Answer: Strategies for Countering Poles
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They miss the final cavalry armor.
Arbalest Halberdier, my friend.
I play poles sometimes and always struggle against strong archers because poles skirms aren’t fully upgraded and they lack final cavalry armour.
If the game goes too long past your window in castle age with the knight discount then it feels like the game slips away against stronger late game civs.
I play poles a lot (~950 ELO) and their eco takes quite a while to get going.
Walling + folwarks take a lot of resources/time and their military units are nothing special in feudal and early castle (until schlatzka is researched).
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Also, it’s hard to keep folwarks close to the TC, so raiding in early feudal is especially effective since poles are typically trying to fast castle into Knights.
Edit: forgot to mention that their cavalry and archers don’t have 3rd tier armor upgrades, so cav archers can be a major problem in late imperial age.
You got put them under constant pressure in the early ages, Poles are like goths unbeatable in late castle or imp.
Portuguese fc into forward castle into organ spam on arena apparently works well (until they nerf them again)
They’re amazing eco doesn’t kick-in until mid-feudal.
Even then, the Folwarks leaves farms exposed.
So that’s when you try and get the upperhand.
A looot of civs are stronger than them early game.
Drush into archers, maybe even drop towers, just do anything to keep them off resources.
If it’s closed map…
Good luck I guess
They are good on feudal, amazing from mid-castle to early-Imp and go bad on late game.
Try to pressure them on the early game, if using civs with camels they will shine a lot.
In Castle Age, if you can, pressure a lot, if not, try to go to late game if you have a civ with heavy Camels or good Halberdiers civs.
They will pressure you, and it’s hard to deal against so many Knights/Cavaliers…
but in a moment of the game their units can’t hold more because they miss late armor, and that’s huge.
They don’t have the late imp army for a closed map but their eco is super vulnerable on an open map.
Drushes, all-ins, castle drops, monks, forwards.
Go go go!
Just don’t bother with tower rushes, they have that natural stone advantage.
You just can’t sit back against the Poles on an open map, but their imp army fades a little (until they’re going trample damage hussar in a trash war 😐).
I randomed into poles recently on Arabia and I’ve only played them 2-3 times before.
My biggest weakness is I usually succumb to early pressure in feudal and here too I was felt like I was quite behind but the farm eco was just so good! 12 farms and suddenly I have a 1000 food!
I held on for dear life until the UT and then suddenly Poles just dominate!
My opponent tried so many options!
Tons of pikes, camels, xbows but the cheapness of the knights just blew everything away. 25 farms 10-12 on gold and you can spam like crazy.
Even with strong pressure in feudal, it’s a difficult civ to counter unless you have camels and pikes.
Mass CA is very good vs Poles.
Can kite knights and Obuch easily (missing last cav armor) and take take on skirm armies in low numbers in Imp because of the lack of ring archer armor.
Poles can counter CA raids with a lot of towers and castles, but their army is generally weak to mobile ranges units.
Go to the Equator.
On open maps you can try to raid (especially) their farms and pressure early, as they have no eco bonus before building farms and the farms aren’t as protected from TC.
If possible go for huge feudal pressure and army, so they need 3 folwarks and have trouble protecting against raids.
I got smashed yesterday as a pole by a bunch of balista elephants in combo with pikemen, I think some combo of archers+halb might do the job
Their greedy folwarks are usually not protected by the tc which can help early on.
Saracens handle them okay with mamelukes.
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