If the French go for an early outpost, HRE can send one villager to get a counter outpost up on the other side of the gold vein – that makes the situation a lot more terrible because the French will have invested 100 wood and still be denied off the gold. If it's just a spearman, the French could mass gather gold with four or five villagers, get enough gold for fast feudal age, get some archers, and take control over the gold again. But if you invest into an outpost and get counter outpost rushed, the transition into fast feudal archer play is much harder or significantly delayed.

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.

In a situation where you're heavily committed to feudal age, if you got Burgrave ready, you get a pretty good window to clean the French army and then they age up without military.

Burgrave is a great tempo play: it's not just the speed on the production, but also the speed on the upgrades that you are going to be getting in – being able to get the mace upgrade and the two-handed upgrade on the men-at-arms at a very very quick pace.

You get some really really strong upgrades for your spearman and your knights as well. So you could in theory actually make a point here for a knight play for the Holy Roman Empire up against a knight civilization like the French.