English need more gold late game than most other civs, because their artillery is not competitive.
Vanilla Bombard. Vanilla Springald. No Culverin.
They get the organ gun and shattering projectiles… So bad lol
While I agree some things on HRE are not working as expected IMO is the best civ, very aggressive if you want or you can turtle, the only thing I don’t like is that it is missing more unique units… I do think artillery I’m this game is broken is extremely powerful.
The Genesis tournament is a perfect display of what a terrible civ the HRE is. The HRE often reached lategame, but they just don’t have anything good. Infantry sucks in lategame leaving the HRE with literally nothing strong. Infantry didn’t do anything all tourney long. It was all about siege, archers and especially French and Rus knights. There is just nothing for HRE. They have the least tools for lategame and also a poor castle age. Watching the HRE in the tourney really annoyed me as it displayed the core of all my complaints all over again. It’s just an unfinished, boring and weak civ. Weakest cav, weakest unique unit, terrible archers, baseline siege, most bugs, least identity and most useless mechanics, it was actually sad. The Daut game against Don Artie was the perfect display that the HRE offers zero. And it beats me why Religion is supposed to be their strong suit. How? Where? When? The Dehli get monk upgrades in age 2, the rus have better monks altogether and both civs do not count as core religious civs. Yet their religion affects gameplay much more. The HRE needs patches, love and everything. Relic… Come on. Why was this game released in this terrible and unfinished state? There is no civ balance, only superior and inferior civs. It’s a mess. High quality gameplay shows that.
There is French
then nothing
then Rus
then English and Mongols
then nothing
then Abbasids
then nothing
then HRE, Dehli and China → HRE has a good early game, rest is trash, and the two other civs got a good late game, but a tough and weak early game
Age of Empires 4 is an open beta and I am not sure, if the game remains in that state it is in rn and only receive band aid fixes, leaving the core issues alive, which would kill the game pretty quickly, or if there is actually the will at Relic to put a lot of effort into it to someday finish the game. There is a lot of effort needed to put the game in a good state. And the longer Relic waits with fixing stuff, the more people and players will get annoyed.
I sincerely hope that the game will turn out the way it deserves to be. Right now we are far away from that. The game was released way too early and didn’t have a long enough beta phase. To be fair, the beta phase was extended into the release of the game and that’s where we are.
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The HRE really could use some kind of siege bonus. We are left with no siege bonuses just like England. The English are supposed to be the straight forward one trick archer civ with defense bonuses. The HRE basically has to risk it for the biscuit into a castle rush to use any siege advantage. Granted they can do this, but it is very risky and greedy in a 1v1. Then you got the French who are supposed to literally be the one trick pony civ, but end up being the joker card of civs.
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Don’t get me started lol
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I’d say HRE is still above Delhi and China. Possibly others. But yeah, as I previously expressed, balance in general hasn’t proven great with the meta now established.
If the French player doesn’t play a perfect start, though, the MAA can indeed counter during the early third age. But, as we all know, high-level players are closer to perfection. Then the imbalance is going to show, of course (I’ll be watching that match you mentioned).
Still, countering doesn’t mean reversing the match in terms of aggressiveness. It’s nearly impossible to take the initiative at Feudal and attack the French base, exposing your economy to swift and fast-healing Knights.
I don’t know how this could’ve made it into the final game.
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England doesn’t have the Culverin.
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I mean culverin isn’t unique to the HRE?
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The English have got splash trebuchets and I guess they are supposed to use them also as anti siege. I do not know how it works in practice, if it is any good, but that’s how they are supposed to counter siege, I think.
The Culverin is not unique to HRE. They just have it along with French (ofc) and Abbasids.
Btw.: The fact that Relic is thinking about a Xbox version of the game, which I was afraid of, is a bad sign for the future of the game. Because this is also the reason why the UI of AoE 4 is so damn anti RTS and terrible. AoE 4 is developed by people who know very little about competitive RTS at best and have the order to also bring this game to the console. This is just terrible for the game. If there is a chance to not bring it to the console, I very much hope that they take that chance.
You have to hate the RTS genre to bring it to console.
Shattering projectiles slightly damages buildings around the thing you are aiming for. That’s what it’s for. It’s not useful. Even killing villagers takes multiple direct hits, and treb projectiles are easy to dodge, and take forever to fire. Trebs are weak and very situational anyway.
English have vanilla bombards and springalds, and they just need to build more of them than the enemy. That’s their anti-siege and their siege.
Culverin is much better than shattering projectiles + organ gun. The first is very effective anti-siege, the latter are just things that you shouldn’t waste resources on.
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Okay, that sounds like it is not viable to counter artillery. Fair enough. I understand that they are more gold reliant in the lategame. But should they get buffs in that regard, enclosure would have to be looked into I’m sure.
On a somewhate related note, the hre naval bonus where if you garrison relic in dock your ship gets an attack speed bonus, its actually a team buff where you whole team gets the buff, dont know if intended or bug
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I agree: HRE is too big to be just one civilization, it would be great if, as you advance through ages, you are forced to pick either one or another bonus to further personalize the civilization in game.
I really like the concept of “Umbrella civilization” but instead of one standard civilization covering many different nationalities without taking into account the difference between them, start with something umbrella and personalize it as you play it and see fit: either focus more in your economy, in your buildings, your navy or some particular units: for instance, building an stable first, you are not allowed to create crossbows in archery range later, or getting some military age up building would disable some eco upgrade later in game.
When I first heard about the Dinasty concept for Chinese I thought that it would be that way: Imagine having one Dinasty that has strong defense, another for cavalry and another for archers, and instead of each Dinasty being an upgrade of the former, that they have a branching path where you lose some bonus, but win others.
Making one wrong decision would cost your game, since you cannot go back… But it would be a great concept.
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Give the OP a pat on the back: he made what is probably the best forum post concerning AoE4 so far.
A little background: I’m a completely new player to AoE. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started a few days ago, and I still have a ton to learn. One thing I did know immediately is that I wanted to play HRE, because it did what I like in a civilization: defensive play, infantry focused, and put an emphasis on religion.
What I found out is that Landsknecht have a lot of potential that is quashed by a lack of armor and HP (do one or the other, not both!), and when mixing them into your infantry you are essentially at the mercy of how good your opponent is at micromanaging. I found that rams act as ad hoc troop transports, but against a good opponent that’s not enough to give Landsknecht the edge they need.
Prelated need a hefty range increase, both on their healing and on their combat buff. Both abilities are amazing and both really give the Landsknecht much more power and survivability, but the range is so short and the usability of Prelates in combat is clunky and somewhat counterintuitive (attack move them to see why) and you have a recipe for disaster. A range increase and a few QoL changes would go a LONG way to making them a wonderful support unit.
For being so dependant upon relics, you would think that Relic would give them SOME unique ability to ensure they get said relics. The only advantage the HRE has when it comes to relics is having a Prelate pre-built and camping the relic; however, anyone playing against the HRE will 1) know they need those relics, and countercamp, by 2) bringing far more units to a single spot, because the HRE has to split his prelates/spears/MMA to three different areas while his opponent can move a far large group around and check on the relics one-by-one. Which basically negates any build-in mechanism for HRE to obtain relics in a realistic manner. And if you don’t get relics, you don’t get to use one of your landmarks, you don’t get the unique buff to a keep or tower or outpost, which in turn means you basically just lost some of your uniqueness. Considering that Mongols, Rus, French and perhaps Abbasid are going to have a stronger early game army than you - well, you’re going to have a hell of a time actually obtaining the relics. It’s not like they respawn or something. Perhaps give the HRE one relic to start with, just to ensure they get SOMETHING?
To wrap up: I don’t think there are many fundamental issues with HRE, I think most of it boils down to numbers and distance rather than ideas. The Landsknecht needs more armor or HP, and/or a different armor type; Prelates need a substancial range buff on their buff and on their heal, and more intuitive QoL changes to their in-combat commands (don’t have them attack during an attack move for starters), and for an empire with large bonuses for having relics they are rather ineffective at actually obtaining said relics vs at least half the other civilizations, which field armies stronger and faster than HRE (and camping relics via splitting your army is a good way to get them all picked off and killed).
I won’t stop playing HRE because I love them on a conceptual level. But please make them a real world power and not playing second fiddle to the likes of France, Rus, or Mongols.
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Not sure why your post doesn’t have more recognition. It is a perfect summation of what is wrong with the HRE.
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They are strong in tier lll but IV infantry are useless I agree, they need a unique unit on tier 4d
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I know I’m new, but I’m just going to say it:
I do not believe infantry are “useless,” not even in the age 4.
Sure, infantry become less powerful - but to make a blanket statement like that just isn’t considering the variables that can be at play in any particular game.
This is doubly so for the HRE. No matter how strong siege or ranged becomes, their MAA unit (Mace Daddy) is always a decent choice because of its versatility, relative tankiness, and anti-armor attacks. Landsknecht actually have potential (once their HP/armor dilemma is fixed) as a unit that accompanies spearmen: the mixture of fully upgrades Spearmen and fully upgraded Landsknecht is a relatively fast, relatively cheap response team that can soft-counter blobs of infantry and hard-counter knights.
On the other hand, MAA and Landsknecht (against, assuming Landsknecht get proper buffs) can actually “counter” archers and gunmen by putting the Landsknecht into a Ram and getting close enough to them to unload and charge.
Siege have to be protected and using crossbows or archers without infantry is a bad idea. You can guard the ranged with knights but do you realize how many ultra-quality MAA a HRE player can field against a mixed army of siege/ranged/knights? I honestly believe with good micro that the HRE player would overwhelm and destroy in that scenario, and if you still don’t think so just imagine for each 5 MMA he threw in one Landsknecht to deal AOE damage.
I am not trying to be beligerant or start a debate, but I do feel the beed to disagree with the generalization that all infantry become useless as the game goes on.
Do I think the HRE need a buff to their infantry and prelates? Absolutely. Do I think infantry in general need a buff in the late game? No, probably not. There is a time and place for infantry even in the lastest stages of the game.
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Tier IV gunpowder units destroy infantry…
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big eye roll… this thread is full of ad hominems and accusations like this. this is an abysmal why to have a discussion… you will simply end up with sycophants who agree with you regardless of whether you are right or not
most of this discussion is comparing HRE to OP civs (france) or units that will likely see a nerf (strelets for sure, but likely all HC)
if you compare HRE to things like delhi, china or abb, they really are not remotely bottom tier
at the same time you guys are complaining about lack of uniqueness by are crying for buffs in so many different areas, it makes them OP.
is it really that hard to consider how HRE will do once the OP things are nerfed and the broken things are fixed? instead of this soap boxing…
Personally I think the HRE is the ideal castle age(III) civilization. Normally in my games as HRE when I hit castle my score goes way higher and is generally when I steamroll. HRE is great on 1v1 and especially in 2v2(possibly the best). However the faction is lacking effective late game personality and is meh at 3v3 and abysmal at 4v4. The building and health bonuses isn’t enough to hold off against cannons and war elephants. Delhi is basically the slowest faction, but elephants are the ideal late game unit who don’t even need siege to attack. Basically what I am saying is I agree with op on most points, such as the prelate bugs, better siege, and how cool the HRE is as a faction, but I wouldn’t say they are completely useless. I also don’t agree with the views on food production. Aachen Chapel + optimized farms = the best food output.
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