We need to put a disclaimer that this is under the most ideal circumstance. He was playing vs AI so there was no pressure comming in. He had a godly spawn where his first cistern could cover berries, gold, stone, TC and straggler trees. That basically never happens. So while it looks very strong on paper, the average person will not be able to execute this so perfectly and will have the longbows out much later. Which gives time for the enemy to react.
He had units in his base at like 4:30 and 5 longbows at 5:15. Who’s getting more pressure than that outside of a dark age rush? He came off gold after the first 100. As long as it’s covering berries/stragglers it’s not going to affect the opening more than a few seconds.
5 longbow man for pretty much free and horseman destroy early economy and then you see castle age at 10 minute mark I surrendered second time right then and there
@@yungfleance849I JUST played against this on the ladder, Delhi v Byz. Horseman/longbow into castle. I crushed him, he was conq last season. I haven’t watched the reply to check their timings, but I just posted the replay on YT. I went double stable and stuffed his eco. I also tried it once and got beat by ayyubids 😂. They went military wing and did a pretty good job. Will be curious to see how it all plays out.
I've been doing this build the last week in preparation for this change. It was halfway decent before the patch. So powerful now. I would feel bad about playing the OP civ if I hadnt been suffering through 40% win rates the last three months while all the brain dead pleabs were zhu zi (not you Drongo, luv you) and ottomaning
Don't think it's Op just has a strong feudal strat now. But you give up some late game strength without winery and have a limited number of longbows. Also knights, English, and defensive landmarks can prevent this from doing any real damage.
Love this Drongo. I was an english main last season, but after seeing the new patch it's clear the English will be even weaker, time to main a new civ and Byz are so much fun to play.
I still think they need to make a cistern tower. Because once you need to push out of your base for Resorces the cistern network advantages is hard to pull off.
It would make cistern if the first hill more viable sure (i assume you mean it would be a landmark and not something you can just build unlimited), but it would also make a very powerfull civ even stronger. So I doubt it would be a good idea. Unless if they take away something else
Cistern of the first hill should be a 6th water level instead of some healing buff that has soo many limits on it. Then people might not take golden horn every time
I don't like this strategy, because if you lose units, its very hard to make it again. Vinery and 2 tc is reliable way to win. Hippodrome in castle age is useless. I am not a conquer player, may be i'm wrong.
That's the thing, you are not supposed to be loosing the units. You wanna pressure the enemy early on, disrupt his plans and ideally snipe some vills without losing units.
great guide at the 12:29 mark for me. I've paused to mention that cataphracts will still be very powerful. I mean, they have a counter in spears... but, longbows. Lots of longbows as you yourself said. I love the idea of a tech-switch; but, there's no reason to get rid of cata's when they're akin to battlecruisers (BCs).
Just played against this bo but with the grand winery. A bit slower. But, even without collecting relics you can economically compete with a fast abba two tc with most upgrades.... Longbow can delay you a lot also. This is crazy. Byz was fine before, except op Lim. I not a fan of bust complicated civ so that more people try it out.
while it does seem too strong, people immediately freaking out and complaining that everything is over, this is the end, byz are completely broken etc etc are really jumping the gun.
I slowly transition to farms as the sheep population dwindles. Wood appears to be the only resource I manage well... hahaha. Since wood is so important for infrastructure prior to castle, I find myself at a 15food-15wood balance with several on gold up until castle. With upgrades, it should be 5 or 6 vills on wood in order to make a farm a minute without stopping production.
The trick the cataphract has up his sleeve is the ability to charge through the front line and hit the back but the problem with it is that the ability's range is too limited. I think that doubling that range would make it a much more useful unit.
If English holds there rush for two to three minutes and builds up spear longbow the kill that force and the attack a defenceless byz scrambling to age up or produce more units. It isn't busted.
Like Travis said: sure byz gets 5LB but then has to wait a long time before the next 5 come out. English can defend for a bit and then will have enough longbow to push byz away and then rush them. Don't forget english gets attack bonus when fighting in their base so their LB are stronger pound for pound. I don't think this strategy works vs English or any knight rush civs. OOTD just needs 1 or 2 gilded MAA to counter this. And civs that can go easy 2 TC will be fine vs this aswell I think.
@@kevintotte4159 which is most every civ in the game. Abbasid go military wing. Deli is pumping ghanza riders from age up. Im more interested in the time with winery. Cause I can get two batches of long bows out before the 8 minute mark and be working on my third. That being said this is bigger for defense against longbow, zhuge nu, and Mas rushes
From now until a month into patch when win rates still aren't at 50 percent in plat, diamond, and/or conq. Lol then they may shut up and realize they are overreacting
@@moonboy2k185 there’s a bug exploit for Byzantine cistern. Basically, build 5 cistern all together but cancel all of them before building, then all of your cistern become 50 stone forever
just curious to try this later, instead of hippodrome, go grand winery, in my head this is what I'm thinking, -Keshik contract is actually more affordable than the LB contract plus they're a stronger early cav unit. -Drop an archery range, and make archers to take the place of the longbows, this will save a lot of food vs making horsemen from the hippodrome, -You won't have as many cav units out, but they are stronger and heal so that offsets a little, but if youre rallying to wood just like in this video, u can easily get a second mercenary house down to speed up the Keshik production. -This might lead to the same affect with the aggression but speed up the castle age even more from saving the food. Looking forward to trying this after work.
You will slow down your first merc time because you want to maximize the first berries so start on sheep the age up and send 14 to 15 bills on berries whole build merc house and archery range
I was wondering when the patch will drop for normal people. BUt overall, this changed seemed like too much of a buff for Byzantines. It seems the dev are so data driven, that they only see the win rates and think Byz is too strong, but they are difficult to play, resulting in low winrates especially in the low level.
Hearing oh ur goals not to kill them just ruin their day is so frustrating to me that type of player is exactly what has always made the vast majority of the public turn away from these games which is why the player base is so small its so toxic and trollish like i play these games to have fun not get pecked until i get pissed off and quit
Killing your units, destroying your buildings, and idling your economy is toxic? This may not be the genre of games for you. That's just playing the game. The point is he can't kill them yet, he has no siege or ability to do so, the early attack is just to gain an advantage not win immediately.
the game is broken. There are so many strategies, if they are mindlessly copied, that are so strong that the opponent can hardly do anything. Thanks for that streamer. That's also the reason that the game dies sooner or later because no one wants to play a game where they can lose if someone is smart enough to type in overpowered strategies on TH-cam.
The game is so balanced that even strategies that are NOT OP are called so just because they are slightly better than the rest. I havent seen anything in aoe4 in the last year that wasnt defendable
Exactly! 5 longbows at 6 minutes in the enemy base witj horsemen? No civ has an answer to this strategy! Except mongols with their tower rush. And French, Rus and JD by training 3-4 knights Or OOTD with the same number of gilded horsemen. And delhi who has a bunch of ghazi raiders out by the time the longbows come in. And Ottoman can train sipahy while they have 2-3 spears for free from the darkage Or english who gets spears and more longbows than this buildorder. Or the abbasid where valdemar has a guide on yt for a tempo build where you would meet the byzantine army with 2 spears, 2archers and i believe 3horsemen at 6min. Malians should be fine defending with their standard build of donso+javelin thrower Ayyubids get dessert raiders for free, so they can make horsemen for an easy counter or archers and still win with micro China needs to think about their bbq placement but with it and some horsemen they can defend and out-eco. HRE and Japan I don't know so well, so I don't know anything off the top of my head, but these are the civs that have defended a push to sneak in a castle timing since the day they released so I cannot imagine that this is a hardcounter. HRE can build a tower and age up in the time longbows arrive if I recall correctly. The only civ that gets completely destroyed by this zu xi. So yeah.. how could there be such a thing where poor poor zu xi doesn't have an answer to this. The weakest civ in the game got even weaker, what a disgrace... (while I'm typing this I remembered that with the jiangnan tower they get a horsemen for free everytime they build a stable, so maybe they also have an answer to this?) Don't get me wrong, this is a strong strategy. But every civ in the game has an answer to this. And with this video out, people know that they can expect byzantines to go to castle after that so now they can plan accordingly after watching this video
@@kaisaraisa3825Now they are balanced. Before the patch theyve been the best civ but to be honest i never felt like they are OP on a level thats not conq 3+. My winrate against Otto on plat II is like 52% so nearly the same like against any other civ. The thing with ottos was that they felt broken if they got like 5 Great bombards out but if that happened the opposite made many mistakes in the game for sure
![World of Warcraft (2025) - Gameplay (PC UHD) [4K60FPS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/N9RHZ8RlILI/mqdefault.jpg)
We need to put a disclaimer that this is under the most ideal circumstance. He was playing vs AI so there was no pressure comming in. He had a godly spawn where his first cistern could cover berries, gold, stone, TC and straggler trees. That basically never happens.
So while it looks very strong on paper, the average person will not be able to execute this so perfectly and will have the longbows out much later. Which gives time for the enemy to react.
He had units in his base at like 4:30 and 5 longbows at 5:15. Who’s getting more pressure than that outside of a dark age rush?
He came off gold after the first 100. As long as it’s covering berries/stragglers it’s not going to affect the opening more than a few seconds.
5 longbow man for pretty much free and horseman destroy early economy and then you see castle age at 10 minute mark I surrendered second time right then and there
@@yungfleance849I JUST played against this on the ladder, Delhi v Byz. Horseman/longbow into castle. I crushed him, he was conq last season. I haven’t watched the reply to check their timings, but I just posted the replay on YT. I went double stable and stuffed his eco.
I also tried it once and got beat by ayyubids 😂. They went military wing and did a pretty good job. Will be curious to see how it all plays out.
I like how they boost Byzantine but also nerf ottoman at the same time😂
Time to retake Constantinople 😮
Surely ottomans didn´t deserve a nerf. SUUUUURELY NOT
@@Pearlharbor-lq5bpeven If they Nerf the bombard Spam wont Stop. It Needs movment Speed reduced. It should be the slowest unit by far
i 100% agree with you, i was being sarcastic. I think the ottoman nerf isn't enough for team games @@AnnaStoller
ottoman needs another nerf lol they are still the most op civ in the game
Would be more persuasive to see this theory crafting video vs AI with a real ladder game implementation, to see an opponents response !
Havent even watched and I know its going to be longbows
Its almost like the thumbnail is telling
I'll definitely give it a try! It does seem that the hypodrome will become more or less useless after ~8min, which kinda sucks.
I've been doing this build the last week in preparation for this change. It was halfway decent before the patch. So powerful now. I would feel bad about playing the OP civ if I hadnt been suffering through 40% win rates the last three months while all the brain dead pleabs were zhu zi (not you Drongo, luv you) and ottomaning
And on lipany with all the berries.... delicious
Don't think it's Op just has a strong feudal strat now. But you give up some late game strength without winery and have a limited number of longbows. Also knights, English, and defensive landmarks can prevent this from doing any real damage.
"So it begins:"
Didnt you ask for that change to the oil Aussie lol?
I do recall this. Dev must be a fan.
Love this Drongo. I was an english main last season, but after seeing the new patch it's clear the English will be even weaker, time to main a new civ and Byz are so much fun to play.
I still think they need to make a cistern tower. Because once you need to push out of your base for Resorces the cistern network advantages is hard to pull off.
It would make cistern if the first hill more viable sure (i assume you mean it would be a landmark and not something you can just build unlimited), but it would also make a very powerfull civ even stronger. So I doubt it would be a good idea. Unless if they take away something else
Cistern of the first hill should be a 6th water level instead of some healing buff that has soo many limits on it. Then people might not take golden horn every time
I was thinking more of a imperial age upgrade to all cistern@@kevintotte4159
Should we always go castle after the first batch or can we mass units to death?
The AI was age 1 the whole game lol
purple byzantines
chef's kiss 😊
What’s the recommended build order for mongols or French?
I don't like this strategy, because if you lose units, its very hard to make it again. Vinery and 2 tc is reliable way to win. Hippodrome in castle age is useless.
I am not a conquer player, may be i'm wrong.
That's the thing, you are not supposed to be loosing the units. You wanna pressure the enemy early on, disrupt his plans and ideally snipe some vills without losing units.
People watch it like they would be able to actually execute it. 😂
Expectation: Longbows withing 5 min
Reality: Longbows within 10 min
Im assuming this is still viable with the research time reversion yea?
Can this strategy against ootd?
great guide at the 12:29 mark for me. I've paused to mention that cataphracts will still be very powerful. I mean, they have a counter in spears... but, longbows. Lots of longbows as you yourself said. I love the idea of a tech-switch; but, there's no reason to get rid of cata's when they're akin to battlecruisers (BCs).
Just played against this bo but with the grand winery. A bit slower. But, even without collecting relics you can economically compete with a fast abba two tc with most upgrades.... Longbow can delay you a lot also. This is crazy. Byz was fine before, except op Lim. I not a fan of bust complicated civ so that more people try it out.
Do you have a build order posted up somewhere?
This is a build order lmao 🤣
@@goldenslabs8175 he probably wanted it written down
also no black smith?
while it does seem too strong, people immediately freaking out and complaining that everything is over, this is the end, byz are completely broken etc etc are really jumping the gun.
So... This is the post-grad video for Byzantine ?
Drongo can you zoom in on it. With differebt kamera angle? Units too small everything so Tiny
when do you transition to farms?
I slowly transition to farms as the sheep population dwindles. Wood appears to be the only resource I manage well... hahaha.
Since wood is so important for infrastructure prior to castle, I find myself at a 15food-15wood balance with several on gold up until castle.
With upgrades, it should be 5 or 6 vills on wood in order to make a farm a minute without stopping production.
I just tried this BO, 4-0 on the ladder!
The trick the cataphract has up his sleeve is the ability to charge through the front line and hit the back but the problem with it is that the ability's range is too limited. I think that doubling that range would make it a much more useful unit.
This is gonna be so bad for ladder...
How would the use of the Cataphract change if it went with the infantry? Just spit-balling possible uses.
Cataphract are F tier Don't use them unless your swimming in gold.
@@goldfish1837 not really a suggestion, anyway I don't play so all good.
Lets see if pro players finally use them in tournaments, we will see.
They have been picked quite regularly in the Elite Classic II tournament. Players might start to ban them now.
Does Drongo stream on anything ever?
not anymore
@@AussieDrongo Any plans on streaming again? I need the dopamine
ty for the quick byz content, wanna learn them
So Byz does Longbow rush better than English now
If English holds there rush for two to three minutes and builds up spear longbow the kill that force and the attack a defenceless byz scrambling to age up or produce more units. It isn't busted.
Like Travis said: sure byz gets 5LB but then has to wait a long time before the next 5 come out. English can defend for a bit and then will have enough longbow to push byz away and then rush them. Don't forget english gets attack bonus when fighting in their base so their LB are stronger pound for pound.
I don't think this strategy works vs English or any knight rush civs. OOTD just needs 1 or 2 gilded MAA to counter this. And civs that can go easy 2 TC will be fine vs this aswell I think.
@@kevintotte4159 which is most every civ in the game. Abbasid go military wing. Deli is pumping ghanza riders from age up. Im more interested in the time with winery. Cause I can get two batches of long bows out before the 8 minute mark and be working on my third. That being said this is bigger for defense against longbow, zhuge nu, and Mas rushes
When will you start yelling Byz is OP and it needs to be nerfed etc. ?
From now until a month into patch when win rates still aren't at 50 percent in plat, diamond, and/or conq. Lol then they may shut up and realize they are overreacting
And the bug with all cistern being 50 stone cancelling is not fixed!! Holy please fix this bug I’m still seeing people do it
What do you mean exactly?
@@moonboy2k185 there’s a bug exploit for Byzantine cistern. Basically, build 5 cistern all together but cancel all of them before building, then all of your cistern become 50 stone forever
@@alexzhang3870 no way
Friendly reminder, Byzanties = Ottoman
With keshiks u gonna have 2 keshiks + 3 horsemen in 5:30 minute... thats crazy 😂
I kinda prefer that honestly.. just build archers later
AND you have Triumph; toss in expiliatores and make something like archers or limitanei behind it then research ram building and bam. Dead opponent.
im kinda temped to play ootd just to counter this bs bec everyone will play this now@@abessia1494
just curious to try this later,
instead of hippodrome, go grand winery,
in my head this is what I'm thinking,
-Keshik contract is actually more affordable than the LB contract plus they're a stronger early cav unit.
-Drop an archery range, and make archers to take the place of the longbows, this will save a lot of food vs making horsemen from the hippodrome,
-You won't have as many cav units out, but they are stronger and heal so that offsets a little, but if youre rallying to wood just like in this video, u can easily get a second mercenary house down to speed up the Keshik production.
-This might lead to the same affect with the aggression but speed up the castle age even more from saving the food. Looking forward to trying this after work.
You will slow down your first merc time because you want to maximize the first berries so start on sheep the age up and send 14 to 15 bills on berries whole build merc house and archery range
Ya after a couple days I can confirm that my idea is compete ass lol
Roma Aeterna
Can't english already do this?
with this timing ? no not even close
Civ wins one game. Drongo, "civ's broken" 😅
Tbf beasty also said Byzantines would get banned in tournaments after the patch.
Beasty is a moron, that idiot before the patch was saying that byzantines were op.@PedroGomes-cx7ku
We will see about that. Either way pros and tournaments are very different then ladder.
I was wondering when the patch will drop for normal people.
BUt overall, this changed seemed like too much of a buff for Byzantines. It seems the dev are so data driven, that they only see the win rates and think Byz is too strong, but they are difficult to play, resulting in low winrates especially in the low level.
Hearing oh ur goals not to kill them just ruin their day is so frustrating to me that type of player is exactly what has always made the vast majority of the public turn away from these games which is why the player base is so small its so toxic and trollish like i play these games to have fun not get pecked until i get pissed off and quit
Bro what if you try to kill them you over commit and you lose.. you dumb?
Killing your units, destroying your buildings, and idling your economy is toxic? This may not be the genre of games for you. That's just playing the game. The point is he can't kill them yet, he has no siege or ability to do so, the early attack is just to gain an advantage not win immediately.
dude u talk wayyyyyy 2 fast and much , i need to take a painkiller after this jeeeez
broken and unbalanced civ right now. pure meta gaming. mangonel tower, free early units , almost every unit in the game with unreal combos
Real sick of this game honestly. Every single season there are 1 or 2 civs that are broken. It'll never be balanced. It really ruins the game
the game is broken. There are so many strategies, if they are mindlessly copied, that are so strong that the opponent can hardly do anything. Thanks for that streamer. That's also the reason that the game dies sooner or later because no one wants to play a game where they can lose if someone is smart enough to type in overpowered strategies on TH-cam.
The game is so balanced that even strategies that are NOT OP are called so just because they are slightly better than the rest. I havent seen anything in aoe4 in the last year that wasnt defendable
Exactly! 5 longbows at 6 minutes in the enemy base witj horsemen? No civ has an answer to this strategy!
Except mongols with their tower rush.
And French, Rus and JD by training 3-4 knights
Or OOTD with the same number of gilded horsemen.
And delhi who has a bunch of ghazi raiders out by the time the longbows come in.
And Ottoman can train sipahy while they have 2-3 spears for free from the darkage
Or english who gets spears and more longbows than this buildorder.
Or the abbasid where valdemar has a guide on yt for a tempo build where you would meet the byzantine army with 2 spears, 2archers and i believe 3horsemen at 6min.
Malians should be fine defending with their standard build of donso+javelin thrower
Ayyubids get dessert raiders for free, so they can make horsemen for an easy counter or archers and still win with micro
China needs to think about their bbq placement but with it and some horsemen they can defend and out-eco.
HRE and Japan I don't know so well, so I don't know anything off the top of my head, but these are the civs that have defended a push to sneak in a castle timing since the day they released so I cannot imagine that this is a hardcounter. HRE can build a tower and age up in the time longbows arrive if I recall correctly.
The only civ that gets completely destroyed by this zu xi. So yeah.. how could there be such a thing where poor poor zu xi doesn't have an answer to this. The weakest civ in the game got even weaker, what a disgrace... (while I'm typing this I remembered that with the jiangnan tower they get a horsemen for free everytime they build a stable, so maybe they also have an answer to this?)
Don't get me wrong, this is a strong strategy. But every civ in the game has an answer to this. And with this video out, people know that they can expect byzantines to go to castle after that so now they can plan accordingly after watching this video
@@leude9984ottoman Are Balanced for you?
@@kaisaraisa3825Now they are balanced. Before the patch theyve been the best civ but to be honest i never felt like they are OP on a level thats not conq 3+. My winrate against Otto on plat II is like 52% so nearly the same like against any other civ. The thing with ottos was that they felt broken if they got like 5 Great bombards out but if that happened the opposite made many mistakes in the game for sure
@@OptimusCrime4444 you forget what bzy has a better eco on a tc and can produce faster