Poland

[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.

[katank]

So was it a short campaign or a long campaign? If long campaign, then that's pretty impressive. Short is easy to do in that time though.

Polish nobles do sound pretty good. When fighting against them with archers, it was pretty hard to take them down.

Any other Polish units particularly good?

[Lucjan]

Woodsmen are good anti-armor units, but Poland's greatest strength lies in it's cavalry. They dominate the field when used properly and have no problem holding their own against eastern mounted styles (particularly Lithuanian archer cavalry are good for this).

[KARTLOS]

So was it a short campaign or a long campaign? If long campaign, then that's pretty impressive. Short is easy to do in that time though.

Polish nobles do sound pretty good. When fighting against them with archers, it was pretty hard to take them down.

Any other Polish units particularly good?

it was a long campaign

here is a screenshot from turn 27/ year 1132

[img=https://img297.imageshack.us/img297/55/polesrl7.th.jpg]

as you can see i have already taken out the byzantines. the egyptians only have cairo and im beggining to move in on the turks.

within a few turns i will take cairo (eliminating the egyptians), caesarea and Adana (which actually elimanted the turks as their other cities went rebel) + a couple of eastern cities - sarkel and smolensk i believe.

so i think by ~ 1140 i should have ~ 35 provinces, only ten more to go. there are quite a few rebel provinces remaining for me to take in the middle east and the steppes so i think i only need to take a few hungarian and venetian cites to complete the campaign.

i actually went back and replayed the campaign from this point as i had saved over my later saves and it was just as much fun doing it a second time. the conflict with the hungarians and venetians was good fun as most of my military resources was beyond the hellespont.

regarding other good polish units. the strezkly (sp?) are an ok horse archer unit availabel from the begginning. i would reccomend having a few of them in an army as the nobles javelins run out fairly quick.

the lithuanian horse archers are available later ( i think with the third archery building upgrade) and they are also fairly decent though i never got to use them much so far as my most advanced barracks are far away from my zones of conflict.

the poles get a unit called something like the polish reatiner which i believe is equivelent to a mailed knight. i never used this much as i tend to have several generals units in an army + left over crusader knights. plus the polish nobles are so good that when you have a choice you are likely to prefer them.

the polish guard is their more advanced knight i believe it is the direct equivelent of chivalric knight, looks like a very good unit, but one ive never got to use much.


the dismounted nobles are a decent spear unit, i believe equivelent to armoured seargeants. I havent relied on them too much though as i found i tended towards heavily cavalry centric tactics with the poles. i move the generals, nobles and horse archers behind the enemy lines, shooot them in the back, unitl i run out of ammo, engage with the spearmen and charge in the back = a rout!

ive never bothered with the woodsmen, cant see the point in them at all.

ive never used the pole milita units much as they arent that good. they are good enought for defending a city during a seige though.

[KARTLOS]

here is a screenie from 1230:

[img=https://img227.imageshack.us/img227/5369/pole2wa4.th.jpg]

i kept on playing to have a go at crushing the mongols who have just arrived. fighting in italy has been a good challenge as there are no castles nearby, and ive thus found it hard to replenish my forces. so now i can look forward to a good old war on both fronts.

i am quite curtailed economically at the moment as most of my cities in the middle east, and eastern europe have full stacks as i was getting ready for the mongols.

i gave dongola and helsinki away to sicily in return for their vassalship - i didnt seem to get anything out of this and they have just attacked me so unless i missed somthing here i wouldnt reccomend it.

after i took rome i gave the papal states ajaccio so i could find the pope in case i want to kill him again!

[Foytaz]

I'm playing Polish campaign (RDM 1.8.0 iron) on h/h and it suits me well. Like all units in vanilla M2TW Polish ones should be reskinned a bit. In my opinion cavalry is balanced enough. I don't know much about infantry units but we(Poles) used to hire bohemian and hungarian merc cause of their experience and skills - expecially after Husite Wars when lots of hussites found shelter in Poland. And if it comes to the accent my brit mate said it doesn't sound Polish for him.

[Marshal Murat]

I played Poland on M/H and it was wonderful.

Began with Krakow and Hretzky (???) Krakow was the economic center, and the Other One produced the Polish Nobles and Crossbow Skeltzy.
Pushed out to Breslau and Thorn, grabbed Stettin, Vilinus, Riga, marching down to Black Sea.

It combat I worked along witht the HA and Nobles, the nobles functioning as the heavy cavalry. Archers work on the front, with the Nobles charging in on the flanks. A good two javelin throws work wonders with morale.

[KyodaiSteeleye]

Well I'm playing Poland on H/H at the moment - short campaign.

I remember in MTW that Poland was very hard, especially if you started in the High period, as you had poor provinces and imediately started getting grief from your neighbours. I have to say so far in MTWII, my Poland campaign has been easy. You start surrounded by loads of rebel provinces, which you can nab faster than your neighbours if you get a move on. I imediately expanded north to the Baltic, west to Prague (stopped there as this abutts HRE), and started expanding east - although I was in competition with Hungary here. I made imediate alliances with my neighbours - i even married my princess off the Hungarian heir. But the treatcherous swines attacked me about 2 years after, so it wasn't worth the effort.

Hungary therefore seems to be your first likely enemy - which makes sense as you are in direct competition with them over expansion and Krakow is next door to Budapest, which is a recipe for tension. Russia so far has agreed a trade treaty with me, but is pretty lukewarm. However, i've purposively stopped my eastwards expansion into the far eastern europe until i've dealt with the Hungarian threat - the Russians also seem very slow to expand, which is useful. One thing to note is that the likes of Kiev are pretty cut off from your other castles/cities, so much harder to relieve, which is a good reason to limit your eastwards expansion while you have other problems.

Economy wise - do the usual - lots of trade-enhancing improvements will set you in good stead - plus get some Baltic/Black sea provinces so you can get some sea-trade going.

Units - polish nobles mounted or dismounted. Mounted, I first thought they weren't very good, but after some practise, they are versatile (if expensive) - but they have a different role to usual as they are a hybrid heavy cav/missile cav unit. Therefore, they won't do well against other (fresh) heavy cav in HtH and unweakened infantry, as their charge isn't good, and they'll lose to other missile cavalry in a shoot-out. However, they are good at getting behind the enemy line and killing heavy cav/inf with their javelins. They can then be used in HtH once their javelins are out and the target units are weakened. . Dismounted - well again, they're expensive, and despite their stats, seem to get hammered very easily against mediocre infantry (eg: militias) - besides having better morale, they are also effectively redundant once you can recruit spearmen in your castles.
Strzleky are good missile units - have enough of these to counter other horse archers, or hire some Alan light cavalry to chase them down. Polish retainers are fun - very good charge, but that's about it - so once they have charged home, get them out fast or they'll get munched. Having a merchants guild for some merchant cavalry has been a boon, as they provide some nice dependable medium cavalry. Later in the game Polish knights mtd/dismounted are the usual dependable heavy cav/inf. Lithuanian archers are better foot archers, whilst Lithuanian Cavalry are a good medium horse archer unit.

Infantry-wise woodsmen have been my field-army infantry mainstay, with Spearmen now coming in from my improved castles. Woodsmen are cheap, expendable but nicely effective.

I've found that I need an effective fleet in both the Baltic and Black Sea, as war with Denmark/Hungary is almost inevitable and both have strong fleets.

I was thinking the MTW2 Polish game was rather easy, but now I have Hungary, Venice, Denmark and Russia attacking, it is somewhat more challenging! I have concentrated on slowly taking out Hungary, whilst attempting to thwart Venice and Denmark by stopping their expansion, destroying attacking armies and taking the odd city and letting it rebel, so giving me a buffer. HRE is getting a good kicking and refuses my attempts to help, despite being an ally. Probably the only reason they haven't attacked is that they haven't got the capability any more!

Oh, and unlike others, i like the Polish skins - they look pretty authentic to me - nice n'gritty.