When dawn of the dukes dropped last August I was especially excited for the bohemians, as I’ve been awaiting their arrival to aoe for some time, and the civ is very similar to how I imagined they’d look, however I found the Hussite Wagon immeasurably disappointing. It moves unnaturally fast, is almost immune to archers (and can freaking kite projectiles), has a strange, hard to micro gimmick and honestly just looks goofy. Not to mention historical wagon forts set up before battle to be a temporary static structure to protect troops inside, not a wooden Ferrari armed with a glock. With the Bohemians being designed to revolve around the protective nature of its Wagons in the late game it’s hard to avoid using them, which puts me off the civ entirely.
The rework I’m proposing is to remove the Wagon’s attack and make it able to garrison infantry and archers, and have a setup mechanic like trebuchets. Once set up ranged units can fire from inside the wagon, however this will work a little differently from garrisoned buildings, and the projectiles fired would keep the stats of the garrisoned unit firing it, eg garrisoned hand cannoneers fire bullets with 17dmg and no ballistics.
The only modifier the wagon adds to the projectile is +1 range once the Imp UT is researched (though this could be removed if it proves too overpowered). The wagon’s speed would also need to be nerfed considerably.
Damage taken by the Wagon is calculated by the wagon’s armour, and bonuses only apply to the Wagon’s siege and unique unit armour classes. Once damage has been calculated 50% is taken by the Wagon and 50% by the most recently garrisoned unit (wagon takes 100% damage if no units are garrisoned).
Example (if hussite wagons have their current stats 1/10P armour): Wagon garrisoned with 1 arbalester takes a hit from a bombard (40 + 60 vs siege, hussite wagon), the wagon’s armour absorbs 1 dmg, then the remaining 99 is halved. 49.5 goes to the wagon and the other 49.5 is dealt directly to the arbalester’s health, killing it.
Another option would be for the 50% damage to be spread evenly amongst the units garrisoned, each has pros and cons.
Of course changing a civ’s unique unit so drastically would require loads of other changes, in tech tree and bonuses to keep the civ’s units and playstyles dynamic, so here are some ideas I’ve had on that front:
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Replace the unique techs
castle age tech can be something monk related, possibly take a note from the recently changed slavs’ book and give monks armour, or a nerfed version of hussite reforms that replaces 50% of monk and monastery techs’ gold cost with food…
Imp age tech: Wagenburg Tactics: Hussite Wagons set up almost instantly (though still take 3-4 seconds to re-pack), projectiles from garrisoned units +1 range, garrisoned monks heal other garrisoned units. -
Give the civ a light cavalry option, after all hussars were a vital element of the bohemian wagon forts, being used to engage flanking enemy cavalry and destroy artillery. Maybe either unlock hussar in the tech tree, give light cav +1 melee armour imp age, or give light cav bonus vs siege
Bohemian light cavalry inside the fort
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Remove Champion, the bohemians never fielded the kind of heavy infantry other European kingdoms used, and already having incredibly strong halbs removing champion might be necessary to allow the bohemians gaining viable cavalry to be balanced.
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Remove 1 or 2 monastery techs, maybe atonement (representing the fiercely nationalistic hussite monks preferring to destroy aggressing faiths than convert them) or theocracy (encourage monk micro).
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Remove building discount bonus, or have it merge with and become the team bonus but nerf significantly, eg markets, monasteries, universities cost -25 wood
Lots more fiddling with the tech tree would be required to make the reworked civ dynamic, but the point of these changes is to make the bohemians much more versatile with lots of unit synergy instead of the uncanny frankenstein the civ feels like to me currently. I can imagine situations of the bohemians player initially using their wagons defensively as semi-static area denial, then getting wagenburg in imp age and pushing chokepoints or key locations by dropping 10 or so wagons onto the enemy army. Or even without using wagons, having useable light cav makes the civ’s other unit choices able to cover more roles without being countered as hard. Thanks for reading 
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