Unified Thread on Poland being op

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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There has been a lot of discussion of Poland because they currently seem to be op in 1v1 Sup, and Treaty, at the same time, the core identity unit, the Winged Hussar, is rather underwhelming. This is going to be a long post, so I will make a number of suggestions for the civ as a whole before defending them.

Units:
Retainer
-Population cost increased to 2 (up from 1).
-HP increased to 240 (up from 210).

Winged Hussar
-Population cost reduced to 2 (down from 3)
-Cost reduced to 80f, 100c (down from 120f, 150c).
-Speed increased to 7 (up from 6.75).
-HP reduced to 240 (down from 360).
-Ranged Armor increased to 30% (up from 20%).
-Hand Attack reduced to 28 (down from 30), Bonus against infantry removed (down from 1.5x), range made visible (it’s about 3.75).
-Charged Attack: Siege Damage reduced to 28 (down from 30), bonuses, penalties, and range unchanged.
-Siege damage unchanged.
-Units delivered by Age ups and cards adjusted accordingly.

Piechur
-Ranged Attack reduced to 14 (down from 16).
-Anti Infantry bonuses changed to 1.75x vs heavy and 1.25x vs light.
-Veteran and Guard upgrades add +1 range (down from +2).

Economy
Settler
-Build limit reduced to 85 (down from 99).

Folwark:
-Unspecialized base rate reduced to 0.45 (down from 0.5).
-Farming Specialized base rate 0.55 (down from ~0.69).

Sejm
-Max gather rate reduced by 5% (each vill makes up a slightly bigger piece of the pie however).

Cards:
-Cavalry Combat (III) removed.

-Polish Cavalry Combat (II) moved to age 3. Now improves Retainers and Cav Archers by 15% and Winged Hussars by 20%.

-Piechota Wybraniecka (IV) now improves infantry train time by -40% (up from -20%).

-Riders of the Apocalypse (II) now improves Winged Hussars’ siege damage by +30%.

-Treaty of Lublin (II):
-Uhlan tech replaced with a tech providing fancy Rekruits from the East and enables training and upgrading them at the Barracks. The shadow tech applied to Polish Rekruits is a bit deferent, -20% attack and hp, +2 range and enables Combat Promotions. Tech cost 1k coin and sends 12. They are not cheaper or faster training than a normal Musketeer.

-Pulaski’s Legion (III) no longer modifies the attack rate of Uhlans. They still get Promotions.

-Agrarian Reforms (I) improves villager gather rate on Mills by 15% and Folwarks by 20% (down from 30%).

-Kielbasa (I) enables Livestock Folwarks to gather from pigs at a rate of 1.5 food per second (down from 4).

-Grand Hetman (I) Cavarly Healing rate cut by 40%.

Retainers
Starting from the top, Retainers are too pop efficient for a civ without pop inefficient infantry. Russia and China have 1 pop heavy cav, but both have poor infantry. Even with the nerfs to Piechurs they will still be great given their lower cost and bonus against skirms. Retainers will still be a very special unit and they can be trained from even default Folwarks, though they become more of an early game unit.

Winged Hussars
My Winged Hussar suggestions might be a bit controversial, but I think they make sense.

In there current form they have lower hp and all purpose attack than a pop adjusted Hussar, and while they do start slightly cheaper on a per-pop basis, they are hard to train in age 2 due to the expense on a per unit basis. It’d currently be hard to train 5 for raiding while trying to age (and they don’t raid great anyway). This would no longer be an issue after being adjusted to 2 pop, and I think the 3.75 shadow range, extra speed, and the occasional AoE and bonus vs infantry should make up for the 40hp and 2 attack per pop. In age 3 with the 20% discount and slightly condensed Cav Combat card I think they become one of the strongest heavy cav units in the game, as they should be. They should also pair well with the Russian Church Musks and Jans.

Piechurs

Currently Piechurs cost less than a skirm, and deal 24 damage (before armor) to skirms while skirms deal 15 back. Skirms have more range, but that changes in age 4 and they actually get outranged in age 5. In exchange for that they do a bit worse vs heavy infantry, but that disadvantage largely goes away with CIR. With the nerf they still do 17.5 damage vs a skirm’s 15, and are cheaper with more speed. These changes still leave the unit in a pretty decent spot, and allow for a 40% training time reduction for Polish infantry in age 4. They’ll max out with 20 range in age 4.

Economy

With 0.55 +135% (two mill techs, 50% from the collective Sejm ups, Sustainable Agriculture, and Agrarian Reforms you get 1.2925 food per second in age 5 with about 0.12925 coin per second. That’s meaningfully better than other civs with no walking time on farms. Between that, Kielbasa (which will be less insane), and the coin trade card I think Poland will be fine in treaty. In Sup, it’s still a 10% better farm that can train cav and supports 10 pop for 170 +150w and you have 10-20% cheaper cav which together seems to compensate for the loss of 14 vills. Without 1pop heavy cav, and with the weakened Piechur, the extra pop becomes pretty fair.

Cards
The changes with Cav Combat and PCC make sense to reduce the huge number of needed cards. Grand Hetman is a bit crazy atm. I think it heals at 10hp per second, and can do that to units that are in combat. Pulaski’s Legion is currently just insane, so reducing their DPS by like 33% seems far.

The Treaty of Lublin change is aimed at adding Polish Musks and removing yet another source of Super-Uhlans. Musks will help make Winged Hussars better and Rekruits with 14 range, Promotions, and no discount seems like a non-issue. Promotions go directly against the idea of cannon-fodder units, but it’s an option and that’s valuable.

Please consider the changes as a set when complaining I didn’t suggest enough of a nerf to some element of the civ. I know some people want to see the coin trade card go, or bigger nerfs to Folwarks, but I think given the set as a whole probably brings the civ closer to something realistic. Thanks to anyone who read this whole thing.

Edit: To be clear, the title is about talking about the civ as a whole rather than piece-meal. I’m not claiming anyone quoted is in agreement with any of my suggestions.

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I think the suggestions are quite fair. They would make the Piechur and the Retainer much more balanced without going as far as over-nerfing them. The Polish economy would go from producing around 16k food per minute to roughly 8k per minute. The only thing that concerns me is the Winged Hussar’s charge attack aoe, which is 4.

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so you basically want to render the civ unplayable. If devs take you literally, point by point, the civ will be absolute trash and played by no one.

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What mode (1v1, team, treaty) are you concerned about? What specifically concerns you?

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My god is this horrible I would hate it if Poles are changed like this.

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What specifically don’t you like?

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I play team ranked supremacy. It makes sense for a civ that virtually doesn’t heavy inf (just a pike), and have awful artillery (no buffs whatsoever other than advanced arsenal), to have an above average cav archer, a 1pop hand cav thats good but needs a lot of cards, and a skirm that have a slight bonus against other skirm. Otto’s cav archer is not as good as polish, but they have humbaraci, bombards, and arguably one of the best artillery in the game to kill inf and siege. Russias cav archer is also not as good as polish, but they have a complete rooster of very cost effective skirm, musk and halbs.

That being said, the way the polish military is designed, the core of your army should be cav archer, if u nerf it by removing cavalry combat, you are basically breaking the backbone of the civ.

Piechur is very bad in the early stages of the game, just 16 range in age2, and 18 in age 3. By the time they get upgraded in age 4 and get 21 range is basically the stage of the game that civs with good artillery start to train theirs (bombards, rockets, you name it), and remember, poland has bad artillery, so basically piechur is all you can get.

The thing with retainer is that you need it to be one pop, because you wont have as much free population to mix in a 2 pop hand cav to kill skirm/artillery or to raid. Remember, you usually wont be using any artillery, so you need 1 pop cav to mix into the ecuation.

Infantry train time improved by 40% misses the point that poles are designed as a cav civ, with limited infantry and artillery options. you don’t service the game by removing the peculiarities of every civilization.

Kielbasa nerf seems awful, 1.5 seems like a mechanic destroyer. Getting to 30pigs, and sending all the cards and the techs to make it work properly is already hard enough for a civ that doesnt have 600woord crate, and doesnt have any other sort of economic differential in early to mid game.

Not having 600 wood crates also makes water boom for poland really bad. On the other hand, civs like japan can get a ridiculous eco in no time mixing shrine and water boom.

I wouldn’t nerf agrarian reform, but if the total output of resources generated, if properly measured is very high in late game, maybe would nerf some of that by other means.

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Polish Cavalry Combat doesn’t currently effect CA. It’s net neutral on CA other than the nerf to Grand Hetman.

I think there’s a valid argument that you could keep the +2 range on Vet and Guard and remove it from Imp and the age 4 card.

I’m not sure it actually pushes you into playing heavy on infantry. The core issue is the unit currently gets 39 attack with a 2.5x vs heavy infantry and a 1.5x vs light infantry, giving it a pretty huge advantage in skirm wars. That needs to be toned down a bit and I wanted to give something back. Faster training is fairly safe, and might just mean your replacement 20-30 skirms come out faster.

I think you could plausibly go to 2 per second, but when I saw it was double the speed that a vill gathers them that seemed insane, especially since they can gather from multiple animals at once without any villager opportunity cost.

Would 100% be okay with adding a 600w card.

Aztec vills with all farm rate techs, Sustainable Agriculture, Grain Market, Chinampa, Temple of Xolotl Support, Great Chinampa, and Wise Woman to age 5 produce 1.53 food per second without walking around.

Polish vills with all Folwark techs, Sustainable Agriculture, Agrarian Reforms, Wodka Distillery, and relevant Sejm techs 1.66f and 0.17c per second without walking. You also have just below 2 factories worth of collection and 2 Livestock Folwarks collecting pig meat. Then you can trade all food for 80% of its value in coin as many times as you want.

Aztecs are also kinda an outlier on farm rate if I’m correct. Maybe I went too far, but I think my suggestion is closer to fair than the current rates.

Spanish Artillery only get a +10 LoS card for artillery. Germans get no artillery upgrade cards unless I’m forgetting something. A lot of other civs have fairly minimal upgrades outside of Advanced Arsenal, though arguably Poland would gain a small advantage with the 14 extra pop.

I also suggested some meaningful net buffs to Winged Hussars, which seem like they were partially intended to serve in that role.

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Poland and retainers are just the new favourite whipping boy, early retainers are too expensive in their food cost for their worth since they get picked off by musketeers since they have 0 range resist.

And winged hussars are close to being in a good state, you’re meant to supplement your numbers with retainers so they don’t need to be buffed that much. they only need some line of sight and maybe 5% ranged resist (remember you can get extra 10% range resist pretty easily).

Piechur’s aren’t as OP as they look on paper they do not 'counter’ skirms most skirm units have a high range resist which nearly mitigates the bonus damage and it’s pointless to prioritise targing other skirms with them as skirms in general have rubbish siege damage.
Skirm vs Skirm is pointless nothing to win even if you do since you should retreat against other skirms it’s just a waste of time and expenses.

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This is a claim that needs to be approached from a quantitative perspective rather than presenting a “perception” without supporting data. To demonstrate this, I will show the following graphs, which illustrate damage received over time and army cost-efficiency.

For these calculations, we consider the scenario where the unit with the longer range fires first, and we account for the time it takes for the unit receiving the initial damage to start exchanging fire, based on its movement speed and the difference in range between the two units.

1. Base Matchup: Piechur vs. Standard European Skirmisher

In the first graph, we compare the unupgraded Piechur against a standard European Skirmisher.

Mechanics: The European Skirmisher holds a range advantage (20m vs. 16m) and gets the first shot. Moving at 4.25 m/s, the Piechur closes the 4m range gap in approximately 0.94 seconds to begin firing back.

Result: Despite taking initial damage, the Piechur’s superior base anti-infantry output (24 net damage vs. 10.5 net damage per shot after 30% resistance) allows it to turn the tide quickly. The Piechur reaches the 120 HP lethal threshold faster, defeating the standard Skirmisher decisively in a 1v1 duel.

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2. Fully Upgraded Matchups: Imperial Piechur vs. High-Tier Skirmishers

In the second set of graphs, we look at the Piechur with all of its Imperial upgrades (22m range, 252 HP, 58.8 base damage) against elite late-game skirmishers: the French Skirmisher (306 HP, highest health pool) and the Dutch Skirmisher (288 HP, representing average elite performance).

Case A (vs. French Skirmisher): Even with maximum French upgrades, the Piechur’s range advantage (22m vs. 20m) forces the French Skirmisher to close the gap first.

Case B (vs. Dutch Skirmisher): In a similar setup, the Piechur completely overwhelms the Dutch Skirmisher.

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3. Macro-Economy & Mass Engagement (10,000 Resource Investment)

In the third graph, we evaluate resource efficiency by tracking how an equal investment (10,000 resources) depletes during a mass army engagement.

Force Composition: At 110 resources per unit (70F/40G), 10,000 resources yield 90 Piechurs (22,680 total HP). At 115 resources per unit (50F/65G), the same investment yields 86 French Skirmishers (26,316 total HP).

Result: Due to higher unit density and damage output per resource spent, the Piechur army completely wipes out the opponent in around 15 seconds. The Piechur force retains approximately 6,000 resources worth of military value (60% of the initial investment), leaving the Skirmisher player at a 100% resource loss.

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It is important to note that scaling 1v1 duel parameters into mass engagements introduces emergent game-engine behaviors that standard deterministic models simplify:

Overkill Damage: The in-game AI pathfinding and focus-fire mechanics often cause multiple units to shoot at a single low-HP target simultaneously, resulting in significant “wasted” damage during each burst.

Collision & Pathfinding Bottlenecks: Unit collision boxes and movement delays mean that not all units in a massed army begin firing at the exact same instant, slightly reducing the theoretical Rate of Fire (RoF).

Decaying DPS: Firepower decreases step-by-step as individual soldiers fall rather than being depleted as a single unified health pool.

While a full Monte Carlo simulation—modeling individual targeting logic, overkill rates, and spatial collision—would be required to capture the exact stochastic variance of a real match, this macro-economic model provides a reliable deterministic baseline.

Even when accounting for target overkill and movement-related noise, the Piechur’s high raw damage efficiency per resource leaves a sufficiently large margin to remain highly effective in realistic army-scale engagements.

The Piechur and the Retainer are anti-everything units
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You’ve missed the point…It doesn’t matter if they beat other skirmishers because of artillery and that all skirms have sucky siege.

Skirm wars are meaningless even if you win, the real threat is heavy infantry which they don’t counter as well and be your piechur’s first target…or cavalry or artillery which beat them anyway.

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Keep in mind while Piechur do beat out other Euro skirmishers in a head-to-head shootout, they were intentionally designed that way. Players really shouldn’t be engaging in a skirmisher war with Poland, much less letting them reach that skirm mass. Piechur don’t do quite as well against heavy infantry, and they still get countered by heavy cav and artillery about the same as other skirmishers would.

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Players shouldn’t be engaging in a skirmisher war regardless;
Even if it isn’t against poland but any other civ there’s not much to gain and skirms are expensive.

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How can a unit be balanced when it effectively counters heavy infantry, Skirmishers, and light cavalry at the same time? , then what is the intended counter to the unit? A unit like the Polish Piechur breaks the traditional counter-unit triangle because it destroys every type of infantry: heavy infantry, light infantry, and light cavalry. This makes infantry no longer a viable option. So how do you justify having a unit like that? What does Poland lack in return for having such a unit? It has a standard artillery roster for a European civ, very good cavalry, a unit that counters light infantry, a cavalry unit that fulfills the role of heavy infantry, and excellent light cavalry.

So why is it there, and what is the point of this statement?