The way inspiration works right now for military, if it works, is not a good mechanic. In reality you barely have the inspiration buff. It’s a 3 sec single target cast and not like the camel aura instantly giving a bonus for every infantry unit in the area. 30 seconds are way too low for the fact that it is a single target cast. This renders it almost completely useless. Units do not get inspired infight, the Prelates heal then. And they are supposed to heal, because healing is actually strong in AoE 4. You do not want them to 3 sec cast a buff and not heal in the meantime. Then again you also don’t want them to inspire only when all units are healed up. The mechanic just is useless except for siege and maybe ranged units. But even then it doesn’t feel convincing and not at all polished. It needs to changed for military purposes so it is not a single target cast anymore. The best thing would be an aura that increases with the amount of prelates that are somewhat close to each other. Let’s say 1 prelate inspires units within 0,5-1 tiles. And 10 prelates inspire units in a radius of 5 tiles. And so on. That way you want prelates with your army, you want to protect them, because they are slow, weak, expensive, but give a nice bonus when kept alive. And the opponent can try to snipe them for max profit. That would be a high risk/high reward mechanic that made inspiration useful with the right gold investment. I think this or something similar to this needs to be done, if this ability is ever to be useful. Right now it is utter trash and can only be used vs ai, because the ai is stupid.
Care to read a bit? Yes? There you go:
Summary
It says for the HRE: Religion, Infantry and Defense. That’s what their core is supposed to be. It’s the only civ that says “Religion”. Yet the warrior monk is way better to use and offers way more synergies. Yes, he only becomes really strong with his Landmark. And yes, you would have to miss out on better gold and bounty generation. But why not? The warrior monk is very strong and the Landmark allows you to gather Relics quickly and maybe even cripple the HRE, who heavily rely on relics in general, but especially in longer games. The warrior monk needs to strike once and somewhat all units get a very similar effect to the HRE inspiration. But it applies to most units after just one single hit and lasts 20 seconds fully upgraded I think. The way to play here is to hit and run with the monks during a battle, so they don’t die at the front line (I mean, they end up wth 290 hp, I think. It’s fairly easy to keep them alive) and thus can keep the buff up almost endlessly. It requires a little bit of micro, but it is not difficult. And when you pull them back, they heal each other up to full, before they need to return to the battle. Again: One strike suffices. And then look at the FU knights the Rus have with warrior monks: 344 hp, 39 or 40 damage (not sure) and 9/9 armor. That’s sick. Especially when your own civ only has infantry with some perks, while the rest of the units is baseline boring. That’s why the HRE also needs a cav tech. They deserve it, they used heavy cav very heavily (no pun intended), perfected knighthood like the French and were the greatest plate manufacturer of their time. And they most definitely did not get outperformed by eastern European knights. But instead they get a Landsknecht that dies if you look at him, because he was completely screwed over given his historical role.
And yes, the eco Prelate is strong. But it is the eco advantage for the HRE. Other civs have other stuff. The HRE eco has peaks and needs to be taken care of, but it is not exceptionally stronger than other civs’s ecos. The French are very easy to play and got an eco that barely needs any kind of micro, skill or planning. Then they get the ridiculous guild hall, which is just insane. The English also have no eco issues, neither do the Rus if they can find enough hunt for at least 350 bounty. And the Abbasids become stronger and stronger eco wise with every minute the game progresses. I do not see the great HRE eco advantage that would justify all the HRE shortcomings. And even if there were such an eco advantage, it would probably get nerfed in the longrun leaving the HRE pretty blank with bugs (that hopefully will be fixed by then, too), a boring tech tree that offers nothing but inf and useless mechanics/no synergies.
If you look at the Abbasids and the HRE and only talk about melee infantry or better: MAA, then the HRE is better. Esp. in castle age. But the Abbasids get their camels as well that are always with the infantry. And camel archers are a pain to counter with the HRE inf. The 10% speed is nice, but they still can’t catch up with cav and since it is only 10% and not 15%, it takes them very long to actually catch up when they can. They will eventually, but not in the sense Zerglings do in Starcraft II. It is nice, but it’s not like they catch everything thanks to it. So, against the Abbasid camels you have to go for a lot of archers. And in that regard the Abbasids have their advantages again due to a faster rate of fire that applies to camel archers, archers and crossbows. You can’t deny that the Abbasids have a pretty darn strong infantry considering the fact that they are not an infantry civ. The HRE, however, is but offers nothing aside from it. That’s the big issue and the imbalance in regards of the civ designs.
My point is that the core strengths of the HRE are Religion and inf, while they do not offer anything else. And then they do not even excel at Religion, because the Rus offer better mechanics/synergies. And the HRE also does not excel at infantry, because other civs also have good infantry and unique units that are actually useful. If there was a castle age match with only MAA vs MAA, sure the HRE would probably win vs every civ. But that’s not the reality of the game. You need synergies and comps that compliment one another and that is where the HRE falls so incredibly short. The early MAA are not even remotely as strong as the early knights, so early MAA is much easier to counter. And once you know how to do that, the HRE does not really pose such a great threat anymore (the English also have early MAA to counter, the French and Rus have knights, leaving only 50% of the civs against which the HRE “strength” can actually be used).
Their military altogether just is inferior to actually every other civ. The reasons for that I have listed up plenty of times. The HRE has the least stuff going for them and they are being played less and less. Most people start to get annoyed by the HRE as far as I can tell, because they realize how limited this civ is.
If I wasn’t a HRE enthusiast, I would probably play the French because I like shiny plate and knights. Or the Rus, because they are played in a way that I actually like and prefer over most other civs. And their knights even rival the French ones. But I preordered the game when Relic announced the HRE to be one of the 8 civs. That made me preorder. And then I am presented with this sorry excuse of a civ desgin that is just lackluster, boring and funnily enough “uninspired”. That’s why I cannot be satisfied with what the HRE offers and how they were designed. They will receive buffs along the line, that’s guaranteed I’d say, if Relic cares for their game. It’s just the question of when and how they will be buffed. I just hope it’s not only little changes that are equally uninspired as the design of the civ up until now.
