A little story time. Last night me and my brother was checking the bonuses and tech trees of the 2 new civs almost immediately after release. When we found that Poles lack Halbedier I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked into my brother and he seemed to be pretty calm and normal. He immediately said, “Well, devs just forgot to add them. It will be added tomorrow in a hotfix.”
I think devs intention was make Obuch an anti-cavalry unit. They actually perform pretty good against cavalry and honestly they are just too OP compared to their cost. They made Castle age Searjant looked like a bad unit. Searjant can build Donjon though and +1PA over Obuch helps a lot against archer. But Obuch is way cheaper than them and better performance against melee units. But still I don’t think it is enough to use them as a replacement of helbs. Kamuyuk is a direct anti cavalry infantry UU and have 1 range making them too good against cavalry. And Incas still have Halbs.
Poles also missing Plate Barding Armor as well as Ring Archer Armor. This also make their late game units too weak, and honestly not that cheap compared to some civs like Malay, or Goths that you just can spam. I personally find Poles is too weak against any good cavalry civ - Paladin, Cavalier with bonus, good Camels, Battle Elephants - all of them.
I know I’m at least two months early to suggest any balance change but I just couldn’t help myself. I think Poles definitely should get Helbs. Plate Barding Armor can wait until how Winged Hussar, Szlachta Privileges and Lechitic Legacy perform. They can certainly have some new strategies around their Falwork and gold generation from stone mining. Need to wait whether a new strong build order is discovered or not.
Edit : I think I failed to express my concern. I find Poles is a very hard civ to play when it is time for a decision making. For example, I hit castle age. Now what?
Should I build extra TCs and wait for dropping castle? What if I’m too late and my opponents brings better/stronger army before I can afford?
So I build castle ASAP and start spamming knight and try to finish the game. What if the enemy managed to hold? I just can’t compete in Imperial.
If I have a castle as well as an UT and then start massing army number, ain’t I too late and my enemy will have full 3TC boom and maybe even his own castle to defend his base. Castle is very hard to destroy in castle age. (I’m not saying it is impossible).
Maybe I’m stressing too much. Maybe I just need to see how pros play with this civ and become better at decision making - when to get LL and when to just continue with FU knight.
Just thrown that into the aoe-combatism.com simulator.
Goth Cav hav the same stats as poles.
Guess what.
Poles cav against halb is as good as franks paladin from a cost-efficient perspective. Plus costs less Gold.
Poles cav SHRED Franks Paladin, lose about 50 % of their strenth from a cost-efficient perspective.
And this is even neglecting the Folwark bonus.
Sorry, but I think Poles are one of the best, if not the best in fighting with other knight line civs. Against camels it may look a bit different, but other knight lines… good luck against poles.
Obuch might also be a useful unit. The -1 armor could be a good combination with archers. -1 pierce armor can make a lot of difference in castle. I have not yet tried to make it work though. Been having too much fun with the -60% gold knights lol, it seems pretty much unstoppable so far
Listen, no offense but I have the feeling that you don’t have a high enough skill level to judge balance. Especially since in every DLC every civ had to be nerfed because they obviously make them OP in order to sell them more well - IMO Poles and Bohemians are borderline broken with 57% winrate (gut feeling) - buffing them in any way is irrational
I’m sure in practical that won’t happen. Knight is not an unit that you will wait to produce until you have a castle up and grab a tech. If you are competing against knight civ, you better compete with the number. Surely stone bonus is helping Poles but if you buy a castle, you are not building extra TC. While Franks and other cav civ can boom in multiple TCs. Knight discount is really great but by he time it comes, I feel like it is too late.
Maybe or
and jumping into conclusion too fast.
I’m sure Bohemians won’t get anywhere close to that in 1v1 Arabia. In Arena, it will be different story. Maybe 60%+. For Poles I can’t say anything. If a new particular BO unique to them is discovered, then maybe. Otherwise I don’t think they are going that huge.
I think Obuch is getting a nerf in the next patch. And maybe Falworks too. But for knight line and anti knight line, I think Poles need slight buff.
If there is anything poles might be a bit weak against it’s arb and HCA.
I just inserted szlachta privileges in my calc for “how costly are which upgrades in the aftermath” sheet.
I assumed that at this stage the game is very high paced with a HWP of 300 seconds, meaning that a knight now is worth twice as much as it would be in 5 minutes. It’s the highest pace I can justify, meaning that the calc is “worst case” scenario for all upgrades as they have to pay back way faster.
WIth this assumed I get a sweet spot for szlachta privileges with either 58 vills (If you build a castle only to get that tech). Or 35 vills, assumed that the castle already has been build.
If I use a HWP of 450 s, the sweet spots shift to 36 or 21 vills. Numbers you very likely will already have at that stage of the game.
So the real thing will be somewhere in between, but I think because of the better defence you get from the castle placement it is very reasonable to get this upgrade quite early in castle age, It’s actually quite strong for what you pay for.
Scout line with extra attack and FU skirms (Or did they lack last archer armor too?) should do fine. But I agree that archer civ also a very big problem for them. Cheap cavalier that survives only 24 shots from Arbalest may not be the best choice.
Only in Feudal. They will fall of, even the trample damage can’t compensate for the lack of durability against archer fire.
Yes they do.
It’s just a mathematical concept, trying to distribute investment over the whole game. This can be achieved by that assumption that everything later is worth less than now with a continouus decrease in value.
Yeah, Obuch and arb yourself might be a good comp vs archer civs though.
Their tech tree seems indeed somewhat weird but at least they added a somewhat flexible civ bc last expension was two one-trick civs and bohemians are as well at least on paper. Maybe their broad array of bonuses allows them to be more flexible than tech tree suggests though.
Yeah that’s a factor of course. The thing is we don’t know if their late castle age powerspike might be so gigantic that archer civs have basically no chance to ever get too arb/hca masses to threaten the poles by any means.
Okay. **** then. I guess Poles are weak against Archer civ than Cav civ in that case.
Honestly that combo is powerful against cavalry as well. In fact Archers can hit and run and kill your Obuch and then your Arbs without last armor and potentially less number (as you invested into Obuch) you may die pretty easily against archer.
bec light cav sucks, especially if you can get 60 F 30 G knights?
And winged hussars lacking the last armor just get shredded by arb balls before they even have a chance to deal damage.
But as I said, this “weakness” might not even come into play in a lot of cases, as poles might just win most games in castle age with their insane knight spam.
I meant bohemians with that. Poles tech tree is pretty decent I think. Sure you miss last armor but you still have lots of cav options and then you have infantry and archer options so quite diverse imo.
Obuch has decent pierce armor and lots of hp while being cheap so maybe that’s enough to tank hits and strip away armor so your own arbs kill other arbs. Too soon to judge I guess.
I thought you meant extra attack applies only in feudal. LL comes at late castle. So you still may need to rely on LC in early castle. Specially if you want to hold knight production until LL.
I do agree with it to some extent. What I don’t agree with your initial statements of saying in terms cost Poles Cavalier shreds Franks Paladin. Well, yes on paper. On practice? Guess we have to wait. Remember Franks can also spam knights from early to mid imp.
Poles are overall quite restricted, but the -60% gold Knights is just broken in castle age, isn’t even funny. Remove that effect and change it to something
In that case it better gives it as a free civ bonus and swap with this
33% gold discount after an UT for a civ that lacks both Paladin and last armor is just too much of big nerf.
You completely neglected archer armor. In that case (14 - 3)*0.33 = 3.67. Also remember Winged Hussar survives only 17 shots from Arbalesters while generic can take 24.