I feel like Byzantines may lowkey be a fantastic way to learn the game, improve your gameplay and shut down "tryhard civs"

On my profile the Byzantines suddenly showed up with an 80% winrate. Immediately thought "wait WHAT?!" and decided nah, must be a small sample size and the winrate would go down if I played them more.

I've only played them a bit and while I'm sure the winrate will eventually drop, (currently at 85%) I'm surprised how nice they feel.

I feel like the main thing about the Byzantines is:

-In order to get your "eco bonus," you need to make trash. This puts you into a reactive, defensive position that is definitely unorthodox since usually you want aggression, but if done right, it means your opponent burns through gold whilst you have a surviving trash army that can still act as a meatshield, whilst you calmly make whichever gold unit best counters what your opponent does after. (usually Camels or Cataphracts in my experience)

-Because you need to be reactive, this encourages you to scout well. I feel like scouting is one of the most underrated and most important skills in the game and far too many players go into games with a civ-based plan of what to do without actually looking into what their opponent is doing at all. This means that if you want to survive as Byzantines, you're forced to get good at a vital skill.

-Again, because it's more of a reactive civ, this has the added benefit of completely shutting down the most stereotypically spammed civs that are considered "tryhard" since those are also the most predictable. I currently have a modest 8 games with them, but the majority of matches the opponent defeated has been a respectable civ: Tatars, Mongols, Mayans, Britons, Koreans, Ethiopians and Franks. My sole loss with Byzantines is vs. Aztecs, which makes sense since the civ is a bit more limited vs. an Eagle all-in.

-The most effective opposition to them feels like infantry, which is the least common unit type to encounter. Yes Cataphract wrecks infantry, but it's still forcing you onto a castle unit and eliminating any eco advantage you could build in Feudal. Unless you're facing Meso, Goths or Malians though, you can basically expect not to see Infantry beyond Feudal. This means that while the civ absolutely has bad matchups, they're the vast minority. You do well vs. all the civs that have predictable army compositions and only truly struggle vs. the few with solid infantry lines.

What's disgustingly refreshing about the civ is that when facing said tryhard civs, the game feels about 1000% easier. You usually know what strat they're going for and you can counter it for peanuts. You've got Spears that cost half a vil in food, Skirms that cost a house in wood, and Camels that have equal gold cost to archers.

....Aaaaaand it turns out, yes, in my experience it seems the average Frank or Briton player is actually "lower ELO" masquerading as higher because they've all completely fallen apart vs. a reactive defense thusfar. Any other civ I hate facing those, but with Byzantines it feels like a free win, not necessarily because those civs are bad vs. Byzantines, but because the players using those civs are completely unprepared for a civ that can counter their usually lethal one-trick deathball.

Thing is it's probably not Byzantines specifically that are needed for that win, but just the mindset they train is fantastic at that. There's certainly nothing stopping anyone from playing reactively as any other civ (unless they have garbage trash), but all the same, Byzantines might be a really good civ to play for a while simply because it seems to be the best at motivating players to learn how to best use such defensive mindsets.

I'd even go so far as to say I now wonder if the low winrate for Byzantines is less to do with the civ being underwhelming (they're regularly used in tournaments ffs and Viper describes them as "the civ I both hate facing and hate playing") and more to do with the playstyle they demand being so unique that most players struggle to adapt or change their gameplan at all, instead just massing gold units as usual and foregoing cheap counters that can act as a boon to their eco.

Just felt like bringing this up because I'm sure there's plenty of player who groan when they have to face Franks or Britons again, and in my experience this civ is a giant middle finger to those that likewise encourages good gameplay habits from you, such as more active reactive counters, more active trash production and more active scouting.