since people figured out how to abuse the Poles bonuses there is no way to play half of the CIV-Pool on Arena and Closed maps.
At first this was fine for me as you always come up with balance changes at some point in time.
However, there were already some patches in the past but none of the touched the Poles.
My current Rating is like 2050-ish.
In 1v1 the Poles bonuses enable them to dominate other civs throughout the game. (from most to least important according to my opinion)
Stone mining generates Gold
Good farming eco
Cheap knight line with upgrade
Strong unique unit
best husar in 1v1
Arbs with Thumb ring
BBC + Siegeengineers
Monk with redemption
Siege Ram
Total amount of gold in the post imp game is higher by roughly 1500-2000 gold
What makes them so strong in 1v1 is this:
They can sell the gathered stone to boost their eco massively or just drop a castle against any kind of rushes.
They can take the map in castle age with light cav due to better supply of food without sacrificing their boom or defence.
They have the option to go for either super cheap knights + petards, Arbs with Thumb ring + trebs or the unique unit as an opening for the later stages of the game. This is only due to the stone+gold bonus.
Side note:
They are not really countered by Siege Onager as they have monks and BBC.
Their only downside is to civs with good Cav Archers like Mongols, Turks, …
However, those have to get to super lategame with Onager or Husar parallel to their Cav Archer as Poles have access to Siege ram and early trebs. This does not work out in most cases.
For me it is impossible to play my most beloved Civs Celts, Goths and even Britons against them (and win).
I think the first (and maybe already the final) step should be to decrease the gold generation from stone mining.
This limits their options while booming or while taking map control.
And does not effect their gameplay on open maps in the early game.
In teamgame it gets worse as they can play their cheap knight strategy to get the map and kill anyone who isnt walled in time while advancing to Imperial in a reasonable time.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you change something about them soon.
Greetings
Weizenesel/GeneralGrom
p.s. Gurjaras are OP as well tbh → but I give you some more time for this one as they are younger.
Finally more people recognize how broken poles on closed maps:)
I suggest this all time:
Obuch PA down from 2 to 1
Szchlacta Privileges cost raised from 500f and 300g to 700f and 500g.
Remove crop rotation.
Those are probably the best ways to nerf this civ on closed maps, maybe aneef to the gold from stone mines too.
And nerf Turks as well for closed maps.
Gurjaras need a redistribution of their power (frontier guards melee armor as civ bonus and 40% more bonus damage to the UT) and nerfs to Chakram and shri rider.
I couldn’t agree more. Second-worst civ in the game right now, I’d argue.
Taking away Bombard Cannon or at least Siege Engineers seems like an easy first step.
I’d go further and strip them of this ability entirely. Giving a civ even two significant economic bonuses is really questionable. And even in most of those cases one of the bonuses in question is relatively minor, e.g. with Franks only a few maps have enough berries for foraging to continue into the midgame (e.g. Kawasan). But the Folwark plus the gold-trickle-by-way-of-stone-mining plus regenerating villagers is too powerful a combination. I don’t believe for a second that Poles would become some sort of bottom-tier civ if they “just” had the Folwark and villager regen (and some new, minor, non-economic bonus to compensate in some measure for the loss of the mining trickle).
I like the stone-through-gold bonus itself. But precisely the fact that it’s a cool bonus makes it all the more logical to just take it away from the Poles and give them a little something in exchange – why provide one civ with a nerfed version of a fun ability that it doesn’t really need, when you could give another civ the full version? I would be glad to see the bonus taken from the Poles in the near future, then reintroduced later on as part of a new civ – the game doesn’t presently feature many montane peoples, and this would be thematically perfect for such an addition.
There are a lot of other things I don’t like about the Poles civ, but they’re less questions of balance than of more general enjoyment, so I’ll omit them here. It’s been a big disappointment to me, I was excited when I heard the civ was being added.
No, Poles lack halbs and Obuch needs to be with good HP to do the intendeed work, but also having 2 base PA makes them too strong at raiding and even taking arbalest damage, unit that is really strong in melee shouldn’t get 2 base PA.
Yeah Poles are frikking strong, they are not much more in the radar just because we have hindustanis and gurjaras as the new OP civs, but Poles feels like they have everithing going for them, and they are never nerfed One bit
In the meantime, they Nerf perfectly average civs like sicilians with no compensation, and Poles can enjoy their OPness
just wanted to chime in, and say that Poles are rly strong on open maps, too. On open maps, they have:
one of the best MAA towers in the game because with the Stone mining bonus, doing the Archer follow up is fairly easy. Regen vills help win tower wars, too.
one of the best castle age timings in the game, it’s not uncommon for Poles to do 5-6 Scouts and still hit Castle Age at 19-20 min mark with all eco upgrades. Stuff that puts Franks, THE Feudal aggression into fast-ish Castle civ, to shame
in early Castle assuming you didn’t take too much damage and can afford Heavy Plow right away, you can really kickstart your boom and spam those Folwarks while defending well. Poles generally have no problem affording a few defensive Knights, Bodkin + Xbow tech early, and so on. Just to give a reference, 5 Folwarks that are fully exploited with Heavy Plow give instant 1500f. This really helps you deal with tough situations, such as Mangonels pressuring you, doing a 4 TC boom earlier (normally contrained by scarcity of food), and more. In many ways, having free resources early allows you to have a far easier time defending and food is probably the one resource that is most valuable.
it only gets better from here since late Castle is generally where Szlachta Privileges comes out, and I believe vs that tech, Camel no longer trades well and Pikeman I am not sure if it’s cost-effective or not, but even if so, risks getting trampled and steamrolled (Pikeman is generally a not very pop-efficient unit so once you lose momentum and mass it generally stops behaving as a counter).
super late game, Poles also look spectacular on open maps with low eco comps like Obuch + Skirm, Bombard Cannon with SE, FU Champion, cheap Cavalier, and the best Hussar in the game (I’m excluding Magyars one here since it’s technically not a Stable unit). They even get Arbalest with Thumb Ring for some reason and a usable, albeit not best Cav Archer (helps matchups like Teutons, Celts or Bulgarians for example) and the only real big gap they have is lack of Halbs. Even so that’s rarely an issue since you can beat Halb targets with quantity generally, such as cheap Cavalier or Hussar or Obuch + Pikeman.
I personally rate Poles THE best civ in the game but wanted to note that they are at least top 5 on open maps too (imo even top 2 if you play your cards right, tied maybe with Gurjaras and possibly Mayans).
1 years ago i opened a topic about how broken bohemians and poles are and vipers in this forum called me noob. Past year , bohemians were one of the most popular pick in tournaments and Poles had %2304029340239423 pick rate in closed maps.
Poles can play, cav, archer, infantry; can fit in every role with 2 of the stronges eco bonuses. It is like superior chinese
30 gold cavs.
Siege rams, bombard tower,bombard cannon for a cheap cavarly civ.
Albalest
Cheap and strong uu with has shared bonus damage vs all.
Poles have so diverse tech tree for their superior eco.
Even their good tech tree doesn’t matter in most cases because their dirty cheap cavalier just overrun most of cavalry counter combined with their superior eco.
Obuch outclass most of infantry UU but they actually rarely used.
So, I propose entirely rework Szlatcha Privilege to change something different. It will encourage pole players actually using their wide tech tree of arb/infantry/BBC and Obuch. Even without Szlatcha Privilege, their knights/Cavaliers are same as Mongols knights but much superior eco. So it can be situationally useful.
Also at least Seige engineer should be take away, They basically have all upgrades (Seige Ram/BBC/Seige Engineer, SO and heavy scorpions are really rare unless Black Forest) which is too much for very good eco civ.
You’ve made some really good points about the situation for Poles in closed maps. Maybe losing access to Redemption and/or Siege engineers could have a good impact in terms of balance for closed maps.
Personally, I’d prefer not having impactful nerfs to their food eco since it will affect their usability on open maps.
Its not a very good option for many closed maps except a few like Hideout. Especially at your level, opponents would estimate that you’re flooding knights and wall back till they have halbs.
But why? These aren’t good civs for many closed maps which start with a stone wall. And goths are not good on most maps in general. I feel you might have a much different opinion if you picked the closed map meta civs like Burgundians, Gurjaras, Turks, Bohemians etc. instead of these weak civs.
This seems like a bit of a stretch. Britons are quite damn powerful themselves and I don’t think would struggle that much against Poles in imp. Especially because of Poles lacking last cav armor.
Btw, If you’re a 2k+ playing Celts and Goths all the time, you could probably get to 2.3k if you played with actually good civs for the respective maps.
you are not alone. try telling the community somethin is op and they with ridiculue yo to the max… wait for a pro to finally speak out about it and they come full cycle.
statistics have showned poles to be totally broken on arena since relase, but forumers dont want to trust numbers, they need a caster or pro player telling them its broken.
I just made a Buildorder for Poles on arena.
It’s a very tight Buildorder. It’s necessary to push your deer early (only eat 2 sheep), use basically only hunt under your TC until you click up. Which also means, you have to drop food frequently. Also it requires market usage, to get some extra food until you transition to your insane castle age folwark food eco.
It’s a 25 + 1 pop FC castle Drop buildorder. Imo the best followup is to make an additional TC and about 10-15 obuch (+armor). Then go up to Imp, which you should be able to hit at about 27-28 minutes.This all while continueing mining stone and drop further castles.
The castle drop should be at one of the edges to the opponent camp, as you want to chop wood with your forward vills.
Why do I think this is so powerful? Because it’s impossible to beat with less than 3 TCs, as the Poles Eco ist way too strong. And with 3+ TCs you will have a very hard time competing with the imp timing, especially if you are pressured by obuch (which can actually dive your TC with the armor upgrades). Imp Obuch also have no castle age Counter, so once you are in imp the obuch (with all armor upgrades) are unstoppable (except the opponent has a designated infantry counter unit). So if the opponent can’t match your Imp timing he will have a very hard time against your castles + obuch + trebs.
So the only 2 ways to stop that strategically for the opponent are to either stop you from castle dropping forward (but then you can make it at home and just boom from there). Or try to beat you with 3-4 TC play, having a comparable Imp Timing and try to win the siege fight. Which might be hard cause he will be against Trebs from 3 castles.
Imo 2 TCs are perfect for Poles, but it’s totally up to you if you want to vary it to either a fast imp with 1 TC play or add more eco behind it. I just think with more eco you delay your Imp too much to make use of the imperial Obuch with it’s 6 PA, that no TC (5+2) or stnadard xbow (5+2) can deal more than 1 damage to and there is no common castle age counter against.
Vill
To
Further Actions
1-3
Houses=> Sheep
4
Sheep
5
Sheep
6
Sheep
7
Lumber Camp
8
Wood
9
Wood
10
Wood
11
Wood
12
House=>Folwark
13
Folwark
14
Berries
15
Berries
16
Berries
17
Berries
18
Food
19
Stone Mining Camp
20
Stone
21
Stone
22
Stone
23
Stone
24
Stone
Feudal
Build House
Make Market + BS
25
Wood
Buy Up (sell 300 Stone + Buy 200 Food)
Loom
Castle
Horsecollar + DBA + Stone Mining (as soon as possible without idling the TC)
Make 2 Farms with Foragers as soon as DBA is done
After finishing Berries, send Foragers forward
After finishing Sheep, send 5 Shepherds to 2nd Lumbercamp, 2 forward
Make a House on the way Forward, sell Gold for Food when you can
Build Forward Castle => Lumber Camp
26
Stone
Heavy Plow + Bow Saw (as soon as possible without idling TC)
27
Farm
28
Farm
Well none of this is used/neede in my buildorder above. Trebs are strong enough even without SE and Monks aren’t needed there as you have your foothold in the castles.
Devs will nerf poles when dlc selling aim done. There is no other meaning of that. Nearly 1,5 years passed since poles added, they were broken since then, but no balance changes.
30 gold knights
very open tech tree, even they have bombard cannon and bombard tower, siege onagers.
