11:40
The way he says it makes me feel concerned for HRE.
They are probably going to have very expensive uber-knights as well as some other very strong, expensive UU’s. Not sure how that will play out, but interesting.
1 Like
Probably similar to the Teutonic Order civ from Age of Chivalry Hegemony. High armor, hp and damage, slow unique units. supported by generic or below average light troops. they might also have a mounted armored monk. i’m guessing their siege will be decent. They might get a defensive bonus, and will probably have a relic bonus maybe a monk carrying a relic into battle to inspire nearby units.
They are 100% screwing over the HRE with this new variant civ. And then when we complain about it here people gonna be like:
“But you just got 5 hp increase on your landsknecht!”
1 Like
Why do you think so?
I think order of the dragon will make hre op i got a feeling like that
Technically the Order of the Dragon isn’t the HRE, you play one or the other.
Yes, in the menu you choose the main civ or the civ variant…the HRE will continue as now…the Order of the Dragon will have unique Aragonese, Magyar and Balkan units…
how do you know the units do you have a leak
Analyzing a little, the history of the civ and seeing which AoE 2 units could return here…
The Order flourished during the first half of the 15th century, primarily in Germany and Italy. After Sigismund’s death in 1437, its importance declined in Western Europe. However, after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, it continued to play a role in Hungary, Serbia and Romania, which bore the brunt of the Ottoman incursions. The Prince of Wallachia Vlad II Dracul, the father of Vlad the Impaler, took his name from the Order of the Dragon.
| Active | 1408–16th century |
|---|---|
| Countries |  Kingdom of Hungary |
_(Border).svg){kind=small} Kingdom of Croatia |
|
 Holy Roman Empire |
|
 Wallachia |
|
 Moldavia |
|
 Crown of Aragon |
|
 Serbian Despotate |
|
 League of Lezhë |
|
 Second Bulgarian Empire |
|
| Allegiance | Holy Roman Empire |
 Holy See |
2 Likes
It’s up.
4 Likes
Some thoughts on OotD and HRE based on what we can see now:
I actually feel like OotD offers way less new stuff than the other variants. Sure, all the units are twice as good approximately, but also cost accordingly. I guess it’s fair in the end and will lead to a new style of gameplay. Cool so far. But what else is there? It looks very uninspired and equally limited like the original HRE. The lack of marching drills is a big issue, the eco growth is rather slow due to the vil build time and getting relics with slow ass monks will be tough. There is probably not even a point in going Regnitz anymore. There is nothing for prelates, no improvement for inspired warriors (although I can imagine it to be better for OotD than HRE). Ayyubids, however, get on top of a lot of really innovative stuff also new monks with a relic use ability. HRE is supposed to be centered around religion, but aside from the villager effect in the original civ, there is not really a lot that justifies that or it is getting less special with all the new stuff for the other civs in the DLC. OotD does not even have improved healing, which would make sense for a 2 pop per unit army. Healing units will take forever. There is just nothing new, it feels like. They took the original civ, doubled the pop and res costs as well as stats for the same units, removed the prelate as a unique unit tbh and called it a day.
I think OotD will have more problems than anybody would have anticipated. It’s HRE with the same limitations, some buffs and some nerfs. I am not saying I hate it, but it sure feels like as if HRE as well as OotD have gotten the least innovative treatment of all the civs and will both have a tough time to actually get relics; OotD especially. There are two notable landmark changes, the rest is meh or not changed at all. There is just so much more stuff for Ayyubids and Zhu Xi, while Jean D’Arc is almost like French with a weaker eco, but a lot of gimmicks that I think are a bit much. You get a full new playstyle with new unique units and techs on top of almost the original French civ (maybe original French won’t be really seen anymore). 66% ranged dmg reduction on a 800+ hp unit (a girl that couldn’t really fight actually) with bonkers siege dmg (ignores armor and looks stupid on a horse) and strong buffs for the units around her, is hella hard to kill, while that is exactly what you should aim for as an opponent.
I almost feel like that HRE is a liability for Relic, since they can’t figure out how to be innovative with them. I love the new looks of the gilded units, but damn… Everything else feels like it’s getting old quickly.
Nothing innovative for the religious part of both civs, the original and the variant, is really getting to me. Beasty’s OotD yt vid is also the shortest, because you actually go through everything that’s different or new quite quickly. I am a bit disappointed when I compare the innovation and thought that was invested into HRE as well as OotD to the other civs.
This is not a balance complaint, since I can’t really judge that part, but a complaint regarding the level of love and thought distributed to the OotD compared to the other new civs. The only thing that has seen some real love is the unit design imo. Especially the knights and halberd Landsknechte, they look great.
And there are bugs. Imperial gilded archers lose .5 tiles range. They have 5 instead of 5.5. And dragon handcannons have no attack animation as you can see in Beasty’s yt vid.
1 Like
They chose a rather meaningless order that has very weak and vague ties to the HRE. If anything, this tells me they struggled to come up with a variant for HRE to begin with.
From what I’ve seen, all of these variants simply seem like better or more fun versions of the originals, without actually doing anything really new. They mostly reuse mechanics, but taken up a notch–like condensed versions of their original. ZXL has so many core elements that represent Chinese identity, yet does them better and in a more intuitive way. Sure, China exists as a different civilization. But, the takeaway is that it feels more like a relic than a different civilization. Like an old, patched out version of ZXL.
Variants as an idea were meant to break away to create something new. Yet, they couldn’t find the gall to actually make something new. Their requirements tied them too closely to original civilizations. Variants had to somehow exist within or be part of the original civilization, they had to speak the same language, they had to be of the same peoples and not represent another; all of these things meant that variants could never be its own thing.
So this is the end result. Variants are pretty much the same civilizations, set to a different playspeed. Whereas Abbasid is economical and slow, Ayyubids are aggressive and fast. While that makes them play different, most of their mechanics are pretty much the same, except Ayyubids comes out seeming more realized and having their “fun” design units be more significantly tied to their gameplay.
Take that and do it with the HRE, who barely had mechanics to begin with, and you end up with a variant that had to stand out in a different way. The stronger units concept is frankly just a lazy one. The cognitive load argument does not hold up, for it does not matter whether you have 30 or 5 units in your third command group; the end result is that players will be having multiple groups regardless–and in fact, should likely be even so more attentive to their Gilded units, because losing one is far more punishing.
So, it ends up just looking like an attempt at trying to make a civilization feel different rather than actually make them different. And considering that it isn’t different, in that, it is the same roster of units, it ends up feeling entirely artificially designed. I think what leaves a bad taste in my mouth even more is the fact that this weak concept of a civilization is what caused them to break consistency, and make gigantic units.
Also, this is the civilization that made them break the format where units have a “baseline” of stats. For example, not knowing Chinese, you could still guess their Archers cost about 30 food and 50 wood, have 70 health and deal 5 damage in Feudal. You would know “unique” variants of it would differ slightly. But, Gilded units? They’re all over the place, and I have to learn that now. It isn’t a big deal, but honestly? For a civilization that offers such a weak design idea, I kind of hate having to even considering it to be a real civilization, that is actually in the game. Honestly, I still think they belong in custom games.
2 Likes
I agree with most of what you say. The logical HRE variant would have been the Teutonic Order. There would be so much stuff that could be added from religious play to new unique units like Ritterbruder, Mönchsritter, Teutonic Knight, unique relic play, Marienburg as a landmark and so on. The Teutonic Order army was formidable and consisted of highly trained soldiers that were inspired by relics carried into battle (that’s an actual fact). They could have implemented the coolest designed units and still gone with the quality over quantity aspect. I really do not understand why the Teutonic Order was not chosen as a variant.
Other than that I completely agree that the new variant civs either turn the basic civs around by shifting their core strenghts or/and do a lot of things better than the originals. Seriously… Why would you ever wanna play French again, if you can play the dota Jean D’Arc version that has everything and more except drop off building discounts and faster vil production? Similar with Zhu Xi, which also seems so much more refined in what it is than the Chinese civ. With Abbasids it’s a bit different, because they are already a civ that offers somewhat everything, but are tied to a rather boomy playstyle. It’s hard to make a variant that offers more in a different aspect aside from shifting from boom play to aggressive play. But with HRE and the OotD it is the worst. I think lazy, and I mean that with no disrespect, is the best word to describe the design of both civs. There are tons of things that could have been done but were and are slept on.
I need to test this stuff for myself once we all are able, but so far I am rather disappointed. Especially when it comes to the OotD. You have a slower eco, but better units. The rest is more or less the same limited stuff, and sometimes even more limited than the original civ. Yeah, I am talking about the religious play. Heals and religious specialities are thrown around left and right, but the two civs that are more or less centered around that have absolutely sad mechanics in that regard. The prelate is in fact just a monk and one of the worse ones when it comes to using them with military. This annoys the living heck out of me.
2 Likes
I feel like OotD is a complete trash civ. Especially when it comes to lategame. With a full eco, which doesn’t have any unique upgrades, so you need around 100 to 120 vils to be on par with other civs and a bit of siege for maybe 15 to 21 pop, you can have around 30 units… And those units, while much stronger, do not justify 2 pop per unit in lategame. Cataphracts are almost on gilded knight level and cost only 1 pop. OotD will be completely useless in lategame.
OotD is not well designed, I fear. Aside from all the reduced options they get for the quickly mentally exhausted… You need unique castle age or imp upgrades for eco, so you don’t need as many vils to have lategame not be a complete disaster. You need some kind of passive income, because Relics are much harder to get for them and trade is also the worst it can be. And you need an imp tech to reduce pop cost for some units, which are simply not worth 2 pop in lategame like spearmen, archers, maybe crossbows and MAA. They are still expensive af, so that offsets their stats already. It’s just pointless with that little pop to even try to compete in lategame. Because in lategame with a full eco, what are you supposed to do with 30 units? 10 knights, 5 MAA, 5 crossbows, 5 handcannons and 5 Landsknechte. You can’t fight on multiple fronts with that, you can’t stop raids, the infantry units are very slow, you lock yourself into one or two strenghts, while the opponent can just go for the full counter to that and erase you. The whole concept is flawed. I have been watching so many videos and streams to feel confident to form an opinion of this sort. I am sick rn, so I watched so much I’ve gotten a headache from that.
There is so much over the top new stuff in the DLC, which is outright broken. The units of OotD do not offset all the synergetic stuff other civs have in lategame, I am very sure. And if you can have 2 cataphracts vs 1 Gilded knight, the whole math doesn’t work out at all. 510 hp, 35 dmg, 9/8 or 9/9 armor, special abilities and one pop vs 554 hp (I think), 43 dmg, 10/9 armor, a meh charge tech and 2 pop. OotD has gotten zero innovation, was even reduced in somewhat everything HRE has, which is a feat in itself, since HRE is already very one dimensional and boring, has pathetic religious play and everything else is just one soldier acting as two. That’s it. The crossbow special tech also seems completely useless once the opponent gets the siege armor tech. And why is Fire Stations, the most useless tech in the whole game, still a thing? Relic doesn’t know what to do with HRE and keeps making them a joke compared to other civs.
The Japanese Buddhist monk reduces enemy dmg by freaking 50% for ONE minute. That ruins the whole concept of OotD alone. How are you supposed to fight a whole army of attack blocking samurai, broken Ozutsu, all the bannermen buffs with a crippled handful of units? How is that supposed to work out? And don’t get me started on the freaking town center rockets. That this is broken as hell is obvious.
Why is the Cataphract the strongest and most pop efficient knight in the game, when better weapons, armor and training from the late medieval ages to the Renaissance were not even available to the Byzantines? I hate this. The French knight is a freaking Kindergarten child compared to an archaic Cataphract from the 10th century that used fucking chainmail and not plate. They have way too much access to gunpowder although they historically didn’t have any, because they were too poor to get it. 200 years of decline does that to you. They can flood you with oil units, which is a free extra resource. They can easily mass Streltsy and just spit on many other civs, because they can build their units and have them fully upgraded as well. The trade off of contract choice doesn’t even really matter.
This is a balance nightmare. And OotD is by far the least innovative, least thought through and eventually least powerful new civ. I don’t get the whole cognitive overload stuff. It doesn’t make any sense, if the opponent has so many more units and can attack you on several fronts. The lack of pop will freaking melt your cognitive abilities, because you can’t react to what’s going on. This game wants to be competitive, but now has total gimmick civs that are just a joke for ranked games. OotD concept as well as the Jeanne D’Ark dota nonsense does not work for a rts like AoE.
I know, I know… “Wait for the full release”… Yeah, sure… But some things are already so blatantly obvious, it’s crazy. And then it’ll take months to get new patches that never adress the broken stuff all at once. It’ll take half a year to balance this stuff out and I am not even confident that this will be a thing.
Just look at HRE. The civ stagnates for almost a year now, while all the other civs have seen some kind of progress. You can do so much with HRE and a potential variant of this civ, but there is nothing. It’s just sad. And due to my professional background, HRE/OotD are the only civs that I really want to main, while I dabble in the other civs at best. This DLC seems to focus on sensationalism rather than reason and a nice balance between civ depth and identity.
Edit: After 10 minutes with a no bonus to vil production civ you have +30 villagers. For OotD it’s +25 (60 food, 24 sec vil production time). 25% of 25 is 6, so OotD is somewhat on par with a civ that has zero bonus to it. The 24 seconds makes the whole eco idea of the civ irrelevant. The bonus for OotD is actually pretty lackluster and not worth talking about. It’s terrible to be honest. The slow eco kills the civ, the 2 pop for every unit ruins their lategame and the lack of mechanics and options make them feel like a half baked stepchild. It’s so sad that the HRE variant receives the same uninspired or even worse treatment like the parent civ.
Edit 2: Another thing to consider: While the production time is 4 seconds longer for OotD vils, those are 4 seconds less gather time. If you add that up to 10 minutes, then there is a total of 2.5 minutes gather time missed compared to a 20 second vil production time. 600 seconds / 4 = 150 seconds = 2.5 minutes. 2.5 minutes in which other civs with 20 sec vils can gather, while the OotD has to wait for their vils.
It’s bad.
They are the different colour armored HRE just that
2 Likes
Yes. And even worse than HRE. The concept of the civ does not work.
1 Like
How is Order of the dragon bad late game?
Seems more like the opposite. They have 25% more gathering rate on all villagers but they cost the same pop. Dragon villager cost only 1 pop.
Early game its not much different because of increased cost. But late game you have same number of villagers as other civs but yours are a lot better.
Units that are 2x the cost and x2 hp are a lot better than 2 of the regular unit. Because the big one still deal damage below 50% hp instead of half damage. Melee units don’t get stuck behind the other ones and can all attack. And they are a lot easier to heal or inspire if you add prelates. Also their train time isn’t that much longer than regular units so you need less barracks early.