[HRE] Suggestion for the devs: How to improve/change the HRE!

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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The HRE is a civ that has certain powerspikes, but all in all feels rather unfinished and like a one trick pony. If they don’t get relics, they are not competitive. They rely too much on one way to play and I intend to change that with my ideas. I try not to go too far overboard, but still feel the urge to change quite a bit, because the current state does not really convince me. I feel like there are only certain maps that are good for the HRE and one or two ways to play them. The first idea might be something for an expansion of the game as I doubt we will see completely new units via a patch. All the other ideas are working with what’s already in the game and aim to improve the gameplay for the HRE. Here we go:

  • [New Unit] The Ritterbruder: This is a unit that can only be trained in the monastery starting in age III. It has knight stats, but with +2/2 armor and +20 hp. It will have a seperate elite upgrade that’s not shared with knigths. On top of that the Ritterbruder has an aura that inspires nearby units. The aura radius could be 1 or 2 tiles (whatever feels okay) with an upgrade to increase radius by 1 more tile. The Ritterbruder is a bit sturdier than normal knights, but can improve other units. They cannot inspire themselves. Their costs should be somewhere around 175f and 175g. They need to be expensive. Their place on the battlefield is to improve the fighting abilities of mainly melee units.

  • [New Civ Bonus] Regnitz Cathedral does not give 300% gold for relics anymore, but instead the HRE in general gains 200% more gold from relics. This is a baseline civ bonus that comes without any landmarks and applies to monasteries, docks, towers and keeps. 5 relics would thus give you 1000 gold per minute, while 3 only give 600.

  • [New Regnitz Cathedral] The Regnitz cathedral can now garrison up to 9 prelates. Each prelate will gather 0.75 gold per viallager per minute. It’s called “sale of indulgences”. With 9 prelates garrisoned and 100 villagers, the Regnitz would give 675 gold per minute. It would give a slight gold tickle for castle age, but really starts to pay off in imperial age or late castle depending on your playstyle as it is a landmark for booming. The Regnitz will no longer be able to hold relics.

  • [New Burgrave Palace] The Burgrave Palace gets changed to: Build two non-siege military units for the price of one. This also applies to prelates. Ritterbrüder, however, would be excluded from this as they are a monastery only unit. With this landmark the HRE is able to apply castle age pressure and gains an advantage in collecting relics thanks to the cheaper prelates. The Brugrave Palace becomes weaker the longer the game lasts, but gives you an edge in castle age. While the Regnitz is for booming, the Brugrave is for a strong early castle age.

  • [New Meinwerk Palace] In addition to its current bonus, research time should also be decreased by 25%. On top of that allow 10 units to be garrisoned. Maybe also give it defensive capabilities of a non upgraded tower: It only shoots when units are garrisoned.

  • [New Swabia Palace] This is actually just a nerf in numbers. Make Swabia a little bit weaker. Increase villager cost and build time in that manner that Swabia counts as 2.5 TCs. I dunno how to nerf it exactly, just make it a little bit weaker.

  • [New Elzbach Palace] In addition to its current bonus the Elzbach Palace now also decreases the cost and build time for Keeps altogether by 25%.

  • [New Inspired Warriors] Prelates can still inspire (the Ritterbruder is an addition, not a replacement) military units after research, but the duration is increased by 100% to effectively 60 seconds. Inspired Warriors also improve attack speed by 15%. So: 15% more dmg, 15% more attack speed, 1/1 armor. Maybe make the 15% attack speed bonus an imperial age tech.

  • [Prelate] Increase inspiration range (both eco and military) by 1 tile in the imperial age. Make inspiration an auto cast option. Thus the prelate either heals or inspires and is not caught in the middle not knowing what his role is. Prelates and all other religious units except Warrior Monks should be excluded from the all-army command. It’s so annoying. If you want monks with your army, give them a group and do it that way. Or use the idle religious units key. In this manner it is easier to manage your army and you don’t pull units that are not supposed to be pulled. This change is very necessary for HRE and Delhi and the other civs would not be too sad about it either, I assume.

  • [Prelate, Monks, Scholars, Shamans…] Allow a-click healing and inspiring. Allow a-click healing for all the other civs as well except for the Warrior Monk. He should probably also get an autocast so he can be used as a pure healer if needed.

  • [New Benediction Tech] Increase building speed from 15% to 25%. In addition to that allow Prelates to move 25% faster as well. Prelates need to be able to move with the army and with 1 movement speed they are just a liability for a civ that is supposedly relying on them.

  • [Holding Relics] Prelates that carry a relic can now also mass inspire when using the relic conversion (wololo). All units in the area are inspired for 1 minute (30 seconds for villagers). The conversion has a 45 second cooldown. It would be a high risk/high reward mechanic for the HRE to use relic in the field.

  • [New Landsknecht] Landsknecht survivability should be in line with their cost and offensive abilities. Right now it is not. Landsknechte are trash. The risk is much higher than the reward. Their survivability should be worse than MAA, but better than Spearmen. Thus give them +40 hp (from 80 to 120. 150 on elite), increase their base armor by 1/1 and reduce their base damage by 1. In addition to that increase their base movement speed by 5%. They should be slightly faster than the spearman. After all they are an elite infantry unit. Their current state is disgraceful to say the least. They need improvements, they need to live longer. That way they are not countered by everything, but by their actual counters.

  • [New Culverins] Improve the culverin for all civs that have them. Just make it better. Or make everything else worse. The culverin is a joke unit right now. And also take a very close look at clockwork rapid fire long range chinese bombards. Clockwork is hands down op, you can’t win vs chinese when they have 950 hp bombards that kill everything. The Baochuan also needs to be looked at. There are too many techs that make this ship too strong. Grenadiers also need tuning. It looks terrible when they attack, you cannot comprehend what’s happening. But everything dies around them. Chinese late game is a whole different story, tho. This all is just a side note.

  • [Bugfix] I don’t know if it only happens when Inspired Warriors is researched, but prelates try to inspire towers to no avail and get caught in a loop. Same thing with mangonels, which do not get inspired, but the prelate keeps trying to and also gets caught in a loop. Also decide if HRE siege units can be inspired or not. Right now it only works for some units and I can’t say what is intended. It’s very weird in that regard.

  • [Bugfix] Add the missing coat of arms to HRE MAA and knights (and Ritterbrüder <3)

With these changes, the HRE would feel much more versatile and it would gain various options. Also mechanics and techs that are not being used due to being bad or useless would suddenly be a viable decision.

This is my original thread that contains many ideas for the HRE as well. Just make the HRE a more versatile and fun to play civ, please :slight_smile:

6 Likes
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HRE is a good civ, but it is true that you can balance the civ better without going crazy.

NERFS

Regnitz Cathedral: Lower the effectiveness of relics to 200% (from 300%) and have the ability to produce prelates.

Swabia Palace: Villagers at 25 food and 100% faster (instead of 300%). With that plus the few requirements to go up to Imperial, it seems correct to me.

BUFFS

Meinwerk Palace: Give a 30% discount on blacksmith upgrades (instead of 25%).

Landsknetch: Lower the price from 60f-100g to 60f-80g.

Burgrave: Let it work the same, but make units 25-30% faster.

That seems enough to me.

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And how or when will inspired warriors ever be a thing? There is much more at fault than what you listed up. It would be a good start, but all in all it would still not be enough. And I reeeeeeeaaaaaaally hate the fact that all the economic power of this civ comes from landmarks. Landmarks should be a decision, not a must.

A lower Landsknecht price also cannot convince. They were elite mercenaries, they are expensive. They just need to live longer. They simply cannot have a worse survivabiliy than spearmen. This unit is in a terrible spot and it is not their price. Their price is fine, the stats just aren’t.

And just compare inspired warriors to Saint’s blessing. One is trash, the other one is hella nice. The civ that is considered to be the Religion civ has the trash version that is not simply trash but also useless.

The HRE is one of the most bug ridden civs that has many wonky mechanics and after all the patches still feels user unfriendly. Relic obviously did not have enough time to design them correctly. But they should do it now.

Other than that the HRE will remain a civ that has more or less one way to play, is only viable on certain maps and has nothing cool or good except the MAA as all the other units are standard and inspired warriors is terrible. I want to play the HRE every game, but it is just boring. They offer way too little. Their limited options should not be overshadowed by the fact that they have 2 landmarks that define their playstyle while everything else is mediocre at best.

The HRE only has certain situations and maps in which they are strong. And if you don’t get relics or only 1, you can leave the game as you are not competitive in the longrun anymore. They rely too much on Regnitz and Swabia and lack the options.

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I agree HRE’s internal balance can be fixed without radical changes. The changes proposed here are almost like making a whole new civ, instead of fixing what HRE has right now.

Regnitz and Swabia are both very good, but some of the “nerfs” people are proposing are a little stark. The problem with those two Landmarks aren’t that they are imbalanced compared to other Civs (if they were, HRE would have a much better win rate). The problem with them are that they are “imbalanced” when compared to the other Landmarks HRE can get. With that in mind, I don’t think those two should get any major nerfs.

Like changing Swabia to 25 food villagers 100% faster? That is a major nerf to it, and I don’t think its warranted to make the Landmark a shadow of what it currently is. I think the food cost of Swabia should be changed to match Elzbach Palace, but I wouldn’t drastically change the numbers for its production that much.

What the faction needs the most is buffing the un-used Landmarks. Meinwerk Palace, for instance, is pretty much just used if you want to try some feudal age all-in, and even then its not great. Turn it into a defensive landmark ontop of being a blacksmith, and it could see some use I think.

Burgrave needs to offer some sort of discount in terms of cost or time of production. It allows you to produce 5 infantry at the same time, but those are normal cost infantry, produced at normal rates, and can only be purchased in batches of 5. This landmark pretty much just saves you from building a bunch of barracks, which isn’t that great. Maybe let it produce Infantry cheaper or quicker.

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There are 3 reasons why one Landmark is used too much (almost 100%) than another:

  • When a Landmark is completely useless and you have no choice but to use the acceptable one (Landmarks of Delhi and English of Feudal Age).

  • One Landmark overshadows another (which is not so bad) because it is strong or very strong (Swabia Palace, Steppe Redoubt).

  • One Landmark is OP and the other is useless (Chinese Clock Tower).

That it is true that Burgrave can improve a little to compensate for Regnitz, seems fine to me.

With the changes to Swabia, it would still be a very decent Imperial Landmark.

It is logical that a civilization that is OP in Mid/Late Game wins less than another that is OP or almost OP in Early/Mid, since before there is a Late Game, there is an Early and Mid. This does not mean that the Early game of a civilization cannot be balanced and that it is more compensated with the Late Game.

Regarding the OP’s comment about the price of the Landsknetch (or whatever it’s called xD), it would still be expensive (60f-80g), but more could be massed. The developers are supposed to have designed the unit to have low health. I also think the idea of ​​raising the HP is respectable.

P.S: The patch takes 6 days, let’s wait how the civilizations meta develops.

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I mainly want to change things that are underused, not in a good spot or simply annoying and wonky.

I want the economy not to be reliant on one landmark, but to offer a choice between booming and being aggressive. That’s what my Regnitz and Burgrave ideas are for. Meinwerk is supposed to play into the Burgrave, but would also be viable for a Regnitz approach. Esp. when there is no great spot for the Aachen. Swabia then would be the choice if you are behind economically or simply want to boom more, whereas Elzbach is the defensive option that really pays off if you want to turtle yourself in. It would work well with Regnitz as your are able to protect your viallgers better.

The prelate and inspiration buffs and changes are aiming towards the idea of using prelates in your army. Inspired warriors is never used, because it is terrible. That’s why I want to improve it by eventually increasing inspiration range in imp, improving prelate movement speed to match maa and increase the duration for military units while offering an autocast. That way it would be very much worthwhile to have prelates with your army as opposed to now where they are just a hinderance and not effective. I also want the HRE to have a military bonus from carrying relics with the army. The HRE needs a stronger personality altogether in playstyle and composition since almost all their units are just standard without a working inspired warriors tech.

The idea of the Landsknecht is fine, although I would have wished for a different design. However, to have him work like intended, he needs to be sturdier. For a trade off in damage, if necessary. He is simply too weak. When I win a battle I want to have Landsknechte still standing. They usually all die. Always. Because there is no counter needed for them as they die to literally everything.

This is the summary of my changes. The rest is the Ritterbruder idea, which is a dream of mine, and bug fixes as well as qol improvements.

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delhi being at the corner , yeah…

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“one of” (Post must be at least 20 characters)

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Well, it might look like designing a whole new civ, but actually it is just tweaking things that are already in the game but are too one dimensional or underused. Leaving out the Ritterbruder there would maybe be 2 techs that needed to be added to the civ. The rest is changing already existing stuff.

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I feel like if you are going to nerf one of the strengths of a civilization who is under-performing, they will need certain other buffs to make up for said nerf. Otherwise the under-performing civ will under-perform even more. Nerfing Swabia does help internal balance, but it does so at the expense of hurting its external balance as well, which I feel is more important. HRE’s lategame boom is pretty much THE reason the civ is able to win. If you look at winrates based on game length, HRE loses most games under 15 minutes, but wins most after. If you start to hurt that late game, you’ll end up with a Civ that just loses.

The example of making villagers cost 25 food at Swabia means they are twice as expensive, and making them produce at 100% instead of 300% speed means they are cranking out at a 3rd of what they currently do. This is a really massive nerf to the building. It will probably still be taken more than Elzbach Palace in its current form, but it pretty much gives up HRE’s big Imperial boom, with nothing to make up for it.

Increasing Swabia’s cost to match Elzbach Palace is a nerf that doesn’t go too far in the direction of actually damaging the civilization. Following that, Elzbach Palace should be improved somehow, although honestly I’m not sure in what way.

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I don’t want to damage the civilization, the opposite is the case. But I think a better inspiration mechanic for eco and military as well as better options for age 3 landmarks that allow for a more diverse approach to a certain situation is a good trade off for a slightly weaker Swabia. Going full boom would be viable. Rushing to imp would still be possible. And you could also play a 2 tc feudal boom, because you are not that reliant on getting relics anymore if you choose my new Regnitz that works well with booming. And maybe you can still snack a relic or 2. In my opinion there are many more ways to play the civ then without making a current playstyle impossible. I think the civ becomes way more interesting that way and has some late game prowess with the better inspiration mechanic. The Ritterbruder would just be the cream of the crop.

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lol come on dude get realz, they aint gonna redesign the whole thing and spend this much resources on this game at this point, none of those would ever happen.

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I dont think HRE is that bad like some people complain. Tho it is a bit boring, so to spice thing up may be HRE should be able to put relic in the Military buildings (including Burgrave palace), units produced from that building will have 5-10% more HP.

Burgrave palace should has a 20% cheaper costs (pay 4 to get 5 the units) or buff the trained units in some way.
Regnitz Cathedral will only yield 200% extra gold for each relics inside the cathedral, 150% gold for relics outside the cathedrals.
Palace of swabia starting bonus nerfed to vill costed 30 foods and produced 15 sec, but can garrison two relics to get the training time and the cost down.

I think these are small changes but could at least make more variety to its civ, and require more relic micro to where its needed.

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First of all thank u for all your work and passion. Thre HRE faction is needing some love in my opinion too.
Relic said that they dont want to nerf mongols by design so they have to step up other civs like HRE with more uniqness.

BUT I played now over 600 games with HRE and will comment to some points of ur posting were I dont agree on so pls dont be mad abaout it. Im apreciating it rly.

A new or usefull unique units is the right way to go but i dont thing that a cav unit is the right choice in AoE4. Because they are namened and desgined as a infatery civ so I thing it would be better to put the dev time into the landsknecht or a gunpowerder unit.

Im totaly against this!!!
Yes the regnitz is realy strong atm but i cant balance it with more slots out because u would undermine the aspect of HRE that u can store reliqs over ur 3 needed for regnitz into keeps and towers. This would cut the HRE uniqness even shorter and this isnt they way we want to go.

I realy like that idear

this is a good idea too. I suggestioned it in the HRE rant post last year too

again i agree and it was suggested last year.

A good choice if the LK isnt getting a rework with weapon switching.
I thing they should have a compareable movementspeed than spearman. If they would be faster they would screw up formations and they should drive in formation with spearman so a Statbuff would be the right choice.

Over all u did a good summary what is written in the HRE uniqness threat HRE - Uniqueness, mechanic and army rant. There is a lot of potential lying fallow - #318 by Jaysus04 .

Added woth additional good ideas :wink: Probs :slight_smile:

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I don’t understand why so many people seem to be fine with inspried warriors being absolute trash. The point of my ideas is to improve underused stuff, grant more versatility and more ways to play. Rus have a great mechanic, the HRE mechanic is utter garbage. That needs to change. And Relic even said they want to buff stuff that is not used. That means HRE techs, mechanics and landmarks will need to be looked at. Because there is tons of stuff that is never used for the HRE.

The civ is not bad, it’s just very one dimensional and boring and has only certain powerspikes while the rest is mediocre or plain useless. It’s unfisnished or rather not thought through. I want this civ to be fun to play. It is the most boring civ of all of them and only certain things of their tech tree are used, while the rest just seems to rot.

It’s a civ that should want to have prelates with their army. But to do so is a waste of pop and gold as of now. Although there are techs that really imply that you should be using prelates with your army, it just is not worthwhile. And in lategame, eco prelates are just a pain in the ■■■. There is no user friendliness anywhere.

HRE is relics, maa, fast imp. That’s all they are. But they should be more. There should be stuff that gives a personality that goes beyond relics, maa and fast imp.

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At the current state, HRE seems to be alright

Marinelord said “ HRE is in a really weird spot right now, it looks like its pretty weak at low level but at high level its considered a really high tier civ on most maps, i have honestly no idea how to fix that”

I agree that the inspired warrior is trash comparing to Russ’s one and could may be get a slight buff, but HRE also has the 40% harvesting resources faster which is something that makes them shine, not to mention the current state of Swabia and regnitz. By buffing its performance on the battlefield too much, it might tip the scale to be broken, so one need to be careful.

Some of these idea could partially solve the problem with HRE being 1D like relic being able to buff all batch units coming out from burgrave palace, or being more versatile by changing relic to archery range, siege workshop, or stable to buff the outcoming units would add a little complexity to the civ.

2 Likes
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I am not sure if I understand your critique regarding my idea. My train of thought behind it is as follows:

Right now the HRE has to go for Regnitz and needs to try to get 3 relics. 2 is okayish, but 3 is the goal. You are constantly thinking about relics and if you don’t get the amount you want, you feel like you are gimped and can’t live up to your potential. Also the HRE offers very little when they do not have gold. They have standard units and nothing special really outside the maa. But maa alone do not win games.

With my changes, relics would still be of great interest for the HRE, but instead of having to put three of them in a certain building, you can already place the first one in a tower, keep or dock and still get the improved gold generation. Getting 3 relics would simply mean you get less gold than before, but you can use them more to the strength of the civ, which is especially interesting with the the [Holding Relics] idea. In current meta you would never take a relic out of Regnitz. So you would have to get 4 or 5 relics to profit from the civ’s bonus. Getting all 3 relics can be tough, but getting 4 or 5 is nearly impossible. Unless you play on a very low level.

The new Burgrave Palace would help securing relics early in castle age and it should help to get 3 or even 4, which would be a great source of income and an even better improvement for defensive structures. Why would you need a monastery, though? Because now the techs in there are actually useful. Monasteries would be built for what they offer and not because you wanna put relics in there.

The new Regnitz Cathedral on the other hand aims towards a play that is less reliant on relics for the gold generating part, but still offers you to go for them. You’d be just slower than with the Burgrave (because you get 2 prelates for the price of one from it), but there is nothing that stops you from going for relics as you are used to. You would simply not put them in the Regnitz anymore, but in any structure you want and which can hold them ofc… And you’d get less gold from them, but you are not forced to go for Regnitz anymore acting like Burgrave doesn’t even exist. After collecting relics with a Regnitz build you can put prelates in the Cathedral to generate gold in a historically accurate manner (sale of indulgences), which then scales with the size of your economy. This would give you more possibilities of steering your income in late game. The HRE is gold reliant. They need a lot of it. But they should not have a mechanic, that relies on map luck and the hunt for relics. That’s not a bonus, that’s a trap.

My changes would make the HRE less predictable and imo far more unique as well. A feudal boom would be as viable as going for fast castle or fast imp even (which all remains possible). Prelates would be able to move with the army and would actually help by inspiring it in a useful manner. You are not forced to go for maa, because inspiration can make any unit better and that is especially important for standard units of which the HRE has plenty. MAA and Landsknecht are the only exception, the rest is just standard units with not special upgrade that improves any of them. I am ignoring the 10% movement speed for inf, because it is only 10%. It’s nice to have, but not great.

I want to ask you to further explain why you do not like my idea, because honestly I do not get it. :smiley:

Well, the civ is called HRE. HRE hand togeher with the french the most powerful knights in history. But that is not shown in the game at all. The Ritterbruder would thus make going for knights more viable as he improves them and can move with them. But he would also be useful in a melee army adding to it’s diversity. However, the Ritterbruder would rather excel at being combined with knights because then he would be harder to snipe and actually make HRE cavalry hitsquads much more viable. He’d be like a warrior monk, but different. Everything that moves on foot, however, would much more profit from the new 1.25 movement speed prelates that gain one more tile to inspire units in imp. They’d be great for anything that does not have 4 legs.

In my mind this would round the civ up quite nicely, give it unique units, mechanics and playstyles and actually rewards various game approaches. You would have a much greater choice of what you want to do or how you want to answer an enemy.

Thank your for all your other comments and probs. :slight_smile:

I really hope Relic has quite some plans for the HRE in store. Playing ten games with them and they get so incredibly boring… This needs to change imo. And that’s what my ideas are for.

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I agree with you on most things and I don’t want inspriation to be overtuned. But I think it is not. You still would have to invest quite a lot in prelates, would have to protect them and you’d have less pop space for other units. They’d still take 3 seconds to inspire a single unit and… yeah. One would have to see. If the inspiration buff would turn out too strong, it could still be tuned. But I actually do not see a huge difference to warrior monks buffing half the army with one strike giving everybody 3 attack and 1/1 armor. As HRE you would need many more prelates to come to the same effect. And that is with my ideas in mind. Currently inspired warriors is completely useless.

One more thing: Yes, the HRE has a 40% better gather rate. But that’s not guaranteed. You can pretty much maintain it in early game, but starting in castle age, it becomes way more complicated to keep the buff active for all your workers. And most pros don’t even bother with that. They put some farms around the Aachen and actually never build a prelate for anything anymore in lategame.

What I am saying is that the 40% is not a flat out bonus for the HRE, but becomes weaker with the length of the matches and the annoyance of instructing your prelates. This is a bonus that is tough to maintain the longer and more complicated the match becomes.

Last but not least I am all about better mechanics for the HRE. Numbers can always be tweaked. But the mechanics need to be there. And in that regard the HRE falls very short imo.

The opponent always knows what the HRE is up to. I find that pretty darn lame.

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I put a little bit more thoughts inside and I have to correct myself on some of my points.

By consept I realy like it but I would like prefer a armored fighting Monk on foot more. But only because Reliq set HRE as a infantery civ on there discreptions. If they would change it to armored civ than I would be fine with a cav unit.

I thing I get ur point now there but the wording is a lil confusing. U mean that HRE is getting 200g/min per reliq baseline or? That would be quite good and fine and it would make my regnitz argument with more than 3 reliqs infalid because u would prefer to use the extra defense vs storeing them in a monastry and getting the same amount of gold.

After I got ur new reliq bonus right this made more sense ^^ A little dehli flavor inside HRE with a investment/result machnic sounds quite good. When ur getting early reliqs u can decide if u wanna be cracked fast by goldincome or invest it more on army instead of prelates.
The question is can regnitzt produce prelates themself?

Only for inspiration.
My concept for this was that burgrave is a barracks with 3x production speed and every unit that was trained out of it will have the stats like elite army tactics would be researched (20%dmg / 20%hp). It would fall of in imperial because u would get EAT in general and every unit production landmark what is good atm has a buff (OP clockwork) or a productionspeed (earlygame councilhall) in it.

They should be as fast as man at arms i thing or it will get a controlgroup hell ^^

Good job in general :wink:

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That’s what I mean, yes. :slight_smile:

I think it should not be able to produce prelates. That’s one of the Burgrave advantages.

That’s also a good idea. But then “my new” civ bonus and Regnitz would be necessary as well. Otherwise it would be hard to skip the Regnitz and take Burgrave without actually reducing your chances.

Yes. They are way too slow for the HRE to be part of the army. I think allowing Benediction to also improve prelate movement speed is a good way to allow prelates to become a viable choice for your army. Plus ofc a better inspired warrior tech.

Thanks :slight_smile: