Some bugs were fixed, the most important ones not. And other than that the civ is just bullshit bad and offers nothing interesting or cool or holy-roman-empiresque. They have a strong eco that covers up for the trash tech tree and unique units as well as mechanics. But it can’t be long until everybody realizes what a shit show this Civ is. Both their unique MAA techs are inferior to one casual Dehli tech (honed blades). The Dehli get +3 for MAA and knights in ONE tech. The HRE gets +2 dmg and +3 vs heavy arrmor in TWO techs. This is so ridiculous.
So far I have been killing it as Holy Romans, being able to build units in groups of 5 without sacrificing wood is very powerful. Also rushing to mangonel makes a serious difference. I will post my build order after I feel comfortable too. Holy Rome should have a strong enough economy + Rapid unit production to instantly build counters.
As @Jaysus04 said: They work through their economy (including the broken landmark for gold income) but not much more.
The unique unit is a weird wannabe glasscannon that gets easily slaughtered (Landsknecht).
Did the MAA techs get any changes since closed beta? Can’t really tell. Doesn’t seem like it.
Yes, they are not useless in 1on1 and you can be successful with them. But the longer the game goes, the more boring they become. They also are still very buggy and have no real identity. Inspiration for army is annoying to use and really not good the way it works. On top of that it is still bugged, but not as bad as it was in the beta. Prelates still bug out and will never be able to inspire anymore. It just happens much less frequent than in the stress test. A few tooltips are wrong or not complete (the Prelate inspiration tooltip says it gives +5 armor, the twohander tech only says it gives +2 damage, but it also gives +15 hp. That was also true for the beta, so the twohander tech was not really improved, the tooltip just never was accurate). The mace upgrade still suffers from -3 damage when combined with twohander. It is supposed to give +6 vs heavy armor, but with twohander it goes down to +3. This cannot be intended, as no tech in this game makes another tech worse. They fixed the attackspeed bug, but not the mace damage bug.
The Landsknecht also is way too weak. He was not improved since beta and can only be thrown into the army for some effect, when you are floating gold already and can pump units out, because ressources are not an issue anymore. When gold is still valuable (which is the case for 90% of the game), the Landsknecht is not a unit you can build and feel good about it. He dies too quickly and to everything.
And the HRE still doesn’t have a coat of arms. There are two slim lines on their shields, but other than that it is empty. The shields of all the other civs look way cooler and also have coats of arms.
Sometimes the shield also gets twisted around, but that usually fixes itself after a while. This is not a HRE only bugy, but a knights and I think MAA bug. Noticed it only for knights in the released game, tho.
The early game of the HRE is strong and they can put in quite a lot of work, but the civ still feels unfinished, is buggy, lacking in mechanics and doesn’t have a real indentity. A tech that improves the sturdiness of knights (more armor, more hp) would make them a bit more HREesque. And a tech that allows inspiration for military units to actually be useful is also needed. Right now Prelates only heal when in combat and barely ever inspire. They also only inspire one unit, so it’s actually pretty damn bad. The mechanic behind it just is lacking and offers almost no synergies. It is okay for ranged units and artillery, but it still feels dull and inferior to Rus and Abbasid (camel aura applies to everything just because the camel is present).
You can also check the HRE Bug thread I opened. There I try to list up everything I find that is off for the HRE. Esp. bugs, but I tend to always go into mechanics and techs as well. ._.
Yeah I am a huge fan of the HRE, I really wish the unique unit wasn’t a push over. Also I still think the poleaxe upgrade for twohanded maa would make far more sense. I mean 2 handed clubs? Wasn’t it always single handed historically? I mean they get dane axes before the upgrade which is a little weird but meh. Upgrade should be bonus damage vs heavy and slight bonus vs cav.
Yep, the Rus are better in that regard. Way better, because reliable. And their monks can actually take some hits.
The Abbasids are also better for their buff mechanic. A camel just needs to be there and every infantry unit gains +1/1 armor. The HRE has to go through a tedious and not very useful mechanic and will never have more than 10 units actually inspired at once while fighting (unless you build 15 to 20 Prelates and put them on the front line). In big battles it becomes even more useless. It’s probably better to play without military inspiration, because the army handling becomes so much easier then. It’s just bad as it leaves the HRE with even less than they have.
They could’ve made it an offensive unit as well… maybe a fighting bishop? It’s not as if the oh so holy clergy had problems with cleaving in some skulls at times : P
I am surprised anyway that there is no “Erzbischof” unit as he would be very German. Those “Erzbischöfe” (plural) had lands and commanded lords and knights. And some religious leaders also went into battle fully armored. Actually when you have a civ like the HRE, you have tons of possibilities for units, techs, mechanics and so on. I really expected more from Relic, because they were so adamant about wanting to be historically rather close to the facts. The HRE in AoE 4 is more fantasy than factual.
This blog gives some insight to medieval Germany:
These are parts of the parade armor of the Erzbischof of Salzburg from around 1600:
If you check the fourth mastery of the HRE and see the historical description of the Landsknecht and how he used pikes, halberds, swords and arquebuses, while fighting in a powerful formation, you gotta wonder how on earth they came to the idea to make the unit the way it is… What the actual hell?
They have the historical facts and still turned him into a ridiculous auxiliary unit that is just pathetic. I actually have no words for this. What are they doing to this civ?
Edit: Trying to manually inspire units that are fighting does not work. And I am not even sure that the Prelates really inspire in fight. They mostly heal and I feel like they do not inspire in fight. This mechanic is getting more and more useless.
Edit 2: Tried it again now. Mangonels do not get buffed, but rams do. The HRE definitely is still very deep in a beta phase…
Edit 3: And why is the +3 armor for spearmen an age IV tech? It’s not even a good tech. It is okay, but seeing gambesons for French and all the other techs from the other civs, it is just another underwhelming HRE tech. It barely does anything. The more I play, the worse this civ becomes. They really were screwed over in somewhat every regard. But it would help if inspiration was fixed and made useful, if there was a cav tech that gives the HRE some actual HRE feeling (+3 armor and +10 hp for cav for example, something outstanding for an otherwise lacking civ), if the Landsknecht was made into a powerful and useful unit instead of this wimp (maybe add a hand cannoneer version as well that is somewhat interesting. Or don’t. But do something!) and if all the bugs with the HRE were resolved. It’s actually not much which would help this civ. Since we probably can’t expect a full overhaul, these are the changes that would make the HRE a more interesting choice. Right now they are bottom tier for me. The other civs are all way more interesting, have better mechanics and are much less buggy. Yes, I also include Dehli. They are slow starters, but actually become really strong. If they need anything, then it would be only something for their early game.
2h uppgrade should be aoutomatically for all civs after researching elite in my opinion since armies in the 15th century was mostly comprised of infantry with 2h weapons ie halberds, bills and poleaxes to name a few
Instead just give HRE halberds with better reach in castleage when maa upgraded to hardened, poleaxe as an uppgrade wich give +4dmg and an additional +3vs armoured
Instead of 2h uppgrade. Fanatism uppgrade in age 3 makes prelate bless also increase speed for the infantry by 10% and armour by an additional +1
Religion and steel right?
Paladins tech in monastery wich makes your knights have an aura for 2min after blessed by prelate wich makes the blessing way more useful then trying to have a bunch of squishy prealates in your army
The only good thing about HRE is its badass name. Holy Roman Empire as I’ve stated in the technical stress test until now is so bland and I hope that the devs add more unique techs to it. One example would be the MAA being able to toggle between 2 handed mace to counter armored units and sword with shield to reduce damage taken from ranged units.
I’ll pitch in my agreement. the Landsknecht is a silly useless unique unit, which should be replaced with a heavy knight on foot, and a mounted version. Perhaps similar to a research for the Man at Arms, you can research to put your knight on horse or not… depending on what you need the most to counter.
I like your ideas. But also the other ideas sound very neat. I think we can agree that the HRE needs a lot of improvements and overhauls. I just hope Relic reads all this and acts accordingly. I have just written an email to them. Again. But I can’t know if it really reaches the devs. I did spend quite some time testing this civ and thinking about improvements, so I hope it wasn’t all in vain.
The HRE is being played less and less because most people have realized how inferior, buggy and boring they are. Relic and Microsoft must have noticed that, too.
The content of my email to the AoE Support asking them to forward it to the devs:
Summary
The bugs with the HRE I noticed:
All the civs seems to have a coat of arms. The English have their cross, the French have their Lillies, but the HRE shields (MAA and knights) are blank aside from 2 slim lines.
The Prelates still bug out and lose the ability to inspire for good. It happens less often than in the beta, but it still happens. On top of that Prelates cannot inspire mangonels. Rams, cannons etc work, but not mangonels. They try, but nothing happens. And they keep trying. It is sad to watch. They also try to inspire allied workers, but also to no avail. Prelates also don’t inspire units that are in combat. Probably because Prelates also heal. The whole inspiration mechanic is very buggy and needs to be massively improved for military purposes as it falls very short compared to the Rus Warrior Monk and also to the Abbasid camel aura. The HRE are supposed to be THE Religion civ, but get easily outperformed by Rus and actually also by Dehli (speedy scholars) and Abbasid (conversion). The Prelate for military purposes is pretty useless and not better than a standard monk.
The Aachen Chapel does not work for military units, doesn’t inspire them although the military inspiration tech is researched. Bug or intended?
The Regnitz Cathedral still says 300 gold/min although there are 3 Relics inside. I dunno if that landmark is bugged or the tooltip. Something is off here. Shouldn’t it be 900 gold/min with three Relics?
The mace upgrade for MAA only gives +3 vs heavily armored if combined with the Twohander tech, instead of +6 (you only get +6 without the twohander tech). Twohander gives +2 damage to MAA and 15 hp (the hp are missing in the tooltip).
Thank you for fixing the mace attack speed bug for the release version, but I wonder why all the other bugs remaind in the game that I know were reported?
How can the Holy Roman Empire be improved? They would need a few more techs and better mechanics. Here are some ideas:
Honed blades from the Dehli give +3 attack for knights and MAA. So one tech of Dehli is kinda better than the core MAA techs for the HRE, because it also improves knights as well. The mace and twohander tech should either be merged into 1 tech (+2 dmg, +15 hp, +6 to heavily armored, but more expensive) or, if that is not an option for whatever reasons, should also improve units other than the MAA. What about the Landsknecht?
Why is the +3 melee armor for spearmen an age IV tech? It is not even that good. And compared to techs like gambesons, you barely even notice it. It would be good, if it also improved ranged armor or did something else. But the way it is it feels inferior to the other civs.
The HRE was famous for their affinity to plate, especially in reference to the Teutonic Order. The HRE barely offers anything aside from okayish infantry (it’s not even the best infantry in the game, the Abbasids have more synergies and all in all a better infantry. So, the HRE needs something aside from infantry and that also shows their plate manufacturing skills. The HRE is also a knight civ, but as it is it is the worst knight civ in the game (together with the English, I guess), because they do not offer anything for them aside from baseline techs. The HRE could really use a tech improving their cav. +3 armor and + 10 hp (something like that) would make this civ more diverse and interesting. Horsemen should probably be excluded from this, because it is the heavy cav the HRE was famous for among other stuff. They need to have a better heavy cavalry. Maybe remove Benediction as it is an insanely useless tech and add a Paladin or Crusader tech with reference to the Teutonic Order to the monastery. It would fit this Civ if military improvement was also to be found in the monastery.
Speaking of monastery techs: Inspiration for military needs to be improved. The way it works is just inferior to other mechanics in the game. You literally have to have around ten Prelates and move your army out of combat into the Prelates to get some healing and maybe some inspiration and then send them back in the battle. This is not good, it is in fact terrible. Inspiration for military must work differently than for workers. So maybe have inspiration either be an aoe cast that applies to more than one unit at once (the Prelate takes 3 seconds to inspire one soldier for 30 seconds, this is very close to useless), or let it become an aura which radius improves with the number of Prelates you have with your army. So if there are 10 Prelates in the army (somewhat close to each other), the aura should cover 5 to 6 tiles for example, while one prelate only inspires units in the range of 0,5-1 tiles. Or massively improve the duration of inspiration for military units. But I actually prefer the aura idea. It seems like a high risk, high reward kind of thing as Prelates are easily sniped, weak and slow. But it would give them a great use for the military and it would make the HRE want them with their army. This mechanic needs improvement!
Now the Landsknecht. Why is he such a weak and auxiliary wimp? You can’t build him as he dies to everything. He is way too bad. In Mastery Challenge 4 of the HRE you give historical insights on the role of the Landsknecht and you actually know that they were elite soldiers using mostly pikes and halberds and sometimes a flamberg (to break enemy pike formations) and later on even arquebuses. They used formations and were devastating to infantry and cavalry. But you didn’t transfer all that into the game and instead made the Landsknechts into some kind of fantasy unit that is a waste of ressources. The Landsknecht needs to be massively improved. It is also very off putting that there is not a single unique tech for the Landsknecht. Every other unique unit in the game has unique techs and/or abilities, but not the Landsknecht. He needs much more hp, less susceptibility to light armor counter (camel archers three shot this poor sod), a bonus against cavalry and maybe even archers and his only weakness should be the low armor and not also low health. The low armor means that every unit in the game can actually kill him. He does not need extra susceptibility and most certainly not this little health pool. Again: He was an elite mercenary that was feared and didn’t die from the halitosis of his opponents. But he does die like that in the game. And then you could also change the HRE hand cannoneer to a Landsknecht version that offers something interesting. Maybe they should shoot faster, have better range or anyting else that makes him equally useful but different from other civs. There are plenty of possibilities to make the Landsknecht and the HRE more interesting, viable and special.
If another unique unit for the HRE is a possibility, please think about the Black Rider. This could be an armored rider that shoots his gun like the rechargeable charge of the Coutilier in AoE 2 and then charges into battle. So: Shoot, charge, retreat. Shoot, charge, retreat and so on. Similar to the French Royal Knight, but still different.
I prefer infantry civs. So I want to like HRE but they do seem to have quite a few more bugs than the other civs.
Why do you say Abbasids are better? Don’t they only have “better” pikes? Along with the aura? Aren’t Delhi in some way better? Attack speed+damage+HP?
That landmark relic Bug is probably the most impactful for HRE. it makes that landmark essentially useless for the cost.
Wrt the lack of unit variety like special knigths. I won’t be surprised if they release a DLC at some point that adds 1 or 2 new units and /or techs and /or land mark to each civ. Including a Teutonic knight type thing for HRE
How do you know it is intended? Was there an official post on it? Because the tooltip does not exclude military.
The Abbasids have longer spear range (which also applies to their torch throwing skill, they ruin siege from ~1 tile further away), gain 1/1 armor for inf when a camel is around, have 15% more hp, they can build mangonels on the battle field with the tech, because they can build rams and siege towers without researching anything and their archers (also count as infantry, but applies to camel archers as well) shoot 25% faster.
They HRE have 10% more speed for inf, which is their best tech. Then they got the MAA techs and +3 armor for spears. That’s it. Oh, I almost forgot. The HRE also has the Landsknecht, but he doesn’t actually deserve to be counted for being such a trash unit.
The Dehli gain attack speed buffs due to landmark and when healed by a scholar. And they have a tech that gives MAA and knights +3 damage. I would not rate the Dehli inf higher than the HRE inf, but when seeing that their knights are also better, I would actually prefer the Dehli techs over the HRE techs. You can basically say that the Dehli get in one tech what the HRE needs two techs for. +3/+3 damage for MAA/knights in one tech vs the buggy mace tech and twohander tech in two techs giving +2 damage overall, +3 vs heavy armor (when it should be +6) and 15 hp.
I am not sure, but I think it is more of a display bug. I can’t say if the Landmark works properly, but you do get a lot of gold when 3 relics are inside of the Regnitz Cathedral.
ok i see what you’re saying, and i mixed up the hp between delhi and abb. i thought delhi had the extra hp tech.
after further consideration and playing a lot more games:
i dont think you’re comparing the civs equally though, same for leaving out a a few things. i also dont think the benchmark for “better” is always the same, it will vary depending on the situation. abb are more flexible with the building of siege. but imo thats where it ends.
i agree abb pikes are always better, no doubt. but the 15% extra hp is only in age 4, and their maa only comes in age 3. not only does HRE get MAA from age 2 (a huge difference for massing and using) but their UT all arrives by age 3 as well as the landmark spamming. thats a huge difference, especially when we consider age 4 is so expensive to get to. and finally HRE infantry being so fast makes them much more flexible in choosing engagements and chasing down opponents. and finally, when the prelate buff actually works, its stronger individually than the camel boost
and even by the end of all those buffs, the FU HRE MAA beats an abb MAA in 16 vs 22 hits (quick calculation, assuming no prelate buffs but camel influencing armour) and thats in age 4. before then HRE are vastly stronger than Abb due to the lack of hp boost.
generally speaking from AOE2 infantry refers to melee infantry only, so when you say a civ is infantry focussed it doesnt refer to ranged infantry. so HRE being an infantry civ makes 100% sense when considering melee infantry.
yes there’s some broken mechanics(prelates / HRE UT), and probably some fine tuning needed, but beyond that HRE is most definitely the best infantry civ. Ram rushes will likely also be tuned.
i think this is also subjective, Rus also only get the religious UT from a single avoidable landmark, HRE get it regardless and from the start of the game you use prelates, besides relics buffing so many buildings with such a big impact, on top of their prelates having a huge impact on both your eco , and decent impact on your military (when they dont break) as well as having two religious landmarks
single conversions from abb, also come in age 4, which again is very subjective, and incredibly late, so we could arguably rule them out completely, also from aoe2, we know single conversions are very difficult to actually have a big enough impact in large battles due to the high levels of micro + cost involved. leaving only delhi. which arguably deserve to be just as much of a " THE religious civ" as the HRE…
