Alright, time to work on the other HRE unique unit.
So overall Prelate on its own is already good when it comes to boosting your economy, especially in the early and mid game.
Unfortunately, however, his usefulness becomes diminished in the late Castle Age after you’ve collected all the relics for the Regnitz Cathedral (if you’ve built that landmark instead of Burgrave Palace), and Imperial Age, because all they’ll be relegated to in the end is dealing with the economy, which kind of makes the Civ lose the point of being HOLY Roman Empire.
Now, the developers did try to put in the upgrades in the Monastery to make the Prelates more versatile in the later game and not be a one-note pianist, but unfortunately, that falls short on several accounts.
Devoutness is fine because it just boosts Prelates already unique villager gather speed boost by 10%, making it 50% in the end.
Benediction and Inspired Warriors on the other hand are useless:
For the first one, you need to sacrifice one of the Prelates to stand by the villagers who are building, whereas he could be boosting gathering, and even then the construction boost just isn’t paying off. To be worth researching it would require it to be at least double the current speed, which means 30%.
The second one has the bigger fault that’s preventing the Prelate to be useful outside of economic boost. Being able to bless military units and not just villagers seems good on paper, but then you have to take into account the fact that the Prelates need to be in close proximity to the frontlines where the encounters take place to be able to bless the armies and even then, the blessing has a 4-second cooldown, lasting only 30 seconds. There’s simply too much danger to have the Prelates be at the range where anyone can just pick them off, and you’re unable to have just one be able to bless your whole armies, and trying to have more than one feels wasteful since the same danger persists.
There is a unit, however, with this kind of purpose that exists in the game already solely to boost the fighting capability and it does it well: The Rus Warrior Monk.
You only need one, and with a single attack it boosts the damage of every unit in the proximity, and since it has a lot of HP it means it will take a lot of beating, giving you time to retreat, and since it’s cavalry, the extra speed makes the engagement and disengagement easy.
That task is impossible for a Prelate to achieve since he’s got no fighting capabilities, he’s got low HP, and he’s slow, There is, however, a way to go around the problem, and it comes down to the same mechanic for which all the other monks in the game exist, but are especially necessary for Holy Roman Empire:
RELICS
Now I’m aware that currently, the Regnitz Cathedral is the be-all-end-all choice for HRE simply because it provides gold generation that would otherwise take 5 garrisoned relics, but let’s say that for example, even after you’ve got 3 relics, you deprive your opponent of the 4th one as an added bonus, or you chose to build Burgrave Palace instead, that you can use the relics in another way.
Notice a newly added button under the “Conversion” button?
This is the new version of “improved blessing”; keep the upgrade purchase as a way of balancing it out, but now, instead of having to force the Prelate to get into the thick of trouble, he can hold a relic and bless multiple villagers who are building, and military units, while being at a safe distance through an aura, that’s similar to “conversion”, but in a different color.
And should the units leave the projected aura, it would apply the 30-second duration to the buff, until they re-enter it.
This way, the Prelate can remain obscure from the enemy’s vision and still boost the units with the ability that exists in the game.
Thank you for listening, and enjoy your day, fellow Romans.