If it could accelerate the output of unit production so that Palace of Swabia is no longer the ONLY viable choice for Age 4 and IT gets reworked into something else.
Actually, I think that increased unit production output for garrisoned relics should be for all production buildings.
So English get alternatives to Wynguard Palace production.
Rus FINALLY gets a reasonable purpose behind one of the previously most useless landmarks in the game.
Meanwhile, HRE is still stuck with Elzbach Palace which does nothing productive. It’s just standing there… NOT menacingly.
And I’m not sure how good the new Regnitz is now…
Yeah I’m not liking the new changes either…
The Elzbach Palace is still super situational, and the new regnitz cathedral is a huge blow to the civ, the fact that you can now train prelates and research the techs isn’t worth the gold that you are losing, and I don’t see how this should incentives me to put relics on other buildings. I mean, if I build the landmark it’s probably because I want to fill it with relics because to get more gold… I get reducing the number of relics hosted, but giving less gold… it really makes no sense…
You want to incourage the use of relics in other buildings, then re-buff the gold generation to +300% and let it house just 1 relic, that would at least make sense…
They buffed the meiwerk palace, but then they also super buffed the chapel, so why? People will still use the chapel…
I really don’t understand the idea behind those balance changes, the only that make sense is the one that allows prelates to both inspire and heal, and it won’t still be that much common considering the healing range of prelates…
The changes overall will make the civ close to the top. But we’ll see as more and more play the PuP and stats start showing.
Stupid me…
I just red correctly the balance changes, the change is actually good because it buff all gold generation and actually rewards map control by buffing all relics.
It still won’t incourage me to put relics in the front line, or to relocate them on defensive castles, but it’s not a nerf at least.
The cathedral is great, just played some games with the patch.
You need to get at least 3 relics to get the same gold as before BUT, you can garrison the relics in outposts/keeps so you can take advantage of the defensive bonuses. The cathedral bonus is now, +100% gold to ALL relics, not necessarily just those in the cathedral itself.
In addition, the cathedral now acts as a monastery.
Slight nerf, with a big to moderate buff!
Quite some time has passed now and this thread has not seen much activity. And I haven’t been very active either. Recent changes to the game have made a lot of things better and also the HRE is in a rather good spot success wise. However, I am still convinced that the HRE, just like the English, offers a little bit too little, esp. in lategame. Their lategame actually is reaching it earlier than others, build a lot of horsemen and towers and try to win by outmassing and outtowering. I find that unsatisfactory as there is no unit comp you really want to aim for. The prelate gameplay has become way better, but still is underwhelming in lategame as in too weak for having units inspired one by one. That is why I opened a new thread a few days back that focuses on balance changes altogether. English and HRE receive most of the change suggestions, but I covered all the civs and tried to find changes that would balance and improve their gameplay. Some ideas might be too strong or too weak, this would need testing, but all in all I tried to suggest a direction for each of the civs that could be taken and feels reasonable as well as in accordance to the game mechanics.
With the announcement of the two new civs, the old civs need to be looked at as well in order to see, if there is some polishing to be done. To have the game in the best possible spot on October 25. Balance is in a good spot, but there is still quite some fine tuning to be done. Some civs deserve some changes in their gameplay variety, because they are too one dimensional. Some strats and comps need some adjustments. And some civs just might a little change here and there to offer more variety and feel even better. I am looking forward to your opinions. 
I think no civs should have less than 3 UU in this game
I would add halbardiers as a unit with bonuses against cavs and heavy units available from castle age
Yeah, absolutely. If you have any suggestions/ideas, feel free to post them in the thread.
I also find it difficult that some civs have 3+ unique units, while others effectively only have 1 or 2. Here in this thread the Ordensritter, Ritterbruder or Teutonic Knight was suggested, but also a Landsknecht Arquebus gunner or the Black Rider, which all would be great additions to the HRE. But there only is the rather cost and pop unefficient Landsknecht, who only fills a niche and, as a historcially warranted Renaissance unit, falls very short in lategame, which should be his strong suit tbf. I for one am not too happy with this design and I think that there should be more to it. The Landsknecht is just a unique unit. It doesn’t even have any unique tech to it, unlinke the vast majority of unique units in the game. I honestly expect more, especially when it’s the only unique military unit for this civ. The Longbow has at least 3 unique techs to himself, the Mangudai also has his personal techs. The Landsknecht is just expensive, dies quickly and gets countered by everything. Even spearmen, the one unit Landsknechte actually excel against, can trade cost effciently with them, when the HRE player is not in a much better position anyway. Landsknechte are only somewhat convincing, when you are already ahead. They are units you can build, when at an advantage and when your eco is floating. If that’s not the case, building Landsknechte will lose you the game.
It’s things like that as well as certain techs and mechanics that are not quite there, where they should be. HRE has sepcial MAA and Landsknechte… The rest of their army is rather baseline and boring, offering nothing special, which is why HRE lategame eventually ends up being mass towers and mass horsemen. There should be more to it than this. Inspired Warriors also is annoying to use with having each unit inspired one by one. There is no good lategame setup to be had, in which this mechanic really makes sense.
Been away from this post for a long time now… so were others it seems.
Anyway, I find it hilarious that with the new civ releases, they have MORE unique units than any other civ before, with Malians having 7 and Ottomans 5.
Meanwhile, HRE still sits on 1 economy unique unit and one combat unit that’s not that good.
I mean yeah, Abbasid also has only 2 as well, but they’re designed to be specifically anty cavalry with camels.
And while you could argue that’s nothing compared to English’s ONE unique unit, the English are designed to gun you down the moment you get in range of towers/TC/castles.
I really think a new expansion needs to update old civs, and add new playable campaigns to boot for it, and HRE would be a perfect fit.
ik at this point this will be considered necroposting but i got ur point. civs need a rework bcuz they are boring to play as they don’t have depth and the fun factor from other civs from other aoes or mallians/mongol.
just wanna say, HRE are like the 3rd played civ (for a reason) so when i say this, im obviously not alone, and CLEARLY you guys are the minority:
HRE are a fun civ to play. their prelates add a level of uniqueness to the civ, multiple civs do not have. every unit becomes a UU with either a speed buff AND a prelate buff. nevermind ther unique MAA and sneks.
their towers are also unique buildings (in the scheme of aoe4), when you consider 2 UTs, a unique repair and a relic significantly buffing stats.
obviously it would be nice if they added more things, but clearly the civ is enjoyed by a lot of people, so obviously dev time should be spent elsewhere, on underperforming and less used civs (ie ottos, delhi-ted and malians all need more attention than HRE)
dont let your bias cloud your judgement
that being said, the less used LMs could do with some love to encourage their use: meinwerk and Elzbach (although this one is more to do with how good swabia is)
So in other words Mehter makes every Ottoman unit a UU because of the buff, right? Which is even aoe, while prelates have to manually buff every single unit, which takes a long time if you have a lot of units.
Almost every Mongol building can pack up and move, that’s unique as well. Not sure why you are bringing in buildings when the topic is about units.
So why should the devs spend time on Ottomans who sits on S tier among with China with 5 unique units? Unique MAA is as unique as the English MAA.
Same could be said to you.
I’d trade Swabia for Red palace anyday, Elzbach is still bugged and literally useless, even with a relic inside it doesn’t come close to other IV defensive Landmarks.
New update and still no new stuff for HRE. Sad. =(
Did you miss the changes to Meinwerk?
There was also a bug fix that is a significant buff to their infantry.
I think it is time to give HRE a little bit more interesting units. As you’ve said in November, they really lack uniqueness in regards of their military choices. Landsknechte are a niche unit, which you cannot always go for and MAA fall down in relevance and power after early castle. I like the new Meinwerk additions, because it puts emphasis on that which historically made HRE strong (armor), but I think there should be more to it. Landsknechte are the only real unique military unit and they do not even have a single unique upgrade and have a lot of counters, while other civs have either several unique units and/or several unique upgrades to their unique units, which can somewhat be used in every state of the game. In this thread here there have been made a lot of suggestions, what kind of unique units the HRE could get. I’ve also created a new topic, which does not seem to find a lot of love or has been ignored up until now for whatever reason. But there I suggest the Archbishop as a new kind of (hero) unit to further define the HRE as what it was: An empire that was very adamant about religious warfare. I also suggested to ease the use of prelates, because the longer the game goes, the more tedious it becomes to actually make use of them within your economy. Especially when not going Aachen, which makes you lose out on an imperial tech now, hence I am not fond of using it anymore. Unless the map gen allows for an insane spot. We have had the suggestion here already that prelates can inspire from within a tower (in order to have Aachen continue to be a good choice, it should be a castle or an imperial tech) and I wanted to warm up that topic again. All other civs boni are much more reliant in their usage, but sprinkling prelates all over the place leads to a loss of intuitive gameplay. Double clicking prelates, because you have eco and military prelates, undeniably ruins your eco setup. This should be better. Without prelates, the HRE eco does not offer anything. So prelates are a must to make use of the civ’s strenghts. I also added another suggestion to Elzbach that goes somehwat in the same direction and would be kinda unique. It would also offer a better lategame scaleability, while also incentivising to have a longer castle age with multiple tcs. So there is actually a real alternative to one tc rushing into imperial. Even with the Meinwerk change the HRE continues to be rather one dimensional. Elzbach is weaker than any other age IV defensive landmark, which is okay, but in return it should offer something else instead of being a more hp keep that reduces dmg taken to all buildings in the area. It sounds better in theory than it actually is. There is just zero incentive to not go for Swabia.
I’d also be very happy to see new campaigns. Not only for HRE, but for all the civs that do not have one. At one point we’ll have a full on scenario editor and that is when new campaigns should be added as well. I just love the possibilities AoE 2 offers in this regard and the amount of campaign content they release. With further improvements to ai, AoE 4 could thus become a real interesting offline experience as well. The current offline experience is rather lackluster and I do not enjoy it very much.
And in order to promote my post that has been ignored for the most part, I’ll also link it here. I am not saying that my ideas need to be welcomed by everyone, but I’d like to have a discussion at the very least.
Last but not least: It’s nice to reinvigorate this thread here again.
It’s a buff to MAA only, which peak in early castle age and then are mostly overshadowed by all the other units. So this bug fix, while it is nice and about time, does not change too much for the later stages of the game for HRE.
I think MAA in general could use a buff for all civs throughout the game. I’d like to see them more often and HRE is not the only civ with good MAA. The only MAA that find plenty of use are Palace guards, since their incredible speed makes them very versatile and useful even for late castle and imperial. They also have the highest hp pool.
With Hre you dont get enough options.
If you look at english early mma rush, cheap farms, farm bonus, villagers with arrows, outpost bonus, longbows, keeps that make all units, gold bonus. And all there other bonus.
Hre have to work to win a game with half of what other civs have
Or, instead of an archbishop, add AN EMPEROR. You cannot have a Holy Roman EMPIRE without an emperor.
A mounted unit with an aura that inspires nearby units, giving them a buff that starts ticking down when they go out of his range.
And now they’ve got Wynguard palace that makes unique units.