Polish Retainers...

[RZST]

well stat wise they dont seem to be worth a damn.
im talking in SP mode by the way.

if you play early you can get feudal knight earlier than polish retainers and FK has better stats than PR.
hell even Avar Nobles are better than PR.

so if im going to play poland, is the Polish Retainer worth the effort?

sure on high its probably easier to produce them but still...

[ichi]

I love Polish Rets. I use them in MP in High Era games where they rock at V2. In SP, you're right, you can get FKs and they work well against the (IMHO) weak AI armies.

The prob with Polish Rets is they need that valor upgrade, which in SP means a well developed province.

ichi

[Ellesthyan]

Polish Retainers useless??

Ok. Imagine you're playing Poland. Your starting province isn't really far built up, and money is tight. Your army will exist of woodsmen, spearmen and some cavalry. Obvious choice for you cav are the Polish Retainers, as you can get them by only building a little horse breeder, while feudal knights need expensive buildings.
feudal knights: cost 425 ch 8 at 4 de 3 ac 4 morale 8
Polish retains: cost 300 ch 8 at 3 de 3 ac 4 morale 4
So yeah, Polish retainers are weaker then feudal knights. BUT They are a zillion times more useful.
First, they're less expensive.
second, they require only a horse breeder.
third, their weakness compaired to feudal knights shouldn't make a difference; they are to be used as shock cavalry.
fourth, you won't hit anything that can deal with a Polish Retainer for about the first 100 turns as the Polish.
fifth, by the time you want feudal knights, you can get chivalric knights already...

There is one thing that kills our little Polish cavalry, and that is that they are restricted to the high/late era I used to have them all the time in early in the pre-expansion time, now this makes it a lot more difficult. Still they have their use, and I always favor them over feudal knights. They lose it to the chivalrics though...

[Nowake]

The polish retainers are good, but as KK said, FK are better. That's just my opinion though. I like them only for diversity.

[son of spam]

Well Wes fixed the problem of retainers appearing only in high, by making them in early, and beefing up their stats http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/jawdrop.gif . Still, I think they're not that good in high otherwise, because as ellesythan pointed out, chiv knights are much better and will come soon. I don't even think retainers are fast.

[katank]

they are great and are a good alternative to feudal knights, being only a bit weaker. They have far less build reqs though and on a shoestring budget you have while playing as Poland, it's invaluable.

high era restriction is kinda bad tho. Still, I use them alot due to requiring only a horse breeder.

that's lower than mtd seargents and they are a lot better

FK and CK still take long time to build up to though.

esp. if you start in high, you must use them to survive.

in wesmod they have more attack and are faster but they were good units in vanilla anyhow and are far from useless.

[Servius]

also, if you think the High/Late restriction is bull, just change the stat file to allow them to be build in all periods. The file, if you don't already know, is

CRUSADERS_UNIT_PROD11.TXT

and you can edit it with the Gnome Editor (which you can download from this site) or even with Excel. For Excel at least, the column you're looking for is AY, the row for PR is 111, and you just change the value to

ALL_PERIODS

TADA, problem fixed.

[LadyAnn]

I took the challenge to play Poland without modding, and I agreed with many here: Try to get the knights by building up infrastructure, you will be crushed by various external forces. But if you could get Polish retainers with only cheap horse breeding program, I could expand the Polish realm early and get enough annual income to feed the building of infrastructure and get knights later.

Also, in time of national crisis (invasion of the Horde, Germany looks East or Russian get ambitious), I can raise Polish Retainers in pratically every province, while I could afford to raise perhaps 1 knight a year (need castle to raise knights).

Annie

[AggonyDuck]

Anyways I think Retainers are far more useful than FK...
Just take a look at the upkeep of FK..... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif
And as Annie said u can pump huge amounts of them quick and their quite reluable too...They're maybe at their best in a cavalry heavy Polish force with Chivs as the frontal assaulters and Retainers attacking the flanks.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
And of course retainers don't need much infrastructure so u can basically just have a huge cavalry force in the matter of 5 years... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
So why get FK when u can get retainers... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[katank]

lady ann and 1pain1Duck are right on.

the knights are good but you can't mass them that fast.

in the initial few years, any cav is good. let along that retainers are pseudo-knights.

when english or french, I would mass hobilars and found they worked well. with polish, retainers are even more powerful. so spam them everywhere retainer flood

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (katank @ Mar. 11 2004,15:54)]lady ann and 1pain1Duck are right on.

the knights are good but you can't mass them that fast.

in the initial few years, any cav is good. let along that retainers are pseudo-knights.

when english or french, I would mass hobilars and found they worked well. with polish, retainers are even more powerful. so spam them everywhere retainer flood
As Poland you will be struggling financially for quite some time. The upkeep of retainers (I don't care about the purchase price) is much lower than for FK's and still lower than for CK's. If starting in the High (unmodded), retainers will be a life saver for any Polish player.

Another note, I believe you cannot build them in any province though. Aren't they Poland and Volhinia only?

[katank]

actually, I think they are in poland only. cash restriction is exactly why you should use low req low upkeep retainers.

also, they are useful in MP where you have a 2 CK limit and you want more med/heavy cav.

[RZST]

yes well i played poland last night, i must say those PR are rather usefull :p since poland doesnt have the build req for FK on high period, heh i attacked hungary after the 2nd turn,it was sweet.

the thing i was pointing out was that if someone plays early poland your economy by 1200 is really stable, your practically rich by then and most of your provinces are already developed for FK.

i didnt mod the PR on early because as i see it theres no counter for it, i mean you can attack hungarians really fast since they dont have any good counter cav unit o.o;

oh and im talking about SP only, not mp :)

and its on EARLY not high

[katank]

I'm sorry I misinterpreted the statement. In that case, retainers are probly not as necessary if you don't mod em in.

I question however, your comment on even avar nobles beating them. avar nobles are not bad at all. with their large shield, they can actually beat feudal knights and are possibly the best heavy cav in early.

BTW, cool sig. how do you manage to make such nice ones? wish I had artistic skillz like dat.

[RZST]

yes i know, i said Avar Nobles can Beat Polish Retainers, havent really tried since Avars are only Early and PR are only high,late.

thx for comment on sig. just learn photoshop and youll get artistic skills too :)
myself ive been learning ps for about 2 years now :p

[Brutal DLX]

Quote[/b] (Ky Kiske @ Mar. 11 2004,03:05)]so if im going to play poland, is the Polish Retainer worth the effort?
Yes.