Where do you rate Poland as a Civ?

Let's look at their UA, UU, and UB:

UA: Solidarity - Receive a free Social Policy when you advance to the next era.

This is an incredibly powerful UA. It is a free Oracle with each era, and I think this is almost OP. It makes Poland flexible in how you play them; tall, wide, semi-whatever. Anything will work because you can choose the social policy to support the strategy.

UU: Winged Hussar - Heavy Mounted Unit specialized in defeating enemy mounted units. This unit is faster and more powerful than the Lancer, which it replaces. Forces defenders to retreat when it inflicts more damage than it receives. May only be built by the Polish.

Starts with Shock I, Formation I, and Heavy Charge. Combined with Ducal Stable, Barracks, and Armory, you can quickly build up a Winged Hussar to start with March. I put the Winged Hussar in my top 5 best units in the game. They dominate their era. Some downsides are the heavy charge can help an enemy unit escape death, or put your Winged Hussar in a bad position. Also, they do not upgrade to anti-tank for awhile.

Still, a very good UU.

UB: Ducal Stable - Unique Polish Stable replacement. +15% production Production and +15 XP for Mounted Units. Each Pasture worked by this City produces +1 Production and +1 Gold.

Compared to the a regular stable, it gives the extra XP for mounted units (great synergy with Winged Hussar), and it gives +1 gold on pastures. The extra gold is great for early game, since gold tiles are hard to come by. This also works well with early trading, since it makes your city a little more attractive to trade. A very good UB.

The UA, UU, and UB are all really good or great, but I think it's easier to measure Poland when compared to other "OP" civs. So let's look at the Shoshone, since several users have said that they are OP.

UA comparison:
Great Expanse - Founded cities start with additional territory. Units receive a combat bonus when fighting within their own territory.

Great for settling new cities, obviously. It gives you access to start working good tiles around your city when you first settle it. The defensive bonus is nice, and makes the Shoshone a little more difficult to invade.

However, you do not get any economic bonuses with the Shoshone for this. I think Solidarity gets better in late game as well, since SP costs go up throughout the game. My vote Solidarity > Great Expanse.

UB/UU comparison
I think we should compare Pathfinder to the Ducal Stable, since they are both the earlier UU/UB that Shoshone/Poland get in game.

The Pathfinder is a great unit for the early game, and helps you get started. The Pathfinder definitely gives favor to Shoshone in that you can get free techs and faith. I would not say the free culture is great when compared to Solidarity, which does the same thing in giving you social policies (without raising the cost of the next policy).

In the early game, the Ducal Stable's best attribute is the extra gold. So you get some early gold, but nothing too great. Maybe enough to keep you above red, while you're setting up your empire. Overall, I have to say Pathfinder > Ducal Stable.

Finally, Winged Hussar vs. Comanche Rider.
Comanche Rider - 34 Str. 5 Mvmt 200 Hammers, available later than Winged Hussar. Upgrades to landship
Winged Hussar - 28 Str. 5 Mvmt 185 Hammers, available before Comanche Rider. Upgrades to anti-tank

Base Comanche Rider vs. base Winged Hussar (no extra promotions, in neutral territory, on plains) Comanche Rider 34 Str -- Winged Hussar 37.24 (28 + 28*0.33)

Same fight, but in Shoshone territory. Comanche Rider 39.1 (34+34*0.15) -- Winged Hussar 37.24 (is that right...going off memory)

So Comanche Rider slightly loses in neutral territory, and slightly wins in Shoshone territory. With upgrades, I put the Winged Hussar > Comanche Rider.

Looking at the total package, I have to say Poland > Shoshone. I don't think there would be a lot of people to disagree with this. So going back to my point now, where does Poland fit with other Civs? UA, definitely OP. UU, really good, fits well within the game. UB, an ok building to help your economy. Overall, I think slightly OP because of their UA. If it's going to be that good, there should be some tradeoff somewhere. They shouldn't have an awesome UA, and a really good UU and UB.

I think they are both among my favorites of the new Civs.

I can't refute your per-unit arguments, but I think you are undervaluing the Pathfinder more than a little. Because it's got the same combat strength as a warrior, you can afford to make 2 or 3 of them early on, and get a lot more of the goody huts than with another civs. With their special ability, each of those huts is guaranteed to be very powerful. That combination is a big boost in the very early game, which snowballs from there.

In my typical 5-player small epic Terra game, I can expect to get about 6 early goodie huts. That's some combination of 1 or 2 free techs (which you can arrange to be second-tier ones that put you way ahead), 1 or 1.75 policies (admittedly counting toward the price curve but early early advantages), 20 or 110 faith, and some gold.

I need to try Poland again now that I'm more familiar with the game; the extra policies are quite potent although the policy cost curve is less steep than in Vanilla or G&K. In my one game, as is often the case, I found mounted units just don't play that big a part in the game because the AIs spam spears/pikes and horses are not plentiful in most games.

Cream of the crop, in my opinion. The UA is essentially a carton of Oracles activated at no extra cost as time passes. I don't care as much for the UU or UB, but the UA rocks enough to make Poland totally worth it.

Ducal Stables also cost no maintenance, so they're a no brainer to build as opposed to a regular stable

As I posted in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504645

I got my first Emperor win with Poland. The UA is equivalent to an extra policy tree.

I thought I would go for a cultural win, but Brazil was a big runaway. I decided to switch to a science victory but make sure I had enough culture to slow down their tourism impact. I won with them probably less than 5 turn away from winning. It was a fun game.

possibly best civ in the game. I've only played 1 game as them so far, but it felt like it was a whole difficulty level easier than other civs. Free policies are just really good...there's not much else to say.

Poland are indeed very good. Just one small point re. the Shoshone, however. The UA does give a small economic bonus in the early game in so far as you are more likely to have a clutch of (unimproved) wonders with that all important one or two gold to work from the outset. Not much, but it can mean the difference between starting with 3 gpt and starting with 5 gpt, giving that slight edge in early expansion. Not much to be said for them economically beyond that, mind.

Before the expansion came out, I regarded them as a little above average. After playing the expansion and reconsidering (though I still haven't completed a game as Poland) I think that they are extremely strong.

The UA is outstanding. A civ's UA is often 'worth' perhaps 2 strong social policies. Poland gets many more than that. Receiving a free policy in the late game is worth thousands of culture. As a result, Poland can be extremely strong, with the flexibility to confidently pursue any victory type.

The UB is solid, but not spectacular. The UU is terrific, although I don't like where lancers sit in the tech tree or how they upgrade.

Poland is a top-notch, can-do-it-all type civ, along the lines of Ethiopia and England. The UA is extremely powerful in the hands of a human player, and the AI seems to get a lot out of it too. Especially since BNW de-emphasized finishing trees AND made some wonders policy dependent, Poland can jump into a crap branch to get a great wonder (exploration, commerce, patronage). OR Poland can complete branches before anyone else for bonuses that stack.

Extremely good civ.

Poland is on the list I plan to try out as the UA is a builder one; I'm going to try for Space race with them first given their achievement.

But Venice (which I played first), Shoshone (currently playing now, I might win that game tomorrow), and at least Indonesia (which I'm planning on trying next) or ahead of them in my list to try out.

They're very good, but I don't rate them as top tier. Their UA is fantastic because of its versatility, but versatility isn't as useful as specialization when the specialization is good (Babylon, Korea, Inca, etc.).

Still, they are quite good.

Poland is a superb jack of all trades master of none. The best thing about Solidarity is that it works with any victory condition and allows you to get the key policies earlier ( I don't think the extra policies are that big of a deal since there generally isn't a full tree worth of stuff that is that useful for my victory type at the end of the game).

I found both the stables and lancer rather poor however.

Stables aren't a priority build until the earliest mid-game even give only a handful of gold and only work on in cities with pastures.

Winged Hussar is rather fun, but like all Lancers I find more than 2 to be overkill since they upgrade into anti-tank and only really use them for pillaging and snagging cities.

Overall I'd put Poland in the top 8 or so because they strong in all victory types but can't compete with the best of the specialized civ's.

I think Poland is by far the best civ in the game. Anything about them is good, really.

Just tried Poland.

Man, they are a bit crazy. Founded, reformed, and enhanced my religion in the same turn, lol...turn 55!

After completing 16 games on immortal/deity, as Poland I'm consistently winning the fastest by quite a large margin than other civ choices. The free policies alone make this happen, the UB is nice and UU i don't get to make because of how fast the mid to late game is for me. I play standard/large maps on standard settings.

I rate Poland as the best all-around civ. If you go a purely random start, Poland is the safest bet.

I think Poland is very good.

The UA (as most people have pointed out) is amazing. And even though it is a "jack of all trades", it allows much better flexibility and easier timing windows. Also, I found that for a Culture VC, the UA is amazingly good since the timing of new Social Policies aligns much better with what you are trying to do at any given point in the game.

The UB (Stables) is great if you have 2+ Horses/Sheep/Cows since you are saving yourself 4gpt (the UB gives 1gpt and it costs 0 maint) at a time in the game when that is a decent amount.

I'm kinda wondering if maybe their UA should kick-in a lil bit later. Maya, for example, don't get their ability until Theocracy comes in. Or do ya think that might be a bit too much?

Then again, SP aren't extremely overpowering as tech can be...so maybe it's nice to have a civ that can grow into any direction and still have fallback options. On the other hand...isn't that a bit too strong? For example, despite Zulu exceptional warmongering, if they fail to use all of their abilities and units, they're behind. Poland doesn't have that problem as they can pursue two victories at the same time.

But, I'm still learning experimenting with them, so please correct me.

Yes Poland is strong, it may happen that there will be not much use for winged hussars (it seems to have small window of opportunity) but it dosnt matter since UA is soo good. And since stables have no cost this also make them better. Definetly good civ to learn the game, since you are allowed to make some mistakes with policies and still get your stuff.

I would not call for OP, since there is no much MP scene where it would matter.

I think they are up there, certainly. I used to rate Maya as the best, but i think the Polish UA almost pips them because you can get so much more of everything because of all the extra social policies.

I think in the interests of balance, though, they should nerf it somewhat. Not too sure as to what, but something similar to the Maya.

Edit: As i play multiplayer, a random roll for me as poland and my friend as japan/India would be too unfair.