I just made some tests with poles and got some intel about their unique mechanics.
First thing is, that the folwark and stone mining bonus synergize very well.The folwark needs more eco attention and makes it also vulnerable to possible raids. The stone mining bonus help in either setting up an early defence or being agressive yourself to hold agression from your base.
So poles eco can easily be balanced by adjusting just one of these bonusses.
I would propose to reduce the mining bonus in a first step to 33 %. It’s neat, but it isn’t enough to support maa + trush opening anymore. Then you need to mine gold in addition.
Then the Szlachta Prinileges knights are just too cheap. They even beat camels with equal ressources - and quite convincingly. That’s too much. The tech itself is also a bit too expensive for a usual castle age tech. I think it should be a tech that you can pick up when you have a brief moment and the opportunity, not a tech you design your matchplan around. I don’t think castle age techs should be designed that way. Also with the folwark bonus polish knight rush is already decent, so the tech seems odd in that perspective.
I would propose to make Szlachta Privileges cost 350 F and 200 G, but reducing knight gold cost by 33% to 50. Then polish knights wouldn’t counter camels anymore.
Lechitic Legacy currently makes no sense. You don’t want to throw your hussars blindly in mass battles, esecially not mass melee vs melee battles. You want to use their mobility and raiding potential. And the tech doesn’t help with either. I think that bonus would be much more worthy with the knight line. The winged Hussars would be way better of with more HP and utility against cav archers. Poles were maybe the best in dealing with various cav archer threats, it would be very weird if the historical “counter” civ to cav archers actually gets countered by cav archers in the game… SO
Lechitic Legacy: Knight line deals splash damage. Winged Hussar get +20 HP and +3 Damage against Cavalry Archers. Cost up to 1000 F 750 G. That tech would be insanely strong and deceives to be that expensive.
Thats all changes I think poles shall receive to solve that current discrepancy between their insanely strong midgame and the quite weak lategame. With the new lchitic legacy they have 2 neat cavalry tools: Cavalier with trample damage for melee matchups. Winged Hussar with extra HP and bonus damage against (cav) archers.
For teamgames their role would be potentially different as they would be a reasonable flank civ, but potentially lacking a bit as Pocket. For this I would propose a possible 4th change, which might look a bit odd, but makes sense in the wider context:
Lechitic Legacy: Also allows all team members to train Winged Hussars at the Castle for 100 F each. (10 s train time). For each trained Winged Hussar of one the teammates (Including Lithuanians!) Poles receive 15 g immediately. Poles lose Banking (for obvious reasons).
This would make poles a very neat flank civ, as lechitic legacy would help them to sustain archer production with way less trade than other civs. Also as pocked it could be a nice synergy with the polish player staying with his trample damage cavaliers while teammates could potentially add winged hussars with full armor upgrades. This would make poles a strong team civ even without any of their power lines being FU.
About Team Bonus. Polish Nobles could not sell Horse, because it was Top Secret Breed and guy could have sentence for Death. Lances was only produced by crown. Sabres were unique too. Inventory of Winged Hussars were very unique and regional unit.
It’s more meant as a reference to history that poles sent their winged hussars to the relief of their allies. That’s why poles get a gold bonus everytime a team member “trains” a winged hussar. As a pay for the “mercenaries”.
Maybe a bit odd, but isn’t it reasonable?
More Mercenary infamouse type of Cavalry was Lisowczyks - Wikipedia in 17 century. Winged Hussars have never used by other country’s. If remember France tried, but it was valid. I dont remember why.
Well if poles don’t like it because they want to be the only ones with wings, I would be completely fine with skipping that bonus.
I thought it would be a nice addition to the civ, a very unique bonus, that would make poles be liked by all their team members…
But ok, if it’s not appreciated i’m totally fine if it isn’t added.
I think you are going good way. Winged Hussars were very universal type unit. They had Obuch, Sabre, Sword, Lance, Pistol or Bow, because of that they get trample damage. For me perfect it would be give little nerf Szlachta privilages, Archers, but buff Heavy Cavalry and give last armor for Cavalry. Stone bonus I would drop 1 to 3.
I would liked to see them with the long lance. I would liked to see winged hussars as a “medium cav” UU, like a better version of the steppe lancer, but…
Sometimes you just have to accept that devs mix things up ;D
I could see this being a nice idea. Make the gold generation scale through the ages instead of being a fixed amount, which is very strong in the early game.
(Is it really higher than 33% atm? That’s a very high number)
I agree there might be a world where this tech needs to be nerfed. However, I think it would be better to make it keep its current benefit, but increase the cost (by 150 food, 100 gold maybe). This would discourage the idea of dropping a castle and rushing the tech as soon as you reach Castle Age.
The other 2 changes I didn’t like. They feel to complex and too forced.
Why give Knight line splash damage? Them being discounted is already strong versus melee units.
+3 Damage versus cav archers seems random. Poles have skirms + siege ram for CA. Why would you want to counter CA with hussars?
Do Meso civs get Winged hussars with a Pole ally?
Why would anyone make hussars in a team game? (Oh lets give my pole ally 15 gold while i get destroyed in the following battle)
The +20 hussar hp is the only one i feel can be good. Makes them better against archers, but then again you don’t want to have winged hussars be good against everyting.
Because this would make a way better fit. Splash damage just doesn’t synergize with hussars, but with heavy cav it actually does synergize very well. Thats also why
to me, because splash damage plus 60 % discount would be beyond broken.
It fits, because the winged hussars were very effective against non-melee cavalry. I read somewhare that the wings (or at least their mountings) were supposed to work against the lassos of cumans eg. So it would fit the winged hussars.
Makes this sense to you?
Yes, it is supposed to be a “mercenary” like system.
Would be fine with that, I just wanted to use that bonus as devs seem to have it individually added for poles.
I just don’t think it fits hussars. It’s wasted with them imho.
Thay could have added 1 range…
But agree, the hussar is overrepresented. That’s why i proposed to make winged hussar an imp UU, but devs made the weird decision to make winged hussar a light cav whilst they obviously were at least a “medium cavalry” type.
This is their only “strong and clean” bonus. Nerfing this means you’d have to give them something else strong in return.
Reasoning:
The civ only has 3 bonuses.
The villager bonus is cool, but it’s certainly not a very strong one. It helps out in an early tower rush, repair, vill fight etc scenario, but becomes effectively useless in castle age and onwards, as units just basically instantly decimate villagers.
The Folwark bonus. It’s not a clear advantage in all cases. You have to build farms around the folwark, and not the TC, which can make walling harder/awkward as you need a larger base, it means you’re way more vulnerable to scout rushes. Having forward berries already is a really obvious pressure point, having to farm around that folwark afterwards just magnifies this. You also will reseed farms more often, as they get depleted 10% faster. This means your wood eco can really suffer if you don’t pay attention. So while it is a nice, bonus, it does have clear disadvantages.
This basically leaves the stone mining bonus the only clear and strong bonus the civ has. Many civs get 4-5 bonuses, the Poles get just 3. Given that there also many holes in the tech tree for Poles, having such a strong bonus is justified.
They’re worse than the Malay discount elephants, which doesn’t even need a Castle and a UT to be researched. While it is surely a good option in mid to late Castle Age, it has a really narrow timeframe for its effect to be useful, so actually I don’t even think this UT will dominate many games. This is because the Polish Cavalier is just garbage, even with the discount.
Well, this would be a completely useless UT. I mean, sure your Cavalier is now pretty good vs other Cavalier, and probably decimates halbs faster, they’ll still be a pretty bad unit overall. Especially if you consider that in your earlier point, you reduced the gold discount. So now you’ve got two UT’s that are both completely useless in imp.
This is just plain OP in TG while not helping the civ at all in 1v1. I mean, they’re about as good as a Magyar Huszar. So this really would invalidate the Magyar Civ’s UU, which already feels extremely underwhelming compared to the easily spammable Winged Hussars. Poles just weren’t designed to be a post-imp civ, so I don’t think it makes sense to try and redesign the whole civ.
But that’s what TG cav civs need, lategame scaling. A cav civ scaling bad in lategame is just not a good cav civ for TG. It’s that simple.
I don’t think it would be OP, just a different mechanic people need to get used to.
Disagree, this one would be insanely strong actually. Reduced cavaliers with trample damage - a dream! in melee matchups.
What’s better in combat? Just give me one thing that is overall better than malay eles … There is nothing 11
Don’t make comparisons like this, some things are just inbalanced.
Still eles are terrible cause they lack mobility. They can’t even outrun their counters.
I give them insane lategame bonusses. Plus I think Poles are currently OP, it’s just a slight nerf, but yes I think poles need a nerf currently. I think Poles are currently the best civ in the game.
And it’s ok because they are new.
Then maybe poles weren’t designed to be a post-imp TG civ. It’s reasonable to try and plan games to end earlier, even if it is risky.
It’s just that these Cavalier still have so many weaknesses that they’d be effectively useless.
Well obviously there are things that are better than malay eles, otherwise they’d dominate every game.
What exactly strikes you as OP about them? They have a strong feudal and early castle, but there are civs with much stronger power spikes. Even the stone bonus eventually runs out, so even their best/strongest bonus has a limited timespan.