Bohemians and Poles first impressions?

[mickeyjim2]

So what are people's first impressions of the new civs? Someone else made a thread showing what the new civ's bonuses are in case you haven't seen them yet.

Obviously the civs have only been out for like an hour or so at the time of writing and I haven't even played a full game with them yet, so I'm mostly curious regarding people's reactions to their bonuses, tech tree etc. and not just strictly about balance like I've already seen some people talking about which seems a little premature.

I have mixed feelings about the Bohemians tbh. The castle age hand cannoneers is cool and the cheaper university, blacksmith and monastery is also on point, but they seem to lack any real eco bonus besides free mining techs, which also worth mentioning is basically just a slightly better version of the Malians original free gold mining techs bonus. Fervor on villagers is just a slightly improved version of the Berbers free movement speed bonus, though sanctity seems moderately useful. Wagenburg Tactics seems underwhelming tbh. I had actually made my own Bohemian civ a while back and I had actually also named their castle UT Wagenburg tactics, but my idea was for it to give Hussite Wagons a bonus vs cavalry, since that is what they were known for. The Hussite Wagon itself seems a little underwhelming as well: they feel somewhere between an organ gun and a Korean wagon stats-wise, the protection for units behind them seems cool but very micro intensive so I have no idea how common it will be to see them used that way online, maybe they could work well in chokepoints on black forest. Not really sure what the history is behind the markets team bonus; I'm interested to know if anyone can enlighten me. The trash monks and techs, on the other hand, seems like a crazy bonus.

Poles are also a bit of a strange case. The regenerating villagers bonus seems rather unusual, folwark seems very strong for quickly injecting food into one's economy. Not really sure what the inspiration was behind the stone miners generating gold, and why both new civs have a mining bonus. The Obuch seems rather strong, not sure how I feel about a unit capable of something like buffing or debuffing enemy units, feels a bit like AoE3 to me. I know quite a few people don't like the Burgundian's Flemish Revolution tech or the Sicilians First Crusade tech because it also feels like more of an AoE3 ability, so again curious what people's thoughts are on this. Would you have preferred the Obuch to simply be the infantry version of the Leitis like many of us initially assumed it to be? The Winged Hussar is cool and its a really nice touch the Lithuanians also get them now. I'm a bit surprised by the Polish cavalry options. They don't even have fully upgraded cavaliers, instead they get a gold discount on knights, so in other words a quantity over quality approach. This seems especially strange when compared to the Lithuanians, since we now have Poles with cheaper but unexceptional cavaliers, while the Lithuanians have the strongest Paladins in the game by some margin, when historically it was the other way around, with the Poles having the armoured cavalry while the Lithuanians contributed light cavalry. The Winged Hussar having a bonus against gunpowder units is a very nice touch though. Gonna love to see some Janissary vs Winged Hussar match ups in the near future. Last thing I'll say is it seems a bit arbitrary that the Poles lack hand cannoneers. I imagine missing halbs is a balance decision to weaken the Poles in trash wars but I imagine missing halbs will hurt the Poles in matches against other strong cavalry civs.

So what are your thoughts? Are you happy with the new civs, or do you find some of the bonuses, UUs and/or tech trees questionable?

[mickeyjim2]

Publicado originalmente por Shad:

Publicado originalmente por SeiFei:

I feel as though Poland should have access to Paladins and Plate Barding Armor for Cavalry but in exchange for that remove access to Champions.

30 gold FU paladins? Don't think that will ever happen.

You would need to remove a lot more than champions for that to be remotely balanced. Maybe if no two-handed swordsman and no elite skirmisher, and no bracer, and no fortified wall then it begins to be somewhat balanced.

If they kept the 30 gold cost then definitely, but again I think the real question is why the devs went with a quantity over quality approach with the Polish cavalry

[trar]

I just think it's weird they added the Slavs as a civ years ago and then later added like 3 separate Slavic civs.

[Shad]

Publicado originalmente por mickeyjim2:

Publicado originalmente por Shad:

30 gold FU paladins? Don't think that will ever happen.

You would need to remove a lot more than champions for that to be remotely balanced. Maybe if no two-handed swordsman and no elite skirmisher, and no bracer, and no fortified wall then it begins to be somewhat balanced.

If they kept the 30 gold cost then definitely, but again I think the real question is why the devs went with a quantity over quality approach with the Polish cavalry

I do kinda like it. Gameplay wise there's quite a few paladin civs already, so another one would be "yet another paladin civ". And it's had to make a strong paladin civ that's distinct from existing ones without being OP in team games.

Historically polish cavalry was lighter that the likes Teutons and Franks. So the "medium cavalry" focus with cheap cavaliers and trample hussars is OK. An alternative could be to lower the trample bonus a little, but extend it to the knight line as well.

[mickeyjim2]

Publicado originalmente por Shad:

Publicado originalmente por mickeyjim2:

If they kept the 30 gold cost then definitely, but again I think the real question is why the devs went with a quantity over quality approach with the Polish cavalry

I do kinda like it. Gameplay wise there's quite a few paladin civs already, so another one would be "yet another paladin civ". And it's had to make a strong paladin civ that's distinct from existing ones without being OP in team games.

Historically polish cavalry was lighter that the likes Teutons and Franks. So the "medium cavalry" focus with cheap cavaliers and trample hussars is OK. An alternative could be to lower the trample bonus a little, but extend it to the knight line as well.

Fair enough, but again its the whole Poles have cavaliers while Lithuanians have Paladins thing that's a bit strange now. Tbh I kinda wish they could have their cavalry swapped, but thats never going to happen

[Elriadon]

Publicado originalmente por nixon gaming:

I just think it's weird they added the Slavs as a civ years ago and then later added like 3 separate Slavic civs.

Because adding 1 civ to represent half of an incredibly diverse continent was a bad idea.

[RitualistEssence]

Publicado originalmente por Shad:

Publicado originalmente por SeiFei:

I feel as though Poland should have access to Paladins and Plate Barding Armor for Cavalry but in exchange for that remove access to Champions.

30 gold FU paladins? Don't think that will ever happen.

You would need to remove a lot more than champions for that to be remotely balanced. Maybe if no two-handed swordsman and no elite skirmisher, and no bracer, and no fortified wall then it begins to be somewhat balanced.

Oh forgot about that.
Just now changed my Mod to remove the gold cost reduction bonus to Knight line from that unique tech of theirs. Don't know what to replace it with, maybe a Hussars +1 attack vs Cav Archers because the Poles did well against the Mongols.

I added 10 gold cost to Winged Hussars but now their attack is 10, hp is 85, speed is 1.3 (down from 1.5) and melee armor is now 2 instead of 1.
Removed access to champions and allowed access to Paladins.

[Chrøme]

Publicado originalmente por Shad:

Publicado originalmente por mickeyjim2:

If they kept the 30 gold cost then definitely, but again I think the real question is why the devs went with a quantity over quality approach with the Polish cavalry

I do kinda like it. Gameplay wise there's quite a few paladin civs already, so another one would be "yet another paladin civ". And it's had to make a strong paladin civ that's distinct from existing ones without being OP in team games.

Historically polish cavalry was lighter that the likes Teutons and Franks. So the "medium cavalry" focus with cheap cavaliers and trample hussars is OK. An alternative could be to lower the trample bonus a little, but extend it to the knight line as well.

But Poles really need last cav armor upgrade.

[Whakahoatanga]

Publicado originalmente por Darel:

Publicado originalmente por nixon gaming:

I just think it's weird they added the Slavs as a civ years ago and then later added like 3 separate Slavic civs.

Because adding 1 civ to represent half of an incredibly diverse continent was a bad idea.

Malians, Ethiopians and Indians say hi.

The reason why FE added Slavs years ago is that ES wanted them ingame under this name (yeah, it's a pretty rough description for almost all Eastern Europe) as well as they weren't sure how successful finally their expansion would become.

Publicado originalmente por Forgotten Empires:

Expanding

A hard choice

It was thus possible to add new civs without crashing the game. It was still buggy, but playable. Now the hard decision came up, which civs to add? I think we all thought about this before: what civs would we add to AoE2 if we had the chance to? Many essays and long discussions in various online communities were held on this topic but none could be turned into reality so far. I still remember my first list, it consisted out of 5 civs. Why 5? It seemed like a good number and it it was also the number of civs added in The Conquerors Expansion. My first list had: Lombards, Tibetans, Incas, Magyars, Scythians. The Lombards turned into the more general name “Italians”, the Tibetans changed to the more military orientated Indians, the Incas stayed Incas and so did the Magyars. The Scythians felt too out of place and were changed to the broader and more beefed Slavs. None of these changes were decided by the flip of a coin, but came by reading through history article after article, trying to figure out which civs would fit into Age of Empires II and could bring up interesting units, tactics or story lines to our favourite virtual battlefield.

Eventually the decisions on the civs seemed to have some surprising support from the past. Apparently when making the decisions on which civs were to be added for The Conquerors, the civs that we eventually picked were all considered in the design process and were only left out in the final voting round. Magyars and Slavs lost to the Huns, Italians to the Spaniards, Indians to the Koreans and the Incas already had two brothers up north.

Source: https://www.forgottenempires.net/age-of-empires-2-hd-the-forgotten/the-story-so-far

Publicado originalmente por Ensemble Studios/Sandy Petersen:

EASTERN EUROPEAN - the choice was between Huns, Swiss, Magyars, Habsburgs, or Slavs (the latter being an all-inclusive group in which we'd put Poles, Russians, etc.) We speedily decided the Swiss were too Renaissance, the Habsburgs were too obscure (besides, I hate them. I think they were a bunch of untalented reactionaries who looked funny). This left Magyars, Slavs, & Huns. For better or worse we chose Huns. Here are the reasons why:

Huns were strong at the very start of the Dark Ages, so it drove home the fact that this was NOT a "Renaissance pack", and we wanted to make that clear.
Attila the Hun had major name recognition and a really cool campaign we could use. There was no corresponding Russian or Magyar hero.
Since we were naming the pack "The Conquerors" we wanted to have as many conquest-oriented civs as possible. We already had the Spanish and the Aztecs, but we needed more, because the Mayans and Koreans, frankly, are not too famous for their conquests. The middle-age Russians did very little invading of other countries, to their everlasting credit, so we decided not to include them. The Magyars did plenty of invading, but we decided for the Huns and against the Magyars simply because of name recognition.

Source: http://aok.heavengames.com/gameinfo/conquerors-expansion

We're now at the 7th expansion and it wouldn't surprise me if we'd get an 8th one.

[Elriadon]

Publicado originalmente por Szaladon:

Publicado originalmente por Darel:

Because adding 1 civ to represent half of an incredibly diverse continent was a bad idea.

Malians, Ethiopians and Indians say hi.

Yes, it also applies to them. Or atleast "Indians". I don't see what this has to do with slavs

Thing is, they made a "Slavs" civ that's basically the Kievan Rus, or at best East Slavs, with no real ties to any other of the Slavic groups except random AI leader names. Would've been better to just call them Rus, even if this was the last expansion. Then they made a "Slavs" campaign centered around Wallachians, who aren't slavs. Lets say there were no East Asian civs, no Japanese, Chinese or Koreans. Then they added a civilization called Asians that was basically the Chinese, but it was also supposed to cover Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese. And in the "Asian" campaign, you are playing as Thai. It's a bad idea. Kinda like that "Native Americans" civ from Civilization 4.

Reading that post, it's funny how they talk about a Slavs civ, but decided against it because there was no "Russian" hero as recognizable as Attila the Hun. Russians are Slavs, but Slavs aren't Russians. If they were looking at Russian heroes only, why did they want to name the civ Slavs in the first place? Why not the Rus? That alone should be broad enough name. It was obvious that's who they were thinking of and then they insisted that civ represents every else slavic nation for some unfathomable reason.

[FireFly]

Well, haven't bought yet (I think it should be cheap). Also I think they should change the name of Slavs to, let's say, Ruthenians. Would make more sense.

[Brutalist Ape]

I have played a couple of Poland games. I really noticed the farm bonus a lot. I had few farms, and yet I seemed to have lots of food. This even helped me win the game. I was being attacked 2v1 but I managed to spam enough units to stay alive. Eventually my allies charged into the enemy base from the rear and they surrendered.

I find it a bit upsetting that the Poles don't get the final cavalry armour upgrade. That's really going to hurt. Given that the winged hussar is a special unit, I think they should have allowed Poles to research that final armor upgrade.

Also I agree with some others here, the lack of Halberdier is going to make it difficult for Poles to deal with massed Paladins in the late game, especially as Poles do not get camels.

[Axegrabber]

I expected the Bohemian wagon UU to be like some kind of mobile tower you set up and pack like a trebuchet. It's that but without the need to unpack. It's so strong and hard to counter currently. It's a love hate relationship since I like the challenge.

[Axegrabber]

I expected the Bohemian wagon UU to be like some kind of mobile tower you set up and pack like a trebuchet. It's that but without the need to unpack. It's so strong and hard to counter currently. It's a love hate relationship since I like the challenge.

[RitualistEssence]

Publicado originalmente por PIÑATA BOOM BOOM:

Well, haven't bought yet (I think it should be cheap). Also I think they should change the name of Slavs to, let's say, Ruthenians. Would make more sense.

Kievan Rus like how mods for Medieval Total War 2 changed Russia to that name.

[Valarante]

Poles are very underwhelming and while discussions about historical accuracy are frowned upon nowadays, it is surprising that they gave them such strong Archers (unfortunately without any bonus for them) instead of better Heavy Cavalry or Halberdiers.
The lack of Siege Engineers hurts a lot too and the Navy is next to useless.

Maybe to set them apart from other Slavic civs?
I have big hopes that they'll still give them Plate Barding Armor to make their Cavaliers (no Paladins here) at least somewhat useful.

The Bohemians tech tree looks a lot more attractive to me and they aren't just all about trash units.
Their mini tanks are my new favorite unit.