If you go for the standard all lord play, you already have a military unit on the field. Whereas with HRE you're the one who needs to react to this. You're not the civilization that can just sit back and be like, 'Hey, I see your lord. I'm just not going to respond to it.' He needs to invest on land. And that gives you an advantage when it comes to getting that water lead a little bit earlier on.

Yeoman archers are baseline a little bit faster, but still not as fast as HRE archers; however, they have one more tile of range.

Meinwerk Palace provides cheaper, faster technologies, so horsemen and spearmen will deal a lot more damage, which is very beneficial against any potential feudal age all-ins from House of Lancaster.

With Burgrave Palace, HRE men-at-arms do 50% bonus damage on their charge. Even with crossbows as a counter, you need a good amount of them, especially since the HRE men-at-arms are also faster.

And here again, having one prelate is basically enough to let your two spears double their strength essentially.