Poland strategy guide

Martin Alvito said:

Prove it, then. I can read a mathematical proof.

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Assuming 4 cities built and 4 conquered scenario.

Honor gives 24 smiles min (assuming you don't build arsenals and above) and 16cpt.
Tradition gives 15 smiles min, 20gpt, 8cpt, 25% growth capital, 15% in others, wonder bonus.
Liberty in the same setting would give 10-12 smiles at most, and 8 culture/turn.

So if you grab say tradition+honor you're sitting on 39 smiles, 24cpt.
If you grab liberty+tradition you have 25-27 smiles, 16cpt.
+12/14 smiles make a gigantic difference.

The new SP trees also give more smiles/GPT/beakers combined with trad/honor than combined with liberty.

again this guide is build around a peaceful approach - if u want go conquer early obviously another bo is needed, BUT, apart this this strategy is fully reproducable, its NOT setting or land depended!

The main part isnt just mixing liberty and tradition but maxing it in a way that things allways arrive just when u need them.
With for example going full liberty straight u ll have a pretty useless early golden age.

But like this u get:
1. cap border expand when u need it early on
2. hammer and building production bonus when u want get key buildings up
3. free settler when workers from cap are done with main improvemts and can go on to 2nd and 3rd city
4. u produce settlers at a decent size and pretty fast, also this early there will still be room to planz
5. u get wonder bonus right when u want building wonders
6. Legalism when u can get amphitheaters instead monuments
7. full grwoth when cities are rdy to capitalise from it - i.e grannies are up and keybuildings are done allrready so u can switch to food tiles mainly. With going f.e. full Tradition u get the food bonus at a time when u want build settlers, usuelss ..
8. The jump into ren age will be very effective - comes right after the golden age social policy

Getting settlers out in 3-4 turns is just so much better as spending 3x6 turn without liberty or spending 500! gold for them, way more effective to spend gold on workers or city states!

Falconiano said:

(...)

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Since you just created a thread opening with "just installed BNW (...) ", I assume we can disregard your opinion on social policies in said expansion.

Edit: Also that's one hell of a sad excuse for mathematical proof.

Falconiano said:

Assuming 4 cities built and 4 conquered scenario.

Honor gives 24 smiles min (assuming you don't build arsenals and above) and 16cpt.
Tradition gives 15 smiles min, 20gpt, 8cpt, 25% growth capital, 15% in others, wonder bonus.
Liberty in the same setting would give 10-12 smiles at most, and 8 culture/turn.

So if you grab say tradition+honor you're sitting on 39 smiles, 24cpt.
If you grab liberty+tradition you have 25-27 smiles, 16cpt.
+12/14 smiles make a gigantic difference.

The new SP trees also give more smiles/GPT/beakers combined with trad/honor than combined with liberty.

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Perhaps you weren't aware, but Professional Army in BNW no longer gives happiness, so for 4 cities and 4 puppets, the Honor tree will provide a whopping 8 happiness, after burning 3 policies getting to Military Caste and idling 8 units that you could be using to continue your conquering spree. MC's garrison culture is nice, but not worth taking 3 unneeded policies. Patronage opener+Consulates (the old Aesthetics) will usually give you more culture from cultural CS friendships, for 2 policies and no garrison costs.

I have a question that I'm surprised hasn't been addressed yet, or maybe I'm just silly.

I noticed you put off archery for quite a long while, and units aren't early in the build orders. How exactly do you deal with barbs in terms of moving settlers around and protecting improvements? This was the biggest problem I had with the strategy when I tried it.

Falconiano said:

Assuming 4 cities built and 4 conquered scenario.

Honor gives 24 smiles min (assuming you don't build arsenals and above) and 16cpt.
Tradition gives 15 smiles min, 20gpt, 8cpt, 25% growth capital, 15% in others, wonder bonus.
Liberty in the same setting would give 10-12 smiles at most, and 8 culture/turn.

So if you grab say tradition+honor you're sitting on 39 smiles, 24cpt.
If you grab liberty+tradition you have 25-27 smiles, 16cpt.
+12/14 smiles make a gigantic difference.

The new SP trees also give more smiles/GPT/beakers combined with trad/honor than combined with liberty.

Click to expand...

I like how tradition gives 25% cap growth and other stuff but you just ignore the other things that liberty gives.

Looks like great strategy, thanks. After playing BNW, the appeal of Poland's UA made them seem much strong and more flexible than I'd considered. Very interested in trying them out.

I'm also considering Brazil, but mostly because I'd want to set up a scenario of popping out three musicians during a carnival and the International games.

Hi Tommynt

as usual insightful posts.

I have one question though, if i take a look at your build order, there is no military foreseen (i think we can discount the scouts here or do you table on improving them to archers/spearman through the huts to provide for the necessary units?)

I ask this because in my (i concur few) BNW games, barbs have been rather obnoxious and i needed military:

- to protect trade routes (and you do build a caravan early)
- to protect my tile improvements
- to prevent worker / settler stealing

Thx for your thoughts on this

I noticed you put off archery for quite a long while, and units aren't early in the build orders. How exactly do you deal with barbs in terms of moving settlers around and protecting improvements? This was the biggest problem I had with the strategy when I tried it.

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Ok this now came up multiple times.
Maybe its because of me playing mainly deity that there are not so many barbs around that they get anoying, as ai mainly deals with them. Also if map gets settled fast there are less positions for possible new barb camps.

I pointed out to add another scout to go with your worker if there are barbs around, if map got lots of open space you will need a 2nd unit to clear barbs and protect settler. This might for example being the dude protecting a stolen worker or just one other who returned from scouting. Remember u ll get these settler out around like turn 40 - so much time to scout 20 turn in 1 direction and another 20 turns to go back.
Definatly dont build more then 5 units! They just drag upkeep and are more then enough to deal with barbs.

The problem to protect trade routes i dont fully understand - early on you will have only 10 tile range for trade routes -so u can only make em with very nearby citys - like 5 of these tiles should be cleared by your culture boarders, not much space left for barbs being around. Later on barbs shouldnt be a problem anymore ...

tommynt said:

The problem to protect trade routes i dont fully understand - early on you will have only 10 tile range for trade routes -so u can only make em with very nearby citys - like 5 of these tiles should be cleared by your culture boarders, not much space left for barbs being around. Later on barbs shouldnt be a problem anymore ...

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Now this is interesting. Being normally Immortal player, i dropped to emperor to get a feeling for the new mechanics and i am exploring mainly the trade system atm and try to get a grip on build order and policies. I do this by playing the first 120-130 turns, with Morocco as it seems their unique ability comes in handy here. I am currently in my 5th cycle doing this.

This being said, Barbs abound in all of my iterations and I do not have the feeling that the AI deals effectively with them. Could it be that Emperor is more difficult here than actually Deity (due to lack of massive boosts in army/settlers/workers for AI) and thus:
- map is settled slower
- AI has less troops to clear the map of the camps

Solution seems to be (i am still testing though) to build 3 archers in the first 60 turns and start clearing camps and delay first caravan a bit. So I do have this additional pressure on upkeep with 1 worker per city + 4-5 military units which reduces available cash.

How required are good starts / maps for these kind of turns?
I've been rerolling maps and I haven't had one map where I could get more than 1 unique lux per additional city. So how do you get the happiness to support such cities. Especially later on I get wrecked by the Ideologies.

My question is, what are top maps, good, decent, or bad ones, in terms of luxuries?

ntr0py said:

How required are good starts / maps for these kind of turns?
I've been rerolling maps and I haven't had one map where I could get more than 1 unique lux per additional city. So how do you get the happiness to support such cities. Especially later on I get wrecked by the Ideologies.

My question is, what are top maps, good, decent, or bad ones, in terms of luxuries?

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From my personal experience, I've had the best luck with Sandstorm. I usually spawn close to Gems or Copper, and I usually run into lots of incense. Also very few jungle starts.

BTW, great guide!

ZPG_Lazarus said:

From my personal experience, I've had the best luck with Sandstorm. I usually spawn close to Gems or Copper, and I usually run into lots of incense. Also very few jungle starts.

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Sorry, I didn't make this clear. I'm taking about standard setting. I usually get 2 lux start and maybe 2 other lux in total for 3 other cities. Can you support 4 city starts with 4 lux?

Liberty gives you one free settler, and lets you produce your other two for the cost of one normal settler, basically you get 3 settlers for the cost of 1.

Without Liberty, you are looking at wasting 3x as many turns in the early game producing settlers to get your 4 city empire built.

The time it would take, and the amount of turns wasted that could be spent building a wonder instead is not appealing to ditch liberty in a 4 city strategy. Honour is useless if you are planning on a peaceful builder approach, Tradition + Liberty has always been best, and still works just as good for the 4 city strategy.

ntr0py said:

Sorry, I didn't make this clear. I'm taking about standard setting. I usually get 2 lux start and maybe 2 other lux in total for 3 other cities. Can you support 4 city starts with 4 lux?

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I find I usually can, but the lux's will only support your population for so long.

For my 2nd-4th cities, I go library-> circus/colloseum -> granery -> water mill -> shrine. Its an ugly solution but it works. Also, if you can sneak a shrine in your build order, getting a religion helps so you can get early pagodas (I believe +2 happiness each?). Then again, I play on King, so I have no idea how well this works on higher levels.

Anyone else have other ideas?

Poland is ridiculously strong. I'm playing an Immortal game with them and it shocked me how fast I got through Tradition+Liberty+Rationalism. The UA is simply amazing.

However, I got to the point where I had to pick one out of two civs to attack and it seems I chose the wrong one. My buddy Rome, backstabbed me as I started to pump some Bombers&Fighters to go after him. He had 20-30 planes so he just rolled over me. Luckily I saved before the decision to push so I rolled back and decided to go after Rome this time. I think I should have done that right from the start, my other choice (Hiawatha) wasn't as strong as him, so I thought taking him out would be easier than Rome.

Well I have Artilleries and he has Trebuchet/Cannon/Knights. I think I should be able to go right through him and then deal with Hiawatha.

How required are good starts / maps for these kind of turns?
I've been rerolling maps and I haven't had one map where I could get more than 1 unique lux per additional city. So how do you get the happiness to support such cities. Especially later on I get wrecked by the Ideologies.

My question is, what are top maps, good, decent, or bad ones, in terms of luxuries?

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simple solution:
aly City states!
Its really that easy!
Trade everything u got eearly on away to make good relations with nearby civs, as long as your r occ its no problem anyway. Get some friendship agreements (trading help a lot here)- keep trading your own stuff away for gold then and spend this gold to Aly the City states u fulfiled a quest for.

Thats why early scouting is so important - meet all these possible later alies. Even when they are on other side of map they might get a culture or lux quest which u can fullfil easy. With protecting status every quest will bbring u to Aly status now spend cash to keep this status.

Dont bother too much with happynes building ealry, stick to the bo in guide. Rather micro to production/gold tiles in noncap cities when hapyness drops to 1. Try keep at least cap growing.

Also with the proposed city spreading every city should really have 2 lux (or horse) in atr least 3 tile ring - sometimes u have to buy tile when in 3rd ring, but with all this culture boarders expand fast anyway.

Played my last game as Poland and reached your numbers around the turn 175 with 5 cities of mine. I didn't go for Liberty but all of Rationalism instead. Reached 650 bpt when i hit Radio. Too bad i couldnt borrow gold for factories so i had to spend a (useless) policy.

Was playing emperor and DoFed only 1 civ.

Another question : Did you sign some RAs? How many DoF have you made?

This guide is very useful. I've been looking for a god peaceful bo for BNW. I tried it with a nice salt and marble start and did well. The only thing that I'm wondering is how the bo should be changed for a low production start with trapping/sailing luxuries. If you have a jungle start with one trapping luxury and one sailing luxury, you obviously would need to change this to get the techs and fishing boats.

Was playing emperor and DoFed only 1 civ.

Another question : Did you sign some RAs? How many DoF have you made?

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Was quite lucky - got 3 DOF - all other civs but 1 liked me aswell but didnt want sign DOF, signed RAs with all of them even when i m clueless if they are really worth it - but just tried doing ..

I didn't go for Liberty but all of Rationalism instead

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Thats the beauty of this strat, with free amphitheaters instead monuments, lib culture and reduced Policy costs u end up in end with all these additional and helpful policies.
I filled my rati tree aswell ..