Is this the same guy who posted constantly about buffing HRE?
edit: Yes it is. Dude lets just wait for the dust to on the factions before doing this all again?
HRE hasn’t been changed since forever. And been left out the longest, but still having the least unique units and mechanics in the game.
The fact that newer civs have been getting more changes than what the HRE ever has had is frustrating and the devs just ignore HRE overall. Even when the big patch this summer released which promised new units for every civ, HRE was somehow left out. They got two mediocre techs locked behind the Memework.
I’d say it’s justifiable to rant about HRE or Ootd for that matter, after all, nagging seems to be the only way to get through to people, no matter what the subject is.
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Why do you think their eco should be so underwhelming and why is that not supposed to be their strength? Because HRE does it? Yeah, well… The problem is that OotD’s design offers nothing else aside the 2 pop per unit thing, there is nothing else really. The whole concept is a reduced HRE with double cost and more powerful units. Looking at the other new civs, they have gotten so much more thought, love and innovation… What good comes of double cost units, if you don’t have the eco to back them up? The whole 2 pop per unit idea has so many flaws. Just take a melee inf unit for example: You pay double for them, they cost 2 pop, they often do not have twice the stats, but the biggest issue is that their movement speed is that of a one pop unit. Zero bonus to it and nowhere to get. That makes melee inf really underwhelming. The only units that are actually convincing are archers and handcannons. And Landsknechte, if they can connect, which is more often not the case than it is. A Landsknecht is such a big investment, but he moves so slow. And so many civs have speed boni and kite mechanics, it’s just flawed. 5% “net” bonus is also not really good, you are overselling it in my opinion. Lose only one villager and you lose so much, it’s not even funny. It’s the simplest civ that has the greatest downside of them all.
This is too much “in theory”. If those units cannot get to their targets and overkilling is not an issue, you can just snipe them one by one. The MAA are the best example of how flawed the concept is. They are probably the worst unit in the whole roster.
True with the mangonel, false in regards of better raiding, I’d say. If you have 4 Horsemen, then they kill more quickly, but opposed to 8 they cannot surround and block villagers. In fact the villagers can run away better from 4 Horsemen than from 8.
I would bet my balls that they are the worst civ of the new ones and probably even of all the civs. What old civ would really struggle against OotD?
Yes, it is. I suffered through 4 to 5 months of unplayability of HRE. I don’t want to experience the same with OotD tbh. It’s the simplest civ of the new ones with the least things to figure out aside from accounting for the increased unit power. And OotD did so badly in all the showmatches vs civs that are far more complex and have way more ways to be played.
My point exactly. I can’t rid myself of the feeling that the tremendous amount of innovation on Relic’s side ends when it comes to HRE or its variant.
That is the core of my issue. And since it persists for such a long time already, it’s really getting to me. 
Very true, unfortunately. I don’t like my role of being the moaning ####### but I also can’t help it if I do not want to stop caring for the game and my by definition most favorite civ(s).
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The fact that OOTD is probably the easiest civ to pick up and play of all the new civs and in theory should be performing the best since people are barely learning strategies for more complex civs and yet OOTD is losing almost every single game they played on the prerelease is a really bad sign.
As a simple straightforward civ, it should be performing above average and have winrate decrease as people learn new civs, considering it’s starting performance is really low that is not a good sign.
Perhaps it will perform better at lower ranks due to being simple, we will have to see as it is released.
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After trying OotD today, i felt the civ was a bit underwhelming. Your eco feel SOO slow, compared to HRE, and you constantly get pop capped.
But After losing a lot of matches, i started realizing that they have a big advantage that other civs don’t really have. You kinda don’t need to go castle, and can stay in feudal for a very long time. Most other civs, if the opponent goes castle you will struggle against their units. But with OotD you’re just fine fighting in feudal while the other is in castle. Your horsemen and spear have enough damage to deal with MAA, and horsemen will shred crossbows and mangonel.
But another very important thing, having a second TC or even a third one is ABSOLUTELY necessary. With only 1 TC you just don’t have enough resources to sustain your army. It’s way too expensive and your villagers are just too slow.
The good thing is that while your opponent spend time trying to reach castle, you can just spend that money on more TC…
I think the guilded spearman, archer and horsemen are quite strong, much better than regular HRE.
The guilded MAA and knights on the other hand are way too weak for their cost. I really hope they will get buffed especially the knight. For some reason the knight is one of the only units that didn’t receive double HP, i think they should have double HP like other units. Guilded knights have almost the same stats as cataphracts, but cost sooo much more and double pop… Guilded Knights stats just don’t make sense…
Landsknecth are OK, they don’t feel weaker or stronger than regular HRE, they feel balanced. They are easy to snipe but will win against any melee army.
Another thing that feel very weak is your blacksmith upgrades. +1 on a strong unit is a lot less interesting than +1 on two weaker units.
Overall i think its a bit less strong than i expect, im still not sure if it NEED an eco boost, as you have the advantage of being able to stay in feudal, and can use that to put a lot of pressure on the opponent if they try going castle. But i would at least fix those issues:
-Make golden cuirrass tech a lot better to help a bit MAA
-Make knights have x2 HP like other units
-I think OotD blacksmith upgrade should get something unique, maybe the melee damage is +2 per tech instead of +1 (for a total of +6). I think that would be fair since you have less units and that +1 melee damage is kinda pointless with OotD.
-Since meinwerk techs get improved, Archen should be improved as well, since its just 10%, its aura could have a larger range compared to HRE.
I think MAA should also get more unique techs. to make them more interesting. And not tech locked behind meinwerk. The civ preview says that they have good INFANTRY, but the only infantry tech available in the barrack is the spear torch… The barrack feels very empty in unique techs.
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I’ve made the same experience and a lot of things were exactly as I expected them to be. The melee part of the civ is really underwhelming, the eco is a struggle. Yes, 2 TC is the way to go with no real alternative, but a prolonged feudal also can somewhat ruin Regnitz for your. And Burgrave does not convince me either. I feel like that the infantry is also just too slow, while I agree with pretty much everything you say. The one pop basic unit speed for 2 pop 2x res units just doesn’t work imo. I do think they need something for their eco. And for the units, especially infantry, as well. The knights are powerful but not in the sense of justifying their cost. The slow prelates also are killing me. The prelate is still a unique unit, but he offers nothing. Instead he is even gutted compared to HRE. He can only be built in castle and is more or less a mere monk. Inspired Warriors is better for OotD than for HRE, but it still is so very bad. I think the tech needs something more mechanic wise for HRE as well as OotD. I think quite some of my suggestions in the opening post are valid. I am not enjoying OotD. It has its fun moments, but it’s so ranged locked because everything else just doesn’t cut it. The relation between cost and performance just isn’t there and a lot of unique techs are simply not very good.
Oh and lategame sucks with that kind of pop. It’s just no fun, because the units are not good enough to withstand the masses of the opponent. Archers even in their bugged state and HCs are the only convincing units in late. Everything else feels very weird and the lategame eco is also way worse than I would have thought. You need a lot of vils making your army even smaller. And if you need to trade… Oh god, there is barely space for units anymore. And getting siege is also very difficult. I never managed to get more than 3 to 4 3 pop siege units, because my army size would be so ridiculously small then.
Landsknechte do deal a lot of damage, but I am not sure if they are cost efficient. Same with HRE, I never considered them to be worth their investment, even if you had nice connections. They can win you battles or even matches every 100 years, but other than that the res invested is often not worth it. In most cases they maw down spears and horsemen and still die in big numbers, because they are so squishy for their price. You barely win an engagement with them left standing. For a unit with that price it’s just not convincing. It’s a niche unit that can be good, but can also be terrible. That goes for HRE as well as OotD. I tried a few games vs AI as well and they HATE prelates. Boy is that annoying how they focus fire prelates and then Landsknechte. And I feel like the unit intelligence has also reduced or just was never that high when fighting in an enemy’s base. Ranged units prefer to attack buildings even if all the melee units not far from them are fighting units. I have to baby sit the ranged units to not attack buildings and waste their dps. For OotD units every attack counts even more than for the other civs. You cannot afford wasting attacks on buildings, while there are plenty of enemy units on the same screen.
And well… even if the radius of Aachen covered the whole map, it still doesn’t do much. I feel like there is barely a notable increase in income. And the Meinwerk techs are just bad aside from Zornhau, which is okay, but also not great. I also couldn’t really make use of the spearmen unique tech. That doesn’t mean that it sucks, but I think it’s a rather pointless tech that only has a niche use. Sure you can burn down farms nicely and it can have its moments, but I think any other effect that actually helps the spearmen perform would be better. And the war horse thing is exactly as I thought it’d be: Not good. I think having the dmg reduction remain for 5-10 seconds after a successful charge would make it a good tech. 10 seconds might even be a bit much. But 5 should be very much justifyable. I don’t know, this would need some testing. Anyway: The knights were rather disappointing. Not as much as the MAA, but close. Especially in lategame.
On top of that MAAs charge with axes, which has to be a visual bug. It makes no sense whatsoever. And Elzbach is bugged, the influence dmg reduction doesn’t work for other buildings. It’s only applied to Elzbach.
I also feel that the core idea of the civ, powerful units for twice the cost, is not an advantage at all. It’s more of a disadvantage, because the unit performance just isn’t there aside from archers and HCs, which are really good. As I have said already.
Being forced to two TC is also not a good outlook. You can still try to get to castle quickly with two TC, but it’s very tough to survive the first assaults. If you can in a rather healthy manner, you can stabilize and put up a good fight. But I very often was not able to survive. I am no Beasty who can manage to pull that off, while still looking not too stressed. But for me it’s reeeeaaally tough. And even if you can fight in feudal vs some civs in castle, it kinda ruins your much needed Regnitz play. Burgrave feels very meh as I mentioned already. The cost reduction is… nice. But the production doesn’t cut it. You only go for it for the 30% cost reduction and then you can only build mediocre melee units at best. I think Aachen and Burgrave are really bad, Meinwerk needs better techs and Regnitz is hard to get going if you are not a multitasking apm god like Beasty or ML. I also felt like my opponents always knew what I was about to do. Because neither with HRE nor with OotD can you really surprise the opponent. It’s so obvious what to expect and my opponents were always prepared. The slow prelates and infantry was a real mood killer for me. I had many frustrating situations in which my investment just didn’t pay off. Either I got kited and killed or killed during a retreat. For an supposedly braindead easy civ OotD is very hard, because you cannot compensate the slightest mistake. You can get punished so hard as OotD, while you have to make every unit count. I think it’s really tough. And then there is actually nothing else than the more powerful units for a higher cost. That’s the whole civ. And I was tearing up when I tested Zhu Xi, Byzantines, Japanese, Ayyubids… Because they have so many options. There is so much to discover and you can go so many different paths. And I totally miss that with OotD. I enjoy the HRE theme in general, but I do not really enjoy the design of neither HRE nor OotD unfortunately. There is so much nothing compared to other civs. Especially the new ones.
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Yeah, i don’t think the civ need a complete rework.
I think it could work but it needs small buff all over the place
I think landmarks need a buff especially the two feudal landmarks.
Melee units need a buff (maybe tied to blacksmith upgrades, or more barrack upgrades).
And if they choose to add eco boost i don’t think it needs a huge change maybe from 25 to 30% or something like that.
They could also let OftD start with 6 villagers like others
and most importantly they needs more unique tech so the unit don’t feel so boring. It needs to feel like a strong infantry civ as the preview says.
The only place i disagree with you, i think regular hre is well designed and interesting. And also much stronger than OotD. Their MAA are actually strong and their eco is really good at aging up fast.
On a separate note, i had a lot of fun with Japanese, and they felt much more interesting.
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Its incredibly early days and I think people need to experiment a bit more before writing the civ off. In part because I remember how the pro’s all claimed Malians were a D-Tier civ on release, and in the weeks/months that followed discovered several powerful things that made the Civ effective (and would ultimately be nerfed.)
With that said - I’d agree that OotD don’t seem like a great civ. The economy doesn’t appear strong early on (and getting to 100+ vils takes forever) - while the units don’t appear strong late on (due to being 2 pop). There’s not much “there” in say the Landmarks to see why this judgement wouldn’t hold up.
You could buff the units - but that risks being oppressive. Especially early on, gilded horsemen have to lose to regular spears and gilded archers have to lose to regular horsemen etc. Arguably this counter system continues on into Castle/Imperial. If it didn’t you’d just make an army and run over opponents.
If I was being cynical, I do feel part of the weakness is that they are getting pigeonholed. “Only the archers good”. Well the archers have great damage output - but they should lose to Horsemen/Knights/MMA/Mangos etc and do. The OotD player needs to pivot through their roster but they seem to get stuck. (Possibly due to the economic weakness we talked about.) I think more experience will potentially change that.
I suspect the strength of the Civ would be in a late feudal push with horsemen/spearmen/archers. If your opponent has spent more resources on a 2nd TC or fast Castle, there should be a window where your superior units should just overcome them. If they stay in feudal, it should come down to micro - and units with more HP should win that (as they are easier to save). But there’s limited upside if they can’t be healed. I think some source of feudal prelates - or a tech like Chivalry would help.
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How to improve the Order of the Dragon?
first - rework and rename into The Teutonic Order
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I can’t stop calling the the Gilded Order in my head.
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Very true.
I also remember that the Mali civ was released they were initially discarded as the weakest civ, because an optimal Build had not yet been invented that would take advantage of their new mechanics. Once it did, they became the most OP and broken civ: Rush musofadi, Rush hunters+JavelinThowers, Rush with Scouts that regenerate, Boom without creating corrals only collecting from cows, etc. Their success was so great that they even received debuffs to balance it: Musofadi damage reduction to increase bonus damage, Reduction of bonus for collecting beef to benefit collecting corral food (Milk, hehe), etc.
I think we have to wait at least a week or two, or a month to better test the new civs and then suggest changes for balance.
Well, precisely for that reason: Unlike the Mali that received a debuff, the Ottomans since their release a year ago have had several boosts to balance it due to the low state it was in: Janizaros boosted with better attack speed, Great Bombards boosted with lower cost and population, Observatory, bonus increased: +20% → +60%.
Since it has already been announced how the variants work (changing only one epithet from its parent Civ and retaining most of the mechanics), I would prefer that the Teutonic Order have its own civ in some future DLC.
In fact, they created a state in Prussia and Estonia called the “State of the Teutonic Order”, so they would have enough Landmarks of their own, and unique units (Teutonic Knight, Teunitonic Men-at-arm, Teutonic Chaplain, Teutonic Sergeant (* Light Melee Cavalry*)
While it did take some time to find a good build order, Malians also received significant buffs before that (many of which are still around)
Pit mines used to generate less gold, cattle cost 100 on release (now 90). Malian pit mines and houses used to be even easier to torch down (pit mine has 300 more hp now, houses went from 400 to 500). Sofas used to have 4 second longer training time
Warriior scouts hp regen was buffed (and later nerfed again becasuse they became too good)
While it’s possible we will discover new build order strategies for OOTD, most of the OOTD units are not very good for their cost (gilded MAA look pretty weak and gilded knights are not great as well, especially compared to some of the new cav like cataphracts). Combined with one of the worst ecos in the game, it’s hard to see how they can be a good civ right now.
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Order of the Dragon is actually very strong and it need to be rushed down or outlasted via efficient trades.
You only need to play it like English. Archer archers archers archers. Few spears if enemy goes cavalry. And a touch of MAA if you need a lil meater frontline. Also using glided horsemen can grant you speed over maa frontline.
Gilded archers have effectively twice the dps as a standard archer will almost the same train time.
Meanwhile glided horsemen and glided spearman each have twice the HP as their respective base unit; aka hp/Cost is maintained.
Lastly you do NOTTTTT WANT TO WAIT until you have 50+ units to push because the larger to 2 armies gets 3 things work against you!!!
- You become susceptible to overkilling your enemy
- Bc your hp pools are so high you actually increase the enemy’s efficiency at killing you and being LESS susceptible to being overkilling!!
- Lastly none of the gilded units are actually 2 to 1 on all their stats and train times so long term the opposing army will eventually have a higher unit/cost ratio than you.
Play OotD fast and in the enemy’s faces and take map and natural resources. Do not play HRE1 fast castle; you’ll be too slow.
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Okay, that might work for early game. Even if I think that this is very hard to pull off, because mistakes can quickly snowball with this civ. And very strong… It might be an okay tactic, ML used it against Beasty. It was potent, but it was by no means very strong.
And after that the civ just stops or what? And having an army of nobles while archery was considered a profession without honor especially in royal and noble circles during the medieval age and ealry Renaissance, feels very weird. This civ should have good ranged, but it’s a melee civ in the end.
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I can agree with all this, but i still think OotD need a few rework, even if its not to make them stronger, i think at the moment they feel very blend and uninteresting. I think it would be possible to make them slightly more versatile without making the civ directly stronger.
I agreed that archer, spears and horsemen are good.
The problem are with MAA and Knights. They are just not worth the cost. They should do something with those units for sure. Otherwise your options become limited quite quickly. It also doesn’t make the civ feel like an Infantry civ when they should. If they need to nerf archer to make MAA and Knights stronger in exchange i would be fine with it… But so far they are not a top civ for sure so archer are probably fine…
If OotD is too strong in feudal, it gains almost nothing from going to castle. At least give a bit more armor on veteran and elite MAA. And make knights have x2 HP like all their other units. It seems like they preemptively nerfed knight HP compared to other units. But now they have almost the same hp as cataphracts.
More unique tech at the barrack are a must as well.
They are a pure infantry civ that relies on MAA and nothing but MAA. Everything else is either a niche bonus or the result of MAA being hard countered. Now we have the Japanesr, whose infantry seems more potent. Especially in lategame. But Japanese also have so much other stuff. HRE is very limited in what it has and it was constantly ignored, while other civs have gotten new units, techs, anything really. HRE stagnates for a very long time now. That is what I really dislike about this civ.
Full agree. Also with the rest of your latest post. MAA and Knights especially feel undwerwhelming. And the slow speed of infantry makes high invest units like Landsknechte and slow MAA the perfect sniping targets. They even are bigger and fewer. So happy hunting for every opponent of them.
And I think it’s easier to list up the techs that are good for units: Archer armor. Zornhau more or less, I don’t think it’s very good. The visual is the best part. And that’s it already. The rest of the techs are not very good and also rather boring.
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The HRE (along with the English/French) are supposed to be the beginner friendly, low complexity civs, which is why I believe none of them have gotten really anything meaningful in the way of new units/techs etc. HRE does have arguably the best eco in the game so they CAN go pretty much any units (in fact knights are extremely common, and it makes them one of the best water civs).
I do think HRE could use a little love as they are underpeforming at almost every level, perhaps doing something with the 3 almost unused landmarks and/or giving them something nice in fuedal age on land.
HRE mostly struggles from being predictable due to being a bit too linear, OOTD however I think is currently just bad. They have a pop and resource inefficient military, have arguably the worst eco, and are really easy to counter (their units struggle extra hard against counter-units). Comparing gilded knights to cataphracts or French Knights is just sad.
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Meanwhile Delhi Elephants are what they have been for months now… I have no sympathy for OotD …
That’s a flawed argument. A new civ should not be measured and compared with other rather disappointing parts of the game. Even though Elephants are not that useless. They are just a unit that is really hard to balance. I am also unhappy with the state of the Landsknecht or what he is in the game opposed to what he was historically. Does he benefit from fighting in formations? No. Should he, though? Yes. Does that lead to that everything else in the game should be as flawed and disappointing? Not really.
Eventually it doesn’t really matter what you feel sympathetic for and what not. Because what matters is that a new civ should be fun to play and offer things that eventually work out or else it’s just a wasted chance to improve the game. Most new civs are really convincing, even if the balance is not quite there yet and things are over- and underpowered. But the core idea and concept of the civ should always be working as intended. And in regards of OotD that’s not really the case.
But it’s noted that you do not care for OotD.
I play some OotD and I feel they are the worst civ out of everything. It is cool your units are strong, but their eco compared to normal HRE is just bad. Its hard to protect siege units because you have physically less units to defend and block. Gilded knights are meh and easy to focus down with xbows.
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