I don’t like Ulans, they look ugly and I have no use for them with my play style, but I like Germany. I would enjoy playing Germany more if I could get rid of the Ulans. There have already been German modifications to swap out war wagons for more standard goons and to swap xbows for skirm type units (despite the fact they already have skirms).
I would like to be able to send a card to switch the Ulans for pets of equal or lesser resource value than the free Ulans, or else the card would remove the XP penalty and lose the free Ulans altogether, or give some other bonus instead of free Ulans such as gold, which Germans need for merc play. (How cool would bears or the tupi jaguars, which are already trainable via a tupi native alliance, be?) I know there is a pricey imperial card which swaps them for hussars, I am proposing an age 1, 2 or 3 card to swap them for a cool pet that could (but not necessarily) have some kind of historical significance to Germany.
Before you say it will be too ‘memey’ to have a bunch of pets, India has the ability to get up to 20 retrainable pet tigers by sending a card (10 are available at the monestary without a card, 10 more with a card). China has monks with pagoda upgrades, Ethiopia has a lion card which is similar to free Ulans except lions, Spain has dogs, Native civs have scouts, Inca has half strength dogs. The Ethiopia lion card is the closest to the German free Ullans, the lions are actually quite good by age 3 as they shadow tech (UIans don’t).
I would prefer a card that, in exchange for losing the free Uhlans per shipment, gives us an improvement in the experience curve of the civilization or perhaps boxes of books per shipment.
I want something that encourages using the revolutions that this civilization has. 
Proposal.
Name: German Literature. (Age I)
Effect: Replaces the Uhlans in the shipments with a box of 100 experience, one for each Uhlans in the shipment. (this effect is enhanced by the German The Logistician)
The problem is that the free Ulans are technically not a civilisation bonus, they are coded into each home city card because mercenary cards send you more mercenaries instead.
Removing the free Ulans would mean having to switch out all Mercenary cards too.
But generally it is strange to want to remove a core civilisation feature because you don’t like it.
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That is why I proposed substituting something else to receive instead of Ulans, such as pets or gold crates. Also, there is ALREADY an age IV card which switches the Ulans for Hussars, which I bet is rarely used. Nothing needs to be done to the merc cards, they remain the same, instead of free pets or gold or whatever the bonus is, more mercs. It is all about offering new ways for the civ to be played via addition of one card, people who like Ulans don’t have to use the card.
It isn’t strange to me, because I like the other unique aspects of the civ but hate Ulans. Maybe people who don’t like to constantly hit their opponent with annoying Ulan raids want to play Germany. Pets have penalties vs villagers, so they would be used differently than Ulans. And since pets cost no population, they wouldn’t prevent sending of resource cards when pop capped like Ulans do. You have to make pop space for units you don’t even want.
Waiting until age IV and paying 1000 food is beyond the scope of a lot of 1v1 ranked games, it is simply too hard to get there in most games given how aggressive most players are.
I was mostly referring to that part.
Getting a suitable replacement that is worth a little more then Ulans so it’s worth sending the card.
Coin crates might be the best replacement tbh.
Also helps with the mercenary focus.
The other option would be to choose a mercenary that has about the same value as an Ulan.
I can’t see the Devs replacing the German trait of Uhlans with shipments - it’s their ‘baked-in’ civ quirk so it would probably make a lot of players a little upset.
On the subject of German Card Wishes, as a way of appeasing the German Split fans, I’d love to see Age III card shipments that allow you to split the current Germany (the broader, HRE) and choose either Austrians or Prussians - maybe a ‘Prussian Governance’ and ‘Austrian Governance’ card which you can only choose one. Upon shipping either card, your nation name becomes Prussian or Austrian and you gain traits tailored to either civ.
The choose your own adventure is really the worst option of all. It doesn’t fix Germany being a bloated mess because they’re trying to cram in two civs worth of content, and it’s the opposite of history. Prussia and Austria were at different ends of the German lands and operated independently the entire time. There wasn’t a German or HRE precursor that split apart. In fact, it was the opposite and Germany formed from Prussia while Austria looked east to their multi-ethnic empire.
Both of them are unique cultures that should be represented as separate civs right from the start. But if that’s not going to happen then just leave it as the Frankenstein HRE that represents neither. Some made up splitting Germany is just as dumb as Denmark as a revolution.
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Well ‘Splitting’ as in focusing on one German state, not a literal split from a nation.
But yes, ideally they would have been two seperate civs in the first place, however Ensemble didn’t see the bigger picture. I grew up playing Cossacks, so was spoilt with Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony, which all offered a lot of variety. Even in that old game you could see that the Prussia were the most martial-focused whereas Austria offered a wealth of units from their empire and even some little outdated ones (Rundschiers!).
this is why we can’t have threads about germany
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I don’t see how pets make any sense. But swapping them out for Magyar Hussars in the late game could give some Austro-Hungarian flavour.
I do hope however not 1:1 because magyars are a massive step up from ulans in quality, especially with the german cav cards.
german cav cards (besides the team ones) does not affect the Magyar Hussars
the age 3 one should buff all cav except mercs
then you are also buffing natives , which is probably going to be controversial with the circle army card and also outlaws, which might be ok but a few will be pretty scary
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