The main strategy against the Macedonians is going to be around early resource denial, just getting them away from the gold early on. If you deny the gold from the Macedonians, they're not going to get any silver. They have no way of getting any upgrades, any of the blacksmith upgrades. Their archers are going to be weak. Their horsemen are not going to have any bonus health. And there's not a better civilization in the game to do that than the HRE with the faster moving spearman and the superior early economy with inspiration.

Spears fighting up on Varangian Guards is never a good look. All Pikes gives your spears a lot of additional damage, but it's just not looking to be enough.

Barracks is the first choice here from the HRE. Obviously needs to have some sort of unit to deal with the Hippodrome units that are going to be coming.

The Hippodrome champion, the Redari champion, is like an Imperial Age unit in feudal age. It increases the movement speed on all of the Varangian men-at-arms for the Macedonians, meaning they're going to be able to catch up to the men-at-arms that the HRE player is making.

These men at arms shred through regular knights and they'll probably deal with Riddari quite well in small numbers initially until the upgrades come in. Of course, crossbows is an even bigger concern as they will also be coming in for free from that Golden Horn Tower in batches of three.