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.

[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.

[Caelus]

I find the Poles to be very strong. I first learned of their strengths the hard way; by having them punish me as the HRE!

The Polish Noble is in my opinion one of the best units in the game. They seem to be slightly faster than mailed knights (although this may just be my impression), and are just as good in hand-to-hand attack (in fact the tests I have done show they will often win). Not to mention the devastating armor piercing javelin attack. They are not as fast as jinetes but are better in melee (in my tests).
Think of them as javelin armed mailed knights! I think one of the best units in the game.

They are not an infantry faction, but their infantry is better than the infantry of Hungary (their neighbor). The woodsmen should not be underestimated! They will decisively beat armored sergeants, and have an extremely low cost, only 70 in upkeep, which is lower than that of peasants! You can’t rely on their moral, with is pretty bad, but they are expendable and you can have lots of them.

In addition they have Lithuanian archers, one of the only three archers which can deploy stakes. At later levels they have Lithuanian cavalry, a horse archer unit, making them one of the best cavalry factions.

As Poland your strengths are in mobility, missile power and shock power.

Strategically make sure you choose your alliances carefully. Your real potential targets are Russia, Hungary and Germany. Each has advantages and disadvantages, just make sure you decide before hand and don’t ally with that faction(s), instead of deciding mid stream when you are already allied with your target(s). That has happened to me many times!

[imperialus]

Playing Poland right now on M/M. These are just some random thoughts about things that worked for me, not a strategy per say. First 3 things I did was blitz Kiev and get ports in both the Baltic and Black seas. Got a marriage alliance with the HRE and an alliance with Hungary. The lousy infantry was a bit of a problem since walls are a pretty effective counter to mounted troops. Merc spearmen and Slavic mercs are pretty effective though and peasants can drag a battering ram just as well as anyone so walls weren’t a huge issue.

I captured a few of the small settlements to the east partially to nip any Russian expansion in the bud but also to beat up on some non Catholics and make the pope happy. My diplomat by Rome is mostly there as insurance, conquests alone maxed out my reputation with the pope.

It's important not to take too many of the piddly little settlements to the east. It takes too long to build them up and they are just money sinks until you get the rest of your economy going. I'm going to have to start taking a bunch of them soon though just so I can have some speedbumps in place when the Mongols show up though.

First crusade was called at around 1105, I shipped my best general out through the black sea and made a beeline for Antioch. Managed to finish the crusade in 4 turns.

By this point I had to turtle. My economy couldn't take any more expansion. I slashed my army sizes to manageable levels and focused on building up my cities. My next big goal is to get Constantinople and possibly convince the Pope to declare a crusade against the Russians. Beyond that I'm not sure. I'm debating war against the Hungarians. The pope doesn't care for them, while I have 3 cardinals and maxed reputation so I'm thinking I can mop the floor with them without having to worry too much about my reputation.

[Unorthodox]

I've just played a little ways into a Polish campaign, and here's a few things that I observed.

Early expansion is key, and your primary targets should be towards the West and South. You should be able to grab Thorn (is it Thorn? Settlement almost straight North of Krakow) on the first or second turn, and Breslau very soon after. You should then use the momentum your forces have and leave only very small garrisons in the settlements, expanding very quickly. You should definitely go as far West as Magdeburg, Stettin, and possibly Prague, although it's hard to take due to its sizeable garrison, so it isn't necessary. Iasi is also worth taking (South East of Halych) to give you a good buffer against the Hungarians (who can, however, make a good ally).

The reason that you should expand South and West is that the only faction to your East is Russia, and they normally expand very slowly. I was able to take Riga, which borders Novgorod, on something like turn 30, and at turn 37 I've just besieged Kiev. Vilnius is still rebel - Russia has taken Moscow, Ryazan, Smolensk, and nothing else. The Russians have lots of room and expand slowly, so you can safely say most of the settlements to your East aren't going anywhere (and if they do, you can just stomp the Russians - the Pope won't even care). You need to make sure, however, that you go as far West as possible and take Iasi to strengthen your hold on the Black Sea and give you a castle to protect Kiev.

Making friends with the Pope is also a very good idea (and Russia is right next door, which makes a good target for Cardinal training) - you can then call Crusades on some of the rebel settlements near you. This gives you large armies with high movement rates and free upkeep, helps you take over settlements, and gets you into the Pope's good books without having to travel to the Holy Land.

I'

[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!

[Seabourch]

In current Poles campaign, I'm at war with HRE, Denmark, Venice and Hungary. I have no allies but I'm winning.

[Fisherking]

When fighting the Timurids I have found it best to boost the number of Polish Nobles in your stacks for elephant killing to about 8. Generals are worthless in these battles so it is best to just take your tried and true horsemen to the battle.

Place your Shooters in open formation two ranks deep but in a double line. The depth and low density helps killing the units ahead of the elephants.

With the Pns turn off the fire at will before the battle starts but keep them all in a place you can use them to support the archers when the elephants come. Two units will waste a formation of elephants in seconds and still have ammo left over to help later. Send only two Pns at a time to dispatch a unit of elephants. Ammunition is critical and should not be wasted.

Once the elephants are all dead then the Pns become your knights to chase down infantry or help your archers caught in battle. When all the elephants are dead these guys are no better than anyone else and die really nicely.

[King Jan III Sobieski]

Many empires found themselves bowing to the superior power of the Polish Hussaria!

[JoeDreck]

this are my new polish troops.

Miechowici, Polish Hellebardier, Mazowiak

[marrow]

Looks nice, excellent work!
Just checked out king's banner 3, defo on my hit list mate, keep it up. Thanks!

[marrow]

OK, just finished another Polish campaign and decided to share my basic impressions about a reliable strategy. Not fool proof, mind.

Poland is not the easiest faction to start with. One city (Krakow), one castle (Halycz) and a lot of ground between them. Even cavalry will struggle to cover that in less than 3 turns (pray there's no rebels in your path). Keeping your gaff safe will not be possible without roads and these must be built immediately.

Keep Halycz as castle and Krakow as a city. At the end of the campaign Krakow was raking in close to 6000 florins - it's a nice asset.

Your first objective is Iasi, I cannot stress this enough. It is imperative that Hungarian expansion towards the steppes is hemmed first thing, otherwise Hungarians will reach Ryazan sooner than you can say wtf and they are there to stay. With expansion options to the west temporarily unavailable it's vital to expand towards north-east. If possible, trouncing Russia is a bonus, I took Novgorod first and expanded towards Helsinki, Riga, Vilnius, Smolensk and Kiev in no time. That's six provinces in almost as many turns, a lot of dough and a map edge to lean on. I also tried to only push the Russians away and not destroy them entirely - they do tech up reasonably well and soak up initial impact of the Horde , nice!

It is foolish to abandon western affairs altogether though. Taking Thorn is easy and usually rewarded with 2.5k as icing. Trusty old Council, I kept it sweet and got 20 units of Knights Templar in total across 75 turns! But anyway, taking Breslau and Stettin is fairly easy too and will prove lucrative later. I chose not to expand any further for now as my resources were being devoured in the north. Some generals prefer to push further still, but I hate spreading myself thin in the very face of angry Germans. I also chose to make Breslau a castle and Stettin a city. A bit of a gamble that, but Stettin makes good dollar later, and it's within +/- one turn away from Breslau anyway, so easily reinforced. Having fairly strong garrisons is quite important at this stage. HRE is never in a good mood and in my capaign they blatantly backstabbed me even though we had outstanding relations and were allied through marriage. Oh well...

Having conquered I decided to turtle and build up a little, luckily my King was in Breslau at the time and with his +8 chivalry I managed to upgrade it to a fortress very quickly. Then he died and I was stuck at fortress level for a long time. My remaining castles (Halych, Iasi, Vilnius and Smolensk) grew even slower and I only managed to upgrade Iasi to a fortress by turn 80 I think! I would have done something about it, shuffled governors around etc., but I honestly didn't mind.

It has been mentioned many times before but I will not hesitate to bring it up again - Polish army rocks, nothing else to it. Fans of all kinds of cavalry will be like kids in a sweets shop here. To put it in perspective - initial castle unit, the very lowest one, is Strzelcy, one of the finest light cavalry units in the game. They have better stats than western mounted crossbowmen who need the very top archery range and a citadel to build it in... And they wield axes so they have both missile and melee AP attack. Shame their stamina sucks for light cav. Next one up is Polish Nobles, enough has been said about them, a very, very good unit. Then there's Lithuanian cavalry, also very good, Polish retainers, a very tasty alternative to knights; even though I love them, they fade completely in the face of Hussars. Think fast moving feudal knights and you won't be far off. Hussars truly are an excellent unit and would be almost your top number, but this being Poland, it only gets better - next up you get Polish Knights, chivalric knights under a different name, thus, by definition, they will break and destroy pretty much anything the game can throw up. Intrestingly, there's an uber unit for perfectionists - Polish Guard. I don't quite get this unit. It has exactly the same stats as Polish knights, it's only advantage being horse barding and better stamina. There is a slight problem though - to get it you need to cough up almost 10000 for King's Stables. One wonders...

I used pure cav armies for a fair while, but eventually I worked out a bullet proof army composition against European armies. Polish cavalry is very tough but it truly shines in support role. Polish infantry is actually not too bad, and they have a very flexible mix that blends well and is intuitive to use.
Forget Dismounted Polish Nobles, they are rubbish, never used them. They have short spears = no anti-cav bonus and despite their stats they don't do very well. Much better are spearmen, same quality as Italian Spear Militia so rather good. Woodsmen are outrageously cheap and inflict severe morale penalty, as well as severe losses. Feudal knights don't stand a chance pinned by upgraded spearmen and attacked by woodsmen in the back. You also get Lithuanian Archers, a very decent outfit, no great stats but do the job well and lay stakes which can be really useful at times.

Because I was hampered by slow growth I had to make do with surprisingly low-tech units for a while. This army composition is virtually undefeatable by AI, be it HRE, the English, the French, no matter. I chewed up stack after stack with cheapo units and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is it:

3 spearmen
3 Lithuanian Archer
4 Woodsmen
3 Strzelcy
3 Lithuanian Cavalry
1-2 Polish Nobles
1-2 Retainers
1 General

Formation is totally generic, Strzelcy fanned out as scouts in front, spears in line, behind them archers, woodsmen on archers' flanks. Cavalry on the wings in any formation, usually Lithuanian Cavalry outermost on the flanks, then Polish Nobles and any lancers in close support of infatry.

It can be modified with artillery but I liked it sautee. Composition works very well under almost any conditions and two such stacks helped me crush HRE very quickly. I also got Templar House in Breslau so in dire times I replaced generals with them.

Oh, yeah, ze Germans. They will attack you no matter what, invasion can only be delayed, never prevented, with big garrisons. I knew that so I decided to leave a couple of militia units in cities and placed my two stacks within striking distance of Stettin and Breslau. Full HRE stack lingered on my land for a while and besieged Stettin. Because the stack was made up mostly of spears I only allowed 37 men to escape having lost 134 myself. I attacked Prague and Magdeburg immediately, took both, sacked them and proceeded towards Nuremberg and Hamburg. Pope had warned me twice already, but hey... I had wind in me hair and almost 30k in my pocket so I didn't care too much about some geezer a thousand miles away.

I left HRE Bern and Metz, both of them castles. HRE still had Bologna but was broken anyway. Because I had tons of money I had filled the recruitment queues in all castles. The reinforcements couldn't even assemble before I destroyed HRE with my 2 initial stacks so 3 similar stacks (one with artillery) were left behind twiddling their thumbs. Which is where my oldest ally, the Hungarians, kindly lent me a hand in my troubles and blockaded my port in Caffa (which I took because of the Council's nagging). I know the game's diplomacy is bugged, but it was an invitation I could not refuse. I had already been excommunicated anyway. I took Bran, which Hungarians had obviously just upgraded to a citadel judging by the dent in the population. Nice! Budapest fell quickly after, so did Bucharest and Sofia (I watched it turn to citadel 2 turns before I attacked it!! ). Because I play on 0.5 timeframe it was still long before the Mongols arrived, on my third King IIRC.

I randomly checked faction ranking and I was astounded to find that I was eons ahead of everybody in every respect! Second most powerful, Egypt, was touching 16000 on the graph, I was well past 32k. I don't even know what it means but one look at the map confirmed my worst fears - I was unstoppable. I swept across Europe and trampled Denmark, England, Scotland, France, Milan, Venice, finished off Hungarians and HRE and stopped at Pyrenees. Fourth consecutive excomm made me miffed and so I was forced to take Rome and the rest of Italy and Sicily (+ Sardinia & Corsica).

I was tempted to wait for the Mongols, but could not be bothered in the end. I still have it saved should I change my mind.

To summarise - definitely attack Iasi, definitely take Novgorod and the east except perhaps Moscow, Ryazan and Sarkel which are good for Russians to have if you hang around for Mongols. HRE will attack you so be ready. Trust your troops because they're top class if used correctly and will get the job done. Just make sure you have towers/spies on the border and beyond so you can prepare. Better yet, be prepared always; as I said, HRE will absolutely not stop, they will attack you if alive. Once they do you can expand freely again. Once past 20 province mark, you'll be home and dry.

[dzidek]

Hi it's my first post... :)

I've played a lot with this nation. Well i'm Polish :)

There was many posts about Polish units, i would just like to add some things.

Retainers is a dump unit, you get Polish Knights just after and they soon replace them, and Hussars are far more better flankers.
Polish Guard is a tank. Just let them hit whatever is in your way (except pikes :P). The difference between them and PK is simple, they have more stamina, they don't charge without orders and they have a horse in plate armour which adds a lot to charge and missile defence.
The missile units are superb, have notthing to add, well maybe that Lithuanian cavalry comes to late to be usefull. Strzelcy are far more better.

Missile units do suck. Only one good and just for the stakes. U have to use missile cav for the ranged assignments. Well until you have gunpowder. Arqebusiers are sometimes usefull.

As for the foot soldiers. You have some to choose from. But the best DPK are your weapon of choice. HRE has nothing on foot that can counter them, just like Hungary. You could have trouble with the Russian and Danish AP infantry if you are forced to fight them 1:1. Spearmen are your basic infantry, nothing special but they do their job well. Now woodsmen... an AP attack and cheaper then peasants. A perfect auto resolve unit. Use against the hordes if you are on the loosing side.

As for my strategy. As said before you have to be quick. Take breslau just when you get the quest for it. you will be awarded 4x Polish Nobles. Take the units form Cracov to breslau and then with joined Noblews take Prague. After Prague i go north for Magdeburg. With the north force i take Thorn and make it a city. Leave one unit there and the rest runs fast for Stettin, makes a siege and is supproted by the Magdeburg forces. After the battle i make Stettin a city.
In the east i produce 2x PN and 2x Strzelcy. Take the whole army south and occupy Iasi which i turn to a city. If the Hung's or Byze's don't rush it i take Bucarest.
Then i turn East to take Kiev, Wilno, Ryga and eventually Novogrod. I make Kiev a castle despite it's economicall potential. It will be my main defence against the hordes.

I leve the east and concentrate on the west. Where the HRE will start by now to alk around my lands with soldiers meaning they are up to something.
Sacking and pillaging Frankfurt and Norymberg and then giving them to the Pope secures your west border.
Now you have 2 options, well maybe 3. You blitz the danes and secure the Baltic sea or you could go south.
Usually i bleed out the danes in 3-4 turns and then i go south. Hungarians keep the alliance long enough and fight with Byzantines and Venice so they are an easy target.
Once you get Constantinopole it's all straight forward.
Personally i like to invade Britain cos expanding the west border is not much fun for me. Besides i have the Pope there.

[dzidek]

I have just finished my Poland long campaign. It was fun... as always :)

My east border was at Halych, Vilnus, Smolensk and Iasi, the west border was at Hamburg, Magdeburg and Norymberg. All those were castles (i changed Norymberg to a castle). South i went to Constantinopole. I waited for the Mongols and forced them to fight Turks and Egipt so only few stacks that went thorugh Russia i had to fight personally.

After they were gone i pushed through to the Holy Land. I was done before the Timurids arrive.

In the north i conquered Danemark. The HRE was left as a minor noation between me and the French. I've only kept great relations with them and the Pope. In the south was my main battle front so i did not have a constant south border,just used the castles that i gained for troop reproduction.

My patrol army was made out of a general 6x polish noble, 2x strzelcy. I had several of them. They dispatched the rebels quickly and without any trouble.
Border castle garrisons included. 4x lithuanian archers, 2x woodsmen, 4x spearmen, 2x DPK, and some artillery usually ballista or ribault or serpentine which i placed in a central possition to the gate so when the enemies charged the units on the sides i usually rooted them with a quick headshot :)
The main hammer was a all cavalry army with some minor exceptions whene i had to take a castle eraly.
The army was made out of 6x Polish Guard, 4x Polish Nobles, 2x Strzelcy, 2x Lithuanian cavalry, 1-2 General, 4x Hussars. I can defeat any stack with this army, in the singleplayer ofcourse. :)

[Grey Ice]

I'm currently in a Poland-campaign on vh/vh. With a bit of luck, I will win the short campaign within two rounds when the last hungarian castle on the eastern edge of the map will fall. Thanks to the 1st crusade which I choosed to join, I'm currently ruling Jerusalem, Gaza and Egypt, only Byzantines and the Mongols are preventing that it's not more. My western border is the current german / polish border in the north, down over Budapest to Zagreb (Italy is under progess), then east to Thessaloniki and the same way up north around the black sea, additionally to the holy land, egypt and the first city west of it.

Polish cavalry units are absolutely awesome. Polish Nobles, which can be raised very early, have very equivalent stats to real western knights, but thanks to the armor-piercing javelins, they are able to beat up nearly any heavy cavarly. The only thing I wasn't satisfied with is their low ammo - but only when compared to Strzelcys.
Strzelcys are imho the best mounted archers available - cheap, easy and early to raise, much ammo and armor-piercing in melee and missile combat. They have relavitely low stats, but not much lower than hungarian nobles or horsemen IIRC, and thanks to their armor-piercing capabilities, I also managed to beat russian and elite mongolian units. I just fought one and a half stack of mongolian armies with one army combined of 2 Generals, 4 Nobles, 2 Knights Hospitalers and the rest Strzelcys. I admit it was a bad idea, especially since I already lost about 20-30% of my strenght to a battle destroying another full mongolian stack the turn before, but I won.

In fact, during the beginning, I mostly used army stacks comprised of one general and the rest strzelcys. They are completely capable of destroying any kind of enemy melee unit - regardless of mounted, armored or not - in their cross fire. Unmounted missile units can make problems, but mostly they are too weak in melee to duel it out against the armor piercing axe-wielding strzelcys. And even if they The sicilians forced me to use also polish knights and hussars when deploying stacks of one general or heavy cavalry and the rest of 2nd level musketeer (don't know their name in english) and pavese crossbowmen, assisted by few spear-wielding units or dismounted knights. Those unit prove to be too strong for missile combat and melee as well. But with knights - which are very equal to western feudal or chivalric knights - or hussars, which are only slightly weaker, but faster and can be raised very easily in cities, the only problems left in Italy is to smash their missile units before their spear militas, knights of heavy cav intervene, and this damn portugese pope. Mid-30 when he got his job, and got very soon problems when I conquered towns and castles of my 3 catholic war enemies - hungary, venetian and sicily. And whats worst - silly me voted for this idiot to prevent a venetian becoming the pope.

Speaking of enemies, currently I'm in war with 6 or 7 different parties - the 3 catholic named before, although 2 of them have been my allies originally, hungary and sicily, egypt, moors (due to the thread of being excommunicated, I need to take some of their cities in a crusade although we have been allied), mongols which just managed to take Accre in their 4th or 5th attempt and now besieging Jerusalem, and I don't now the stance to byzantine. My only ally are the Danes, and fortunately they managed to make HRE their vassal, so my western border is relatively safe. The biggest problem I have is to conquer towns or castles. The polish infantry is mediocre at best - except the dismounted knights and the lithuanian archers due to their stakes. Since the infantry is just slowing down offensive armies and taking a place for a useful unit of cavalry, I only use them to stay home and take care of the household while my important armies are out doing their job. Sometimes I hire some mercs to carry the ram, that all, mostly I conquer the towns by besieging them until they come out. Unfortunately, without infantry, I lost much time in sieges so some of my wars could already be settled.

Currently, the mongols are making real problems, not because they're too good, they are just to many, and with a so far streched empire, so many wars to fight and no kind of naval forces that survived for more than 3 rounds, my economy is not good enough to really cover my war expenses. I just hope that someone occur that distract the mongols, but I fear the only ones able to doing this will be either the timurs or my own king who was forced again to join a crusade from the baltic sea down to Antioch - and once I crossed the Bosporus, I'm in hostile territory. But for those of you who think about trying something new, Poland is really fun, and AFAIK second to none in military matters. Even the Mongols can be beaten in open battles, even if they outnumber you. And I think with those armor-piercing units like Strzelcys, also the timurs can be beaten - although I'd like to hear more of your expieriences or advices how they can be dealt with.