Keep the current Magyar Huszar and Winged Hussar models, they are accurate.
Remove the wing/feathers from the regular hussar as it is not accurate.
Instead of the wings, Hussar should wear a cloak and maybe a single feather on top of the helmet but nothing more.
Maybe it can be renamed to “Raider Cavalry” too
AoE2 is 25 years old now so there are a lot of issues that accumulated over time.
When the Hussar was originally added there was no intention to have Hungarians and Poles with unique Hussar units down the line.
There are a lot of other issues like that too but I’m afraid that the nostalgia faction will veto any such changes.
@Skadidesu Why do you have to defend every problem?
I don’t defend the problem, I just want to manage expectations.
I would like to see them remove the Hussar Wings and I mentioned that in some other threads before but I know it will likely never happen.
Unless they do something like optional (potentially paid) historic skin pack or something like that.
Why though?
The requests are Dev’s headache. How does it affect you?
I voiced my disappointment with people blocking improvements because of nostalgia.
Maybe you understood me wrong there.
The hussar would need a full redesign then, remove the wings and it looks very close from the light cav.
Though it’s only a light cav with 15 extra hp.
To me the obvious solution is for the devs to release an event mod with a new hussar model, possibly even one that changes the name as well. But we haven’t had new event mods for ages, so I don’t expect even that to happen.
Is there an appropriate scenario editor unit/hero graphic that could be used? Maybe someone could make a mod from that.
There are some mods that try to use Chronicles hussar equivalent. But it changes horse colour to white making it hard to distinguish from Knight line.
I think removing the wings would be fine.
The three main distinguishing features between the LC and the hussar are the helmet, the wings, and the armor on the front of the horse. Removing the wings would still leave the different helmet and armor.
Which is still approximately, if not more differentiating, than the difference between scouts and LC.
IDK about “Raider Cavalry” specifically. It’s definitely better than Elite Light Cavalry tho which is the only thing I’ve ever been able to come up with.
Ever since they added the Polish-Lithuanian Winged Hussar, I’ve not been a fan of the regular Hussar being called Hussar and having wings in the model.
Honestly it’s never been really all that fitting thematically with quite a few civs either. Persians, Khmer, Mongols, Burmese, Hindustanis…it looks really off with them. Meanwhile the Light Cavalry is almost beautiful in how well it fits with a ton of different civs.
This is true, tho it didn’t bother me as much before the introduction of the Winged Hussar. I feel it’s ok to use the name/appearance of a specific real world military unit for a general unit in aoe2. Paladins and Halberdiers for example. So Persian Paladins, Mongol Hussars, and Incan Halberdiers are all IMO similarly incongruous, but at the end of the day, a unit has to be called something and has to have a model, and if you can only have one name and one model, it better be something recognizable and differentiated from other units. Hussar used to check those boxes.
It got a bit weird when the Magyar Huszar was introduced, but the two units have somewhat different roles, had reasonably dissimilar models, different name spelling, general unit vs uu, different historical inspiration (tho etymologically both hussars are related).
But having the winged hussar and the regular hussar just seems redundant.
Actually, there was a mod in the HD version, and I missed it.
I’d be okay with a good-quality mod, but it needs to maintain the game’s visual aesthetics—something like the Royal Janissary mod, with the correct icon for the unit. The problem is that the Royal Janissary model was already in the game.
It would be cool if the developers made an official mod, similar to what they did with the Indian Architecture in the HD era.
Just add a light harness to the horse, even if it is only the head. It is absolutely no problem.
Consistency vise anything named hussars have wings.
I actually strongly prefer this approach to the approach of giving everything a generic name. I’m happy with some generic names (e.g. light cavalry is totally fine) but I really don’t like the AoE4 naming, where you have something like horseman → veteran horseman → elite horseman. I’d rather some names being incongruous in some contexts than all names being bland.
I don’t actually object to “raider cavalry” (I like it much more than “elite light cavalry”) but here are some ideas for names. I’m not convinced about any of them, just throwing ideas out at this stage:
Someone suggested a coat (as some had on one as a defence against cuts).
It would then look kinda like half tectonic knight with a hat instead of a helmet and mounted.
Pretty different, yes?
I like the name Raider, otherwise it can be Hussar. After wikipedia
The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry regiments in European armies during the late 17th and 18th centuries.
But anyway, Raider is cool, and also it’s primary task is, raiding the opponent’s towns, woodlines/mines or other vulnerable units. And yes, it’s looks cool and is distinguishable from Light Cavalry by only removing the wings. It should be a low effort to remove them from the graphics.
This topic is only about removing the wings, with lowest effort possible. Renaming the unit is probably not a viable option since the Hussar unit is in the game since 24 years already and people, community of gamers is so attached to it, this term lives in all online sources, manuals, howtos etc.
