Boosting HRE Landmarks

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Dear AoE4 Developers,

I would like to raise a discussion about the current state of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) and suggest a few changes that could improve both its performance and overall gameplay experience.

At the moment, HRE has one of the lowest win rates, and it feels increasingly difficult to play effectively. I was disappointed with the most recent patch because the main buffs target the Imperial Age. In reality, HRE’s biggest challenge is reaching that stage consistently. The civilization relies heavily on a strong Fast Castle strategy, which has become much harder to execute in the current meta.

I believe the issue is not the late game itself, but rather the value and impact of HRE landmarks throughout the game.

Aachen Chapel

The Aachen Chapel functions as a religious landmark, similar to a church or monastery. Because of this, I find it strange that it cannot train Prelates.

Other civilizations, such as the Tughlaq dynasty, can use comparable landmarks to produce religious units before reaching Castle Age. Allowing the Aachen Chapel to train Prelates would provide HRE with additional flexibility and reduce its dependence on the Town Center.

My preferred solution would be to allow Prelate production directly from the Aachen Chapel starting in Feudal Age. This would create a mechanic similar to how the Chinese can train Imperial Officials from their landmark, while also fitting the historical and thematic role of the Aachen Chapel.

Burgrave Palace

The charge attack bonus is a welcome addition, but it does not address the landmark’s core issue.

The Burgrave Palace encourages MAA production, but maintaining continuous production in Fast Castle strategy is extremely difficult. Players quickly run out of food, and sustaining full production often requires around 40 villagers on food, which is unrealistic at that stage of the game.

Without a large farming economy, production stalls. At the same time, without Men-at-Arms on the field, HRE struggles to gain map control for the food. This creates a lose-lose situation.

To address this, I would suggest one of the following:

  • Reduce the food cost of units produced through the Burgrave Palace by 10–15%.
  • Alternatively, reduce the production bonus from the equivalent of 5 Barracks to 4 Barracks (400% → 300% production speed), while compensating with lower resource requirements.

This would make sustained production more realistic and allow the landmark to fulfil its intended role without overwhelming the player’s economy.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the weakest aspect of HRE is not its unit roster but its landmarks. Compared to other civilizations, those HRE landmarks often do not provide enough immediate impact or strategic flexibility.

The civilisation would benefit greatly from landmark-focused improvements that strengthen its early and mid-game without creating balance issues in the late game.

I would be interested to hear what the community thinks about these suggestions. If you have additional ideas for improving HRE, please share them in the comments.

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I also think that the Landmarks are a problem, but in opposition to your take. I think they are too defining for the civ. They enable the civ, make it work. Outside of the Landmarks there is not much civ left. It’s all about early eco bonuses, tempo and Landmarks to then end up fighting with boring generic units that nobody needs to be afraid of.

I’ll post here what I wrote somehwere else as well:

Imo Aachen needs to become a different kind of Landmark and Burgrave as well as Swabia need to change, too. The Burger and imp rushing should simply be stopped. It’s been like that for 5 years now and it is lame and boring. It also seems to deny any proper changes and additions to the civ, because this university stuff and the inspired warriors nerf were not needed at all. If anything, inspired warriors should increase dmg by more, not by less (the Abba army buffs are significant and they all affect bonus dmg as well, but IW was nerfed and has also always ignored bonus dmg). It’s the worst mechanic in the game by far and therefore should be rewarding. But this IW now is almost useless. 10% is just not good enough. Especially with that poor roster and in comparison with other buffs and their braindead easy qol.

The civ needs to also be something outside of Landmarks and Landmarks shouldn’t be so decisive for the civ as they are. Landmarks need to be impactful, but they shouldn’t decide everything about the civ. For HRE, this is unfortunately the case and it sucks. And there is absolutely no fun to have with the HRE army. In imp you always have the worse army, no matter the opponent. Your towers and keeps are your best units. Together with the basic culverin. And it’s so boring to play.

Without Burgrave this civ would have a winrate below 40%, since this stupid Landmark is the only reason why HRE hasn’t fallen off even further. But winning by massing MAA in castle age is just such a waste of time and good gameplay. It sucks to win like that and it sucks to play against it. It shouldn’t exist the way it is. Aachen, Burgrave and maybe also Swabia probably need to be changed in their function and then HRE can finally get nice things and be a fun civ. Maybe Swabia could even become an Age III Landmark and Burgrave becomes the Age IV version. I don’t know, I also do not like the idea of an Age III TC too much, so it could maybe become something entirely different.

HRE needs a fundamental change or it will never be touched by anyone anymore except some Burger rushing nerds that never do anything else with this civ. Which is another reason why Burger simply needs to go. I have always disliked this Landmark. I think it is really terrible for the gameplay and the way HRE is played or can be played.

I am not sure about swapping Burgrave and Swabia, that was just a random idea. And I like your Burgrave idea, but I would even go further. Imo the production bonus should be a lot less, but global and the discount as well. It should have a long term effect, if you fail to get Regnitz relics. Here are some ideas for the Landmarks.

Regnitz should also always do something, while still focused around Relics. Maybe it should be able to produce up to three relics (for a high price of maybe 500 food, wood and gold or smth like that) or allow villagers that gather around it to generate gold, a mechanic which would be called Sales of Indulgences. It would be very historically accurate. Maybe every monastery should be able to do that, once they are cistercian. And then the gold bonus for Relics from Regnitz could be removed, but the Sales of Indulgences then scale with Relics (only for Regnitz, though, but the Relics do not have to be inside of Regnitz). It would look like this:

Without Relics Regnitz/Monasteries generate 1 gold per 10 seconds per inspired villager that works a farm. That’s 360 gold per minute on 60 monastery inspired farms. So this would also be achievable, if you go Burgrave and build cistercian monasteries with farms. (Regnitz would allow for quicker acces, but would still be very reliant of Relics. So the Relic production could still be a thing as a unique mechanic for Regnitz. Maybe it could produce only one Relic then.)

With Relics, however, the gold generation bonus per villager for Regnitz alone is increased by 0.5 gold per Relic. So with 5 Relics you’d get 1 + 2.5 = 3.5 gold per Regnitz inspired villager every 10 seconds. If you have 20 farms around Regnitz and 5 Relics, you would get 420 gold from villagers and 400 from 5 relics, while 40 other monastery inspired farms would give 40*6=240 gpm. Eventually it would be more potent for HRE on 5 relics than it is in the current version of the game, but the gold bonus would have to come a much longer way and wouldn’t be as immediate. It would also heavily rely on the villager count, similar to English, but still different. That way HRE wouldn’t be so explosive with their gold generation and build up slower, so they could then have better units that give the civ more identity and are also more accurate and useful.

Aachen could be changed completely as well. It doesn’t area inspire anymore, but allows the production of Prelates and reduces costs of TCs by 25%.That way Meinwerk would offer some distinct bonuses for the army, while Aachen would be the feudal boom landmark, but with less tempo than currently.

Swabia still reduces age up costs, but the villager production bonus is halfed, while their costs remain as low as they are now. Addtionally Swabia increases trade efficiency by 15%.

These changes would leave a lot of room for several additons or even reworks:

  • Keeps could get a tech that allows TK production and improves inspired warriors further (increases duration by 50% to 90 seconds). The TK would make a lot of sense for HRE, as I layed out in my other topic. He would definitely make more sense for HRE than for KT.
  • In castle age you could add Riveted Chainmail back in and have it increase hp by 10 and armor by 1/1 for all human units.
  • There could be a new imp tech called Fervor that increases attack speed the more hurt a unit is (similar to fanatism).
  • Landsknecht could finfally be an imp only unit with much better stats, so he is actually a strong imp unit. There could be Doppelsöldner and Landsknecht Arquebusiers as well, there could be synergies and bonuses in formation. Or you simply take the old Landsknecht and make him a unit that is worth 100 gold and that is respected by every civ. Because rn this unit is not to be taken seriously by anyone.
  • The Black Rider should become a powerful unit that is accessible and has distinct bonuses. It could be an anti cav unit similar to the Dragoon in AoE3. It could take 50% dmg less from gunpowder and deal bonus damage to gunpowder and cav, while it is countered by Crossbows and spearmen alone, not by Camels and not by gunpowder (HCs, Janissaries).
  • Inspired Warriors could be buffed by adding Archbishops as units. They are mounted, tanky buff units and you can build one per age starting in Castle age. They have an inspired warriors aura and inspired warriors should be reverted back to 15%. For the aura, you need to have inspired warriors researched. The Archbishops are costly, but powerful, so without inspired warriors they would just be strong units with a build limit of 2.
  • Concave Lens gets changed to “Archdiocese of Cologne” which increases the amount of Archbishops you can have by 1 and reduces their costs and is available as imp tech in monasteries/Regnitz. Eventually the HRE had three prominent Archbishops (Trier, Mainz and Köln/Cologne). Archbishop build limit would now be 3. That way the front line could be inspired by Archbishops, while a handful of Prelates are stil worth to have around for healing and keeping the back line buffed.
  • Elite Army Tactics becomes unique for HRE (Imperial Army Tactics, I took that idea from another post) and it increases dmg and hp by 20% instead of 15%.
  • The +30 pop from universities get removed again. It’s just useless.
  • Add a new tech to the siege workshops called “Feldschlange”. It allows Culverins to have some pierce through dmg or simply increases anti personell dmg for culverins.

I know that all HRE unique units would be imperial units then, because none of them would really fit the castle age. But I think that is okay, because the castle age can very well be focused around MAA that can be improved with the new (old) Riveted Chainmail, which also slightly improves all other units. So HRE would be solid enough in castle age, despite the loss of its tempo. And honestly, I’d rather take another hit to inspiration efficiency, if that meant the civ could finally get some more military strength and uniqueness. So if all these changes would require inspiration to be lowered from 35% to 30%, then I can only say do it. HRE needs fresh air and they need something that expands their design. This civ hasn’t really changed in 5 years and it continues to fall off. Something significant has to be done to it.

Let a man have dreams.

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I like your idea that the Aachen Chapel could produce Prelates; it makes sense.

Now, regarding the HRE, I feel that what could be done to improve the civilization in its Feudal period is to consider an “imaginary campaign” sometime before 1400, so as not to rely on Landsdnecht (Age III) in its design, or to better understand how they defeated other civilizations during the Feudal Age, if the goal is to boost this period with real historical aspects and not just temporary balance buffs.

I mean, the HRE fought against the Vikings, France, Poland, Bohemia, and Italy; there were the campaigns of Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II.

Well, after a lot of reading, I’ve seen that at least in the HRE, it’s “difficult” to give them more unique units in the feudal era, because before 1422, they didn’t have a standing army. Each of the more than 100 “mini-kingdoms” that made up the HRE sent militias, often poorly trained, and noble knights to war, but nothing more. In fact, the victories of Barbarossa and Frederick II seem to have been due more to “good logistics” and micromanagement (seriously) than to unique units or anything else. He also hired Brabancons, but these were mercenaries who also fought for the English and France, so they weren’t part of the HRE. The Ministerials do count, and I’ll talk about that later.

But they did give me some ideas:

  • Imperial Militia.- They could actually give them some mechanics, like Town Centers spawning Militia periodically to fight or as extra support, and you could use that support instead of “emergency repairs,” and both could share cowldown, so you decide whether you get free units periodically or free repairs.

  • Ministerials.- They were a class of heavy cavalry, slightly less armed than knights. Many nobles preferred to give their armor, weapons, and horses to serfs to fight for them, and they were given this title. They could be early heavy cavalry (II) that you summon specifically, perhaps with a limited number (X Town Centers) or through landmark technologies, like Meinwerck, which is supposed to be the military option of the Feudal Age, while the other is the economic boom that relies on you surviving until the 3rd Age without much protection.

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What do you mean by that exactly? The connection between England and the Holy Roman Empire was deep, but primarily dynastic, strategic, and cultural. Rather than a permanent political merger, they maintained a shifting, centuries-long alliance. Richard of Cornwall was the only Englishman who has ruled a constituent part of the HRE. He came into power in 1257 and is considered to be an exception.

The HRE did not have a standing army per se, but the Emperor could call upon the Reichsarmee, which were mixed armies from the various parts of the empire. Unique units are not necessarily HRE specific, but also regional. The Black Rider for example comes from the Northern parts of Germany and especially Saxony, while the Landsknecht could be recruited from anywhere in the HRE.

There are some options for the medieval era of the HRE:

  1. Ministeriales (Dienstmänner) as you already mentioned: The backbone of medieval HRE armies. Originally unfree peasants or bondsmen, these men were granted land and administrative authority in exchange for military service. They served as elite, heavily armored cavalry and eventually evolved into a class of recognized lower nobility (knights).
  2. Feudal Levies (Heerbann): Under the feudal system, the empire’s dukes, princes, and counts were obligated to supply the Emperor with set numbers of troops based on the size of their territories. These levies consisted of both mounted knights and local foot soldiers.
  3. Urban Militias (Bürgerwehren) which would go in the direction of what you called Imperial Militia: Free Imperial Cities (Reichsstädte) were required to defend themselves and contribute to imperial campaigns. They raised militias composed of armed citizens (craftsmen and merchants) and often hired local mercenaries to patrol their walls and fight in regional conflicts.
  4. Imperial Knights (Reichsritter): Independent nobles who swore loyalty directly to the Emperor rather than a regional duke. They fielded small, heavily trained regional contingents, acting as a rapid-response force for the empire.
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What a mistake by the google translator… many times this translates of HRE into many stupidities even when I didn’t mean to (HRE: Holy Roman Educated, Human Rights Exercises, Hungarian Roman Elite, Horse Radish Extortion). This time was the worst.

Also, it’s not related, but the only reason England didn’t try to annoy the HRE during the Middle Ages was because they both had borders and conflicts with France, and therefore, “The enemy of your enemy is your friend,” or at least a potential ally.

On the other hand, I think you should focus the discussion on improving landmarks. If we’re going to look at unique units, perhaps we should start a different topic; otherwise, I think we lose cohesion.

I gonna make one in some minutes, maybe 1-2 hours, be patient.

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Alright, gotcha.

Yes, definitely. You are right about that.

I am, no worries. Don’t stress yourself. :slight_smile: