Are Poles and Bohemians too strong?

2 months after the Dawn of the Dukes release, let's dive into the online ranked stats of Poles and Bohemians!

0:30 What games are included in the data?
0:52 Poles (overall)
2:10 Poles (open maps)
5:00 Poles (closed maps)
7:30 Bohemians (overall)
8:20 Bohemians (open maps)
9:28 Bohemians (closed maps)

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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition

[johntitor]

Poles really are OP. Their folwarks allow for perfect 3x3 farms.

[YossarianVanDriver]

Honestly, it's really impressive balance that even the most "overpowered" civs still only have like, a 50-something % win rate, and even the most "underpowered" only have a 40-something %, you have to really zoom in the graphs to make the differences significant. Makes me feel good about exclusively playing the ones I think are cool historically, even if they're technically underpowered it's never going to be by /that/ much.

[owenpoppe]

I imagine the reason poles are so good on arena is because their stone bonus greatly helps a fast castle drop, followed up by potentially the best spammable unique unit in the game. Which also happens to quickly cut through buildings.

[josephdaumen]

<Sees Vietnamese and Tatars as some of the worst in team and 1v1 games>

Sorry, guys. That's on me. Singlehandedly bringing everyone down.

[elliejohnson]

I am impressed at their balance. Most "On-launch" content in every game I play, ESPECIALLY paid content, is extremely overpowered on launch.

[zaracaan]

Beautiful graphs. Great statistical analysis. This is pure Spirit of The Law's awesomeness

[michaeltaylor]

I think the Poles low performance in long team games may come down to their imp age cavalry's weakness to archers. If the enemy team has groups of massed archers they shred the Polish cavalry very easily. The discount on their Cavaliers doesn't matter much if they get killed before they can land a hit.

[namekiannameless]

2:24 arabaia huh, interesting new map, gonna check it out

[matthewmcneany]

No + 4 armour is absolutly the killer in team games. That's 5 damage per shot from a bracer and no chemistry arbalest against your cavlier as compared to 3 damage for a cavalier from a civ with plate mail. An archer player does 2/3 more damage to a cav player's units in early imp, all things being equal. And yes the price discount is significant but but doesn't translate into a 2/3rds bigger health pool - which is why you can't reliably chose poles in a team game. At least that's how it seems to me from the games I've played and watched.

[zeflute]

So, where can I find Dr. SOTL's papers and where did he get his tenure?

[petertimowreef]

Whenever we talk about the Bohemians I picture a group of avant la lettre hipsters sitting on a faded chesterfield couch with an opium pipe and a scratched violin.

[Davtwan]

“Calvary civs don’t work in closed games.”
Poles: “What!?” *Hoof punch.*

[talmagejones]

As someone who loves stats, I love the explanation of the graphs, of confidence intervals, etc. that you give in the video. Thank you!

[Binarokaro]

This is actually really fascinating, I had been focusing so much on their individual bonuses and uniques and whatnot that I didn't realize that when taken as a whole, they're actually quite average, rather than being OP

[spd]

I'm interested to see how Poles will do if allied with Mongols. On paper it looks like that:

1. The scouting bonus will help the player with the Poles actually start with scouts while the Mongols could begin with archers before switching to cav archers in Castle Age.

2. It also is possible the Mongols keep up with scouts while the Poles try to hold out with archers in Feudal and then get faster to a castle.

3. The Imperial Age is nothing to talk of. Furthermore, the Poles can actually carry the Mongols and cover for their weakness in early Imperial. Obuch and Mangudai seems a good combo on paper at least. It also can mean a Hussar Mayhem in the end if the techs get researched.

4. BUT both civs lack Plate Barding and Ring Archer Armour. This may make the raids suffer a bit. Poles make up with emphasis on quantity while Mongols make up with extra mobility. But could that work out?

I'm interested to ser how these very unlikely allies (historically) would go together. At least it could be interesting.

[Unormalism]

Watching the Incas in each chart was a real ride. Second least picked, and those sporadic winrates

[nekoprincess]

Whether the Poles and Bohemians were too strong before the making of this video, it matters little now. Spirit has cursed them to become nerfed.

[petersmythe]

Interesting the grouping of civs in a phylogenetic tree. I did not expect that data structure here but it totally makes sense. In fact, there's a lot of interesting stuff to analyze here.

[Neon-Lines]

9:34 Spirit says Poles and Bohemians are among the most popular picks despite not everyone owning the DLC, but completely ignores that people just play them because they're new

[mastemaherald]

Just a minor nitpick, the 95% interval represents that when collecting the data with the same sample size as used here, the calculated interval would contain the true win rate 95% of the time (When looking at one win rate at least). It's a bit confusing, but there is an important difference here since the 95% relates to the data analysis and not the win rate itself.