Well, neither fought for the Polish Commonwealth technically, so…
I feel like literally no Musketeers would tacitly foster the cavalry centric gameplay as you won’t have the bread-and-butter infantry unit, which will force you to find other ways to play-
These were ordinary peasants with modified agricultural scythes who participated in the Kościuszko Insurrection. It took place a year before the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Halberdier turning into a serf with a scythe sounds irrational. Especially if it was to be called Royal Guard.
Personally id like to see Poland not have Skirmishers rather than musketeers.
For infantry id like to see Wybraniec (Cheap musketeer) and a pikemen/halberdier nco similar to poruchik.
For cav: winged hussar, Pancerni/Petihorc, Wallachian/Registered Cossack, Dragoons
Artillery: if we need a cheap Falconet, the octave could work. If not, just give them less cards for the basic roster.
Royal Guards:
Winged Hussar (Krakusi), Dziesietnik (pikeman/halberdier) (kosynierzy)
Royal guards are often very generic and not “royal”. Dutch has some good examples of this, as does France with the gendarme.
The often suggested Lisowczyk RG would be better as a mercenary in my opinion as they were not long lived, ended very early in the time period and also fought for the Imperial Forces in the 30 years war.
Haiduks, Rajtaria and Janissaries could make good potential church shipments.
Do you think Scythemen might basically be pikes with 1 AoE? It seems like the type of weapon that could do that. Usually AoE melee units are more like Dopps, so having a pike like one would be weird in what might be a fun way.
Not having skirmisher at the start is plausible but there still can be a tech which turns crossbows into some sort of rifle unit, English got rangers, Germans got Landwehr and Ports got Ordinance Rifleman.
As MUTY pointed out earlier, Kosynierzy were peasants with scythes who took part in Kościuszko’s Insurrection, putting them as a veterancy for pikes/halbs would be just weird. Giving Poland ability to revolt into Poland (Basically France into Napoleon France, we could call it Dutchy Of Warsaw, idk) which then would turn your villagers into kosynierz instead of revolutionist would be more fitting and since we’re here, the revolt could turn Wybraniec musk into stronger Polish Legionare (Thanks Jonasnee for mentioning those).
That idea could work. We could even get a Krakusi upgrade for the hussar/ whatever their heavy cavalry is.
Maybe the Poles need to use cavalry as their light infantry instead, meaning no crossbows or no Skirmishers. They would get some kind of Jazda lekka, Wallachian or Cossack instead that acts kind of like a more balanced chinaco.
Alternatively, they could get a Skirmisher unit in the form of a registered Cossack or a Cossack infantryman.
I like these ideas a lot. And yes the Krakusi was an idea for a potential partition themed/Duchy of Warsaw Revolt. I really like the Hetman idea, though a Szlachta politician could work too, given many Cossack infantrymen were used in their private armies.
Unfortunately it just looks like this is due to a Steam change. The same thing happened to AOE2 and 4 this week. All of the old branches were removed and dev work was likely consolidated into one hidden branch. We’re not going to see many hints from steamdb anymore.