[NFP] Tagma, positive or negative?

[Alex Vance]

Just go for a warrior/archer rush with battering ram support, and upgrade those warriors into swordsmen as soon as you can.
With Crusade you are well positioned to knock down a neighbouring deity AI (in fact its my go-go rush), and with Taxis and early political philosophy for Oligarchy you are more than well equipped to knock the neighbour down.
Sure you lack the speed of cavalry units, but early on battering rams are good enough provided you have Crusade in place.

The trick is to spend the first faith on a missionary to convert the closest city before you declare war, and then just steamroll from there.
Unlike other civs that might struggle to convert while at war, city conversion is essentially free and unavoidable from that point on for Byzantium.

Listen, I'm just going to be honest about this: you're one of my favorite posters here. I generally agree with what you say.

On this aspect, however, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Tagmata are, in my experience, an extremely powerful UU; and PotatoMcWhiskey recently speculated that Tagmata may be the strongest UU in the entire game. (I personally disagree, but I do think they're in the top 5.)
Having a Knight that's also a mini-Great General that all buff each other (on top of normal combat unit proximity bonuses) -- and don't require Science, which you should have zero interest in as Byzantium (as they obtain Science indirectly by conquering cities with Science-producing buildings)? Sign me up please.

The fact that they also affect Missionaries and especially Apostles adds an element of versatility to them, as well.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Listen, I'm just going to be honest about this: you're one of my favorite posters here. I generally agree with what you say.

On this aspect, however, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Tagmata are, in my experience, an extremely powerful UU; and PotatoMcWhiskey recently speculated that Tagmata may be the strongest UU in the entire game. (I personally disagree, but I do think they're in the top 5.)
Having a Knight that's also a mini-Great General that all buff each other (on top of normal combat unit proximity bonuses) -- and don't require Science, which you should have zero interest in as Byzantium (as they obtain Science indirectly by conquering cities with Science-producing buildings)? Sign me up please.

The fact that they also affect Missionaries and especially Apostles adds an element of versatility to them, as well.

Why thank you, those are kind words.

I will clarify my stance on Tagma a bit:
I am in not way saying that it's a weak unit.
As you say, it's probably one of the strongest UUs in the game.
The reason I'm not all that convinced by them is because I see plenty of players advocating that they are so good that you revolve your strategy around the Tagma.
This can be everything from trying to beeline Divine Right in the civics tree by deliberately trying to maximize culture for that particular reason, or to "save up" Hippodromes to print free Tagma on the second they unlock.
This is imo a rather big mistake, because it misses the mark on what makes Byzantium so good (and I'd argue, OP).
The AI, especially on Deity, is particularly vulnerable to an attack in the late ancient/early classical era, because at that point they usually haven't started getting new military tech out, and walls are often not built yet.
Meaning that if you can leverage a bonus like Crusade, you are effectively bringing an extra tech level worth of units into the fight, which the deity AI severely struggles with.
And if those units of yours happen to be Horsemen (which is what I advocate rushing the Deity AI with as Basil), you are effectively bringing Courser levels of unit power against an AI that usually only has Swordsmen levels of units at that point.
Aka., they can't deal with it and tend to fold like a deck of cards, at which point Byzantium starts snowballing extremely hard.

Don't get me wrong, Tagma are very strong.
But I believe that delaying any kind of offensive action as Byzantium in favour of waiting for Tagma, is wasting a lot of snowball potential.
Upgrade your Heavy Chariots (which are also good to rush the deity AI with) into Tagma when you get to Divine Right naturally, and keep stomping the AI.
It is precisely because Byzantium is so ridiculously strong in it's own right with Taxis and Crusade, that I believe Tagma are more of a "win harder" type of unit, rather than a game changer in itself.

 

[Alex Vance]

Why thank you, those are kind words.

I will clarify my stance on Tagma a bit:
I am in not way saying that it's a weak unit.
As you say, it's probably one of the strongest UUs in the game.
The reason I'm not all that convinced by them is because I see plenty of players advocating that they are so good that you revolve your strategy around the Tagma.
This can be everything from trying to beeline Divine Right in the civics tree by deliberately trying to maximize culture for that particular reason, or to "save up" Hippodromes to print free Tagma on the second they unlock.
This is imo a rather big mistake, because it misses the mark on what makes Byzantium so good (and I'd argue, OP).
The AI, especially on Deity, is particularly vulnerable to an attack in the late ancient/early classical era, because at that point they usually haven't started getting new military tech out, and walls are often not built yet.
Meaning that if you can leverage a bonus like Crusade, you are effectively bringing an extra tech level worth of units into the fight, which the deity AI severely struggles with.
And if those units of yours happen to be Horsemen (which is what I advocate rushing the Deity AI with as Basil), you are effectively bringing Courser levels of unit power against an AI that usually only has Swordsmen levels of units at that point.
Aka., they can't deal with it and tend to fold like a deck of cards, at which point Byzantium starts snowballing extremely hard.

Don't get me wrong, Tagma are very strong.
But I believe that delaying any kind of offensive action as Byzantium in favour of waiting for Tagma, is wasting a lot of snowball potential.
Upgrade your Heavy Chariots (which are also good to rush the deity AI with) into Tagma when you get to Divine Right naturally, and keep stomping the AI.
It is precisely because Byzantium is so ridiculously strong in it's own right with Taxis and Crusade, that I believe Tagma are more of a "win harder" type of unit, rather than a game changer in itself.

I agree with your general outlook on the faction. I don't think it's worth putting everything on hold for Tagmata every game.

That said, there have been games in which I had a bad start, and wasn't able to properly begin a Horseman rush in a reasonable timeframe.
Under those conditions, it's amazing that Byzantium can still turn things around by delaying Hippodrome until there is 1 turn left, waiting for Tagmata to be reseached, and suddenly producing 3-5 (ish) very powerful UU that ignore walls on the same turn. The power spike is so unusual and powerful (remember, another wave will show up a few turns later if you can build Arenas and chop some trees); especially since you can buff archers/crossbows and essentially force enemy troops to come to you (or mop up by third-parying a war, which I did in one game I can still vividly recall).

That's the versatility which Byzantium has that isn't immediately obvious to the uninitiated. Top tier factions often have tricks that only become obvious after playing that Civ a while.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

That said, there have been games in which I had a bad start, and wasn't able to properly begin a Horseman rush in a reasonable timeframe.
Under those conditions, it's amazing that Byzantium can still turn things around by delaying Hippodrome until there is 1 turn left, waiting for Tagmata to be reseached, and suddenly producing 3-5 (ish) very powerful UU that ignore walls on the same turn. The power spike is so unusual and powerful (remember, another wave will show up a few turns later if you can build Arenas and chop some trees); especially since you can buff archers/crossbows and essentially force enemy troops to come to you (or mop up by third-parying a war, which I did in one game I can still vividly recall).

I would go for Heavy Chariots in that case, they unlock a lot faster and can work as a temporary stopgap.
They do after all have 41 combat strength from Taxis and Crusade, and are thus stronger than any Swordsmen they might be fighting.
But yes, if you get a horrible start where you are too low on production (or terrible tech paths with low science) to get the rush going within a reasonable timeframe, resorting to Tagma printing might be viable.

A tip for those who didn't know - Taxis works for all units that fight in melee, not only cavalry type units.
Meaning that even warriors and spearmen can knock down walls without battering rams, as if they were cavalry type units.
This can in some particular cases also work for an early assault on the AI, if you happen to get shafted on cavalry type techs (for instance, when playing with a random tech tree).
It happened in one of my Byzantium games that I had to resort to warriors and archersdue to a god awful tech layout, later transitioning into Heavy Chariots and Horsemen once I had taken over the first couple of cities.
Works well, but is obviously a bit harder to pull off, and requires a precise tactical sense.