Polish Love? (or hate)

[the_dong146]

So reading through the forums I see little notice of the Polish. I'm kind of wondering what others opinions of them are.

Personally, after experience with France, Milan and England, I'd say the Polish may very well be one of my favourite factions to play with (that's right). My reasons:

Polish Nobles - while expensive, hold up in melee as well as mailed knights, but of course have the added advantage of an high missile javelin attack (10!). Love charging them into a mass of enemy troops, then quickly withdrawing them as they pelt them with javelins until that time. Alternatively fake a charge and ride out on the flanks, and lay down a vicious crossfire. Main problem, other than price, for me is that they're a little slow

Other Cav: Polish Knights/Guard/Hussars - haven't reach yet but look quite promising

The Starting position - Basically a "choose your own destiny start" - either expand fiercely into the HRE/Western Europe - or into the Russian/Hungarian/Byz lands (no pope interference). Either way you can get some great lands, though castle->city, city-> conversion is a must (i.e Thorn). Admittedly playing on M/M (this is my first total war game though, and I've had it for only a couple weeks), I easily manged to capture all thew way west to Prague and Hamburg, while maintaining my economy.

Krakow - though a land capital - great revenue potential with its mines!

Problems: Very mediocre infantry, though early game I found the dismounted polish nobles perfectly capable of holding ground.

Personally I have to admit I stretched myself quite thin in my latest game as well, after winning a crusade.

Your thoughts?

[Czar Alexsandr]

Ah the Polish. How many alliances have they broken with me? Oh.. it's countless.

GAH! YOU SHOULD RESPECT THE TSAR CURSED POLES!!!!

Other than how they act in my campaign they're fine! Great units, good location, interesting faction, good colors, love their war banners. But sometimes..... I hate them like the English hate Scots....

GAH!

I suppose you can say this Czar has a love hate relation with them! :beam:

[KARTLOS]

i think the poles are a great faction.

the polish nobles are my favourite unit in the game. they are possibly the best jav throwing cav in the game - making them excellent for taking out elite unit including knights and generals.

they are also acceptable heavy cav, altrhough they dont have as good charge bonuses as other cav units they can still do a job.

another great thing about them is that because they are misslie cav they tend to kill more than standard cav and hence level up on experience a bit quicker. this means you do end up with some nobles who are pretty decent heavy cav.

the best way of using them is to race them behind enemy lines. impale them with your javs until you run out, engage from the front with your main force and then charge the nobles into their undefended rear.

ive played a couple of polish campaigns through to completion. the strategy i stumbled upon first time, which i think is actually the best is to go after the byzantines earlly and re-orienate yourself to an empire around constantinople.
the territories around the polish homeland are fairly poor financially and take years to develop, so it is best to call a crusade earlly, pic up lots of cheap mercs and take out the major byz cities on your way to the holy land.

[KARTLOS]

i think the poles are a great faction.

the polish nobles are my favourite unit in the game. they are possibly the best jav throwing cav in the game - making them excellent for taking out elite unit including knights and generals.

they are also acceptable heavy cav, altrhough they dont have as good charge bonuses as other cav units they can still do a job.

another great thing about them is that because they are misslie cav they tend to kill more than standard cav and hence level up on experience a bit quicker. this means you do end up with some nobles who are pretty decent heavy cav.

the best way of using them is to race them behind enemy lines. impale them with your javs until you run out, engage from the front with your main force and then charge the nobles into their undefended rear.

ive played a couple of polish campaigns through to completion. the strategy i stumbled upon first time, which i think is actually the best is to go after the byzantines earlly and re-orienate yourself to an empire around constantinople.
the territories around the polish homeland are fairly poor financially and take years to develop, so it is best to call a crusade earlly, pic up lots of cheap mercs and take out the major byz cities on your way to the holy land.

[KARTLOS]

other than the polish nobles the poles are fairly standard/ boring

i modified the dismounted polish nobles to make them into a jav throwing infantry.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74809

[Darth Nihilus]

I love using cavalry heavy nations, so the Polish are one of my favorites. I just don't think there are a lot of Polish people on this board, so they don't get a lot of attention because of that. Also they aren't considered the absolute best at anything, so naturally factions that are will get more mention.

[Cousin Zoidfarb]

Did Polish cavalry use javelins historically? I think the Poish noble unit isn't accurate. Lithuanians did use javelins on horseback, not bows as we see here in the game. The horsearchers in the Lithuanian army at Tannenberg were perhaps settled Tartars.

[the_dong146]

Quick question:

Polish Nobles or Boyar's Sons?

[pat the magnificent]

fighting the poles is basically the worst, that is if you're attacking anyways. defending against their almost entirely horse armies ain't too bad if you have the high ground and plenty of crossbows.

and yeah, i hate those damnable pollock nobles too, (which is to say they're good units).

[Czar Alexsandr]

POLISH NOBLES!!!! GAHHHH!!!!

Man... thosse things are soo annoying. Tactically flexable to.. Don't know how many times I've seen the AI use them for Mellee... It shouldn't be possible! I mean... you think the AI'd make em lob every Javy until they ran out. Anyways it's bad though cause they go straight for the foot archers.

Excellent unit.. But in my experience the Boyar Son's always manage to top em in close quarters.

I might just play as the Poles some time. But for now. They are my sworn enemy......

Anyways I may have killed a King and still ended up lossing my great.... great... awesome general.. to thosse Polish Nobles....

[CountMRVHS]

I concur with all the pro-Polish faction sentiment thus far.

I'm playing M2TW out of the box, no mods, unpatched, VH/VH. My first short campaign (M/M) was with Spain, to unlock the factions. Then I messed around a bit with the Scots and English, but found the campaign was too quiet (maybe I should have simply waited longer, as M2TW seems to get *more* interesting as turns pass, which is unusual for my experience with TW games. In MTW or RTW you'd reach some point at which the game was fairly boring as you'd built up an unstoppable empire and your biggest AI threat was still building fairly low-tech units. But in M2, I'm getting a much more consistent challenge as time goes on, making me want to actually *keep playing* beyond the first 30 or 40 turns. Anyway, topic for another thread....)

I finally settled on VH/VH with Poland on a whim. As is to be expected on a VH game, I got betrayed in due course by my allies and had a great time trying to stave off invasions from all sides. The Danes went nuts and had captured down to Prague when they turned on me, by which time I had only maybe 4 or 5 provinces. At the same time the Hungarians and Russians joined in, meaning I had to shuttle my armies from east to west while keeping a force around Krakow to stave off the big threatening stacks from Hungary and Denmark.

Managed to get a Crusade down to Antioch at this time, but the Byzantines turned on me after a few years and the Egyptians joined in; after several decades of maneuvering I ended up with Acre and Jerusalem after losing Antioch to the Byz. Of course it was around this time the Mongols showed up and took Acre off me... Currently my crusaders, after abandoning Jerusalem while under siege (diplomat gifted the town to the Mongols, which allowed my army to leave the city), have established a new home on Cyprus. We'll see how long that lasts.

Took me quite some time to finally subdue the Danes, at which time: I noticed Spain was a behemoth and held France and Germany as vassals; the English turned on me; and I noticed Hungary owns Constantinople and Nicaea! So much for my "short" campaign -- after beating Russia and Hungary I'll have way more provinces than I need.

In short, the Polish provide a great challenge with lots of interesting opportunities. Others have talked about their units in great detail; I just want to add that if I hadn't been offered a Templars' Chapter House in Krakow early in the game, I might not still be playing -- getting 4 free Templars for completing a mission was something I badly needed when I was in the red during my war with Denmark.

I just can't wait until America is discovered, as this will be the first time I've done that with M2TW.

CountMRVHS