The HRE is boring, one dimensional, has barely any cool techs or units, only thing thatās good is MAA. Landsknecht is trash, rest is baseline with nothing interesting. Worst cav, worst archers, worst mechanics, worst lategame. Just terrible design with lots of stuff left to do. There is no civ identity. Itās a generic infantry civ with prelates. All the cool stuff is with other civs. It needs a lot of works and also more techs and maybe another unique unit. A knight unit would be very fitting:
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fix prelate military use/fix inpsiration
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fix civ clunkiness in regards of mechanics (eco and military)
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add a unique knight upgrade that focusses on armor in age III (+2 armor, +10 hp, expensive and in monastery) ā civ focus here: Plate meaning MAA and knights with prelates and baseline archer/siege support
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Religion needs to stand out more. Rus (military) and Delhi (in general) feel better in that regard. HRE needs some perks here
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move Landsknecht to age IV, make him anti cav, anti inf (in the sense of not weak against inf but viable), unarmored, fast and yet somewhat sturdy
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add a Hand Cannoneer upgrade making them Landsknechts with arquebuses. Give them a bit more dmg or 10 more hp or make them a bit faster or whatever, just make them useful and kinda special.
Are you serious? Even in this match you could see how terrible the Landknecht is. The unit just dies. It costs freaking 100 gold and was an elite and front row soldier, not an auxiliary wimp like Relic made him into. You can even read all that stuff up when doing the HRE masteries. This unit is pathetic. I respect Matiz, he is a great player and an amazing SC2 coach, but fuck meā¦ Him building Landsknechts kills me inside. You can get a knight for that or 5 MAA. This unit is such a joke. Itās the only unique unit (aside from overloaded Chinese) that has not a single unique upgrade. It is the only unit you can barely use for anything. It has only rare occasions in which it does some work, but it never is worth its 100 gold. Never ever. This unit is the definition of trash. Expensive trash at that. Itās trash that is not even good enough for a trash war, because in order to be good for that, it would have to cost 40 food and 20 gold. This unit is that terrible. It dies to everything.
And donāt tell me āit needs to be mixed inā. Yeah, you can do that against scrubs. Or when you are Matiz. In the video you linked the caster didnāt know what he was talking about. The battles in which the Landsknechte were used were all in favor of Matiz. All these battles were onsided, the HRE was always in a big number advantage. At minute 27, however, you can really see what Landsknechte are made of. They get in, they attack the archers and they all die with 50% archers being left alive. Minute 27 is the one moment of the video when you want to talk about the power of the Landsknecht, because it is the only battle in which the HRE advantage is not huge. Itās THE worst unique unit by far. It costs 100 gold!!!111oneelevengoddamn
And this was one of THE worst matches of Hera in AoE IV.
I donāt wanna be the A-hole here, but this is just theoretical stuff that also is historically highly inadequate. The Landsknecht was a complete different kind of soldier, he was not what Relic made him to be. And he never ever is worth the 100 gold. Relic wants him to be a unit that can be sucessfully mixed in with other units, but it doesnāt work like that. You canāt design a knight costs melee unit that can barely beat a spearman. It is always better to build a knight, 5 MAA or a Hand Cannoneer instead of a stupid Landsknecht. He was lightly armored but excelled vs heavy armor and especially cav. He was durable and survived most of the battles. It was his job, he was a mercenary. Mercenaries are not suicidal. This unit would not even be picked for Suicide Squad 2. It is just trash. Hell, freaking Weasle is more of an asset than the Landsknecht.
It is the ONE unit you actually never see. Unless you are ahead and get 3 relics easily and uncontested, so there is actually no harm in mixing Landsknechte in for the heck of it. Itās the only moment when they are useful: You are ahead, you start to shit gold, you cannot actually lose, you wanna be fancy, but you still notice that this unit is completely useless for anything else and especially for late game, so you stop building it shortly after youāve built, because you actually do not want to throw the game.
