Not the teutonic order. Ffs, I have had so many HRE maa spammer team mates that never clue in on making any ranged support. If we wanna enable this harder by porting in one of the worse unique unit of aoe2, then lests add a ban civ list for team mate matchmaking too.
Rant aside, lets remember that while the teutonic knights and ritterbuters are a whole different era, there’s still the Austro-Hungarian empire which is a bit closer to home. HRE was historically the real big gunpowder civ, hell the Ottomans didnt give janissaries guns till they saw them used more effectively in the Balkans by HRE reinforcements.
Drawing from that, the age 3 handcannoneer that’s sitting with the ottomans should be ported right on over to the HRE, replacing the xbow and named the handgonner. Now you have maa as the effective anti armor and meatshield and the handgonner as the high dps ranged support.
Where do landsnakes feature? With horsemen. Land/h####### is the already functional alliterative to more common ands/maa. You now have 2 effective army comps - one a simple powerhouse vulnerable to long range and the other a moderate apm comp with almost no weakness at all.
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as an HRE main i support a unique ranged unit
Why not just give the Holy Roman Empire the [Schwarze Reiter] in the future? They could be the unique gunpowder unit for the Holy Roman Empire.
According to what is stated on the Wikipedia the “Handgonne” is just another name for the Hand cannon. If that is the case then giving the Holy Roman Empire a unique unit called the Handgonner would just lead to the same result as with French who have the [Arbalétrier], where the name of this unit just means “Crossbowman/ Arbalester” in French and it doesn’t really refer to any distinguished soldier or regiment from history. I haven’t found any evidence either that the arbalest was particularly associated with the French.
Here is a sketch that depicts a Schwarze Reiter:
Wait! is that a knight with a flintlock?
Knight and knight, it is an amored rider with flintlock pistols 
But I support the idea, would be cool to have a cavalry unit with firearms. A bit more unique.
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I am not sure if they were knights or rather man-at-arms but they were well trained horse riders that were primarily armed with firearms.
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As fun as is may be to have gunpowder cav, I’d rather stay in the time zone of the game and further away from aoe2.
For alot of reasons related to just how awkward it was to use the guns on horseback, it was pretty much impossible until the matchlock and then further refined to cavalry oriented musket/pistols. And said guns were notated to be worthless when even early cuirasses were made.
Now, we could add matchlocks into the game to have this unit, but given that they were invented by the French, there’d be no way to avoid giving the French better handcannons, and do we really need to do that to ourselves?
As a bit of trivia, the handgonne used to types of powders for firing; snake powder (which all handcannons used) and then the upgraded black powder (which was a stronger euro recipe of propellant). Renaming it handgonne is just the reference to updated powder and giving it the stats of the janissary is another reference to how a battle with hungarian troops using these was the reason the Ottomans adapted guns to their army at all.
Also the French arbalester makes no sense in the first place anyway, cuz that there is the venetian/Italian paviser. Really should revisit that, the French used normal crossbows like Spain and Germany did.
What do you mean stay in the time zone? AoE4 goes later than AoE2 does. Into the renaissance, except that they didn’t really commit to that idea fully. There could be a lot more potiental with the ‘Imperial Age’ going more into the renaissance period.
But we already have the late HRE units equipped with burgonets and renaissance armor etc. So adding a gunpowder cav wouldn’t be outside the games as cavalry would be using wheellock pistols. Which would have been around the same time as that Maximillan styled armor in the far right of the screenshot.
Maximilian armor form 1520-1530s.
This type of handcannon would have been rather old compared to the other types of gunpowder weapons by the Imperial Age of AoE4.
But then again stuff like this exists, which mixes different pieces of armor that just shouldn’t be mixed in what was advertised as a somewhat historical game.
Yes, I agree, in the next season I would have to improve the HRE (landmarks and civ bonuses) and give it some other UUs along with the English and French…
New Feudal Age HRE UU (1000-1200):
Teutonic Knight (Replace the HRE MAA. Represents the Crusades (1095-1291))
New Castle Age HRE UU (1200-1400):
Hussite Wagon (Replace the HRE Springald. Represents the Hussite Wars (1419-1434))
New Imperial Age HRE UUs (1400-1600):
Bavarian Villager Wagon (Can be builded in the Mills. It gathers twice as fast than Villagers but also costs wood, uses up two population, and has a much lower train limit. Represents the Protestant Reformation (1517-1555) in the HRE with mass exiles))
Reiter (Horse Archer but with a pistol. Represents the Schmalkaldischer Wars (1546-1552) and the Eighty Years War (1568-1648))
So you would have 6 UUs for the HRE:
Dark Age: Prelate
Feudal Age: Teutonic Knight
Castle Age: Landsknecht and Hussite Wagon
Imperial Age: Bavarian Villager Wagon and Reiter
