I like the majority of your ideas, but most importantly I very much agree with you. I have opened a thread a while ago focussing solely on the state the HRE is in right now, because I noticed in the beta already that this civ was just unfinished and lacks so much uniqueness, identity and working mechanics. As you’ve put it they simply do not have anything going for them except MAA. They have no lategame, the civ actually ends in castle age. They also have the worst cav in the game and so much about them just doesn’t make any sense. Esp. the Landsknecht was desgined in a completely wrong way which does not at all display the role he had in the battle field. They made him into an auxiliary wimp, when he was the elite core of actually any renaissance army, but esp for the Habsburgians. That is also why he should be an age IV unit, leaving space for a new unique unit in castle age. And that should be the Ritterbruder, a heavy cavalry unit of Teutonic Order descent that excels in survivability and melee. It should either be an upgrade for the knight or a completely new unique unit which would have to differ from the knight in a way or two.
The focus of the HRE should be plate and Religion in castle age, garnished with the anti armor and anti cavalry abilities of the Landsknecht in imperial and rounded up with some lategame techs including gun powder stuf and maybe further focus on religious military support.
In the future there would be room for another unique unit: The Black Rider. He could be a reasonably armored cavalryman with a gunpowder charge from range that has a cooldown (10 or 15 seconds, like knight charge) and some melee capabilities during that cooldown. There could be a tech called “Caracolla” which would reduce the cooldown of the charge for example. And if that is all too complicated, he could simply be a ranged rider with a pistol. It doesn’t make any sense that in AoE 4 the HRE only ranges until 1517. Because of Luther or what? The Reformation was not its end, but merely a hickup. The HRE existed for around 1000 years if you call Charlemagne its founder and it ended around 1806 with Napoleon.
Here the link to my thread: