How to beat
Holy Roman Empireas French
Matchup tips
French units are chasing, but realistically you can never chase the HRE military. They're moving too fast for you, even the spears.
HRE most likely in this matchup will go for a dark age opening, getting spearmen up across the map to harass and annoy the French, just delay that early timing on the pro scout.
The Burgrave has been changed: you now do 50% bonus damage when charging with infantry. That means Castle Age men-at-arms with the upgrades completely shred knights.
The HRE would typically start off with faster spearmen just in order to react to a knight, because the risk of not having spearman when that knight arrives is too high. As French, you can take advantage by not making the knight immediately and instead getting a much faster professional scouts timing.
In an ideal situation, you age up with like 20 plus knights and go for royal institute and then kill the HR out with bloodlines. The guild hall does feel a little bit safer in a scenario such as this.
HRE does not need that much gold, but it's easy to get gold starved if your opponent puts enough aggression on top of you. French is the civilization that does that.
But that's the thing about the HRE when they start to get a lot of spearmen and they start adding those horses too, things get quite difficult to handle, especially when your micro needs to be perfect to ensure you can actually shut them down.
HRE spearman are faster with marching drills. They gap close insanely quick. Even though archers deal bonus damage to spearmen, the spearman's base damage is 8, so the exchange is not terrible if you can close the distance, which HRE can.
French knight scaling feels better in a prolonged feudal, whereas HRE traditionally wants to reach Castle Age before around 15 minutes due to the relic win condition.
HRE is a timing civ that peaks a lot faster. Once that timing passes, French late-game units like Royal Bloodlines horsemen, Arbalétrier (the best crossbows), and French knights make the game very scary for HRE.
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.