And garrisoning the Relic into TC will speed up villager production.
That way it fixes the Palace of Swabia dependency.
Mongols already produce multiple villagers for the same price and time with Ovoo, while Abbasid can produce more villages with reduced cost from the economic wing.
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Statistically speaking, the HRE is balanced.
A win rate between 45% and 55% is considered a balanced one.
Statistically speaking, the HRE has the lowest win rate. And it goes lower, the higher the elo is. -_-
According to your logic, everything would be perfectly balanced right now in the game. But win rate is not everything ofc. I think I made it quite clear in various postings that the HRE has problems that lie within its design and lack of synergetic mechanics. The civ identity is also disappointing, but there are various ways to improve that.
Hi, I have ideas where I think can be good. I’m a main HRE player and yes, its very very difficult to be unpredictable.
Also I’m agree that HRE need to be more design.
My ideas :
*Starting the game with 6 vils - 1 scout - 1 prelate
*barrack cost 100 woods
*all monastery ( Regnitz and achen chapel include ) get a taxes collector area similar to the achen chapel area got already. ( Need a prelate in the area or inside for the achen chapel ) The city of HRE need church every where !!
Dark age : —
Feudal age : 2g/min/vils
castle age : 3g/min/vils
Imperial age : 5g/min/vils
*burgrave palace now also increase the taxe collector effect for a monastery (also achen chapel) when place near it for 5g/min/vils
*meinwerk palace now allow 10 units to be garrisoned and shoots when units are garrisoned.
*elzbatch palace now get a passive taxe collector area for army units inside of is area 1g/min/army units ( need a prelate in the area )
*landsknecht now have same hp than MaA
*prelate, already start with inspiration for military and now act like a radius area of 3 tiles. the inspire effect last 1min after you leave the radius. Their healing range up to 5 tiles as well. When you place a prelate in a scout tower or castle this inspire radius effect up to 8 tiles. The prelate inspire siege units.
The prelate start with infantry inspire :10% attack, 1 armor
You can upgrade it in the monastery : +5% attack, +1 armor
Tell me what you think about that ! With this change, I think the HRE will get more option ! And its not a HUGE BUFF ! But more prelate macro and different landmarks to play !
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sorry my English is bad.
I like the ideas, but if they were all added I think it would be overtuned.
I really like the aoe inspiration idea for military though. With the aeo effect I think 1 minute duration is way too long, but it would make sprinkling prepares into an army for inspiration way more reasonable, as now they don’t even inspire when moving and need a lot of micro just to get them to stop and do their job.
maybe they should get an extra +1 armour per age as well to make them tankier, give HRE a better chance to collect relics, and sustain them better in battle.
Makes sense thematically as the “infantry” civ.
For that matter, why not give their villagers +1 armour per age as well?
Makes them harder to raid early and would make up for some of their early eco problems, and acts as a nice “opposite” to the attack power that English vils get.
Or they could recycle the old aoe2 teutons bonus and give outposts double the garrison capacity.
It would be a good defensive bonus, you would need less outposts to protect vills, and those outposts would deal more damage to enemy armored units.
If you want HRE to be totally OP, your ideas are fine. Logically you have to tweak the Early Game, beyond that not much more is necessary.
I think that the key to buff the HRE right now is through their outposts:
In order of priority, the buff to the outposts should be:
1 - Outposts have double the garrison capacity
(this one is mandatory)
2 - The emplacement discount affect the fortified outpost tech too
3 - Outposts emplacement discount is buffed
4 - Outposts research techs faster
The first option with any number of the other options might work
I don’t think HRE should become AoE2’s Teutons, even though I want the Teutonic Order to be accessible to them.
HRE can already make defenses stronger, what they need however is relics, which they cannot gain access to until Age 3, and even then, considering the current design, the relics won’t be used for anything other than Regnitz cathedral, which is a one-trick pony play for the civ overall.
What this civ needs to synergize is 2 things:
-
Completely get rid of the Regnitz bonus gold generation, so that people will be willing to garrison them anywhere else.
-
HRE needs to have a research that will allow them to pick up relics in Age 2
That however means also that a new way for them to passive generate gold needs to be implemented that doesn’t involve elements outside of the civ itself. The English have it with Enclosure with farms, and a good and balanced way was already suggested here several times.
Lol that would be broken OP, while getting sacred sites in feudal can still be denied, relics once are inside your base are pretty much gone.
Also, now you can garrison just 2 relics inside the regnitz, so there is plenty of relics for other purposes too.
It’s not just about making defensive structures strongers, it’s about protecting more vills, getting map control, being able to more safely get boars and deers, defending their base more efficiently, without having to have vills run back to the TC every time.
It’s not like you can’t deny relics either. If you’re rushing to Age 2 you’re only going to have 1 prelate, which you can’t waste because it boosts your economy and even then it takes time to get resources to make another one.
You might likely get 1, or 2 if you’re lucky, but considering how slow monks are when carrying relics now, denial isn’t impossible.
As for vills getting raided, what civ doesn’t have to deal with that?
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Once a sacred site is captured, you can de-capture it with any unit at any time.
You can deny relics with good map control, but once it get captured and brought back to the main base, that’s it.
Onestly stopping 5 prelates in feudal age backed by some horsemen it would be quite difficult for a feudal age army.
You don’t have to rush, you’ll get relics an age earlier anyway. And onestly you can easily add at least 2 prelates while aging up. And losing some minutes of buffing is totally worth 5 relics an age earlier.
You age up with mainwork palace, get marching drills so that you prelates are faster to get to the relics, then add a couple of stables and some horsemen. That with maybe a 2 scouts opening can assure you at least 3 relics for sure, probably 4.
Really, it becomes a no-brainer, HRE would get for the same opening and the same build every game… it’s not just broken, it’s boring…
HRE are one of the most susceptible to it. They lack particularly good ranged or mobile units, like britons or french, they lack special defensive structures, like the chinese, and they lack good eco bonuses like getting gold from hunt or extra food on berries.
What you get is more efficient vills, by getting roughly about 2 extra vills every prelate, but this also means that you extinguish the resources near your TC faster. HRE eco is based on booming, or getting good map control.
Better outposts also means that if a woodline is raided, you don’t have to get 10 vills back to the TC with the risk of losing some, but you can build an outpost near it and have way less walking time.
It’s a pretty big deal in age 2 to build additional prelates or to send them out to gather relics. It’d be high risk, high reward. It would be broken, if you leave the HRE alone during feudal age. But you can try to deny it, since the HRE investment is quite high that early. One would have to see. My suggestions are not aiming at relics being available in age 2, but I like thinking about it. The idea of it isn’t too bad, as it offers quite a unique identity for the civ. Implementing it in a viable way, however, is tricky.
The point is that the HRE is highly dependable on relics. Getting them is paramount for them. Not getting them is close to losing the game, because you are robbed of your one stand out eco strength. The inspiration mechanic is just a trade off for not having faster or cheaper vil production and for the lack of having any other eco bonus. It’s a trade off, not a clear advantage. It also comes with the great disadvantage of being much more susceptible to raiding, while the only advantage is to not having to build a monastery in age 3. And yet the Rus are the best at gathering relics. Which is also a reason why it is almost pointless to play vs Rus as HRE. I also don’t understand why all the monks were slowed, but the movement penalty on warrior monks remained untouched. If you compare them to other monks, they are again Ferraris when carrying relics. Why is it okay that Rus almost always gather all the relics? Just watch any Rus game. They have at least 4 relics in their Abbey. Always. It’s a joke to nerf HRE relic gathering, when Rus are already better at that before the nerf. And the fastest or best HRE fc strategy does not have marching drills rdy when hitting age 3. It’s an additional investment, which also forces you into going Meinwerk. Without Meinwerk you can’t get it on time in a fc play.
Also it just can’t be okay that Rus hard counters the HRE. There should not by any civ hard countering another one. That’s not how this game wants to work. It beats the whole purpose of its intended counter system. Everything HRE has, Rus does better (except MAA). And then Rus still has their special stuff. The comparison between Rus and HRE shows where the HRE deficits lie: The HRE brings way too little to the table. Not only when compared to Rus, but comparing them Rus just shows best how bad they actually are.
That is why the HRE eco needs to become less reliable of relics or should at least have the option to be viable without getting relics. Delhi is still viable without sacred sites. HRE is not viable, they cannot pay for their in general very expensive army.
And that’s why the HRE special units need to become better and need to be more defining for HRE play. The Landsknecht needs much better cost efficiency and needs to lose his glas cannon image. That’s just terrible design for a melee unit that is that expensive and that has the historical background of an elite mercenary that meant the core of the army. And the prelate needs to be more than just a monk that can inspire. They need some unique mechanics, so it’s not a waste of money and pop to let them walk with the army, but an actual advantage of which opponents are scared of.
The HRE army barely has any upsides otherwise. MAA is what carries that army and there are too many good ways in the game to counter MAA. That’s why the HRE needs to become more diverse as well. They need other strengths. That’s also why inspired warriors needs to become better and easier to access as well as easier to handle.
It’s counter intuitive right now. You can only inspire out of combat. You cannot inspire while on the move. Healing and inspiration gets easily mixed up. It is annoying to switch auto cast on and off. And it’s also bugged. Sometimes prelates don’t inspire or don’t heal. Sometimes units look inspired, although they are not. Sometimes prelates look like they are healing, although they are not.
The inspiration mechanic needs to become way more reliable and implemented in a much more useful way. Right now you have to force inspired warriors to be something good. You need to invest a lot, need to buff up your army in a calm spot and then charge in to profit. There is so much setup bs to be done that this is still quite a useless mechanic and not even remotely close to what Rus can do. Inspired warriors as a buff is in most cases worse than the Rus version, which fully upgraded gives you 3 dmg and 1 armor for 20 seconds in a big area for all your units. Inpsiration works on a single unit for one minute, but cannot be applied during fights and is also still very buggy. It gives 15% dmg and 1 armor. That’s better for high dmg units, but worse for any unit that deals less than 20 dmg. And again: The Rus monk needs one strike to buff all the units, whereas the prelate needs to be out of combat and buffs one unit within 4 seconds for 1 minute. In 1 minute one prelate can buff between 15 and 20 soldiers. That’s pathetic in comparison.
It’s clear that inspired warriors needs a lot of fine tuning.
It’s clear that the HRE needs to be rid of their one dimensional way of playing. They need more viable strategies and more viable army compositions.
They need to be the best civ at gathering relics or become less dependent on relics, so that relics are an optional bonus and not a must have. Relics shouldn’t be essential for a working eco, but still be a HRE specific option to improve it. That’s why I introduced both suggestions: Making relics give 150% gold in any capable building and baseline for the civ, while also adding cheaper units with Burgrave and a way to self-reliantly generate gold, which requires quite some ramp up time: 9 prelates that cannot be used for anything else while generating gold and a high vil count. That’s my “Sale of Indulgences” idea I described above.
The HRE needs to become more fun to play. They need a more defined identity. Right now they are very annoying, lacking synergies and smart mechanics and are by far the most susceptible civ to early aggression. You always look for your eco prelates and your military prelates, because the game doesn’t make a distinction there. The relic play feels off since Regnitz can only house 2 of them (and I also didn’t like it when it was at 3 relics. I never liked this way of playing and always wanted there to be more viable ways). Their timings are off altogether. The Burgrave palace is not affordable, 2 tc play feudal is not viable. It all feels terrible. When playing another civ, it’s almost like playing a different game.
That’s also why it’s not enough to fine tune some numbers, give them 50 wood more in early or improve their towers, but leave everything else. That’s not how the HRE issue can be solved. It would ignore the conceptual flaws of this civ and it would just never feel good.
It’s not about making the HRE borderline overpowered. It’s about giving them a fun and interesting indentity that offers several ways of viable play and frees this civ from its one-dimensional way and the stupid no brain massing of MAA and nothing but MAA into losing the game. MAA is the best unit this civ has. But the rest is rather shite. Historically it is also wrong to describe the HRE as a pure infantry melee civ. That’s completely wrong. They combined every kind of european Soldier in their armies and used many mounted units. They were masters of the heavy plate, used elaborate artillery and gun powder weapons, used techniques from Italy, Swiss, France, Netherlands, Poland, Hungary although these countries or kingdoms were only partially/temporarily part of the HRE. It’s such a variable and rich civ that is just not complimented when being reduced to MAA and only MAA with some wannabe religious support. An expensive castle age tech that provides 2 armor for knights would compliment this civ and would make their comps more diverse, because knights always make other units better due to their tankyness and mobility. High armor knights would give the HRE many new possibibilities that have an edge over the opponent. I find it really disturbing that the HRE knights are among the worst in the game without any benefit to them. High armor would be the fitting HRE niche here.
It’s not done with just making the HRE survive feudal better. They need conceptual re-alignments, better and more synergies, and more ways of viable play that are not all ruined by missing out on relics.
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Apparently the prelate is still or again bugged. I didn’t test it myself, but here is the reddit link to it.
HRE is just… not polished, not finished.
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It’s a neat interpretation of the tech/mechanic and I could probably arrange myself with it as it’d be a unique and self-reliant eco option that scales with pop size and progression. That’s what my idea is all about in its core. My attempt tries to resemble a historcial rather correct display of the tech/mechanic, while still powerful and scaleable (you decide how many prelates you produce and put inside, it’s dynamic and could also scale with pop size, not just vil number. Soldiers did “pay for their sins” as well ) but with a trade off and ramp up time. It were in fact prelates and other church people, who established and collected the sale of indulgences. And since this is a game, it could just as well work with a gold per buff mechanic that is not bound to a sacral building.
Mind you though, this would put Aachen over Meinwerk since it’s a constant area buff.