Polish Winged Hussars are completely OP

[caralampio]

I was in a battle against Poland, doing pretty well all along the line, most of them were routing. Then the Winged Hussars charged into one of my flanks. I had reserves behind the line, so I figured I would be able to contain them. They chewed up the line unit, and the reserve, and the cavalry I brought up to fight them, and all the infantry I sent against them. In the end, that unit of PWH single-handedly destroyed MY ENTIRE ARMY. They only lost 9 men.

[Mjarr]

They are quite nasty to deal with but not impossible by any means. Truth to be told what happened there is basically what happened several times in the 17th century (Battle of Kircholm and Battle of Klushino come to my mind) but as far as ER goes, there are several factors to deal with them:

1. Organised lines and close range volleys. Now this may require some fine tuning and some pausing since the AI obviously tends to move around quite wonkily at times, but there is not a single cavalry unit that is allergic to bullets. While they may inflict more casualties than other cavalry units on contact before they break, if you have fresh unit in good position and you toggle fire at will around 4\10 of the max musket range, it takes very experienced cavalry unit to to break from the hail of bullets. Secondary line of infantry ready to repeat the task is guaranteed to drive them off, but that requires pretty insane experience on the winged hussars. And I will stress that if you do it right, there is not a single cavalry unit that can withstand it. Not garde du corps, not household cavalry, not winged hussars. Good volley with right timing = cavalry will be driven off unless they have insane experience and morale boosts from general to back it up, even if they make contact and take some infantry out.
2. Checkerboarding a line. If you play with a faction that has access to pikemen, keep them around inbetween some line infantry and maybe some cavalry nearby. The key is to force pike square and try to herd the hussars towards the pikemen in pike square, and then crossfire with muskets or send cavalry unit properly around them as they are gaining fatigue. If you have no pikemen available, you can still use the similar principle with cavalry or regular line infantry so even if somewhere there is contact, there is something potentially supporting it. Requires some effort in management and terrain to use effectively though, and maybe some extra pausing.
3. Artillery. Of course early in campaign this is not as practical, but since most factions have at least one regimental gun battery from start and they can keep up with infantry fairly well, if you prepare a line in a decent spot and take artillery into account with some other methods mentioned there, all it takes is some artillery and musket fire that hits and they are quite pointless.
4. Using massed cavalry tactics or movement. Say, front of the column (preferably heavy cavalry so they don't get immediately slaughtered) pins them and another one flanks them properly, or have one unit as a bait and have another one attack in flank, and the baiting unit shortly after. Requires some micromanagement and possible pausing however.
5. There is unit cap of two winged hussars total and they are quite expensive units. We all know AI cheats a little bit with money on higher difficulties, but it cannot circumvent unitcaps and the recruitment time if you managed to destroy unit altogether means another one shows up earliest in five turns. Maybe not even then if AI has trouble with money and so on.

[poa]

there was no bayonets at battle of Kirkholm 1605,
and Karl IX got the bright idea to give the boys booze before battle to boost morale, as was custom,
but in this case it wasn't a bright idea since the boys were starving,
making them drunk so they could barely stand straight.

The Karoleans did fight the winged hussars from 1700 on, as is ETW era,
and out of all the forces they met, they considered the Poles to be the lowest morale,
so yes: winged hussars are OP in ETW

[Mjarr]

Polish infantry is already perhaps the worst (European infantry) in ER and only cavalry unit that stands out are the winged hussars, which are as overpowered as any dragoon guards, heavy cavalry, cuirassiers etc are in the mod if they hit the right place and they all can be beaten with simple volley assuming it is not poor terrain as far as musketry's concerned.

In other words, not really. Vanilla ETW or other mods hardly matter if we are talking specifically ER mechanics etc.