Recently on Reddit i saw a post with the focus on “what if AoE4”. Someone asked what people would like if something could be added that people would want. And several people including myself answered with a Dutch Variant of the HRE.
This would mean early medieval times and middle and high medieval time/age of the Netherlands. Mostly focused on the Center, East, South and North of the Netherlands. Outruling the counties of Holland and Zeeland which were Burgundian and hence should be a French variant.
The early Netherlands, Lower Lotharingia was a part of Frankish HRE. A part of (Middle) Franconia. The early naming would be The County of Frisia.
Which started with the Christening of this area through the Prince Bishopry of Utrecht which influenced the whole country, in good and bad ways.
We’ve had different forms of governement in the early medieval times and i would like to try to implement those in this variant. For example the Bishopry churches power, the secondary counties that were formed by the influence of the HRE neighbours to the east and south, and as last part the Duchies that became powerful until the 80 years war with Spain. Excluding the influence of the Burgundians Hapsburgers.
In general i think they should have the following bonusses:
- Food dropped off at mills also grants a small amount of gold.
- An earthen wall as a new building, works like a stone wall. But can be walked on at one (inner) slope/side, the other side isn’t walkable, and farms can be placed on the walkable part. Units can walk on the top which is flat like a stonewall. The earthen wall and the units on top take less damage from ships and ranged siege weapons.
- Villagers can be changed into Guild Archers for a price. (Then your farmerss can defend your dykes).
- Houses can be upgraded to Housecastles which give them a short range attack.
- The Barracks has an extra upgrade for your Man-At-Arms and Spearman: Gothic Man-At-Arms and Gothic Pikeman. Which gives them additional melee and pierce armor.
Then we should have a Feudal Age influenced by a religious Franconia with familiarty to the Aachen Chapel and as the other option the influence of the Emperor establishing democracy by giving out cityrights.
FeudalAge Landmark1: I was thinking of an Aachen Chapel renamed, it increases gather rate for farms.
FeudalAge Landmark2: Magistrates Cityhall, you can train Magistrates(Schepenen) from this building that can focus on your gathering building to increase gather rate or production speed.
The Castle Age was mostly focused on the Cities their selfgovernement and indepences within the HRE. But also Hanseatic trade. Thus i’d prefer to have two landmarks concerning that.
CastleAge Landmark1: City’s Guild District; here you can get different kinds of technologies. Military ones to allow your villagers to swap into Guilded Pikemen and Guilded Crossbowmen. And there should be a tech called Masterproof that increases resource gathering, preferably gold but vills become more expensive, or an opposing option to make villagers cheaper maybe an options system like the Abassids would be good so you can pick a limited amout of techs. And the building should have an area aura that gives surrounding buildings more protection against siege/fire damage.
CastleAge Landmark2: The Magisters Thing. In this building you can train a Guilds Conscription, which trains a small batch of Guild Pikemen and Guild Crossbowmen for a (heavy) gold price. And the more you use it the more expensive it becomes. A secondary option would be to train or post a Skolthēti, which should work like the Jin Dynasty ‘Mouk’ it spawns the unit and it can reveal invisible units and fight them, it comes outside when it detects invisible units. Or make it a trainable unit then it can see invisible units like the Mali ones.
The Imperial Age is mostly known for the diversity of culture and counties that developped.
ImperialAge Landmark1: Trappistenbrouwerij, a building where you can train Trappists (a monk) that can area heal (heal multiple units) slowly at the same time. And the Trappist has an aura that gives units in its area more hitpoints. The Trappistenbrouwerij has a tech to upgrade your Trappist, this adds a barrel to its back. And the Trappist can place the barrel on the ground and it will give the hitpoints aura to units in the area, and it will heal units for a certain amount that decreases from the healing. When the certain amount becomes zero the barrel will disappear.
ImperialAge Landmark2: Bolwerc, a keeplike buliding with a moat. It can only be attacked by rams and ranged siege units like the stone wall. From here you can train Waardgelder, which are pikemen with very long pikes and they have the ability to build earthen walls and siege weapons in the field (they dont need the tech from the blacksmith.