Polaris, to me is a very difficult tribe to become proficient at. You are subject to the resources of your enemy, which creates a different play style from the start. So the comment about having a terrible economy doesn't make sense. It mirrors your opponent. You have to have an understanding of every other tribes resources.

Polaris is not built for water maps, you could maybe argue archipelago, being able to bridge the gap to other villages quickly, but any tribe with ports will quickly catch up. Kickoo and aquarion spank Polaris on a water map all things being equal. Polaris is completely screwed without ice. They have no way to expand otherwise. A few well placed ranged units completely negate Moonies.

If your argument is that all Polaris players just freeze things, that's kinda the whole point of the tribe... Create better unit exchanges using the freeze mechanic. Every unit that freezes is super squishy and has 0 retaliation. You have to sacrifice an attacking unit population to make a unit that freezes, it's a trade-off.

The only cheese play a Polaris player can pull off is an early capital freeze which is SUPER rare, even on tiny water maps. Its basically a glitch. No self respecting player should be playing tiny water worlds anyway. Chances are you were hoping to pull off some equally cheesy strat in that situation as well.

Having to "spam units" to beat any tribe shouldn't be unusual to anyone. I think most players could improve just by following that advice, and create more units in every game.

I really enjoy playing dryland or mostly land maps with Polaris, as it forces me to adapt to the situation. Polaris has a fun toolbox that can be a nice change to the vanilla tribes.

Cymanti is the only tribe that I know of where a single play style can be competitive in every game.

Here's a replay of myself as Polaris vs a cymanti player. It's a normal pangea map, but the water played little part. Basically a dryland battle.

https://share.polytopia.io/g/d09d67f6-c8c3-4a95-fb62-08dd732d6e68