Big changes for the Hussite Wagon! (August patch AoE2)

Here's a quick look at the proposed August 2023 patch changes to the Hussite Wagon.

1:35 HP and changes to bonus damage they receive
2:45 How their attack is changing
5:00 Better or worse damage in castle age?
6:34 Better or worse damage in imperial age?

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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition

[Binarokaro]

It feels a little odd that they're giving the Hussite Wagon characteristics of the Organ Gun. I feel like it would have been better to further workshop the defensive mechanics more, instead of making the unit feel more generic

[forsakenquery]

So they actually managed to make them MORE useless? I mean, I'm not even mad, kind of impressed.

[tomhmmer]

Making the unit need to pack and unpack could be so much interesting than this changes

[amrosh]

It needs to be like a ram. Garrison hcs in it and be totally impervious to arrows.

It also needs more, not less hp

[JoeKnaggs]

A mobile tower would have been pretty cool. Unpacking into an outpost of archers with fairly high defence but are kinda weak when unpacked.

[MrTheQuestioner]

Always nice to see Ornlu and Spirit of the Law independently coming to the same conclusions

[-Zakedodead]

I really like the idea of a wagon unpacking into a sort of "palisade bomb", and not even having the guns

[Osteichthyes]

Honestly, could just turn it into an APC and units can fire out of it like a tower. Could get some really massive output by putting in HCs, but if you lose a wagon those HCs are in a very vulnerable spot. It would be interesting to see this if they could also have the game check what unit types were garrisoned in it. For instance, 2 Arb, 2 Skirm, 1 HC. The wagon would carry them around and it would fire 2 arrows, 2 spears, and 1 shot. It'll give some protection and increase the amount of agency that players have while being fairly authentic to the original concept.

[JustDaZack]

Seeing the "pack/unpack" mechanic being used with a different unit would actually be amazing!

[szymonczarnomski]

Pack, unpack with garrisoning would be awesome.

[rerror]

I wanted it to be basically a moving wall that you can pack and unpack. Two wagons less than three tiles apart will build a wall between themselves. You soldiers can pass through the wagon part like gates.

[mitchellbur]

Spirit of the Law Just thought I would like to mention that one of my favorite videos of yours was the one where you analyzed all the wonders of aoe and deduced what buildings they are based on. Seeing an expansion on that video to include news civs would be great!

[_jurd]

I would REALLY love to hear the designers explain the rationale for changes lol

[RLelling]

I feel like packing / unpacking would be very interesting, but I think we could do something cooler than just a treb-style switch between armed and moving. I wonder if we could treat them something like a pop-up palisade, and when ordering a group of them to unpack, they could be made to form a line, so the player can essentially speed-build a little wall in front of their cannons, trebs, etc. The passive ranged damage reduction to allies behind it would still work, and while they wouldn't be a super durable wall, they could do the job of protecting your cannons from light cavalry just enough to give you an edge.

We could even give them an attack with a really short range, like, a range of 2. Historically the crossbows used in a Hussite Wagon situation wouldn't have a lot of range, as they were mainly used by inexperienced shooters to pelt enemies with imprecise but very spicy fire that can pierce armor at short range. So if melee units choose to punch through the Hussite Wall-gon, they would also take a bit of damage from the shots as they fight to get to the juicy treb behind it. The low range would keep the use of this defensive, and combined with the ability to move them, it makes them the intended "defensive support for offensive operations" unit.

Gameplay-wise, this could be really fun, but also really difficult to implement. The idea of popup palisades or short-range towers definitely sounds like a recipe for shenanigans, but with how much micro this could need if implemented poorly, it could also be completely useless in an actual game.

Also, just style-wise, I think Hussite Wagons look super dorky as they are right now. Because they're treated just like any unit, especially by AI, you just see a swarm of these overgrown carts with no real movement to their unit model wheeling across the grasslands like tanks, and when switching directions they rotate in such an unnatural way, it just looks silly. Like a legion of medieval Daleks. Surely we can come up with something better.

[StvNWL]

Hussite wagons should have a trebuchet mechanic in where they can dig in, protect 100% of the units behind it and deal more damage.

[inductivegrunt]

The loss of damage is probably it's biggest hit. I really like the Hussite Wagon, but the old wagons are a definitely better. They swapped out the historical stand and fire for game hit and run. I'd much prefer an unpack mechanic like Spirit said at the end, but making Bohemians more mobile with hit and run attacks with both Hussite Wagons and Handcannoners sounds good as well.

[youtubelover]

i wonder whether in later patch Frank Castles will be renamed as Punishers ...

[anothaeasywin]

They added the +6 to the villagers against wagons because the only time you use the wagons is during a early castle drop. Then theyre the best UU in the game lol

[mvcvn]

In summary: they managed to make the worst UU in the game even worse

[MATT-qupl]

I wish they would hire you tbh. The idea at the end of being an unpackable unit has some really great potential for a unique unit