Alternative design of the HRE Aachen Chapel

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I think with the recent change the devs want to make HRE stronger in feudal by giving them more resource to work with in early game. However, this change also make the fast castle timing earlier and FC harder to stop, which gives HRE players less reason to fight in feudal.

If the devs find the current HRE castle timing to be too fast, I suggest changing the Aachen Chapel to work like this:
The player can garrison infinite amount of prelates inside, every prelate can only inspire 8 units like they’re outside of the Chapel but have infinite casting range. This change prevents the Aachen Chapel from doing the work of multiple prelates in early game thus slow down the castle timing while still allowing it to scale in lategame. It would also encourage HRE players to make more prelates in early game and give the Meinwerk Palace more early military advantage compared to the Aachen Chapel.

2

It will not be clear which peasants the prelates will buff. Well, late game it will snowball if they don’t have the buff range. It will be possible to mine deer, boars and gold at the other end of the map, with a full buff, without fear of losing the prelate.

HRE try not to fight in the feudal era, because if they get stuck in it, they will have problems with food. Farms are expensive and external sources can be easily blocked by more aggressive factions.
Their man at arms is the only thing they can do against other factions, but in the feudal age they suck and cost a lot of food. HRE will not be able to produce a lot of them without problems in the feudal era, so it would be possible to transfer the improvement to two-handed weapons in the feudal era. This will allow the small force that the HRE can afford to operate with any degree of efficiency.
However, this can lead to an even earlier man at arms rush by those players who are good at micro, and will be able to control additional sources of food.
In general, a difficult question.
I would think, if I were the devs, how to make it easier to get HRE food from safe sources, but in a way that doesn’t lead to an even bigger snowball in the late game. That’s just how to do it?

PS :I HRE man.
translated from google

3

I agree that it might be too strong in late game, but that can be solved by putting range limit on the Chapel.

HRE actually have the 2nd easiest farm transition after English if both your woodline and your farms are inspired. Even more so if your woodline is covered by Chapel.

After the buff I think HRE is also capable of fighting in feudal. Delhi only has generic units in feudal but they’re still strong in feudal. HRE don’t have the berries bonus but with the recent buff they should have enough early military force to be able to take some map control and gather food from deer.

4

yes, they can quickly transfer a tree to farms, but only if they are not interfered with, and if they are not interfered with, then they do not need farms. In the feudal era, no one needed farms except the English, the hre, and the Chinese. The Sultanate and Abbasids get food from the bushes and they have forces capable of controlling the map in the feudal era (for free, fully upgraded units in the forge with cheap scientists treatment, and camel shooters, respectively), the French will also pinch the enemy at the base and will get food from any sources on the map, spending less resources on mills. Russia has recently been using professional scouts, the Mongols have sheep.

those who need farms:
The English (only because farms are cheap, they also extract much faster from them).
The Chinese (they can use starting bushes and sheep for quite a long time, as they get 1.5 more resources from them, and this is most often enough for a “painless” transition to farms.

It remains only HRE who need to get an extremely large amount of wood in order to somehow get food under pressure from the enemy. Yes, they do it quickly, BUT, the rest don’t do it at all. You need to spend 225 wood on farms just to produce peasants without interruption, without barracks, soldiers, towers and so on. During this time, some French will get resources for another knight, which will bring much more benefits than the forced construction of farms.

The only thing that this change of the chapel will give is that the forge (as it is there) will no longer be taken at all (as in principle it is now) and it will give an insane boost in resource production in the late game. HRE doesn’t need it, she has enough resources in the late game, and she is one of the best in the late game, she just lacks a unit that can stop Rusi’s strelets and she will be the most powerful.

Changing the chapel like this will also not slow down HRE in the feudal era, as 2-3 prelates will be enough. this will slow them down by a maximum of a minute. This is not enough to make HRE seriously fight in the feudal era. You can watch the records of the battles, where they do without a chapel and how the prelates act there. By putting them in such a chapel, they will not be able to control and point to a specific resource. So in the feudal era there will be more minuses than pluses.
translated from google

5

With this design the Chapel will prioritize closer vils like the prelate does so you can control what to inspire by popping out prelate and move them to the resource you want to prioritize.

HRE can use pro scout as well. MarineLord do it a lot. HRE can also get deer at the beginning of the game and take much more food from it before enemy force arrives compared to other civs due to holy inspiration.

Slowing HRE feudal by 1~2 minutes is a lot, fast castle is usually done with Chapel because the Chapel allows 1 prelate to function as multiple prelates. With my proposed design the Chapel is weaker in feudal but scale better in lategame. With the current design the Meinwerk Palace doesn’t make sense if you can cover 3 resource with Chapel. With my proposed design the Meinwerk Palace gives you an relative military advantage in late feudal to mid castle while Chapel doesn’t have much benefit in early game if you can micro your prelates well.