Why Poles 'Suddenly' Became Overpowered | AoE2
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- Опубликовано: 28 июл 2024
- My Gameplay Channel: / @hera-gameplay
My Twitch: / hera
My Discord: / discord
My Twitter: / hera_aoe
My Instagram: / hera_aoe
Edits by K1
00:00 - 01:02 Intro
01:02 - 02:26 Tournament History
02:26 - 04:26 Who Discovered the Strength of the Poles
04:26 - 07:57 What Makes the Poles Overpowered
07:57 - 10:17 Why Didn't the Pros Notice it First
10:17 - Final Talk & Outro 
Игры
This is why hoang is a genius. He saw celt bonuses and just synergized them perfectly. That's why poles are strong as well. Every civ is strong if you can find a way to synergize their bonuses correctly
Hera just salty he didn't discover Poles' strength first cause they are average on open maps
Salty?? Smh doubt it
well not really. Look at Burmese or italians on open maps. Players are searching for a good synergy since years and no one found a good one yet.
But i agree that some civs become much stronger than they appear to the most players if someone is willing search for a good unique strategy.
except bengali
@@olecram207 Bengalis are being discovered and they did pretty well in team game and closed map, they can also be pretty okay in open map, once people got Bengalis fully figured, they would probably became a very strong tournament civ.
I think Poles are completely underrated as an archer civ. Everyone focuses on the cheap knights, but the food bonus can really turbo you to a fast Imp Arb play. They are better on 1 or TC than any other civ, if instead of making more TCs you keep making folewarks. Their Obuch stripping armor is a phenomenal way to increase the archers DPS. Many archer civs lack options to raid and deal with skirms late game, not an issue with poles winged hussars. They really don't have any of the weak points normal archer civs do. I think Poles should really be played as an archer civ more against civs that are weak to that, it makes them a lot less predictable.
Absolutely agree!, I feel if you go xbow there is this tendency to have more farms than needed in castle for upg. and vilagers in order to reach castle faster, and then you dont need them because you need a lot of gold and wood for balistics and maybe siege. With poles you should be able to reach castle with fewer farms (exactly as needed to produce vills and get xbow+bodkin), and once you do the damage you can get your eco rolling very fast.
Anyone else just enjoying the neat little towns Hera builds for this videos?
I assumed this was made before the nerf but it does look like the pro ban rate was very high in titans league.
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Seperately I wanted to say that I saw your tweets after the final Hera and just wanted to say that I hope you're not feeling too down with the community and hopefully everyone can come together if you're receiving unacceptable comments.
Although I have in the past found you the sort of player that is fun to root against (more because your dedicatication and huge skill makes nearly every opponent feel like an underdog) I wanted to say that you seem a really nice guy and are very important to the age community. Especially since the Facebook deals I think you've done a lot to step up and keep interest in the whole scene high.
I wish you the best of luck in NAC4 and I look forward to seeing what fun strats you and Dave come up with in Nations Cup.
The first time I ever played against poles I got absolutely steamrolled by knights and obuch. I then realized they were part of the expansion that I didn't have. Sad day
Pay to win baby! Pay! To! Win!!
@@CoffeeAndBusiness nonsense
@@davidtaylor4717 ehh, most of the dlc's have factions that are pretty damned popular right now competitively. i wouldn't consider that coincidence.
@@aztekenen1 I still prefer AOE over other games. Especially mobile. Some mobile games you have to spend like 10 grand on to compete.
@@davidtaylor4717 yeah fr I could smoke the Poles with almost any other Civ just don’t let them have a field day with the farms
As a Pole I can confirm we thrive exponentially when not disturbed.
Unfortunately, that's what our neighbours understood as well.
Damn those ´´Teutons and Slavs´´ :D
@@krystofcisar469 :D
What makes them so strong is they got plenty of options in non-water maps, knight rush in castle age then in Imperial we got Obuch + arbalest - such a deadly combo that can easily dominate most of the matchups while you can still spam hussars, cavs and even cannons with all your economy behind.
yeah the devs should have given them a proper weakness like all other civs.
I guess the vulnerability of the folwark was ment as such a weakness but it is just too little.
9:37 - I find the concept of 'pros rarely innovating' somewhat novel, but it also makes sense with Hera's point -- it's not unreasonable to think that a pro got caught offguard by something on ladder, but saw the potential of it and adapted it at a higher level.
Love this breakdown Hera =). Would personally love to see a follow-up video on how you recommend fighting them as archer civ or knight civ / windows of opportunity etc, in absence of nerf. I got wrecked the first time facing them as archer civ as they laid towers everywhere and I flailed around with siege only to get wrecked by the knight spam.
I am an arena player and since the release i make comments in some videos saying that poles were ridiculous op in closed settings. They lack only one important stuff, halbs.
-They have the best boom economy,
- One of the best infantry units (obuch are amazing since archers do not heavy counter them)
- One of best cavalry options (Cav with UT)
- Archer and CA line with full upgraded attack ups.
Farms work as a sort of investment that pay off in time. Forwarks break this mechanism, giving Poles a window in which they are broken.
I have experienced this in games also. They have amazing eco, and great options with cheap cavalier but when im against a strong paladin civ it seems like they dont have many options that are easy to counter it? Obuch are good but you need castles, hussar can be spammed with trample dmg but not effective enough, and pikes just die too fast with little effect with less bonus dmg
@@95bricks_AoeOnly teuton paladins trade cost effective against poles cav. Also keep in mind that reaching palading upgrade and numbers - it is slow process. Poles is very fast civ and ther main strengh - is timing advantage with very cheap units follow.
Didnt learn too much new stuff here but HELL YOUR EDITING IS AWESOME! Pretty much every frame is not only fitting as a visualization, but also pretty beautiful.
Another synergy the Poles have is regenerating vils with the Folwark. Farming around the Folwark is more dangerous for the vils, and regenerating vils mitigates that weakness a little. I wouldn't call regenerating vils a strong bonus (it isn't making them OP), but it does synergize and it does help.
that could be a cool series. bengalis come to mind. Bohemians. and in a year when pros finally realize how strong dravidians can be
It's an interesting point you make that the people who optimise a system and the people who come up with totally new systems are different. You also point out that those who optimise the system usually get the credit.
I think the same can be said for other things in life.
Hey Hera, just wanted to say I appreciate the content you make and the level of dedication you show to high level play and the AoE2 community. It can suck when you see too much negativity but I hope you can see the positivity too. Even if you think there are too many haters, there are definitely still a lot of us that love what you do. =]
I tried Poles few times, but your truth it's very hard do master. I see how old players playing them, but don't have always success.
My favorite bonus is villagers regenerate HP. A lot profit on Arabia!
I was almost always soo successful with them on 1300 elo by mining stone, getting 50% in gold, which still allowed me to go castle age relatively fast also thanks to falwark, and just creating pressure with knights in early castle followed up by castle drop, which then began to spam obuchs who would counter opponent's pikes.
I discovered their potential very soon after relese and have fallen in love with the civ instantly. I play mostly team games and closed maps like Arena or BF and everything you said is true in my experience :) also had some 3v3 arabia as pocket and the cheap knight spam worked wonders
These days you now see the arena players putting their initial houses right next to the TC so they can save space for future folwarks.
really love your videos man, the amount of time that you are putting into these and the dedication that you show to this game is admirable
I've learned more about aoe from Hera than everyone else put together. thanks
Hera shouting out lower elo players, TG, Arena players for innovating the game. Pretty dope
As someone who likes to always go against the meta and try to break it, I'll tell you I've learned very quickly that this isn't really the path to success. Even if you discover something really cool, it won't stay unique very long. Someone else who's actually invested their time into getting good at the game will just take the strat and perfect in a few days or you'll find out what you discovered isn't really all that new, etc. But that's always been cool with me. This is just how I like to play and I'm comfortable with my elo (1100-ish). Just trying out new things is more fun to me than trying to climb the ladder.
I feel like that too and I'm 15xx. I still think UUs are slept on.
The thing is... a great deal of this game is based on mechanics... So even if you are an amazing strategy thinking player you still going to lose to someone who plays perfect dark age into perfect transitions and good micro... The small advantages will stack up until you're too behind to comeback with your well thought strategy lol... I also like to try different things (even my civ of choice reveals that, Burmese) and I have success against players of same level, but I often lose to people doing obvious strats (like spamming archers as a archery civ) only because they're better at microing and managing their eco at the same time... It doesn't matter that I know exactly what they're gonna do, I'm just going to get mechanically overplayed...
@@shadowsun4055 sure, but my mechanics are pretty good I think. I can look at replays to tell if I lost because of my mechanics or because of my strategy a lot of the time (and usually it IS the mechanics!). But if it IS me losing because of mechanics well then great, I get to keep practising my fun strategy and know that I'm not losing because of it yet!
Could you start organising your new videos on your gameplay channel into playlists by the civ you are playing? I think that's what survivalist is doing on his channel and I find that to be very helpful. When I want to see how a civ I am currently practicing plays out at higher levels I can just check out a playlist and have multiple samples of high level gameplay, and don't have to look for each video manually
Yeah sure. I'll get to it soon
Only when the civ is being played by Hera, not his opponent, right?
Oh thanks so much for considering my suggestion :) ! I would group the videos only by the civ that Hera is playing, because that's the civ about which we get most insights on the decision making
@@dixiepop it's out now my friend. there is a civ playlist on the gameplay channel in alphabetic order. hera will make a community post about it soon too. thanks for your suggestion
I think the only thing said wrong was when you said they mine 650 stone they get 325 gold but if it’s 33% instead of 50% after the nerf it would then be about 215 gold. Love the videos thanks Hera!
I like the editing in this video. Thanks
That AOE2 zen scene in the bg at the opening of video! Love it!
Vinchester was the first pro I saw realizing the Poles' strength. He made the mistake of going massive walls to try to set up multiple folwalks behind. Afterwards, he realized he could start with a few close to his TC, use his eco advantages to pressure then wall up and expand later. Hera was the first pro to use the early castle drop.
i was on poles train since day 1, im proud
Great video Hera! I’ve personally discovered poles recently and they feel insanely strong. How would you balance the civ?
great video Hera, Poles pronounce ch and h identically, only differennce is in writing, so you can pronounce it something like "Obuh" ;)
Innovations always stem from Spirit of the Law, the real Viper counter.
As a pole, I think they should get a bit reworked. It would be more historically acurate to exchange stone eco bonus for bonus to selling food on the market (like saracens for all resources). Also winged hussar should be a unique upgrade to knights, they used to be heavy cavalry. Also they were famous for shock charges, so something coustilier-like would be acurate. Also they might have lower pierce armor for balance purposes. On top of that, arbalesters were never very popular, instead we eventually got very decent canoneers (piechota wybraniecka, Hajduks). So they should be swapped and maybe even get some imperial UT to improve fire speed while keeping last armor upgrade out for balance. This would make Polish military playstyle more accurate with small groups of canoneers and cannons supported by swift and well-charging cavalry.
Love the video Hera. Perfect! Especially attributing some of the strategy development to the lower spectrum of high skilled players.
One reason I like Poles is that I love to spam cavalry. And let's take into account the following: your cav are cheaper, also you generate more gold with stone and you also get pretty good map control with strong cavalry and more castles, so you have the potential to take even more gold from the map. This means you can make 4 or 5 times more cavalry than other civs can, and with higher numbers you don't care very much that they aren't as tanky, so you end up overwhelming other civs. And like Hera said, if your cav don't work that's no problem, poles have a lot of different options.
Finally, even if the map runs out of gold and for some reason you haven't crushed your opponent yet, their winged hussars are awesome
Really good video! I hope they do not nerf them more. I think they are strong but not at a level to be nerfed again
As soon as I unlocked the poles 2 weeks ago, that’s all I have been playing 😊
I've got polish heritage and I like knight rushes. Ofc I'm gonna love this civ
I think their potential on open maps was discovered during The Resurgence tournament. Poles were drafted by the opponent in almost half of the sets and when pros used Poles they probably realized its actually quite good.
I think the best way to balance poles is changing the crown: not reduce but replace the cost of gold with food, like the malay crown for the two-handed swordsman and the kamandaran of the persians. And also, OF COURSE, not get crop rotation. And then the combination of the eco bonus and the military units make sense
great idea
That would be either totally useless or totaly OP :D Knight for 135 food? No thanks, I would rather sell food to buz castle and do obuch :D
I liked the Poles because the Obuch reminded me of the Dwarfs from The Hobbit books lol (edit: the huge group that showed up later in the book. Idk what happened in the movies)
It would be so nice if pro players credited whoever they get inspiration for their strategies from!
How does poles crazy fullwark eco compare to the 2nd cuman TC?
do you think removing the pop space on the folwark would help?
Oh, some of us knew immediately.
From the comment section of Spirit of the Law's Poles overview video:
"Boo Radley
11 months ago
"My favorite of the DLC civs"
Oh you mean the one that is blatantly overpowered and will be totally controlling the meta within a year if not nerfed?"
As an Arena player I've been calling them op after the 1000th castle drop. Didn't know Arabia players didn't know they got high potential.
Poles are perfect, and they need no nerfs pls no
I love them too but they could use a couple nerfs 11
@HeraAgeofEmpires2 hopefully if they get tweaked we still get to keep those Chad Polish arbalest. Such a great tool for the civ.
@@Blooticus I dont think anyone is coming for your arbalest. That's like thing #6 in line of ways to lower the poles power, and it would hinge on them already doing some economic changes or else the Arbalest just turns into Skirms and Obuch which is the most obnoxiously powerful combination in most of the "average" ELO ranges. Someone can literally send 15 paladins up against your 15 obuch and 15 skirms and you will win because they'll strip enough armor off before they die that the skirms are doing 300-500% more damage than usual and can actually kill the paladins. I've seen things on some replays that made me stop and think it was a custom scenario because "they arent supposed to be able to do that."
Sure you can beat that comp with micro, but that's not really great. Micro being the main way to defeat a composition is generally not what you want from AOE2's design. You want micro to fight another players micro, and macro to fight macro. That way games from 500 all the way up to Hera ELO stay competitive. Poles macro is just too strong tho.
@@HeraAgeofEmpires2 They did nerf the mining bonus from 50% gold to 33% recently. It's not balanced, but it seems they're trying at least. The knight bonus imo is where things become crazy.
@@booradley6832 It would be a pretty reasonable nerf to remove either arb or thumb ring from the civ.
Hera, thank you for your work for our beloved game, thank you for inspiring us to be a better player, please stay the way you are
I love playing as the Poles! Recently got 4 matches in a row Vs. the Britons and they shredded me with the Longbows. Any suggestions on how to counter them? Cheers!
Such a complete and fun civ to play and master, honestly my favourite of all the DLCs.
I'm happy to see they are getting nerfed slightly and in the right places too, making their eco more in check instead of just nerfing their fantastic versatility.
I hope the eventual nerfs will keep following this direction (I like their current spot tho)
They nerfed the gold bonus though. Now you only get 1/3rd of the stone mined in gold (you say "half" in the video).
Can you please do a follow up after the recent nerf?
I think it became OP because previously they focused on the cheap tech using one TC, without focusing on the economy. Now, a player can start with archer build or scout into archers. Develop the economy behind, get a castle up and have constant double gold unit composition (cavalier+arbalest or cavalier+hammerboys). even with early damage, they can come back because they get free food when they place farms. The trample damage on their hussars is so strong.
wouldn't say "OP" though
In closed maps, OP. In open, there is a limited time window to kill the game or specific OP civs can counter them.
Hello, I am a big fan of Hera
Do the farms need to be placed in the first row next to the folwork, or can you go for 2 rows to get the bonus? I usually go for a second row since 1 tile of it is still in the radius.
The farms have to be completely within the range of a single Folwark to get the bonus. So they can only be at most 1 tile away to get the bonus.
@@jasonsmith1950 thanks a lot. It seems kinda pointless though since you can place 2x1 and 2x3 farms on each side and end up with 8 farms wether you leave one tile or not don't you? You'd be missing one tile for an extra farm. The only reason I can see to have a 4 tiles radius would be strangler trees.
The fact that Chieftains costs 700f 500g (for a civ with strong eco but wayy too limited tech tree and with infantry ias the main strenght) while Szlachta Privileges is only 500f 300g (civ has 2 powerful eco bonuses that only get stronger the longer the game goes with far better tech tree and several strong units) is just BS.
Spirit of the Law had very early looked at the Bohemians and Poles win stats and found that Poles actually had a higher win rate in closed map than Bohemians shortly after release. I personally always loved them because I blast Sabaton's Winged Hussars song while spamming those hussars with soooo much pleasure
I’m a very bad aoe2 player and a pretty good gamer in general. So when poles were released I had no preconceptions to trip me up. I played by these pole rules:
1. Never mine gold. (You can end the game with 1000’s of gold without mining it or getting relics)
2. Never get horse collar (you want your farms to reseed often)
3. Get stone mining upgrade before double bit. Poles are a stone mining civ that generate free gold for doing so. Stone is top priority.
4. On open maps build first two houses on your tc to start walling out. Never farm your tc.
5. Obuchs train ridiculously fast. Build no military except castles and obuchs before 25min. That’s the time when you are dropping your fourth castle and have about 30 obuchs defending them.
4. Get fletching and bodkin. Get arson. Don’t get infantry upgrades. Obuchs are cheap spam that allow you to project castle coverage across the map.
5. Go full send and don’t boom. The inverse of idle tc time is kills and buildings razed. As long as you are destroying more than you are not making that’s a net gain.
Like I said, I’m a bad player in general, 600elo, struggle against hardest AI. Playing poles I shot up to over 1000 and can take an extreme and a hardest AI at the same time on a closed map.
I reached out to t90 and spirit with this one month after release. No interest in something this “wrong.”
Hera, I don’t know if my pole rules translate to pro meta but I still think their bonuses are even more exploitable than you guys have realized!
wow
Nice video. Main takeaway? Play and watch more arena!
Placing second mills and doing odd things I think by/from lower level players is sometimes a really good thing. It just takes people who can/do focus on the game to figure out WHY it was it is or could be made good.
P.S. I typed this plenty before the end comments in the vid. I've known/seen it for a long time through Starcraft & more. Although I do think AoE takes these potentials and skyrockets them relative to Warcraft & Starcraft.
The gold trickle rate def needs to come down some more
I'm just hoping they won't get nerfed to death...
Poles in aoe2: We dominate.
Poles in history: where was this domination when we needed it?
I mean for the time period, poles were pretty damn dominant, crushing the teutonic order and the ottoman empire repeatedly. It wasn't until late colonial era that they started to fall off and became the victim of all the european superpowers
@@m05513 Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth were no joke.
I love Poles, but they do nerd a nerf. Perhaps a big tweak or nerf to Szhlaztha Priviliges is enough. I feel they need to keep their identity as a super booming civ.
everybody hyperfocused on the lack of plate barding too
FINALLY someone talking about this absurd of civilization. A total turn down to everyone who likes competitive matches no mather the elo. Thanks Hera!
In addition to all these points, I feel that the stone mining bonus also ensures that poles will have gold when other civs run out of gold.
Sort of... You'd run out of stone before you run out of gold though
@@tomsbondars What a big deal :D Generally you still have thousands of bonus gold on map :D
I think the nerf that Poles needs first is with seige. Remove Bombard cannons and seige ram and lets see what that does for their overall play
Hera can we have you playing ai extreme with handicap?
I always felt Bengali bonuses could synergize like this somehow better so they're not as dogshit in the rankings. I wonder if someone will find a way to synergize them
Is Lithuania still good and if so is your guide on them still valid
Lithuanians werent changed at all since DE i think.
7:22 now you tripping, their Hussars are the weakest to arrow fire, meaning they perform worst of all Hussar civs at their designated tasks, namely Raiding and chasing Archers, Siege & Monks
3:19 Stone mining bonus after nerf is way worse than eco bonusses of other civs
They're only missing the final armor, meaning that their hussars (even if they didn't get winged hussar, which has more attack and hp to compensate) still do well in that regard. Winged hussar also has more bonus dmg versus monks and has bonus damage against gunpowder
@@jacknumbertwo9647 but useless if you never reach those, dying to arrow fire
@@Neon-Lines Yes they die faster, but definitely not so fast that they are useless. They still definitely do their job, just slightly less well
You missed the opportunity to speculate on how to solve the problem. Always bring a solution to the table ;)
That's all nice, but the best thing about Poles is the castle model
I guess the only late game issue is lack of halbs?
3:13 where are slav villagers going to 😅😂
Stupid AI man. I rerecorded it like 4 times trying different stuff to make them stay on spot, but they would wander around every time, so i gave up 11
Hi, the intonation in this video is a bit strange for me. It feels 'choppy' since there is little "room" between sentences, making this the auditory synonym of a 'wall of text' for me.
Greetings from Poland to everyone! 😇🤍❤
Just remove that stone to gold bonus really. Why do they need to have 2 eco bonus?
one mistake: towards the middle you say "when you mine stone you get back half of that in gold" even though you only get 1 gold for every 3 stone now
That cheap knight tech is a little bit overpowered. It should be just saving 40% gold (save 30 gold each knight) so that the cavalier option will be equally available to the obuch option. It is not hard at all to let the cavalier number pay off the tech, especially in imperial age.
I thought poles only get 33% gold per stone now not 50%?
That is correct. At 5:20 Hera made a slight error. The tweak from 50% to 33% happened a few months ago.
@@zonza73 I thought it did, thanks for clarifying
i took the wock
all the homies play poles
Facts
All the homies smash each other from the back at sleep overs too
@@kremepye3613 🤨hol up
@@westernaoe nothing
Its true that pros are not innovators in most games simply because most pro players strengths are in execution of strategies than making them in the first place which makes them the top in their respective games
Where are the poles from???
Poland 😂
The land of poles.
Poland
North Pole
Germany
@@sgtpepper8581 thats undeniably one of the poles
I love obuchs, but look how they massacred my winged hussar… they made it a meat shield. 😔 It should be at least an upgrade for steppe lancer. 👌🏻
At least it's one of the strongest meat shields in the game.
poles are my best civ according to the game
Viper fanboys will not be pleased to hear that bit of controversy at the end but it's true 11
RUclips nerf this video!
Poles, Hindustanis and Gurjaras all need balance changes.
Hera just ruined my career. I've been playing poles on arena since they came out, they have always been good. Sad the secret is out.
It was never secret :D I prefer bohemians on arena tho
I think the bonus should be getting only 20% in gold... even 33% seems too much.
I destroyed many people in tgs with poles early on
Can you make a video on Koreans for the opposite reason? Why they became weaker than even Bengalis?
So what im hearing is that my 600 ELO scrub gameplay of building a mill for my deer was actually the correct thing to do as poles? Nice.
they should remove that stupid stone to gold bonus and remove either bombard cannon or siege engineer from the pole. Why the hek do they need to have so much?
The reason they're op is the paywall.
SURELY they aren't picked over Hindustanis and Gurjaras on arabia are they?
As if the magic alchemy gold wasn’t bad enough for a civ that doesn’t even have a gold intensive tech tree, the freaking Obuch having 95 HP, 2 pierce armor, and only costing 55 food 20 gold is a freaking joke. Naked power creep.
Yep even before watching I said to my self arena players. Pretty much from the first 2 months I began seeing poles op on arena. Specially with tower rush with castle followup and booming at the same time. Crazy. There was an idea that poles were bad on open maps though I think because people were being greedy trying to rush schzlta privileges asap. But when they realize they don't need to rush it, they became op there too