HRE need some love !!

[Valhalla]

"Edit" Known bugs i have came across with HRE "Reinforced Defences tech" 40% buff to hp not registering keeps and other structures are the same hp. Another bug concerning the prelate not buffing workers.

I have been playing HRE main and i feel theirs just not enough going for them i seen someone recently saying that "the HRE were an after thought" and i feel the statement to be true this is especially true to the glorious french.

There special unit the Landsknecht is a beautiful unit aesthetically but also a pile of trash by the time they become relevant its already the late game and they get mown down like sitting ducks or they are just cattle for the slaughter, even after all the upgrades and the prelates buffing them which is also done in an unsufficient way they get wrecked i will mention more about the prelates buffing later.

Obviously if you mass them up in a small army within a small army its going to be bad for you because they will all melt away like butter which leaves only really one option to take only a couple in your army at a time and even then they have very little impact for the ridiculous cost that they stand at.

Taking these units will generally make you trade badly for the cost 100 gold 60 food which is absolutely insane considering you get a royal knight and all its powerful glory for 100 gold and 140 food but if you use the insane bonus of production buildings built around a castle you get them much cheaper and faster production.

when you take into consideration that a fully upgraded very powerful men at arms with the one handed mace upgrade is a mere 100 food and 20 gold compared to the Landsknecht at 100 gold and 60 food that is also unarmoured you clearly see what unit you want to be spending your precious resources on.

Prelates give a buff to armour of units but they are so difficult to use when they are in battle as you need to manage it yourself most of the time on top of moving your troops around which becomes impossible. Its a bonus wasted in my opinion it also takes so long to buff each individual man if they do it before battle its not worth waiting for and ends up getting wasted especially when there is no time to lose when you think you might have the advantage.

I propose you use a similar ring of influence for heals and armour buffs as the Conversion gets or similar to the Khans ability he uses on his cavalry this would solve all the bonus problems that prelates have on troops.

Also the prelates buff villagers but how much by it doesn't say all the information you get is that they "inspire villagers to greatly increase resource gathering" but greatly is debatable if they had a number on it we could understand more because in terms of numbers i dont know what this translates to and cant really compare it to other civs economy upgrades.

I also believe that their landmarks are not really the best the Regnitz Cathedral and the Palace of Swabia are their best Landmarks but the Palace of Swabia coming in at tier 4 is a little to late to have an impact as i usaully have 100 villagers by then and my economy is already running at full capacity and have been training military for a while by then.

There is probably a lot more i haven't touched on especially with economy bonuses compared to other factions but i believe this is sufficient for now.

[General Oliver]

i don't play HRE, i prefer RUS. but have felt the same when i tried them out every once and a while. I hat this civ because it focused to muck on relics and i'm terrible with relic collecting. but anyways, I've read that the prelate gives villagers 40% more resources and can only affect up to 8 villagers at a time. and also felt that their landsknecht should act almost exactly like the RUS warrior monk that gives the saint's blessing to nearby troops while in combat. i played them alot during the stress test, but found them underwhelming when compared to the french and rus.

[IT]

I don't even know how to start with them. Economic bonus need a prelate, tower and dock bonuses need relics. Would be nice if they are as straight forward as the Teutons.

[MakkaHS]

Yeah I think a buff is coming

[Bakeneko]

Changing the Prelate buff from single target to small area of effect is good idea! I also vould like the have a small upgrade to their healing range (1-2 tiles).
Landsknechte are glass cannon for sure, but currently they are more glass than cannon. They have the same amount of HP as an archer, so even a handcannoner is more tanky than a Landsknecht. IMO they should have at least as much HP as a spearman, and could benefit from the Ringmail upgrade too.

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

HRE is very strong. MAA rush in Feudal hard to stop. Prelate boost is 40%-50% with upgrade. You have very fast feudal time with very good feudal eco. That is very big. Regnitz give you free 600-900 gold per min. If you go Aachen, your whole farming line is 50% better than generic. In comparison, English has 15% bonus. Also has access to culverin. I will agree Landsknecht suck, so I'm sure they will buff that. Prelate armor and damage buff is OK but should be able to rebuff units in combat. You usually only see prelate buffing culverins.

[Elriadon]

HRE needs some redesign. They feel blander than the English and that's a shame since I like HRE and Infantry factions.

Also, Prelates are seriously bugged. They could also benefit from a "Move and Heal/Buff units" behavior on Attack-Move instead of just moving to the destination and getting slaughtered.

[ShadowReaper]

HRE main, and I have to say

Why the hell are there no Phalanx, Centurions, Legionary?
You know... the units they were known for?

Instead it's Spearmen... Wtf is that?
Just further proof HRE is an afterthought.

Why is it that the French get faster and faster Villager production (no upgrades needed), but HRE needs to be in the Castle Age (III) for the Palace of Swabia which is no longer necessary at this point because any HRE player worth their salt has 80-100Peasants at this stage?

Why is it that for the HRE, Age II, the Meinwork Palace only gives -25% Research cost, but the French all melee damage techs are FREE99 at the start. WTF is that ♥♥♥♥?

Why is it that the HRE's, Age II, best unit is the Man-at-Arms, which obviously is no contender against every other Civ's unit? What exactly is an Armored Footman supposed to do when they can NEVER catch their target, IE Longbowmen; Horseback Archers; Knights. By the time you get 10 of these guys, the other team as already advanced to Age III.

Landsknechts are absolutely useless. I've tried everything from mass production (30+) Armies of only Landsknechts, to mixing them in my Battalions (Spearmen+Men-at-Arms+Landsknechts+Archers/Crossbows), only to watch them get wiped out as they feebly attempt to reach the enemy.

Prelates are a backbone to the HRE, but they're highly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless at times.
EX: Often times, usually Late Game, they forget they're Priests and stop Blessing Peasants all together forcing you to either manually individually buff 1-unit at a time, or commit suicide so you can purchase a new Prelate that will buff.
If you have them in your Unit-Army and grouped with any Battalion, the Attack-Command sends the Prelates to the front to stand in front of the enemy and be the first to die instead of Move-Heal(group). This forces you to specifically micromanage each individual Prelate wasting Hotkeys that should be used for your Armies so you can manage Flank-Maneuvers.

Why is the Unit-AI for attacking completely retarded?
EX: Your enemy has a force of say 20 Calvary, you as the HRE have 60 Spearmen in a Spread-out Formation.
The Calvary charges headon, you decide to meet them headon also charging all men into combat; what happens next?
ALL of the Spearmen then begin to funnel down towards the first-nearest-enemy to the first-nearest-Spearman to attack that 1 unit instead of remaining spread-out and easily surrounding the enemy...
To attempt this maneuver you now need to have 3-20Spearman groups hotkeyed but you can't because you ran out of Hotkeys using them for each of your Prelates.

IMO HRE's best feature would be their ability to Spam Infantry like an endless Zerg, but their units are neither Cheaper nor faster to produce and are easily trampled over by French-Paladins, Nest of Bees, and simple archers.

[Tyr]

It's not HRE problem, problem is OP broken french and op english feudal that make HRE weak against these civs. You probably want to go as fast to castle age as you and defend against raids assuming your opponent won't just let you build up.

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

Originally posted by ShadowReaper:

HRE main, and I have to say

Why the hell are there no Phalanx, Centurions, Legionary?
You know... the units they were known for?

Instead it's Spearmen... Wtf is that?
Just further proof HRE is an afterthought.

Why is it that the French get faster and faster Villager production (no upgrades needed), but HRE needs to be in the Castle Age (III) for the Palace of Swabia which is no longer necessary at this point because any HRE player worth their salt has 80-100Peasants at this stage?

Why is it that for the HRE, Age II, the Meinwork Palace only gives -25% Research cost, but the French all melee damage techs are FREE99 at the start. WTF is that ♥♥♥♥?

Why is it that the HRE's, Age II, best unit is the Man-at-Arms, which obviously is no contender against every other Civ's unit? What exactly is an Armored Footman supposed to do when they can NEVER catch their target, IE Longbowmen; Horseback Archers; Knights. By the time you get 10 of these guys, the other team as already advanced to Age III.

Landsknechts are absolutely useless. I've tried everything from mass production (30+) Armies of only Landsknechts, to mixing them in my Battalions (Spearmen+Men-at-Arms+Landsknechts+Archers/Crossbows), only to watch them get wiped out as they feebly attempt to reach the enemy.

Prelates are a backbone to the HRE, but they're highly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless at times.
EX: Often times, usually Late Game, they forget they're Priests and stop Blessing Peasants all together forcing you to either manually individually buff 1-unit at a time, or commit suicide so you can purchase a new Prelate that will buff.
If you have them in your Unit-Army and grouped with any Battalion, the Attack-Command sends the Prelates to the front to stand in front of the enemy and be the first to die instead of Move-Heal(group). This forces you to specifically micromanage each individual Prelate wasting Hotkeys that should be used for your Armies so you can manage Flank-Maneuvers.

Why is the Unit-AI for attacking completely retarded?
EX: Your enemy has a force of say 20 Calvary, you as the HRE have 60 Spearmen in a Spread-out Formation.
The Calvary charges headon, you decide to meet them headon also charging all men into combat; what happens next?
ALL of the Spearmen then begin to funnel down towards the first-nearest-enemy to the first-nearest-Spearman to attack that 1 unit instead of remaining spread-out and easily surrounding the enemy...
To attempt this maneuver you now need to have 3-20Spearman groups hotkeyed but you can't because you ran out of Hotkeys using them for each of your Prelates.

IMO HRE's best feature would be their ability to Spam Infantry like an endless Zerg, but their units are neither Cheaper nor faster to produce and are easily trampled over by French-Paladins, Nest of Bees, and simple archers.

With all the false things you've said, its quite obvious you don't know how to play HRE.

Nothing good comes out of comparing a civ to the French because they are OP for now. For your first point, this is the Holy Roman Empire, they dont have Hoplites, Legionaries or Centurions. You need to go back and learn some basic history.

HRE has one of the strongest economies with the Prelate buff being 40%. You have one of the fastest Feudal ages and one of the fastest FCs. Meinwerk palace is a free blacksmith with reduced techs for all your upgrades including siege engineers that allows you to build rams.

You obviously underestimate how strong early MAA are. They have 3 ranged armor or 4 when you get the armor upgrade. This is the same armor as early knights. Longbows will take forever to kill them. And this is where Meinwerk comes in. you get discounted armor and the siege engineers tech which makes HRE Ram rush one of the strongest in the game. If your civ doesn't have Feudal Knights or early MAA, it is hard to stop this rush. Its almost a free win vs Delhi & China. If an English player just makes longbows, you can quite literally ignore them and siege down their base.

Unit AI is also not retarded like you claim. Since you gave the example of the spears vs cavalry, you're obviously giving them specific attack orders that cause them to shuffle around. Just attack move into them.

Archers are a pretty bad unit vs MAA they do quite literally 2-3 damage per shot depending on your upgrades. You also get mangonels so use those vs massed archers/longbow. Nest of bees shouldn't be a problem if you build springalds or culverins in Imperial.

HRE doesn't need discounts to their infantry when they can get free 900 gold per minute from Regnitz while having a 50% eco boost with the Prelate. If you're not planning to rush with HRE, just go build Aachen and get the best farm eco in the game.

[Tyr]

Originally posted by ShadowReaper:

HRE main, and I have to say

Why the hell are there no Phalanx, Centurions, Legionary?
You know... the units they were known for?

Instead it's Spearmen... Wtf is that?

HRE has nothing to do with the Roman republic or the Roman empire, it was created 300 years after the fall of western rome by Charlemagne in 800AD. Western rome fell in 476.

The romans did use the phalanx in their early republican years before Rome got sacked by the gauls but the formation is best known for it's use by the greek city states and Alexander's successors.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Too Valhalla:

Also the prelates buff villagers but how much by it doesn't say all the information you get is that they "inspire villagers to greatly increase resource gathering" but greatly is debatable if they had a number on it we could understand more because in terms of numbers i dont know what this translates to and cant really compare it to other civs economy upgrades.

Its 40%. There's a tech for 50%. I probably figured this out by hovering over the status on a villager, but idr because I found it really easily.

I think if you actually optimize their eco (something I've only seen at high levels in like boom war on black forest, haven't seen it on arabia or for feudal plays), they have the best eco in the game up until like 13 minutes or so (whenever your villagers have to start long distance gathering wood to keep it under the church landmark's inflluence), and kicks back up to pretty decent when you start building lots of farms. I think the other landmark is a trap, its not even better for a ram push in feudal because having an extra 10-15 villagers buffed up without building an extra prelate will make you back the resources for blacksmith + upgrades before your push hits.

I don't think they're top tier (I think the best civ is mongols actually, then french, I'd probably place them somewhere from 4th-6th), but I think they're fine and can hold their own. They're not like Delhi where they just can't compete on land maps.

That said, the Landsknecht needs a buff. Its useless in 95% of games. A lot of the actually unique units seem pretty bad in this game tbh, especially when compared to better version of common units like royal knights or streltsy (not including nest of bees). Mangudai are I the only unique that feels commonly worth building.

[What-ever]

As english you can smash the mongols pretty easy with just mass longbows in early feudal, they have no real answer to it. Thats why I think french are just better than mongols but mongols are really strong. Its like French are S tier and mongols are A tier together with the english and rus.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by What-ever:

As english you can smash the mongols pretty easy with just mass longbows in early feudal, they have no real answer to it. Thats why I think french are just better than mongols but mongols are really strong. Its like French are S tier and mongols are A tier together with the english and rus.

I haven't seen that work at high levels of play. And I think its really risky (its way easier for mongols to scout english army than english mongols, and if you push out with say 20 longbows at 10 minutes and they've got 20 horsemen you instantly lose the game. If you wait til you've got a large mass of spear+longbow and attack at say 13 minutes, they could just be castle age and overrun you with maa/knight. If you try to add in spear cause you see horsemen, and they just go deer stone into mass archer, they'll easily overrun you). And I think english have to be aggressive, because if mongols hit castle they just start running around with +25% damage +15% speed healing knights raiding everywhere and english has to defend for the rest of the game which is almost always a losing formula.

[Haarvieh]

Originally posted by ShadowReaper:

HRE main, and I have to say

Why the hell are there no Phalanx, Centurions, Legionary?
You know... the units they were known for?

HRE is medieval germany+bohemia+northern italy. Yes the name is confusing but its not the roman republic/empire. Just google hre and look at a map.

That said. HRE has strong eco but its military is quite weak/baseline outside the MAA. The Landsknecht is in serious needs of buffs. Currently its useless. Very expensive + very low health is a combination not worth it when you can spam more of your good MAA which are quite tanky and can dish out damage. The 2 unique damage upgrades in age 3 for the MAA feel strange and rushed tbh.

They have baseline cavalry, siege and archers. Yes they are the infantry civ but other civs have unique techs for several kind of troops. French is a cav civ but also have superior crossbows and good siege.

The Prelate military buff is in its current iteration quiite useless. Its very hard to use. PRelate takes 3s to buff 1 unit. Buff is 30s so 1 Prelate can only buff 10 units. You have to take them with you to battle but prelate is extremely slow which negates your best unique tech (10% fastetr infantry). Look at the Abbasids. They have mounted aura buff units. They can fight, they are fast, they have health and they buff multiple units at the same time.

All the building defensive buffs the HRE gets are nice but in this game siege is very strong. So you buildings life 10s longer.

The unique mechanic to put relics in defensive buildings to make them stronger is good on paper but extremely situational and thus never really used.

While the HRE works because they have very strong eco, they feel flavourless and most of their bonuses dont synergise very well.

I expected the mto have more armor techs for their units because they were by far the largest plate armor producer of their time. Many of the known designes came from the HRE and the most producers were located there (southern germany, northern italy)

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Haarvieh:

Originally posted by ShadowReaper:

HRE main, and I have to say

Why the hell are there no Phalanx, Centurions, Legionary?
You know... the units they were known for?

HRE is medieval germany+bohemia+northern italy. Yes the name is confusing but its not the roman republic/empire. Just google hre and look at a map.

That said. HRE has strong eco but its military is quite weak/baseline outside the MAA. The Landsknecht is in serious needs of buffs. Currently its useless. Very expensive + very low health is a combination not worth it when you can spam more of your good MAA which are quite tanky and can dish out damage. The 2 unique damage upgrades in age 3 for the MAA feel strange and rushed tbh.

They have baseline cavalry, siege and archers. Yes they are the infantry civ but other civs have unique techs for several kind of troops. French is a cav civ but also have superior crossbows and good siege.

The Prelate military buff is in its current iteration quiite useless. Its very hard to use. PRelate takes 3s to buff 1 unit. Buff is 30s so 1 Prelate can only buff 10 units. You have to take them with you to battle but prelate is extremely slow which negates your best unique tech (10% fastetr infantry). Look at the Abbasids. They have mounted aura buff units. They can fight, they are fast, they have health and they buff multiple units at the same time.

All the building defensive buffs the HRE gets are nice but in this game siege is very strong. So you buildings life 10s longer.

The unique mechanic to put relics in defensive buildings to make them stronger is good on paper but extremely situational and thus never really used.

While the HRE works because they have very strong eco, they feel flavourless and most of their bonuses dont synergise very well.

I expected the mto have more armor techs for their units because they were by far the largest plate armor producer of their time. Many of the known designes came from the HRE and the most producers were located there (southern germany, northern italy)

I think this is a good post to summarize up their problems.

They're not weak, but they lack flavour. It feels like playing a completely generic civ with strong eco and amazing relic gold. But its not even an eco like Delhi's where it functions noticeably different, its just extra gather rate.

I do think you underrate the building bonus a bit. It can outheal trebs and stall you from dying to ram pushes for quite long periods of time. Its not the amount of healing that's the problem though, its just too situational. You have to be getting sieged for it to do anything, and more often than not you're either to lose because you lost army/villagers or you'll be attacking your opponent. Games are infrequently decided on buildings living or dying.