I know that at the time it’s considered the weakest civ, but still I think that it have potential, and I want to to try to master it.
Unfortunately, it’s not like I have that much time to spend on trying everything, and being not a straight forward civ, I struggle to find reliable BO.
I would like to know your experiences, and what you found that works, or have potential.
The way I play it, is to build a prelate in the age 1, then try to age up as fast as I can, with the chapel on the gold and TC. Then trying a fast castle with cathedral, with a bunch of prelate trying to get relics, protected by a couple of spears.
From then on usually, nothing works too well… I don’t know if it’s worth to go for a fast imp, or if on the countrary it’s better to go for an early MaA rush in the age 2?
I’m not also sure if I’m using the prelate correctly…
Here is what I do. This works pretty quick for me in getting to Feudal. I think there could be some improvements made, but it’s a start.
Start of game, send all your villagers to sheep (6 villagers).
Town center queue up in order: 1 villager and 1 prelate, followed by more 3-4 more villagers
Your first trained villager will build your first house.
After the house is built have the same first trained villager build a lumber camp.
Your prelate should have spawned by this point and have it hover over your 6 villagers gathering food from sheep.
Once lumber camp is built send villager to wood.
The second trained villager (after the prelate) send to wood.
At this point you should have 6 on food, 2 on wood, and 1 prelate hovering over food.
The next 2 villagers you train send to build a gold mine. Time your prelate to move to gold once 2 villagers begin harvesting gold.
Keep sending your villagers to gold until you have enough food and gold to upgrade to Feudal.
Have all workers on gold build your landmark to advanced to Feudal and return them to gold once complete.
I think with HRE, the 2 on wood works out really well.
It really is a mad dash to get gold ASAP because that’s what I’m often waiting for if I put too many villagers on food or wood.
Once in Feudal, you should have a enough workers on gold. This is when I turn my focus to food.
I personally like going the Aachen Chapel route. Don’t forget to garrison your prelate in this building. Build farms around this later game, but also strategically place this landmark near your gold and sheep harvesters.
Typically after feudal I’ll build a mill near deer. I’ll have the 6 villagers on sheep continue working, but my new villagers from here on is food and wood focused. I’ve been able to get a 9:45 Castle age time doing this.
Once I reach Castle age, I start training more prelates for relics, doing blacksmith upgrades, and marketplace with traders. After sheep are gone I move villagers to berries to save on wood. Once the berries are gone I then start on farms around the Aachen Chapel.
Playing this civ since launch it’s incredible the amount of food and gold you get with prelates inspiring your farms, collecting relics, and inspiring your wood villagers. You can really dominate with a large infantry. I’ve had games where it felt like I would never run out of resources with at least 3 relics, and plenty of farms that inspired by prelates. Running out of wood I guess would be the main concern depending on the map.
This is pretty much what I already do. Sometimes I queue up 2 vill before the prelate, but most of the time it’s just one.
This is were I do it differently. After the house, I send the vill to gold, since I already spent it on the prelate, and then the second it’s either on gold or wood, depending on the situation.
It’s hard to do it differently and age up quickly, since the prelate burn through your gold. Also, after having putting more vills on food, I switch the prelate to buff gold.
Is it enough to compensate though? I always have idle time when I do it that way, but maybe it’s because my micro isn’t on point.
You use the prelate to boost the build time too?
That’s ok, in fact, I add wood after gold for that reason, so that then they are buffed along with gold by the chapel.
This is also for a fast castle BO, right? Anyway I usually also spam prelates.
At least 3 for being ready to pick up relics (protected by spears) one for the chapel, and one for each resource out if the area of the chapel.
I usually skip berries, since the boosted farms seems to give me more food.
But still, any other civ either have boomed more, or have more army. Maybe I should go for a fast imp with palace of swabia, and a ton of vills on stone to build keeps and towers.
Still, I’ll try your BO next time, I’m tired of maining the French.
I would also like to try a MaA rush, but I’m stretched too thin in the age 1 and 2 between training vills, prelates and then MaA.
Also, I don’t know which landmark to choose. The chapel helps my already stretched eco, but the palace help me researching critical techs like marching drills and SE.
Another problem, is that with infantry rams are critical, and they cost a lot of wood, wood that often is delayed in favor of gold or food. And with MaA you can’t really annoy the enemy vills like with cavalry or archers.
I haven’t done the math or tested this on which is faster. In my head it makes me think that inspiring 6 villagers with that 40% speed is better than delaying it for that 1 more villager to be trained. I want that prelate as fast as possible. I suppose I would get the prelate first, but I’m thinking about that first house being built by the first villager. Again, I haven’t tested this.
I’m going to try this and see how it works out for me.
Yes
Yes
Once I reach FC I do the 3 prelates as well for relics, and another for wood. I find that I could always improve on using them more often on dead areas with no inspiration.
That sounds like a good approach I should try. I find if I do farms too early and I don’t have enough wood,
and then I’m housed trying to build houses when I’m out of wood.
Good stuff, I’ll try some of your strategies as well. Love me the tower and keep idea.
As for the prelate, you are right, buffing 6 vills of course get you more value overall. But I also found out that with almost all civs, 6 vills on sheep is more than enough at the start to keep vill production, at least for the first 4/5 vills, then I worry about piling up food for the age up.
Still, you might be right, if I buff the vills on sheeps then I can send more of the new ones to other resources. But it’s gold usually the resources that trouble me.
I also, tried to add more prelates in the age 1, but that doesn’t help, unless you are staying more on the age 1 and then build a landmark after another until you are in imp.
Yeah, adding prelates and spears in the age 2 slow you down, but I found out that this way I always have at least 2 relics assured before the first minute in the castle age, which with the cathedral is a lot of gold.
Probably though this depends by the enemy strategy…
Usually, I do sheeps into deers, then add vills to wood, and as the wood goes up, I gradually take out a vill from deers or wood to make farms. Or I put new vills on stragglers trees until they have wood for a farm.
I use berries only if they are close to deers or the chapel, or if I’m doing an all in and need the wood for rams.
Yeah that just a raw idea on paper, never tried it out, so good luck
first vill build a house, and with shift click a mining camp
prelate on the food vills
second vill on gold
third and fourth vills on a lumber camp
the remaining vills where are needed
when you are approaching the food cap for aging up, switch the prelate on gold
age up with the gold vills and the prelate with the palace (blacksmith) and keep 2/3 vills on wood, all the others on food (around 10, between remaining sheeps, berries and deers)
AGE 2
spam 2 barracks, then keep 4 vills on wood, 2/3 on gold, and every new vill on food
start massing MaA, mix in some spears if you are against a civ with early knights
research marching drills and then SE with the palace as soon as you can, and move on with your mass of MaA and your prelate, and start pressure with rams
AGE 3 and 4
keep adding vills on food and gold, maybe some prelates to go to the second age, and get your early relics as soon as you get to age 3, then maybe use your advantage to get to early imp with the palace of swabia
This is the usual timings. Feudal at 4:30. M@a at enemy base at 6:00-6:30. Ram at 8:30-9:00. This is not an all in build.
Villager #1-4 sheep
5 gold mine near gold
6 build house near gold then go to gold
Queue prelate then villagers. Prelate buff food villagers
7-8 food
9 gold
10-13 wood
14-15 food
Age up with gold villagers
16 help age up then go to gold after
17 barracks then food queue m@a when in age 2. Attack with m@a when you have 2 or 3. When fighting French or Rus queue spears instead maybe 2:1 ratio for m@a to spears. Move one gold villager to wood as well if fighting either.
I got mine from our Lord and savior Daut who likes playing HRE. 6 vills on sheep, prelate then vills. First 3 vills to gold (first one houses). Next 3 to lumber. Around 350 food, move 2 vills and the prelate from food to gold. If aachen won’t hit all my starting resources I often get a 2nd prelate. Also after moving prelate to gold after inspiring, I move him back to the sheep to inspire.
I usually build Aachen with 3-4 vills, and then do something based on my opponent.
I often try to fast castle but I always scout and build counter units. I rarely go early MAA, they are expensive and kind of a bait unless your opponent is all-in feudal. Horseman are still good vs low mass archers early, but 90% of the time I go spears and/or archers.
I usually try to be very defensive feudal and get barracks going as I age up to castle to fight for relics. HRE is probably the hardest civ to all-in in feudal as the emergency repairs make them basically immune to ram pushes.
In the transition between feudal and castle u can do diffrent strats like professional scouts vs english cause ur opend with stables.
I like 2-3 maas vs french to with spears to deff. They are gold dependend too and if ur harassing there gold the french dont have a easy counter to it or ur getting there knight attention.
While building the castleage the preplacing for some prelates at the reliq should be mentiont imo.
When ur lucky and got 3 relics u can consider fast imp or spam und push
On big multiplayermaps I nearly always go for a fast 2 TC after feudal starts. Only not the best in a close position ofc
early MAA trade very poorly vs early knights, they require the castle upgrade to be strong.
Also, you’re right about the prelates I often get a 2nd one in late dark age or early feudal if my aachen chapel isn’t hitting all my resources and I usually queue a couple more when I start building the cathedral.
I personally don’t usually go 2 TC as HRE, I usually greed pretty hard once I get the relics if I’m confident I won’t die, and try to get imp somewhat early for the palace of Swabia which is all the TCs you will ever need. (cheap imp that produces 4 vills for the price/time of one is so good, and you can re-boom from basically any raids.)
They dont win 1vs1 or value wise at this stage yes. But my only attention is to delay or even get some villager kills if its perfect. They will procud vill faster but ours are more valuebale cause of 40% more resc…
Im even planing often vs abbasid in 1vs1 a ram push with maa as standart. I want to get some dmg done and villager kills because they often wanna boom. Imo not enought players using the storing maa into ramms for this. Even with the TC focus change u can go in and do building dmg and can go out when the villager are coming and ur getting safe value.
The 2 TC is for 3s or 4s. You have to try it. With a prelate and 5 vills u can get all the stone u need in a 4 villager aachen chapel time and u need than only wood. After the rushed TC ur Chapel is realy safe from 2 TC with emergency repair and ur villager count is a huge multiplier that u shouldnt underrestimate. In bigger multiplayer matches are more relics so its not a fight for 3/5 and u can even build vills while build prelates cause of the second tc. Ur reaching imp range with 80 villagers. So u can use swabia to boost u to ur ideal 120 as good as normaly and reshresh all loses ofc
