Hello guys, so according to Hera (youtube video) and me, Hussite wagons are the absolutely worst UU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GMwM6bZbaA
My ideas:
What do you think? –Not all changes at once for sure.
I do not play much Bohemians. Bohemians players usually try to go for arbalesters + Houfnice + halbetdiers.
What should the Hussite Wagon accomplish in the Bohemian army ? Accompagny this usual composition or allow a new composition ?
If I understand correctly, you want to make it sone kind or ram for hand cannoners, similarly to the current ram for infantry. And this should allow a castle age power composition Wagons+HCs, which would roughly be as if HC would not be weak against Xbows and skirms, and not get wrecked by a single Mangonel shot. The counter would still be mangonels, especially because knights woukd die to garnisoned HC if they cannot immediately kill them after surounding them.
I think the idea is nice, especially as it motivates to train HC instead of Xbows. But I think you are going way overboard with the buffs. Which I often see when people wants to buff a bad unit. If the Wagons power basically acts as a defense for HC, the wagon dont need (and shouldnt) tank too much against knights or mangonels. Even if the wagon gets destroyed, as long as it blocked a couple of mangonel shots or 10s of knight attacks, it more than did its job in the fight. We should make sure that this cadtke age deathball can be countered in castle age by most civs if they see it coming. Redemption monks is nice but not enough because nearly half if the civs do not have Redemption.
I’m sincerely hoping you’re not asking all the changes at once.
This one is a bug afaik. They should fire all projectiles at once like OG.
No, those are just suggestions to the devs or for discussion. All the changes at once would make them too strong.
I get the feeling the current firing behavior is intentional. They’re not supposed to micro around like conquistadors, they’re more like deployable towers.
And they essentially already allow units to ‘garrison in rams’ just by standing behind them.
They’re supposed to be a niche unit. I don’t know they’re fine as they are, but I don’t really care for any of these ideas.
Maybe the one buff I’d like is no frame delay on the bonus projectiles.
They should simply absorb all of the damage, to have actual functional use. But that would make the unit actually OP, which Bohemians really don’t need. Buffing their damage output however means it’s just another generic gunpowder UU, but less usable due to how harshly mangonels counter it. Buff them against Siege, and it’d become an obnoxious unit.
It’s just kind of a unit that balances the civ through its uselessness. Which is fine, I guess, some civs just have fluff units (or techs). Don’t think I agree with that design, but Bohemians don’t really need anything to buff them. 
Same stats and make them cheaper, a lot cheaper
Adjust stats if too OP but make them usable
I think their are 3 Reasons why the unit sees little to no use.
I think it’s intended to work well with the Castle Hand Cannons. It should work well with them in theory as usually other ranged units are kinda effective against HC. But they wouldn’t stand a chance with the Hussite Wagons in between.
The three reaosn why we basically never see that are:
A) Too high investment + timing disadvantage. You need a University and Chemistry. Then a Castle to make the Hussite Wagons. It’s just too much in total.
B) Weaknesss agianst Siege. Hussite Wagons are too easy countered by Siege, they take too much damage. HC aren’t exactly Siege Counters either.
C) Weakness to Cavalry and Monks. That’s more a soft counter as with the HC in the Back their is enough ranged firepower to deal with those. But the HW on their own get completely dominated by those cause of their low Damage output and clunkyness. Maybe some melee armor agianst Cavalry would help, but it’s also partially as from point A) you often just don’t get the needed numbers in time against these unit types that don’t need much investment to be viable.
I actually would possibly ask for making it possible to build the University in Feudal (and a few techs like murder holes). And also reduce the cost and research time for Chemistry by 1/3. Then reduce the bonus Damage of the various Siege units against the Hussite Wagon Armor Class a bit, possibly also a small cost reduction. And as compensation remove the free shaft mining upgrades. Just the free mining upgrades former malian way is imo enough.
I think you can half the bonus damage the current mangonel and BBC lines deal to Hussite Wagon and also adjust their cost to 100 W 60 G (from 110 W 70 G).
The last 2 alone should be enough. Garrisoned archers/canoneers make it move faster, garrisoned hand canoneers make it shoot more projectiles and a small reduction in bonus damage they get from mangonels.
Other ways of making it useful - reduced damage on one or two of monks, pikes and siege within their range irrespective of front or back.
recently introduced attack delay removal of 10frames was a good start, still pretty bad tho
So, crazy idea, but they clearly don’t want people microing the wagons, right? But at the same time, the frame delay makes them super awkward as-is.
So here’s a crazy idea: Reverse their firing pattern.
Hear me out: Right now, they shoot the big 17 damage shot, then 2-4 more 2-damage shots afterwards. The problem is, if they kill the enemy with the 17 damage shot, they have to target something else, THEN fire the bonus shots that do practically nothing, THEN reload, and only THEN fire the 17 damage shot. This results in a 4 second frame delay, in practice.
Now, what if we reversed that, and completely removed the frame delay? This should achieve the goal of being poor for micro, but also fix the problems of damage being bizarrely inconsistent.
With the new system, you could fire the first 2-4 shots instantly whenever you want(zero frame delay), but you’d then need to sit and wait for a second before the main projectile(17 damage) fires. If the target dies, it could instantly switch to another target with zero lost time.
If that’s the case, then civ designers surely failed at it. They are deployable hand cannon instead of tower. 11
I’m all in for letting them garrison HCs. It’s even thematically appropriate. Just make it so that if the wagon is destroyed, the HCs lose half their HP or something. A bit of risk-reward.
However, Bohemians already have an S-tier UU. The houfnice. Considering that, I don’t mind that war wagons are garbage units.
This one is a no because they can run away from mangonel. Civs with bad stable like Dravidians, Bengalis, Koreans, Malay often need to rely on mangonel to counter this unit.
Not sure about 0 frame delay. But first step should definitely be fix their projectile. Make all 3 fire at once like OG.
So doing this would probably re-break houfnices and by extension bohemians, but what if it was re-tooled somehow that synergized with the houfnice. It seems most people find the Hussite Wagon hard to use cause it’s so slow. well the hussite wagon is slightly faster than the houfnice.
IDK how you’d implement some sort of synergy without making houfnices OP again, but yeah.
I probably didn’t type it right.
Basically I just think that only the 17 damage projectile should have frame delay, NOT the sub-projectiles. That alone is a big part of why it’s so frustrating to use atm, and I think it really reduces their DPS too.
I think you did. I understood what you have said. This will be a new mechanic. No frame delay for two 2 damage bullets. So hit 2x2 = 4 damage and run and hit 2x2=4 damage again. That’s sounds like Janissary with a very bad hand cannon. 11 But if you want full 17 (20) damage shot you need to wait. I don’t think this will be enough to solve their problem.