the polish

[Tristrem]

I have always thought that the polish were an interesting country to campaign as. In vanilla they have quite a unique roster. Armored spearmen, woodsmen, polish retainers, and lithuanian cav (usefulness can be debated here). However, i always get the feeling that they are left out compared to other factions. They only have one truely unique unit with the polish retainers. The others are either regionals, or some of the more odd vanilla units. Is it just me or does this faction seem looked over, without a lot of effort put into making it.

Which mods add the most interesting units to this faction. I know pike and musket does quite a good job, but I was wondering more along the lines of same time period as vanilla.

[cegorach]

As much as I would like to see a unique Polish roster, CA did it quite well in the game.

Polish military of that period didn't differ too much from other Catholic countries.

The timeframe of the game pretty much removes any serious need for earlier druzhina cavalry and mounted infantry who were replaced by feudal knights and citizen miitias, similar with earlier light infantry, longbowmen and javelin throwers.


The starting and ending dates define the period when Polish military was quite boring in terms of unique military traits and units.

THe only thing I really regret is lack of warwagons employed after 1422 - they were mainly Hussite mercenaries, but the weapon was quickly adopted by the postfeudal and new professional Polish army.
Besides that Polish retainers quite well represent eastern Polish cavalry from Masovia which was light and hard hitting (and cheap which was something important for that poor region) dealing with Lithuanian and Mongol raiders.


So overall any attempts to add more unique units to the roster are not supported by the real history and real military of Poland during that period.

The Golden Age of the Polish military begins later, so appear various unique traits, but that is something useful for mods such as Pike and Musket - I have personally identified about 60 unique units which could be used only by this faction.




When it comes to the mods - XL and BKB's have some random additions - one-three units here and there.
The real 'unique' roster is provided by MedMod - of course that uses several units which are all variants of ordinary feudal knights, spearmen etc, but a few special units still appear however their historical use was (un-)important.


Regards Cegorach

[Tristrem]

I was looking at the guides section and from what i read there their roster is pretty vanilla, but they do have access to quite a large variety of regionals, with the catch being to have a diverse roster they have to hold quite a bit of land.