How to beat
Holy Roman Empireas Byzantine
Matchup tips
The Hippodrome is actually what makes this kind of difficult for HRE. The horseman presence so early really keeps you stuck in your base as HRE at a moment when you would want to continue the pressure, but you're just kind of unable to.
Cataphract longbow makes obvious sense here, but longbows won't really counter the men-at-arms effectively either. They're better than any other archer, but the men-at-arms are moving faster for the HRE, so kiting potential isn't quite there.
With the Hippodrome build, the Triumph ability makes Byzantine horsemen stronger. Even if HRE goes Meinwerk, in a straight-up fight, the Byzantine horsemen will win when Triumph is active. HRE should not take a fight once Triumph is activated.
Keshiks from the Eastern contract are good in straight horseman vs horseman because of their armor, but HRE has the best spearmen at this stage due to bonus movement speed and the All-Pikes upgrade, so they will do incredible damage to Keshiks.
I think the biggest problem for HRE, especially on a map like this, which can easily drag into Imperial, is there is nothing beyond Imperial Age for HRE. You don't really have a very special late game army. In contrast, the Byzantines do have that.
There's not really a good answer that Byzantines has to Men-at-Arms. He needs to get some Javelins up, but they do okay, they're not hard counters.
If they get the relics that boost the eco and with the relic towers as defense, that could pose a thorny issue for Byzantines.
We're seeing Keshiks come out. Might be able to at least deny a couple more relics than if he went for longbows.
You get such a big economic advantage just from going for the Golden Horn Tower. It kind of evens out the fact that your opponent got five relics. Like five relics, that's like 10 villagers. But Golden Horn Tower with five cisterns, that's like 12, 13 villagers worth of production that you're getting in there. Gives you a leg to stand on.
We've seen how bad Limitanei can be at chasing Pro Scouts; the movement speed is just way too good. Actually if there was a civ in this matchup that could block Pro Scouts it's the other one, because HRE have faster moving spearmen. Those Spearmen when they're actually charging, I think it's somewhere like 1.56 tiles per second and a regular Knight is 1.62.
You can also go Keshik which actually can deal pretty well if there's a Burgrave play coming in with a bunch of Man-at-Arms, then Keshik will do decently well.
You can't go Ghazi Raider either because your opponent has Knights, and even if he didn't have Knights he'd have heavy MAA into Ghazi Raider.
Holy Roman Empire Unique Units
Holy Roman Empire Landmarks
Age of Empires IV © Microsoft Corporation. AOE4.pro was created under Microsoft's Game Content Usage Rules using assets from Age of Empires IV, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.