Poland

[frogbeastegg]

Poland needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[Alatien]

I have started playing as Poland, and I must say I am suprised.

In MTW starting as Poland was hectic as Holy Roman Empire was eager to expadn east... However, now in turn 50 I have the largest country (9 provinces) including Prag and Nuremberg. Thou I have few comments:

1. Polish units look ugly. Looks more as a bunch of thugs with sticks rather than an army.

2. Infantry is weak. The only advantage could be Noble Swordsmen (or sth like it), that is avilabe from the beginning. However, this unit seems to have problams dealing with simple rebel spearmen.

3. Cavalry is... werid. Not until Fortress, Poland has a direct charge cavalry. Instead of Mailed Knights, Poland has Polish Nobels - a javelin throwing cav, with medium attack. Instead of usual light cavalry a second shooting cav in form of Strzelcy. Strzelcy are equiped with crossbows, but unlike the MTW counterparts, these can move and shoot/reload which is a huge improvement. Nevertheless, until Fortress, Poland lacks any hard hitting cav, and Polish Nobels and Strzelcy are only supporting units.

4. Speach accent... why o Lord why? Do Polish people realy sound like that?!? Its horrible!!

Campaing strategy:
Expand north and west first. This way you capture land that otherwise Germans and Danes would take. Then whileyou upgrade your cities you may expand east and south. Try getting alliance with Hungarians and with Germans. This will protect your flanks.

Combat tactics:
Early Polish army is ... werid (again). Infantry - weak, Cavalry - shooting. With such units its difficult to set up decent battle line since shooting cav needs space to maneuvere (and there never is enough sace one fighting starts), and infantry cant win on its own. If someone likes shoot and run tactics for 30 min then this is your army. I havent found a "golden ratio" for early Polish army yet. For late period... please stad by.

[Lucjan]

Excuse me...the Polish accent is not terrible. Try not to make such unnecessary comments, please edit this. I'll admit the accent is far from perfect, it should be heavier, but it's better than expected.

And the Polish army is not weird or ugly, it is actually more historically accurate than the one offered in the original Medieval.

Woodsmen are one of the best armor routing units you can get, they take other units, particularly armored ones, and beat them into the dirt when you flank them.

Also, Polish Nobles attack is actually 11, 1 higher than their Mailed Knight counterparts in most of the rest of Europe, you're probably just not performing the charge correctly, it works differently than rtw.

[KARTLOS]

ive just completed a fantastic polish campaign. I was playing on h/h and completed the game prior to the mongol invasion, so ~ around 1200ad.

the polish nobleman are an awesome unit one of the best in the game- it is effective against armour so they are great for taking out enemy generals and cav.

my campaign probably took a fairly unusual shape compared to most people playing as the poles. I never fought the germans or the russians and ended up with a meditaranean empire centred on constaninople.
I made a marriage alliance with the russians at the beggining and this held for the entire campaign despite the fact that I completely restricted their expansion.
i also allied with the HRE and this alliance was never broken - judging by the size of their garisons i think this is because they were never strong enough to take me on.

I strated off normally, initially taking the surrounding territories, breslau, thorn, stettin, kiev, prague and iasi.
I produced alot of priests and quite early on my standing with the pope was good enough to pursuade him to call a campaign on jerusalem. I had two full stack crusading armies, one moving south from iasi and the other coming in a bit behind from prague. an important tip is that the excellent crusade specific mercs are not really available in the slavic land or the steppes. i was able to stock up around prague but not at iasi.

on the way to jerusalem i essentially took out the byzantines. the first stack took took constantinople and Nicaea. and the second one came in and took hessalonica, and corinth. i moved on imediately after each conquest and didnt suffer much in the way of desertion.
(a tip regarding garrisoning cities you take on the way to the crusade, is to get your general to move out of his army select leave crusade, hire some mercs and use them as a garison, then have the general rejoin his crusading army rejoin the crusade and move on.)
I took jerusalem and then used the crusader stack there to take all the surrounding cities. I was massacring the populations as they were muslims and this made it easy to leave small garrisons whilst my main army was taking cities.

by the time the crusade was over i had a very unusual looking empire, the polish territories at the top of them map. i had greece and western anatolia and i had the full strip of the holy land. i decided my empire would be more profitable if i moved the capital to constantinople and then set about securing this by getting rid of the turks, egyptians and the remaining byzantines. i found this relatively easy. I tried to avoid their field armies and just went about taking out their cities.
although i had taken the byzantines cities in greece they still had one full stack army and several smaller ones. I took out the smaller armies opportunistically when i could and handled the full stack carefully, they laid seige to my cities a coule of times but in the end i solved the problem by taking the final byz city nicosia and the byz armies turned into rebels which are much more passive and easier to handle.

as far as i could tell the turks self destructed before i could finish them off, their last remaining cities yerevan and mosul went rebel and the turks were no more. I think that the economic shock of my invasion had been too much for them. With the egyptians i think i defeated a coule of sizable armies in the holy land but after that they were not able to offer me too much opposition and i took cairo and alexandria easily.

back in europe the hungarians and venetians both started to war with me (and were excomunicated for their sins). i took quite along time to take them out as their cities wer often protected with full stacks. but i eventually did and that was prity much it.

a really fun campaign - deffinately a true alternate history!

the polish nobles are a uber unit- use them wisely.

[Parmenion]

How on Earth did you manage to complete the game on h/h in 60 turns or so?

[KARTLOS]

How on Earth did you manage to complete the game on h/h in 60 turns or so?

i kind of went over what happened in my first post, but to put it simply il break it into three:

1 polish nobles are an uber unit- use alot of them get them behind the enemy lines and they will decimate their best troops from behind. kill generals easily.

2 Made effective use of a crusade. by the end of my fist crusade i had taken out byzantium and fatally weakend the turks and egyptians. i destroyed the turk and egyptian factions fairly soon after the crusade. so i ended up with a prity big empire earlly on.

3- concentrate on taking cities rather than fighting armies. you dont have to fight every soldier to wipe out a faction, go after their cites to take them out. the ai often doesnt defend them properly and also fails to respond to your agressive progress towards them ( i consider this a game flaw)

i will post a screenshot soon when i get the chance.

[Syrous_PL]

Let me just say first there are some good tips in this thread regarding the early strategy. I was always finding myself short on cash playing Poland, so this time I sent a crusade down south to Antioch and pillaged that region until Mongols appeared. I tried to give away some of the cities in the Holy Land that were too expensive to hold, but there were not takers...

One tactical tip that I'd like to give to guys playing Poland is to put some Lithuanian Archers in each city/castle. I found them very handy on defence, despite the fact that archers in M2:TW are way weaker than in the original TW. Basically, when deploying, put them in front of the gate (inside the walls) and have them deploy the stakes. Then when the battle starts you can move them to the walls, but the stakes stay there for any cavalry trying to rush in through your gate. You can leave 1 or 2 units of infantry to mop up those who get trough. I was able to massacre many heavy horsemen this way.
Hope that helps.

[Seabourch]

Have done really well as the Poles, currently concentrating on the steppes before I head south to turkey for the turks,( Polish units should get heatstrokes even unarmoured in reality, would you wear a furcoat in the Holy Land?), at war with Germans but playing defensive mostly repelling invasions only one small stack of town militia and spear militia, one unit apiece. Got some revenge when I mauled them with four units of Polish nobles. Conquered the Russians. Will not head west until Im the Popes favourite faction as Inquisitors prowl that area( I notice they crawl around the area from france to Germany to Italy, so will family members eastwards to avoid being executed for lack of piety.) I once 3 family members to Inquisitors as Milan in a few turns. By the way, the Poles in there do not have a wierd accent.

[Praylak]

I found Poland to have an interesting unit selection. I personally like the look of them myself. You can tell right away this in no basic European faction, like the flamboyantly rich looking Italian units. This is a country that has just embraced Christianity, mainly for its self preservation. Its people would continue many of their pagan ways for the next 300 years following the baptism of its ruler. Knowing this and having used the Polish Nobles, low cost but effective Woodsmen, and assorted Lithuanian units, it just felt right.

In converting Thorn to a town you delay the progress of your higher level castle units, as your other castles are going to be a while to develop. But I thought it was an acceptable move as the early cavalry are so good and it proved to be so. It’s got a decent population and becomes a city quite quickly and with port access it makes decent income. I also initially took Settin, Madleburg and Breslau. Of these all but Settin were made as castles to form defensive boundary against the HRE. The initial plan was to hold the line here while I’d expand into Russia proper and Scandinavia. I had no interest in displacing the HRE so that I could trade one enemy border for three, at least until I was ready to do so. Eventually Venice, Milan, or France, or all of them will bare themselves against HRE.

I formed two cavalry groups each consisting of 3 Polish Nobles, 6 Strzelcy and an able general. They were my border guard. Being all horse, they could quickly assist a siege, or intercept an invading enemy. It also allowed for minimal garrisons and kept my economy in progress. When my lands developed and income improved, I built my own siege army that could deal with a well defended city or castles.

It’s already been well discussed here; to underestimate Polish cavalry is to seal ones fate. They are very good but it was the Strzelcy that really impressed me. These mounted crossbowmen make excellent light cavalry. Use them as light cavalry (minus a lance) that have a ranged attack as they can perform any task you set them too. Unlike standard horse-archers, one must keep in mind trajectory during battles. Arching parabolic/arcade shots are not good with crossbows; you want a direct line of sight at all times during the fight.

It took me a bit to adjust (as I’m an avid horse-archer fan), as I would manoeuvre them around in battles, but I soon realized they are just as good. I even think they have a little bit more ammo then standard.(?) Armour piercing both in melee ( axes) and shot, makes for allot of killing. Stack after stack of HRE fell to these two groups. Always greatly outnumbered in battles, it mattered not. They always prevailed. If you can micro horse archer armies, you’ll bath the soil between you and the HRE with the blood of thousands.

Once I formed my combined arms stack for conquering enemy factions, the Woodsmen came into their own here. Note their low defense and high attack. Don’t send them in head on. Keep one or two in each wing of your line behind your able spearmen. Once the lines meet, the spearmen hold, and run the woodsmen around the flanks, preferably with a Polish Noble as escort right beside them to intercept other cavalry that may try to attack them. While they run around the sides to setup for a running flank attack, Polish nobles are there with them throwing javelins. When the woodsmen finally engage it’s a bloodbath that ends in a mass death fairly quickly. It works fantastic to say the least.

It’s a little bit of a rocky start as Poland, as many of the surrounding lands are undeveloped. Patience and its excellent cavalry and low cost/upkeep woodsmen will see you securing as modest empire in the early game. Later you get Polish Knights, and Hussars, just to mention a few. They’ll see you own the world. If the HRE gets under your skin, after sending the 35th stack across your border like what happened to me, I did three raids against Nuremburg, Hamburg and the capital Frankfurt. I kept Hamburg. Sack and burned the other two. (Sell all buildings except church and let it rebel) After this they left me alone and I was able to continue my conquest of Russia/Scandinavia unhindered.

[TheLastPrivate]

If you have any doubts about the Polish army then you either lack tactical sense or autoresolved everything. Well-used polish nobles will decimate anything, and surpasses the capabilities of Jinetes and Boyar sons from my personal experience.

Lategame I adopted the strategy of "Polish Avalanche of Steel" -Polish Guards can actually do a headlong charge in FRONT, followed by Dismounted polish knights, and while your heavy cav. and infantry march Polish nobles and strelzy will harass the enemy and keep the missile fire away from your frontline knights. While the missile cavalry harasses and draws missle fire in spread-out formation Hussars rush to the enemy rear, and when the time is right have the polish guard charge headlong, directly followed by dism. polish knights, and at the same time hussar charge in the rear. This routes the most highly experienced stacks of whatever the enemy throws, with the exception of mass pike wall. Simply have all your cavalry flank in that case. Notice I do not use missile except those of missile cavalry, because Polish missile infantry are not really worth the dime and you do not want to be skirmishing a long time and let your infantry/cavalry die off to missle harassment.

[Fisherking]

Basic Polish Cavalry is Devastating to most other factions!

Handled well they can do fantastic and amazing things. Almost as much fun as the Kats in RTW. All you need is a foot unit for taking cities.

In my current game, a few turns ago, the Russians decided it was time to attack me, and surprised me with a stack of around 16 spear and archers. All that I had in the castle was 3 shooters a noble and a peasant. There was no help within two or three turns and I saw doom written on the walls…But then I took hope…if the enemy captain was in an archer unit I might have a chance. If I lost then I was just ending the battle a turn or two sooner and would make them pay for attacking me.

Placing the peasants on the gate I charged out to meet the enemy…not directly but I had to run past all those archers. I think I lost one man and was soon behind his lines with my little force.

His deployment allowed me to charge two archer units from behind on his right flank and they were soon routed with minimal losses. I regrouped and did the same on the left flank but one of my guys got tangled up with some spears and routed with only two men left. The other horse had cleared out the rest of his archers and the nobles had at last killed his leader, but the spears seemed to be holding fast.

His weakest unit at this time was a spear on the left flank…(his left flank) that had hacked up my unit of shooters. I brought the two men that were now calm back out to shoot at this group as no one else had arrows left.

I switched them to work on some of the stronger spears and formed up the nobles on the flank and my leaders shooters in the rear. I called back the unit chasseing the routing archers and then attacked the weak spears hoping to start a larger route. The spears were soon wiped out but still no route though they were not being very aggressive.

When the unit on the right came back I had him hit a spear in the flank and attacked the left in the same way …these two unit routed and I chased them and hit another in the flank…this finally did the trick and the last units gave up the ghost… I had whipped a thousand may army with just about two hundred….WOW! Was it a fluke? And then I saw as I was chasseing routing spears that my units were still set to loose formation to avoid arrow fire!….what can I say.

Then similar things happened against the Sicilians, Malian, and Denmark… So it was no fluke. These guys are amazing!