HRE is a basic civ with barely anything unique. They have the least amount of unique units and techs as well as abilities/mechanics. This civ only exists around their landmarks with a wonky prelate that is not even worth including in your army, although the civ is supposed to be built around that holy inspiration fact. The landmarks govern everything for this civ, because the basic civ of HRE just offers close to nothing.
While what you say should be true, it just is not true for HRE. There is barely any resemblence of the actual civ, nothing that stands out and does not get severely hardcountered by building crossbows, mechanics that do not work well, they have the worst units, only one unique upgrade in imp and that’s for buildings… This civ only exists because of Aachen and Burgrave, either one of these two landmarks is responsible for a HRE victory. HRE at best is semi-unique, because the landmarks (and age II is not even a choice) overshadow all the shortcomings. HRE can neither beat Ottoman nor French, because their units are just too bad. Mehter, Sipahi and Janis counter everything HRE can do and French has the upper hand from the start due to knights and completely demolish with Arbaletriers, against which HRE cannot field anything that is remotely cost effective. And that is true for the rest of the game, there is nothing HRE can aim for composition wise to gain the upper hand. There is only mangos, which are slow, expensive and susceptible to… oh my… knights. I do not get the Arbaletrier anyway. A unit without any downside, it’s not even more expensive or slower, has more armor than most heavy melee units, but is not tagged as heavy, shoots faster, has a very strong use ability and laughs at their counters. Horsemen do nothing to them. And then look at the Landsknecht. One billion downsides for some aoe dmg. A unit that is so far from being cost efficient that you can only build it if you are ahead, but not if you wanna get ahead. It’s more or less useless.
The last patches benefitted some civs and ignored others, but no civ was ignored like HRE. Delhi once was their best match up (for the worst reasons) and now HRE struggles against them, but hasn’t gained any advantage anywhere as compensation. There is no good match up for HRE anymore. Maybe English, but it’s an okay match up at best. And maybe China, unless they get a good age III eco going and can reach imp. HRE can’t beat anything in lategame, especially not Chinese, because HRE doesn’t have a lategame aside from massing inferior units and building towers.
I am probably the big minority, but I do not want new civs. Not as long as the civs we have do not have comparable levels of uniqueness and power. Right now there is quite an imbalance. The problem, however, is that pretty much all civs have in-depth uniqueness, while HRE has only landmarks and offers almost zero variation. And Delhi also doesn’t find any form of peace in regards of their free but slow technologies, because it is so hard to balance. That’s why some things can be solved by fine tuning, others, however, require quite some overhauling.
The game is ready for new civs, when there are no overhauls needed anymore and everything can be solved by fine tuning. The early launch with all the issues is the biggest burden of this game, because it is so hard to recover from a bad launch. New civs can help to revitalize the playerbase, but there is only longevity to be had if every aspect of the game, if every civ inside of the game meets the same standards of quality.
