After the last Trailer which leaked a lot of additional informations I took me some time to think about what was told. I came to the conclusion that both civs seem to be quite strong for casual players in their respective resorts. Poles in open and Bohemians in closer Maps like Arena.
But the things shown indicate that they might lack competitiveness for higher ranked players and might even be considered trash by pros. Here are the two things I concluded an for each of them a possibly easy solution I already thought about.
POLES
Besides Poles seem to be a mid to lategame cavalry powerhouse they don’t receive an early game bonus besides the Folwark. You could now argue that the Folwark might be so strong that it would be enough ecowise to carry them through Feudal. And the reasoning behind that might all be correct. But there is a single soft factor working against it. And that are early raids. As it looks like, the Folwark doesn’t offers any protection to the farmers around it. That means if the polish player wants to make use of that bonus he HAS to expose his food eco to raids. This will be punished in competitive gameplay. I don’t have any doubt about that.
My solution for that problem: Just make folwark bonus apply to ALL food sources. This would lead to unqiue tight buildorders for poles only competitive players will learn to execute flawlessly, so it wouldn’t change the civs balance in lower elo, but make it competitive at high elo as the potential bonus from the earlier placed folwark can be translated to be either more agressive or protect the exposed vills better from raids.
BOHEMIANS
It’s comaparable. Bohemians seem to don’t receive any eco bonus, but are set up for the long game. Possibly the strongest unit comp in the game, as it looks like. But in competitive the early game is always the most important part of the game and having 0 bonus there, even in arena, is basically a no go. They need something to carry them through feudal.
My solution - aswell as it may look a bit odd: Foot Archers have +1 atk but lose the last attack upgrade. Bohemians lategame comp is set up to take few food but mass wood + gold. If they would need to go for scouts in feudal, they would need to set up a food eco which just doesn’t fit their general gameplan. So a bonus to the only available line that doesn’t takes food seems to me the only real option. It also would fit their gameplan evene further as they then would add castles (garrisoning space!) to make hussite wagons which would protect the archers from other units which could possibly a thread. In the process of the game the bohemians would slowly tech out of archers in favor of adding siege and whatever support unit they need. Also in this case, this would mostly benefit competitive gameplay, as the execution of this strat will turn out to be very complicated as the burgundian player because of the lack of an eco bonus will need to adjust according to the opponent’s strategy quite often. But the general availability of that strat will make it much more competitive - and I think that’s what we should look for if new civs are added, that they are competitive even at the highest level of play.
I think my actaul bigger concern about Poles is their late game Hussar spam. The Folwark will 100% be better than the slavic farming bonus, and the Winged Hussar with two UTs affecting cavalry sound ridiculous
Yes I did. But both civs seem to be set up for mid to or lategame prowess, so I concluded early bonusses might either be OP cause the civs would have basically no general weakness if they would give them any kind of general eco bonus.
Maybe I’m wrong with this thinking, but that’s why I posted these concerns. Just to share my thoughts if the civs are set up around the already mentioned techs and UUs, they might be quite bad in competitive, like burgs and sic were at their release.
Just to remind what happend with the last expansion.
Most likely, most likely Poles will be the by far best lategame civ in open maps.
They have an eco bonus that affects their farms, which means a solid Midgame eco and beyond. They are clearly going to have good late game hussars, and rhen their unique techs increase the power of their cavalry. So what is rhe civs weakness?
Maybe the early game…
But also pure cav isn’t necessarily that OP. Most cav civs have actually something to back it up. Even lith have their faster skirms. So if poles don’t have strong backup they can possibly be the best cav civ in the game without being unbalanced.
True, but that’s actually my big concern. If they try to “balance” the civ that way, the poles would be terrible competitive but completely dominate maybe everything until 1250 elo… That would be a terrible design for a civ.
Bettere if they have some kind of special early game eco which needs special builds to execute, that way they can possibly balanced amon all elos. (even if this would need to rebalance the folwark accordingly)
The biggest downside of the poles bonus is, that farmers are unprotected. It’s stated in my original argument. Poles farms are way more exposed to raids.
This is a multiplacitive effect, as when poles aren’t threatened they can snowball way faster but if they are raided they lose even way faster as their eco is also much harder to protect. And this negative effect actually scales with elo, at higher elo there is way more interactive gameplay (raids) to deal with.
In early game you can just fullwall and includes the mill inside. You may argue that you would place folwark further than normal mills (I guess that is your points) but that is likely unnecessary - you seldom place a lot of farms in early games anyway.
The point is - unless you place folwark differently than mill, they offer the same amount of protection, and I don’t see why you would place it differently than mill in early game (the first mill is often near berries anyway)
The point is, if you want to get the bonus from the folwark you have to place your farms around it.
This you don’t do with standard gameplay, you place them around your TC to have better protection.
So if poles want to use that bonus they have to expose their farmers to possible raids, which is a very high risk. Especially in competitive.
In early game the first and potential second mill placement is rather static tho (near berries)? Normally when you want to start farming it’s shifting to midgame already.