The Key to everything is Communication with ur players/customers ! This isnt working well
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Fair points. Iām an HRE main who was hoping for a boost haha
I guess Iāve bought a number of videogames / entertainment that i didnāt end up liking. It sucks but it happens. And if Iām super dissapointed it usually involves unrealistic expectations. OK, this new CD isnāt like their last oneā¦ can I learn to appreciate it, or do I want to move on?
I think its good to express frustrations, especially when the dev team is willing to update the product. But what Iām saying is i donāt think it makes sense to stay upset for a prolonged time about something that is supposed to be entertainment.
Generally I would agree with you. But this is Age of Empires 4. The franchise, the name alone leads to high expectations. Age of Empires 1 was my first windows game ever. And Age of Empires 2 was a dream come true back in the days. My expectations thus were high for AoE 4. And why not? This game is also a title that has a great reputation before you even release it and then your expectations are increased accordingly.
I like Age of Empires 4 and I want to really enjoy it. But I am very disappointed of the state it is in and the differences in civ balance, diversity and identity. I told Relic during beta that the game needs more time and should be postponed. And now we are playing an open beta. It is what it is, there is no denying that.
And the first big update nerfs quite some stuff that was not overpowered or anything, leaves out the core problems of the game, does not include any ideas from the beta except for a few ones and most importantly breaks so much other stuff that some civs are actually unplayable or just ridiculous, if abused.
That is difficult to accept. Iāve put more time into bug search and posting issues than playing this freaking game for which I was so hyped. I cannot enjoy it if the civ I want to play is an actual mess and the opposite of innovation, working as intended and cool mechanics. I could live with most issues for now, if the civs really felt like that they had all gotten the equal amount of love from the devs.
The HRE has the eco prelate, is buggy as hell, has good MAA and a strong age III landmark that is an absolute must choice if you wanna be somewhat competitive with this civ. Thatās all you need to know about this civ. Thatās it.
I totally understand your sentiment and stance, but for me Age of Empires 4 is more than a game, but a succession of my favorite childhood title and thus I want it to be good. No, I want it to be great,
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Thanks Jaysus, and I can respect where youāre coming from. Its probably my favorite videogame franchise and i canāt help but have high hopes.
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I think Landskneckts should just be made a unit with an āon-demandā function, as in, they change their weapons as per required scenario since theyāve been known to be versatile.
Baseline theyāve got sword as they have it now, thus theyāre good at cutting down light infantry in area of effect fashion.
Incoming cavalry charge? Have them switch to polearms.
Got to take out the incoming heavy armor enemy units at the range? Have them switch to guns.
Of course, there needs to be a cooldown to weapon switching, and the gun usage should be reserved for Age 4 upgrade.
And of course, they need increased health to actually be worth something.
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Something like that would have been cool.
A reddit post said the following regarding I believe the AoE dev stream:
āThey will be looking into the Landsknecht and camel archer. No specific details.ā
But I think we cannot expect anything before spring in that regard. They also want to improve archers vs spearmen. That would mean the Landsknecht would suffer even more from archers then. I hope Relic thinks about that fact. The Landsknecht is the only light melee infantry unit next to the spearmen and he gets completely ruined by archers and camel archers. This needs to change and they need to think about that fact. The Landsknecht needs a powerful spot and should not be countered so easily. He has knight costs, he needs to be impactful.
I also hope they look into HRE in general. I am repeating myself, but it remains the worst designed civ of all even if the bugs and the Landsknecht were fixed. They need better techs and mechanics, different unit strengths and especially some love for their lategame.
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Iām still stuck on Mastery 11 because of bugsā¦ because it doesnāt seem to register Iāve built 3 keeps in range of Elzbach palace.
One of the best posts I have seen on the forums, great ideas all around. I play HRE and agree it needs some love
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the tooltip is not good written.
U need the Elzbach palace , the amount of keeps AND all of them have to be in a emergency repair radius of a town center. 
PS: but i did it before the emergency repair āfixā. It could be that there slept in a new bug.
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Then itās outright lying, it doesnāt say anything about needing to have towncenter repair buffs.
Does it have to be from the ORIGINAL town center or can you just spam build towncenters around?
In one of the emergencys repair networks. Original towncenter and newer ones should work.
U can make it easy in a skirmish match vs Ai or wihtout opponent with starting age and resources up. It should count if they didnt changed it. I did mine this way.
The 50 LK kills was pain enought xD
An addendum:
Actually, why not just replace the Spearmen with Landsknechtās for HRE, in the same way, that English have Longbowmen replace the regular bowmen.
And then in Age 4, have them replace Hancannoneers as well with the upgrade button.
IĀ“m sorry but i dont remembar all of the text here or tested it.
But why has the burggrave palace no additional effect?
All the impactfull landmark unit productionbuildings have a additional bonus like council hall, school of cavalerie or clockwork tower.
How the 5x prodution of burggrave works and/or priced is even a disadvantage against it. With the 5 barrackses u could build units even if ur lower on resouces
IĀ“m missing something or is it so plane?
It would be so easy to give all of the units builded there with a stacking up unit que the earlir advantage of elite army tactics for example.
spiky , spicy and would fall for balancing
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I can only tell you that you are not missing anything. It is that plane.
A quick summary, because the thread has gotten very long now and I seem to not be able to edit the first post. Dunno why.
And here is a link to a newly created reddit post, because if we want any changes to the HRE, we need to be frequent and loud. 
Summary
The problem with HRE is that it peaks in castle age and ends in castle age.
A closer look at the civ shows the following:
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They only have MAA that are better than standard.
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All their other units are mere baseline.
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The HRE has the least diversity, the worst mechanics and the least useful techs.
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- Benediction should be completely changed into something that helps the army or the performance of the Prelate. Itās utter trash right now.
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- The defensive techs are all boring, close to useless and do not make this civ any better. They are nice to have, but you only get them because you can. Itās not like āYes, soon my walls will have 40% hp more. Yesss, yesssssssā, but itās more like āmehā.
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- Some civs have better Religion mechanics, although the HRE is the only āReligionā civ. The Rus Warrior Monks are better in every way and can easily steal Relics from the HRE before they can get them. There is no real religious advantage except a boost to eco.
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- The age IV spearmen techā¦ Really? (Iāll get back to that)
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- Any techs for anything other than infantryā¦ Where art thou?
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There is no reference to the Teutonic Order. The HRE actually has the worst knights in the game, which is a joke. They are a generic infantry civ with close to zero civ identity. You cannot enjoy building any other unit than MAA with the HRE, because all other units are just boring standard. There is not a single civ that has only techs for one branch except the HRE. Okay, there are religious techs, but they mostly just suck.
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The HRE does not get anything out of lategame armywise. There is just nothing. No techs, nothing. Everything is plain standard and all the other civs have a lategame advantage over the HRE. There is the +3 melee armor for spearmen in age IV, but this only shows how pathetic the special techs and boni of this civ actually are. This is one of the worst lategame upgrades in the game. It even gets negated by many techs or units like the French knight to some extent, the Rus +4 to knights, the Delhi +3 to knights and MAA, the buff to Elite Tacticsā¦
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The HRE techs that are actually good are also inferior to similar techs from other civs. Looking at honed blades you see that Delhi get two big boni in one tech. The HRE, however, has to get two techs for not even the same āqualityā. +3 flat/+3 flat vs +6 vs heavy only/+2 flat. It just never feels like the HRE gets the same quality out of their techs than most of the other civs do. I am not saying āDelhi opā (I know about their state), but I am saying āWtf HRE?ā.
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The Prelate mechanic is annoying and all-army selects also your eco-Prelates. The Prelates are weak, slow and can be easily sniped during raids which especially in early game poses a real problem. In late game they are just very annoying to use for your economy. It always feels clunky.
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The Prelateās inspiration mechanic is almost useless for the army. Itās just not good enough. Too little units are affected in general, the duration is too short and you need tons of Prelates to actually have a slight effect. The Prelate is a unique unit, but he doesnāt offer anything special. He is slow and weak and he can inspire the HRE eco because that is their eco bonus. He is not better at anything. In fact Delhi Scholars, Mongol Shamans and Rus Warrior Monks are just better.
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The unique unit for the HRE is much too weak and does not fill its historical role. Relic also forgets about him when talking about Archers, (Camel Archers) and spears. They forget that the Landsknecht always is also affected by any changes to these units. He should neither be light nor heavy, but medium in the sense of counter mechanics. A new class so to speak. And he should be sturdier altogether and slightly faster than a spearman. He has knight gold costs, thus his performance needs to be somewhat on par or at least similar within a certain range. The opponent should think at least ādamn, he has quite some Landsknechtsā instead of āalright, I need mangonels or archers orā¦ no, I actually donāt need anything and can just keep doing what I am doing, because Landsknechts suck anyway. Maybe I should mirco a little bit, but ehā¦ Why? They cost 100 gold, I will always trade nicely with themā.
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The HRE could use another unique unit, as they just feel like they were forgotten. Ritterbruder, Reichsritter, Black Rider, (Erz-)Bischof, Landsknecht with pikes, halberds, arquebusesā¦ All these things would be great unique units. The HRE part in the HRE civs falls very short.
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And what is their Wonder anyway? It looks terrible and trashy. Here is a comparison. Anybody with eyes should see that the HRE wonder just looks trashy and low quality: All 8 Wonders in Age of Empires IV - YouTube
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The HRE also does not have a coat of arms. That alone tells you that they have not gotten much attention. Their knights and MAA carry blank shields. They are the only civ that are lacking in that regard.
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The HRE early game defensive possibilites are rather poor, itās not really justified to call them a defensive civ because they cannot defend well. They can break under pressure quite easily, esp. in early game. They have defensive techs, but that does not make them a defensive civ. And cheaper emplacements is also a meh bonus that is rather underwhelming. It comes in handy once youāve built mass towers, sure. Itās nice to have, but you wouldnāt miss it if it was gone.
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If you do not get relics (at least 2), this civ is completely f*ed. But then they barely have any bonus to get Relics better or faster than other civs. They can position the Prelate early, but that costs gold and eco time. Losing the Prelate early due to counter play also is very tough. And against Rus you might not even get a single freaking relic. ā You can actually leave the game then. Generally speaking you can get at least one Relic vs Rus. But thatās not an advantage then, but the best you can get. Less than 2 relics is a big problem for the HRE. Esp. if the opponent has the others.
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The HRE has mediocre to useless civ boni, bad and boring techs and mechanics, nothing interesting except the MAA, boring artillery, strengths that are not strengths, they are forced to go Regnitz because the Burgrave Palace sucks badly and they do not have any other option for passive gold generation, of which they need a lot of for their armyā¦ Just to sum it all up a bit.
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The HRE is severely bugged since day 1 and remained severely bugged until today. The newly introduced spearmen-no-brace-bug for HRE and Delhi is just the cream of the crop.
This civ needs a lot of help and love. They seem to be the unwanted stepchildren (together with Delhi). They literally have no lategame.
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I think they should take off the landsknecht an give two tech instead one in the 3rd age wich reduces the costs of spearmann by 25 % and in the 4rd age a tech wich give inf a bonus on def and attack if there are nearby other soldier like a fromation bonus. As a special unit they can add the field mortar wich is abel to shoot over walls.
Wintergaming is one of the streamers that actually judges this game very critically despite really liking it. And he somewhat agrees with everything this thread is saying. Just to stress that the HRE or rather 50% of the civs are not there where the rest of the civs is:
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I hope the bracing bug will be corrected this week. I was skipping 1vs1 totaly and all the not premade games this week.
Its ridiculous that a so important unit espacially for a infatery faction like HRE is brokenā¦
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Not sure when this was - but Iām not sure Iād agree.
I think HRE are the only civ with so few features.
China by contrast has loads of features. They didnāt work on release due to a range of issues - but the spearmen buff and repeater crossbow buff have made China a flexible civ with an amazing end game.
Delhi has a load of features to. Sure each and every one of them seems to be bugged - but you can imagine when fixed you will have an interesting civ.
Abbasid have a lot of features but the numbers just donāt seem tuned properly so its comparatively weak. But you can see how it should have good booming potential, good trade, a flexible combined arms end game even if it doesnāt really work out that way.
Its only really HRE who get prelates (who donāt add up to much versus having an extra villager and some natural civ buff) and better MAA. Landmarks are okay, perhaps even good, and you are a reasonably solid pick on water - but thereās a real lack of civ identity compared with the other factions.
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In my opinion are the 4 Civs with a campaign ready to play against each other with maybe little number aka balance tweaks (mongols)
But Chinese is working āokā but have to be adjusted huge by numbers see firelancers/clockwork attilery
Abba is like Chinese but other way around. They are working too but are numberwise a little to weak that there unique ness cant shine so good.
Dehli will work after bugfixes too.
HRE is missing 50% of there landmarks cause in many opinions and the top of the ladder only one landmark is played 99% of the time. The reliq system isnt ended or complete and only one trash special unit and all roound very buggy faction ā¦
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