I like the Order of the Dragon

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

That’s it. I see a lot of complaining about it, and yeah maybe it needs a bit of a tune up from a balance point of view, but overall I think it’s a pretty interesting idea to have a civilization with very few eco bonuses and extremely efficient units. It leads to a fun aggression-focused game plan that I enjoy.

The only thing I’d take a look at is changing up a few of the unique techs and making them more useful. Stuff like all the infantry getting ‘Dragon Fire’ instead of just the spearmen.

Nice job devs!

3 Likes
2

It needs new military units. Not sure how it’s that hard to get?

3

Same, I like them a lot as well and have been using them over HRE since they got released.

From my point of view they need to double down on the military rather than eco. Especially since from a lore perpective they are a religious militant order whose members compose of the wealthy elite and have the best training in turn.

From my perpective it needs the following:

Prelates:
Have prelates do AOE healing/inspire.

This particular change is done to make it more one star oriented as it is currenly designated and remove further touch points/micro management that newcomers would have to deal with.

Aachen Chapel :
In addition to its current effect for OOTD, have it also act as a church where you can train prelates and do upgrades however only on age 3. This is so that the player already has a church and mimics what Regnitz Cathedral and Palace of Swabia does.

So in effect you have additional church base landmarks on age 2, 3 and 4 and can build more form there if needed.

Have its inspired effect also effect military unit to provide an alternative method of playing (i.e. land grab or aggresive plays/rush).

This also comes with the downside where if you are too far from your hub area, the landmark would get destroyed if it is not defended or you overextend and lose too many units.

Another downside is that you lose out on the unique Meinwok tech upgrades like Dragon Cuirass, Zornhau and Bodkin Bolts.

Military:

Add Marching drills to Meinwork palace
Have Dragon Fire efect MAA
Add Heavy Maces and Two-Handed Weapons added as upgrades in the barracks (this is probably contentious)

Overall, this makes it so that the Age 2 landmark would dictate how a person would play.

They can choose Aachen for eco and its potential for landgrab/rush but in turn lose out on the meinwork tech upgrades.

Heavy Maces and Two-Handed Weapons are just added in as a fallback since if Aachen is chosen then the MAA will not get Dragon Cuirass.

4

I think the idea is to make them different from regular hre. So what i suggested in previous post is that for their MAA they should instead have a One Handed Axe tech (if you look at the model sometimes they switch to axe, now they would only get it with the tech). But to make contrast with regular hre. It would give them +6 against light units instead (axe are better against unarmored).

The other suggestions i had, is that archen shouldn’t be another monastery since regnizt is already one. Instead i was thinking you could garrison one relic inside (to contrast with hre that garrison 1 prelates). If you do the bonus goes 10% to 15. This would also fit with Beasty concerns that the archen should scale with age. So you would be able to scale it to 15 in castle age but at the cost of 1 less relic in a keep or outpost.

I agree that unique tech should be improved. War horses should last a few seconds after charge. I like the idea of giving torch aoe to all melee infantry.

I don’t think they should have marching drill, i like to keep them different from hre they already have the same landmark

5

I agree with a lot of the stuff you’ve all posted, honestly. Unique techs and landmarks feel like the areas that would benefit from some more work, and would go a long way towards making their gilded units feel more unique if each landmark had their own twist on how their units should develop.

e.g. Aachen focuses on healing units, making prelates faster/tankier, and adding more inspiration effects to soldiers
Meinwerk adding more broad effects to units directly, in the form of unique techs, would be cool too.

Another fun one would be straight up making EVERYTHING gilded, even the siege. Gilded Trebs would be pretty spicy!

I do think it’s important to avoid making them feel similar to HRE, and that it wouldn’t be good design to share really definitive techs like Marching Drill just to keep the play experience fresh. One of my favourite parts of OOTD is how powerful archer play is, which is often an afterthought in the HRE meta.

6

I agree that OOTD needs to be different however it brings about a conflict from a lore perpective.

We have HRE being a proper civlization with economy and military well in place and then we have the OOTD which is a religious militant order composed of highly trained aristocrats and is essentially a professional military company.

OOTD in itself doesn’t have a leg to stand on to be it’s own civ or a variant civ. One of the only bits that makes it stand out and ties it back to HRE is that OOTD’s founder Sigismund becomes the Holy Roman Empire which essentially gives it a reason to have the HRE tech.

A strong argument in favor of this is the Jeanne d’Arc civ which has the exact same French tech and more, being a hero unit plus additional unique tech like Ordinance Company and Companion Equipment as well as the ability to spawn Jean’s champion units through the keep which allows players to play aggressive as well as do landgrab and defence.

OOTD on the otherhand has a burning weaknesses in that it is essentially a slower civ with the units while being strong cost too much so any unit lost whether a dragon villager or a military unit will hurt especially since they take longer to train as well.

Another weakness is that military units cost double meaning that you’ll have just about have half an army
and can’t force projectwhile the enemy players will always have more than you and will outlast you on attrition or wipe you out with ribaldquins, mangonels or nest of bees.

Another problem is attacks on 2 different fronts. It’s worse enough that you dont have a large army but now you have to split them in 2 who will most likely die.

The reason why I suggested those changes in my prior post is for the purpose of snowballing.

Marching drills is an age 2 tech that increases the speed of all infantry and prelates by 10%. This tech in particular will help when it comes to getting relics.

Additionally, if you have Aachen Chapel act as a church and be able to produce prelates by age 3 as well as upgrade them then you have a further snowball effect where when you go age 3 and choose Regnitz Cathedral which also can create prelates, then it means that you now have 2 chruch buildings automatically that can create prelates who will then partake in the relic rush as well as research upgrades.

This makes it so that you don’t need to build additional churches unless you wanted to though it will take 20 seconds.

While it is good to be able to add relics to Aachen Chapel for scaleability, HRE and OOTD do not have a competetive edge in a relic rush besides marching drills to be able to get relics in a timely manner in comparison to Russians which has their Warrior Monk on a horse and the Ayuubids who have athe dervish which is a monk on a camel who both in turn have better mobility which make marching drills a requirement.

Aachen Chapel having it’s mass inspire also effect military units will at least give a alternate way of playing the landmark either defensively or aggressively similar to keep based landmarks.

In terms of additional units, they can probably add in Sigismund as a hero unit which is contentious as per the feedback on Jean d’Arc.

The other is having a bombard unit as by the 14th and 15th century (which HRE and OOTD is a part of), a lot of civs get bombards by this point.

HRE specific ones are Pumhart von Steyr, Faule Mette and Galeazzesca Vittoriosa as an example.

The alternative is that all these upgrades should go to HRE as they have definitely been missing out for a while now.

7

I like it too, it’s fun. And like any other civ that can add new unique units or items, this one could use some improvement too.

Maybe if they release civs like the Poles, Vlachs, Hungary or others, maybe there will be a gilded version of their unique units, a “Gilded Hussar” will be interesting. If not, perhaps a better balance of their unique technologies, considering that they are already an official game civ and also enter the game’s balance system.

In fact, another post was made about these aspects recently (), especially because the civ on which it is based, the HRE, still only has 1 single military unit, which is also situational. I had suggested that the Men-at-arm be replaced by the “Ministerialis”, and that some special abilities be given to it, as well as adding the Black Rider (Schwarze Reiter) as a unique Age IV unit.

As another aspect could be considered interesting, if in the future there are mercenaries for all civs (my suggestion), although limited to 3 units and only historical allies, the civs that contributed troops to the Order of the Dragon could have a mercenary from this civ:

HRE

  • Gilded Knight (because they always stood out for having the most attractive armor on horseback)

Bohemia

  • Gilded Crossbowman (bohemian nobles who like hunting)

Hungary

  • Gilded Handcannoner (their kings exported handcannoners to Wallachia and Moldova)

Serbian

  • Gilded Spearman (one of his unique units is the Hoplite, his OotD unit as well)

Wallachia & Moldova

  • Gilded Archer (they had the best archers in the union, and they would be civ variants)

Bulgaria

  • Gilded Horseman (because they loved cavalry)

Aragon

  • Gildad Men-at-Arm (infantry civ, and were part of the HRE under Charles V)
8

I dont think OotD need a hero, if they make another hero civ I really hope its going to be Mongol Variant (Gengis Khan replacing the generic khan). As this is the civ variant that would fit best having a hero considering the importance and relevance and power of this person on the battlefield (even more than JD).

I actually thing OotD should move away from the whole “relic” fast castle strategy as i dont think that’s what they are meant for. Instead of making marching drill + chapel EVEN MORE in line with this, i think would just be best to change how regnizt cathedral works. I was really disapointed at launch that the OotD regnizt doesn’t work differently like some of the other landmarks. Then OotD wouldn’t have to worry about relics at all and could focus on different play style that fit their civ.

For example the Regnizt cathedral could simply make the warrior inspire tech become better, or some kind of bonus like this, instead of being focused on relics which in my opinion doesn’t fit the playstyle of OotD at all since they dont have access to prelates early.