Playing as Netherlands

Ookamikun

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 25, 2012
Messages
21
Is there really an ideal way to play them? Only thing going for them is the polder UI and I guess the Sea Beggar is not bad. Their UA is really lackluster, and focusing their starting point on luxuries rather than strategic resources is kinda bad.
 
There is...


Try to play peacefull and go for a science victory.. Build wonders that give you happiness like the chichen nitcha, notre dam, forbidden palace.. At this point you can sell all you're luxuries for money withouth losing happiness...

If you can't get them but you're neighbour has them its worth declaring war and taking over because it helps a lot..




Sea bagger is extremely usefull ship it starts with suply SO if you are playing as the netherlands build a few sea beggars and start creating a fleat...


Polder just built it whenever you can

You can sell all you're luxuries and still maintain happiness.
 
Why do people keep saying the UA is weak? I think its a great UA. It means you can get extra cash early and still retain some of the happiness of the lux you sell. Or sell your last copy for a lux you don't have and come out +2 :) ahead. get the right SPs and its like you never gave away your lux!
 
It's an amazing UA. Won my first deity game with the Netherlands ... I don't know why people don't like it more. Just rolling in dough from all the trades you can make. Works better on a pangea map where you can meet everyone fairly quickly and always have trades going. Like Arabia in that respect.

The polder and their ship are also awesome.

However in multiplayer it's useless.
 
I guess it's more of the inner machinations of the lux happiness that confused me.

I know for a fact that you retain 50% of the happiness boost when you trade your last lux copy. However, does the game assume that you still "have" it, i.e. that lux happiness boost from Commerce affects it still?
 
I think The Netherlands is awesome, for the following reasons:

:c5moves: I'm from The Netherlands. :scan: What? Okay, not being fair here..

:c5moves: The UA is great. Sell all luxuries. Get the Protectionism policy from the Commerce branch for even more happiness per luxury. This might give you a better chance at a golden age. You'll get so much gold (on top of the amounts you normally would generate), that you could i.e. buy buildings and focus cities on science (or a great person for it's special tile improvement, if you're going to complete the Freedom policy branch), go for massive gifting to city states, buy lots of military units or... ...all of these.

:c5moves: The Sea Beggar is great for it's a ship, ships look way cooler than all those unique horses many civs have. I thinks there's 10 unique horse units, on top of the normally available horse units!

:c5moves: Playing a map with lots of coast and sea? Go for The Netherlands! Archipelago is a very good map for William. The fact that he has the strong Sea Beggar and that these ships come with the supply and coastal raiders promotions out of the box (can you imagine, a pirate ship in a box ;)), makes city conquering (or just raiding for even more gold) a walk in the park. If a city can't be attacked from more than 2 sea tiles, use some frigates to bombard the city from distance before attacking it with the Sea Beggars.

:c5moves: The voice of William is very annoying (thankfully, his nickname is William the Silent) and some things he says don't sound to me like correct dutch (not even correct old dutch). This means that choosing The Netherlands as your civ, you won't have to hear his annoying talk.
 
I guess it's more of the inner machinations of the lux happiness that confused me.

I know for a fact that you retain 50% of the happiness boost when you trade your last lux copy. However, does the game assume that you still "have" it, i.e. that lux happiness boost from Commerce affects it still?

I'm testing it right now!

* results are in, read next post *
 
Short answer: YES! Protectionism grants extra happiness for the last copies of luxuries you trade away.

Explanation:

Spoiler :
Regardless of playing with The Netherlands or not, having a luxury resource grants 4 :c5happy: happiness. If you have 2 Crabs and you're exporting 1 of them, the exported one generates no happiness, the one you have generates 4 :c5happy: happiness.

With Protectionism (+2 :c5happy: Happiness from each Luxury resource), the one Crab you have left will generate 6 :c5happy: happiness.

Now, what if we're playing as William, so we have the East India Company UA. On top of this, we have the Protectionism policy from the Commerce branch.

Read the unique ability carefully:
Retains 50% happiness from the last copy of luxuries that are traded away to other Civs.

Firstly, for the UA to take effect, you need to trade away all of the particular luxury resource.
Secondly, the game calculates the UA happiness before the Protectionism bonus, strangely enough (check the images below), but it grants the Protectionism bonus even if the Luxury is traded away...
This results in the following amount of happiness for a Luxury resource.
50% of 4 = 2 :c5happy: happiness from the UA + 2 :c5happy: happiness from Protectionism = 4 :c5happy: happiness from the last copy that you are trading with another civ.

Do you see what I see? I see that trading away a luxury resource costs 2 happiness (it gives you 4 in stead of 6). That's not the 50% the UA states, but what the heck, let's exploit this as much as we can.

This can be seen in the two screenshots below.


Images from an actual game, to illustrate the above.

Spoiler :
The game in the shots is played with The Netherlands, of course. The first one is without Protectionism. The second shot is with Protectionism.



In the above image, you can see that we have 1 crabs + 1 exported, 1 silk + 0 exported and 0 Truffles + 1 exported (last copy). This grants respectively 4 + 4 + 2 = 10 :c5happy: happiness from luxury resources, as we can see as well in the image, showing the Economics Overview. The UA happiness is labeled Misc. from Luxuries.

The following image has 2 differences. Now, the Protectionism policy is adopted and the 1 silk we had is now also exported. Now we get 6 + 4 + 4 = 14 :c5happy: happiness from these luxuries. A remarkable detail: the Protectionism bonus for the 1 crab we have left is labeled Bonus per Luxury, but the Protectionism bonus for the exported silk and truffles is labeled Misc. from Luxuries, as it belongs to the UA happiness.



I hope I explained in an understandable way.

Now it's up to you to think of other unique situations that influence this UA. Like: what happens if you give a civ your luxury (after they made a demand), is this considered as trading away your (possibly) last luxury?
 
Ahh interesting, so essentially his style is selling all resources for quick buck without worry of losing happiness.
 
Netherlands UA is FANTASTIC if you know hot to use it! Its one of the better UAs in the game. First you need to sell all your resources, swim in cash and you will still stay on happy side with this UA. Buy city-states with that money for their resources and bonuses all over the place, more happy, more culture, more food - > which leads to monster cities.

They are even better on water maps, where you want to colonize islands with new resources thus using your UA even more. Last +2 happy policy in commerce tree is fantastic for Netherlands - beeline it, that tree is really made for this civ. Patronage is excellent since you will have money.

Polder is fantastic also, you need to get to economics, just don't clear marsh tiles. Sea Beggars are a bit expensive to build, but you can buy them outright. No-brainer victory - diplomatic. Science is ok too.

And you really want to avoid wars as you need many friends so you sell your resources.
 
And you really want to avoid wars as you need many friends so you sell your resources.

If you're on a water map, this is not a big issue. By the time you can build the Sea Beggar, you'll probably have a nice collection of CSs allied of befriended. All the money you get from the UA can be spent on Sea Beggars in stead of new CS alliances. This way, you'll have protection and all kinds of CS benefits.

You could even capture an enemy city with a Luxury you didn't own yet if the situation permits lowering your guard or spending extra money on an offensive fleet. They'll beg for mercy after a while.

I recommend having 1-3 Sea Beggars per coastal city you own, depending on the aggressiveness of the game.
 
Finally tried to play one seriously - holy crap that was awesome!

I managed to amass a huge army of sea beggars! I feel like there was no need to build ranged sea units outside of the occasional sub - it was really fantastic, especially when upgraded!

The UA is really helpful vs. AIs - you can force them to be bankrupt because they somehow can't refuse any luxury offer.

And wow... the Polder... man.
 
Seabeggars are awesome! :D Did you guys ever try one of these two strategies on archipelago maps (high water level makes it even easier) to make optimal use of them?

1. Puppet hunting (for gold and science)
• beeline navigation and build some seabeggars a.s.a.p.
• convert other ships to seabeggars (like the Ottomans UA does) and get naval domination for the rest of the game (seabeggars upgrade to destroyers, making subs less of a problem)
• conquer coastal cities without the use of any landunits! (Major issue: you don’t have to be afraid of loosing embarked units to barbarian or enemy ships or accompaning them by naval units, loosing speed!)

Bee-lining for navigation can get you seabeggars early enough to conquer at least a dozen cities with them, without any support of other units!! When cities grow stronger or when there are not enough water tiles to attack the cities from: use a few frigates for supportive bombing!! This way you can get a huge puppet empire that financially compensates for the loss of friends to trade with. And a lot of puppets (pop!) can boost science too! And because of your huge navy you don't have to be afraid for invasions for the rest of the game.

2. Luxury hunting (supporting the UA)
• especially suited for larger archipelago maps
• beeline navigation and build some seabeggars a.s.a.p.
• convert other ships to seabeggars and get naval domination for the rest of the game
• carefully select few AI-opponents (or CS’s) that have luxuries you lack, especially the scarce ones.
• declare war a.s.a.p. and go luxury hunting (only puppet cities with luxuries)
• when you‘ve got the luxuries you want, settle for peace, making the peace deal as profitable as possible.
• use the UA to sell the luxuries to the remaining friendly civs without happiness penalty
Without the necessity of land units, now you can conquer the one-tile islands with whales, crab and pearls very early!

Downside: playing on an archipelago map probably gives you less marshes and floodplains to make use of the polder improvement.
 
The Netherlands are fantastic on a water map - just about to finish an Immortal game with 8 civs and I've all but decimated the opposition.

Their trait and UU allows you to increase gold from trading all your luxuries without a massive happiness hit and it bags you a huge fleet from a small investment in some early ranged ships and seabeggars - just steal enemy ships and save them until frigates are available -> upgrade. Combine this approach with the Tradition & Commerce Tree and you will never have unhappiness or city growth issues. My only issue so far is that I'm not allowed to build polders on tiles where I thought you could - river plains. I don't get that one...

I don't know how they would perform on a landmap, but their trait is definately top-tier no matter the map type.

Going for a Netherlands deity game with 10 civs next.
 
You both mean that you declare war to the entire world, to get so huge naval forces ? :confused:
Because if you only steal barbarian ones, it could be veeeery long, no ?
 
My only issue so far is that I'm not allowed to build polders on tiles where I thought you could - river plains. I don't get that one...

The Polder can be built on flood plains ans marshes (so don't clear marshes!!!). Not every tile next to a river is a flood plain. Maybe setting the map to wet will create more marshes and flood plains?
 
You both mean that you declare war to the entire world, to get so huge naval forces ? :confused:
Because if you only steal barbarian ones, it could be veeeery long, no ?

In my game, eventually yes since I'm going for a domination win. But not DOW all at once, of course. After you get Iron Working, beeline Education and Navigation after that. Make sure that the first civ you DOW, doesn't have a lot of friends among the other civs (you want to keep healthy trade relations with as many civs as possible, at least until the midgame), is fairly close to your own empire and if they have iron and luxuries you don't have, that's an added bonus.

On Immortal/Deity the above speculation might be redundant, as it is more likely that they will DOW in you first. If so, just fend them off until you have the strength to go on the offensive. Don't make peace if you plan to attack them later, when the conditions are to your advantage.

As for the fleet, I think I built 4 range and 4 melee ships myself initially and that was it. The rest is taken as prize with seabeggars/privateers. I think my fleet consisted of something like +30 ships by the 1500s AD, half of them frigates. All my iron goes to frigates. Sea dominance will win the game for you, especially since the introduction of melee ships in G&K. I didn't take a single barb ship - in fact, they seem to have become pretty rare.

@EDP - thanx. I figured it out by re-reading the in-game breakdown on the polder improvement :)
 
You both mean that you declare war to the entire world, to get so huge naval forces ? :confused:
Because if you only steal barbarian ones, it could be veeeery long, no ?

No, DOW one or two civs at a time, depending on how strong or confident you are. ;) First set your goals (puppets, luxuries, eliminating opponents) for this period in the game and choose the opponents to DOW carefully. By defeating the (small) navies of your opponents, you will almost automatically grow into naval domination.
Barbs are helpfull when present, but this varies every game, even when you set them to raging.
 
The Netherlands are pretty much third when it comes to Naval Power (Behind England and the Ottomans - early game they will be trumped by Carthage and Byzantium but they're a non-issue later on) so you'll have to keep that in mind. Don't bother too much with a land force. Get Guilds ASAP if you have enough tiles for polders (they're really worth it) and then try to get the Great Lighthouse afterwards so your ships will end up on par with England's and negate their advantage (If they're even in the game). Then work your way up to Economics for the Polder Improvement which turns them into real powerhouses, and once you got that, work up to Sea Beggars.
During this time, improve all luxuries you get and sell them off ASAP, racking in so much cash you can afford to just buy the buildings for your city rather then having to waste hammers on them. Easy as can be.

Side note; Netherlands on a flood plain/desert heavy map + Petra = Good game, right there.
 
I think the netherlands are great for the 4 city tradition strategy. You can settle luxuries early on, sell them and still get enough happiness to rush your 4th city.

Apart from that, they seem to be somewhat adaptive to terrain. Around a desert polders can be used to get some extra yield from flood plains and offset desert tiles. In swampy areas (which are rare on temperate setting, but may occur on in wet worlds), the polder allows some quite neat midgame yield.

And finally, see beggars are great on any water map. I guess they are my 2nd most favorite CIV after Korea. :D
 
Top Bottom