Looking at the tech tree now after launch it feels very odd that poland have 4 royal guard units (5 if you count the xbow after a homecity card)
Danes was kinda supposed to be the odd one out with them all being royal guard but tbh Poles isnt that far behind.
The only other case i can think of is Port but that was a result of a really wonky series of changes and it doesnt even feel like its the case due to how the build orders works
Its porbably too late now to remove these but for a lot of them it makes their upgrades more streamline cause now it makes their unit upgrades really wonky to play
yo no veo el problema sinceramente, ademas es cierto muchas mejoras de guarda se sienten chapuceras por que realmente no dan nada nuevo y algunas de esas son:
voltigeur, Espadachin, Tercio (España si bien tiene 3 unidades de guardia solo el lancero tiene una mejora), Gendarme, Husáres de la Guardia escolta del Rey, Ballestero de la Orden, Legionario, Dragon de Aviz (si bien portugal tiene 4 unidades de la guardia solo el piquero da un efecto unico), Drabant, Stadswatchen, Voluntarios, Rumeliotas. habran mas pero no me acuerdo de todas xd
En lo general todas las mencionadas anteriormente no tienen nada nuevo, solo un 10% más de daño y ataque, en cambio muchas de las nuevas si tienen efectos distintos.
If I were picking RGs for Poland I would have leaned towards Winged Hussars and Cavalry Archers. WH need some rebalancing though, they seem somewhat mathematically subpar.
The Polish royal guard cavalry upgrades are perfectly fine, but the infantry ones are bottom of the barrel.
Kurpie Marksman is a really weird choice. They’re a tiny ethnic minority not really notable for a warrior culture. Kurpies are far better known for their economic pursuits, especially their beekeeping.
Referencing Kurpies through an eco card that improves Folwarks would be a much better way to represent their culture. A card referencing them could do the following:
A) Give Folwarks an aura that boosts gathering/yield of nearby food and wood as a reference to their beekeeping, forestry, and hunting pursuits. This could visually add a beehive to the base model and food specialized version.
B) Enable training Piechur at the military Folwark to reference Kurpie marksmanship.
As for Scythemen, they should be a unique unit. Poles didn’t even use pikemen so it being restricted to a royal guard of them is really dumb. Sythemen could simply fill the pike role. But since they’re a later development, they could be even more radical and use Axemen for the pike role in age 2 and have Sythemen not available until age 3. That would also fit very well for Danes and Russians too.
They went overboard with Danes too. A lot of the names are more “Royal ____” slop like the royal house units, or the 3rd iteration of a unit named Drabant.
At a minimum they could have excluded artillery from the royal guard perk as they’re the most poorly named, and the Danes have nothing special about their artillery other than the Espingol and Rockets that are already not part of the royal guard regime. Even the perks of the artillery rg is stuff like a tiny bit of melee resist which probably isn’t even that impactful in the first place and wouldn’t be missed.
They’re a ‘Royal Guard’ units but they don’t have any cards to upgrade them.
Not to mention that Scythemen are the only heavy infantry unit the Poles have, as they have neither musketeers nor halberdiers. Royal Guard in name only but absolutely necessary for balance reasons.
Another Civilization that has a Royal Guard but in name only is germans; Their Skirmishers get 1 upgrade card and that’s just for hitpoints.
That 10% of stats is so they’re not completely hopeless when scaling through the ages.
Again I remind you they’re the only standard heavy infantry available to the polish, and they’re Scythemen because as many would point out the Poles didn’t have regimented Pikemen…So they’re Scythemen. You still need to protect your guns from cavalry uncarded Veteran Pikemen don’t cut it in the Imperial Age.
Brits also have Redcoats though and some think they do need Billmen (Cover mode is useful) but I digress.
Polish Scythemen are mostly aesthetic it’s just a unique upgrade (with better historical relevent than pikemen) and a little boost so their heavy infantry is not completely obsoleted in the late game. Not worth fretting about.
Currently only Malta have normal guard Pikemen without the Papal Guard politician or sending a card.
Anybody ever notice Guard Winged hussars still get the 40% HP/Attack but pay 600/600 for it?
Sigo pensando que rusia necesita el Poleaxeman, el pike and shot de europa del este era muy distinto en sus formaciones a la europa occidental. quizas Polonia podria tener el Scytheman como unidad unica, siendo una unidad anti caballeria que provoca sangrado y que cada mejora del cuartel le permite atacar un poco más rapido
I’d agree with you if Poland didn’t also get janissaries so easily through a card that combines several techs and is basically mandatory today. The problem is now similar with Sweden: they don’t have halberdiers, so you’re supposed to adapt your strategy, but with the recent update, thanks to the church card, you can now train Gustavian guards, which just wipes out the weak point that used to make the civ unique. Even though these techs have a cost, it’s well worth it because you’re getting access to powerful units, getting access to a unit type you couldn’t train before, and you don’t even pay for their upgrades thanks to the “ghost” techs. What starts out as a weakness quietly turns into the civ’s main strength.
Sending a few support units that you can’t train through cards, without unlocking them, is still fine, since you have to make choices in your deck. But making that unit available through the church card (which you’re putting in your deck anyway no matter what) just patches over the civ’s strategic weakness for free.
Italy, for example, has no skirmisher in age 3, which makes it pretty vulnerable, and it has no real workaround except playing differently, like sending mercenaries, etc. That’s also part of what makes the civ unique, and that’s totally fine as it is.
Right now I’m seeing a trend of giving every civ a way to get whatever unit they need to shape their strategy. But it’s becoming pretty clear that players now get easy workarounds to cover a civ’s weakness for free. You’re no longer adapting to the civ’s specific weakness, you’re just bypassing it. When you give a civ every unit type with no tradeoff, you strip away what makes it unique — and that uniqueness isn’t just about its strengths, it’s also about its weaknesses.