you are likely to be at least 1 policy behind by that point. Without any boost to culture, what turn do you get the second policy?
Sure I can get Sailing or Horseback Riding before Philosophy, but that means more turns falling behind the AI. Who on King+ already got Pottery (8-10 turns advantage) on reaching Philosophy. I have had games where all religions were gone by turn 70 ish iirc. No it doesn't happen in every game, but that was on King level.

Spears can make Cataphracts pretty ordinary, I'd rather have Companion Cavalry in my opinion they are the most powerful unit in that category. Dromons are the UU that really shines but good luck getting those built early if you are going for Stonehenge as well.

But I think you summed it up in your post, you need a little luck. Would it be too much to ask that someone post in this a thread a how to get that religion for Byzantine. Instead there seem to be a number of 'Byzantine is fine you are doing it wrong' posts without really explaining why?

For me the Byzantines are the 'luck' civillization. They shouldn't have to rely on a start with certain terrain to work, yes I have had Byzantine starts without forests/hills. Should I just re-roll those starts? Maybe I am just unlucky, unfortunately that seems to prove my point. I have much better 'luck' when I play as Spain.

I do best with the Byzantines when I just ignore the UA and that cannot be right.