How to beat
Byzantineas French
Matchup tips
You need like 20 archers to one shot limitani with the shield wall up.
Javelins against archers is never what you want to take as the French.
The knights with Royal Bloodlines will tank so well against these Limitanei, especially if they have shield wall up, which reduces their attack speed.
This matchup, Byzantines once they get to like 40-50 villagers, that's where the percentile scaling really starts to catch up to French. But early on, French have momentum because they're ahead in workers raw, and they have cheaper discount upgrades, and they play out for very valuable resources early on like the deer.
Byzantines can actually afford to be later on techs than other civs because of how quick they get them with the Dialecticus. Instead of waiting a whole minute, it gets hit in 25 seconds.
Byzantines have percentile scaling, so for French to gain an advantage they need early villager kills, since the percentage bonuses are less valuable if the villager count stays low.
Against Byzantines, opening archers instead of knights can be effective: archers can kill Limitanei as they come out without needing to micro knights.
If you're not trading with the javelins whatsoever, eventually the count is going to be so massive that you cannot fight into it. The javelins scale a lot more rapidly than archers do, so the longer you drag this out, the worse it's going to get.
Limitanei javelin is something that the French cannot really crack until men at arms and even then men at arms just feels like a weird choice for a French player.
Byzantines take a bit more time to get going, so as French you can safely go for early wheelbarrow against them.
French Arbalétrier counter Byzantine Limitanei, crossbows, and mercenaries, making them the dominant unit in the matchup.
Against byzantines, open with one knight and then go pro scouts. The knight forces them to expose their base and commit to Limitanei, enabling your pro scouts. Then just spam Knights and don't even build archers.
Pick Guild Hall against byzantines: it puts them on a clock because their cistern scaling is slow, while Guild Hall's resource generation accelerates your scaling considerably.
Byzantine Unique Units
Byzantine Landmarks
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