Poland

[randomnub]

Dunno, you play with exactly no UA for the first 60-80 turns, then you enter classical and get a policy worth ~300, and nothing else until renaissance. By ideologies you're quite OP, but you must have made it that far with maybe 1 policy advantage and a plain civ, no snowball potential.

If Ducal stable is a decent UB, you have some low standards imo I can only rate coffee house or skola as lower impact than that, and only because they come damn late.

 

[Stalker0]

Dunno, you play with exactly no UA for the first 60-80 turns, then you enter classical and get a policy worth ~300, and nothing else until renaissance.

Unless I am mistaken, the free policy is truly free. This means that it does not increase the cost of future policies. That is worth a lot more than 300 culture as the game goes on.

 

[Stalker0]

Poland actually has another really good benefit for testing purposes. Its a great baseline civs for a lot of testing. For example, its a great civ to test starts on, because you don't have to separate the "civ bonuses" from the "base bonuses" for the first 50 turns or so.

This is another reason that I think its good to have some generic simple civs. Not the sole reason of course, but it adds to the pile.

 

[randomnub]

Unless I am mistaken, the free policy is truly free. This means that it does not increase the cost of future policies. That is worth a lot more than 300 culture as the game goes on.

Yes it is free: I was just comparing what you get at that point of the game, where a civ with an early culture source (an UB, a better UUs for tributes, or higher snowballing potential) might have an advantage very well worth the culture cost of a policy over a classical era Poland.

 

[CrazyG]

Just 1 free social policy is actually quite useful in my experience. Poland is quite strong, and I think a free social every era was too strong.

I think the Ducal Stable is awful, even when you get a super high roll (like +15 gold) it isn't that impactful because its late. I would still rather have a Bazaar for the early yields rather than a 15 gold Ducal Stable, and your other cities will usually have weak stables. The horses are nice but why are you building a stable if you have no horses? Winged Hussars are kind of fun but I just don't like lancers that much.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

The main thing I'd do is change the Ducal stable so that 1.) It would come one tech earlier and/or 2.) It would spawn 1 horse resource (with 2 horses) and 1 cattle/sheep resource near the city.

 

[azum4roll]

That could create some weird terrain/resource pair like snow horses and jungle sheep. But then it's already possible with Indonesia.

 

[Bhawb]

That could create some weird terrain/resource pair like snow horses and jungle sheep. But then it's already possible with Indonesia.

Strictly speaking those aren't remotely unnatural placements IRL, the only reason horses/sheep/cattle are placed on grassland/plains in game is to provide counterbalance to the other resources so that there are slight varieties for each different tile/feature combo. But IRL, horses and sheep have been or could be domesticated for any land tile/feature combo in game, even snow. So it isn't like it technically breaks any immersion, and as you said Indonesia also breaks some standard tile rule-sets so it isn't outside the context of the game.

 

[andersw]

Just 1 free social policy is actually quite useful in my experience. Poland is quite strong, and I think a free social every era was too strong.

I think the Ducal Stable is awful, even when you get a super high roll (like +15 gold) it isn't that impactful because its late. I would still rather have a Bazaar for the early yields rather than a 15 gold Ducal Stable, and your other cities will usually have weak stables. The horses are nice but why are you building a stable if you have no horses? Winged Hussars are kind of fun but I just don't like lancers that much.

On emperor and below as warmonger the Ducal stable is very good, garantueed extra horses, and Poland seems to spawn a lot of cattle around starting location, which also have good synergy with Serfdom (fealty) and cathedrals if you can get them.
But I can see situations where they are not as useful, and not as good in other victory type games.
The Winged hussars (CS40) with alhambra oneshots enemy knights, I can see that its less strong on diety but even on even tech with the AI they are very strong, they are maybe a bit late but if you're in a rough creek they solve a lot when they are on the board.

That brings up my question to Gazebo (or someone who have code knowledge), the Winged Hussars special promo heavy charge have no numbers to it, it just says "more damage if enemy takes less and extra damage if enemy cant retreat", can we get some ingame numbers on that please?

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

It's been a while since i played with winged hussars and i'm actually glad that Poland is pretty much the same from vanilla civ 5 *cough* loses a couple of free policies *cough*, an extremely versatile civ without being good on something in particular ... Ducal stable is a great building though i still wish it spawns a horse tile just the Indonesian Candi does.

On emperor and below as warmonger the Ducal stable is very good, garantueed extra horses, and Poland seems to spawn a lot of cattle around starting location, which also have good synergy with Serfdom (fealty) and cathedrals if you can get them.
But I can see situations where they are not as useful, and not as good in other victory type games.
The Winged hussars (CS40) with alhambra oneshots enemy knights, I can see that its less strong on diety but even on even tech with the AI they are very strong, they are maybe a bit late but if you're in a rough creek they solve a lot when they are on the board.

That brings up my question to Gazebo (or someone who have code knowledge), the Winged Hussars special promo heavy charge have no numbers to it, it just says "more damage if enemy takes less and extra damage if enemy cant retreat", can we get some ingame numbers on that please?

Half the damage dealt as described in civilopedia.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I'm not sure if this is an intended behavior or not but leveling up winged hussars to get Overrun promotion is a lot of fun; when you push a unit back the Overrun promotion activates and deals 10 damages to that unit and the newly adjacent units.

 

[pineappledan]

I'm not sure if this is an intended behavior or not but leveling up winged hussars to get Overrun promotion is a lot of fun; when you push a unit back the Overrun promotion activates and deals 10 damages to that unit and the newly adjacent units.

Oh that IS interesting. Does Overrun activate when a unit withdraws from melee too? ie. If the targeted unit withdraws, will they still take damage from overrun?
Someone needs to test this!

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Oh that IS interesting. Does Overrun activate when a unit withdraws from melee too? ie. If the targeted unit withdraws, will they still take damage from overrun?
Someone needs to test this!

I'll test it but it's also noteworthy that Overrun activates even from amphibious attacks.

 

[azum4roll]

Please also test if Overrun activates with a kill from city/fort/citadel.

 

[Stalker0]

Sometimes Poland gets a bad rap for being "boring", but when it comes to culture, no one matches him. All of the remaining civs (including me) are 1-2 policies from getting our Ideology. Here is Poland:

Those early policies help snowball his culture and really take off like a shot. Now its not OP because that is Poland's kit, he doesn't have a lot of other things to fall back on, but there's nothing boring about being Tier 3 on ideology when the rest of the world hasn't even declared yet!

 

[azum4roll]

That still doesn't make them that strong, so I'd say it's balanced. They can snatch wonders easily if they focus on science more, I guess.

 

[Paramecium]

I think a very strong part of Poland's UA is, that you have a way better chance on higher difficulties to get the first tier classical era wonders. In most cases, if you don't have a strong early culture source, you might beeline techwise for the wonders, but then you can end up waiting several turns for that really important 4th policy, a time when always an AI can snatch that wonder right before you. As Poland, you will probably use that free social policy for your 4th one and can start building the wonder right away. It is by no means a guarantee, but it is reliable.
And considering how important those wonders can be, I would say Poland is by no means an weak or just average civ. And that bonus transcend to other wonders ...

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Please also test if Overrun activates with a kill from city/fort/citadel.

Nope, it does not.
Tested it twice today and it does not .... seems like the unit has to advance for overrun to activate.