How to beatZhu Xi's Legacyas Byzantine

Limitanei are exactly what Zhuge Nu will do very well against.

Additional range from the Temple of the Sun on Nest of Bees can outrange longbows, negating their range advantage.

Longbows make the most sense against Zhu Xi's Legacy because they'll most likely be going for Zhuge Nu. Zhuge Nu get a bit more range with an upgrade, and in mass, Javelin Throwers get countered easily by their attack speed; Longbows have extra range and better attack speed, so they do better against Zhu Xi.

Plus two damage on those Longbows would definitely be able to do a lot of damage against the Palace Guards.

Mangudai just don't feel like they do enough damage to palace guards.

15 minutes in the game is about when that deer food tends to run out. He has to start moving those external resources.

You're getting five longbows every minute and a half for free. And the cool thing about that is longbows are a premium archer with higher base damage anyway. They keep relevance in castle so much better than standard archer play. You know what doesn't keep value in castle? Zhuge Nu - I feel like every time I see a player stuck with Zhuge Nu in castle, they hate it.

Those Cataphracts are definitely going to be the great equalizer when it comes to siege. Byzantine is not known for their siege, whereas Zhu Xi, not as potent as China, still has access to that Nest of Bees which, especially when you are forced to fight in one spot to contest for the victory, that is when they really start to shine.

Longbows is really all you need. The important thing is the Palace Guard play. It's very hard to intercept pro scouts as is often the case with Byzantines. Your goal is to keep longbows alive. Get the count up to like 15 and then you just go castle. With the level five Cistern system build, the castle rush feels kind of broken. Getting longbows for free every 1.5 minutes is a huge inflation to your economy, and then you might actually have an answer to armored units in feudal that do feel quite hard.

Weirdly enough, as you scale into castle, because Palace Guards have less armor, veteraned longbows fare better than normal archers, and you just add a few Cataphracts or even just Limitanei. Limitanei are surprisingly tanky because of the extra 10 HP, they don't just flop dead as quickly as Spearman would against Palace Guard.

When Zhu Xi first came out, one of the classic answers was English longbow massing, because Zhuge Nu and Palace Guard just didn't stand a chance against a longbow push.

Zhu Xi doesn't do Dark Age. Dark Age is grayed out for them. Byzantines are quite weak to dark age harassment in the current meta, but that not being the case in this matchup means that Byzantines can get to their full strength.

There is this very aggressive timing from Zhu Xi just being able to pump out tons of knights. The Limitanei do work very well against it, especially once you upgrade the Painted Shield. Suddenly your Limitanei go from 1.25 to 1.44 tiles per second movement speed. They're going to be able to react to all of those raids from the knights coming in.

The bonus percentage armor against range damage works perfectly against the Zhuge Nu, meaning they're going to be able to tank up so much more damage against them.

In theory, the Byzantine player could just go for the Keshik wing and get Ghulams, and could absolutely destroy an army composition of horsemen, spearmen, and Zhuge Nu with just Ghulams.

Getting the Foreign Engineering Company feels so good when you're up against Zhu Xi and they're trying to make something happen. You can get your own Nest of Bees and cannons.

The Camel Archers' camel support aura provides plus two armor against Zhuge Nu. It's going to be an absolute nightmare for the Zhuge Nu to fight even against unarmored units.