European Royal Houses came with some awful and generic, adjective names for units. One of these is “Shock Rider” (House of Jagiellon). The unit itself is fine, as it represents the Serbian style hussars that served mainly in the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian armies at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. In Hungary, Poland and Lithuania, these early hussars of Balkan origin were also known respectively as Rácok (singular Rác) or Racowie (singular Rac) or Racai (singular Racas), what is one term, anglicized as Rascians.
So why not use this proper name instead of the current one, that looks just like from a cheap mod? On the Polish Wikipedia there is even a separate article about this type of cavalry, and it is also titled that way:
I don’t know, maybe the devs hadn’t heard about this term earlier and that’s why they used such a fancy name. Fortunately, there is no problem to fix this issue in the next patch.
Unfortunately this one was one of the better named units for the Royal Houses. Half of them are named “Royal ____”. “Dismounted Infantry” has got to be the best one. As an added bonus, neither Mounted Infantry nor Line Infantry have any Habsburg theme whatsoever.
Also I wonder why Royal Scots Grey ships a group of Brunswick hussars. There is no relation between them. Either make it a new unit, or rename it to King’s German Legion, etc.
I have been waiting for 15 years for “winged hussars” to finally become actual winged hussars, and now here are Scots Greys.
And I can hardly tell why mounted infantry is a native and mounted rifleman is a merc. They just sound like the same unit line.
The former does not really have a good unique counterpart in real history because it was just a generic unit. The latter is clearly a chasseur-a-cheval (see the painting Chasseur - Wikipedia, this is even explicitly stated in the history section) and I wonder why not name it so.
BTW, as the true Irish mercenary is in the game, maybe change the “wild geese” to them? (they used to be hackapells which made no sense. Harquebusiers made a little more sense, but now there are already the actual wilde geese).
No, no, no!
Generic and/or easy names are good, specially as we have been getting so much stuff, so many units, so many things exclusively from cards or revolutions.
Generic names are the best thing to help us track what we are dealing with. The updated names of European Team Cards, for instance was really a backwards step in my opinion because it just hid a simple and straight description and replace it with a random title.
Just imagine if every single stuff get a custom name in this game from now on…
They don’t though. Early Dragoons fought just like mounted infantry.
Line infantry is so vague it should be a unit tag. The “musket infantry” tag is not very accurate when half a dozen of them actually throw javelins. And the “Line Infantry” unit is just terrible design. Who in their right mind thought 2.7 ROF is a good idea?
There’s also no particular connection between these units and the Habsburgs. Units like a Houfnice and Magyar Hussar would have been a much better fit.
That would be a valid point if there was some consistency, but there really isn’t. The “Royal ____” units aren’t even all natives, there’s mercenaries mixed in.
If clarity of conveying information was paramount they wouldn’t have created a native unit with 2.7 ROF.
“Royal horseman” should be directly called garde du corps.
“Mounted rifleman” should be directly called chasseur a cheval.
They sound too much like native units.
Both the new natives and the new mercenaries are a mess when it comes to naming and theming. The solution to both the terribly named “Mounted Rifleman”, and “Mounted Infantry” could be to merge them into a single Chassuer unit.
Chasseurs fought both on horse (chasseurs à cheval) and on foot (chasseurs à pied), so they’d be a much more aptly named replacement for “Mounted Infantry”. Since Chasseurs fought against the Habsburgs, a different native unit could take the place of Mounted Infantry from Habsburg allies. A Houfnice would actually have a connection to Habsburg lands and could bring some variety as a native artillery unit. Chasseurs could then replace another poorly named native unit (such as Royal Dragoons), or just become a mercenary.
The extremely unintuitive and poorly named “Mounted Rifleman” should also have its function rolled into Chasseurs. Ranged cavalry should never have multipliers that allow them to hard counter Skirmishers at range. They need to preserve at least a hint of a consistent counter system if there is to be any hope of attracting new players to the game. Chasseurs could fight as ranged heavy cavalry without multipliers when mounted and then become counter-skirmishers when dismounted.
The function of Royal Horsemen also doesn’t make a lot of sense. Massive trample damage isn’t exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of a mounted palace guard. If anything, continuous trample damage would make the most sense on an Elephant unit.
I think there’s a Habsburg eagle on its hat but it’s pretty forced. Same with the Line Infantry.
Mounted infantry is an interesting concept but its name is trash and it’s totally unrelated to the Habsburgs. A Chasseur unit with similar mechanics would have fit perfectly with Bourbons and would have also eliminated the need for the uninspired “Royal Dragoon” unit.
For the line infantry I think it would be more historically accurate to wear a white coat with player color accents and a tricorn hat.
Now about the mounted infantry unit I think it would have been better to make a skirmisher similar to Schiavoni and call it Grenzer.
I think the look of line infantry is the least of their problems. “Line infantry” would be best as a tag for the unit type (right now they’re tagged as “musket infantry” even though many don’t have a musket). The stats on them are also really dumb. For some reason they’ve got a 2.7 fire rate so comparing them to other units is tricky. The model could be repurposed as a Landwehr if Prussia is ever added but it’s not something that makes sense for Habsburgs.
Grenzers are already a revolution unit but they could make sense as a Habsburg unit. They should just be infantry though.
Not making a native artillery unit is a pretty big missed opportunity with the Royal Houses. A Houfnice could have been an interesting unit to give to Habsburgs instead of the extremely generic ones we got.
Rácok (singular Rác) or 
Racowie (singular Rac) or 
Racai (singular Racas), what is one term, anglicized as 
Rascians.
