Why are the Netherlands ai just... bad?

Is it me or am I the only one who in their games that when they look at the smallest army unless it's very late the netherlands usually have 0 army even when next to warmongering civs? In my King game I was playing Denmark went to war with the Netherlands and he had about 11k and I think was making is 5th city (only about 60-90 turns in on standard speed). I then because Morocco made friendship with Denmark payed Denmark to go to war with Morocco and it pulled me in with because of defensive pack. Later in the game after the Netherlands had only 2 cities I got frigates took over Rabat (which Morocco JUST gave away in peace) and gave it back to him (bad city) and went over and returned Netherlands 3rd-4th city (they also lost Rotterdam). After about another 50 or so turns using Info addict he still remained 2nd to last in military (even on turn 200 he was still there) only because Denmark had basically his capital left and he was very close to them in military.

I don't get it. In many games I see they usually are the first to be wiped out if they're in it and near any semi-warmongering civs.

Why are they just so bad at knowing what they really need? I understand the AI isn't to great at it but I see the other AI's that aren't warmongers have a good enough military to actually defend their cities from even barbarians (trust me 11k most likely in the AI's way wont defend against barbarians over 4-5 cities)

I don't know, they're probably the worst AI in the game though, they do not even know how to use their UA.

Try trading with The Netherlands when it only has one luxury resource, it will still try to sell it to you for a high price even though their ability is that they do not take a happiness penalty for trading their luxury resources.

Its not just their UA. AIs dont actually need a UA to be good. France barely uses their UA either but is much better. The reason is the dutch have very high naval unit flavour and they build very few land units. They tend to get overrun when attacked from land which their ships can do nothing about.

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Some AI problems in Civ V trace down to the flavor combinations. Some flavors (such as high science) work well; others such as (high expansion + low happiness) wouldn't work for a human even on Prince but due to AI handicaps can for the AI, and yet others (low science) doesn't even work for the AI.

Yet other flavors desirability is situation dependent. Netherlands has a low land unit flavor. With peaceful neighbors it works well, with aggressive AIs next door it doesn't. I also note though that all AIs, including Netherlands have a high flavor for their UU. And so if Netherlands were fighting a Naval war in early Industrial era (after having a shot to build its naval units) it would do well.

Yes, Netherlands doesn't use its UA at all. It does give you a discount compared to other AIs in this situation though. All other AIs want 3 of your luxuries for their last copy. Netherlands only wants 2 of your luxuries for their last copy. It's still normally not a good deal.

On some maps there won't be any Marsh or Flood Plains to use its UI.

An interesting pattern I've seen is that all AIs with a naval flavour tend to suck or at least perform below average. I guess the idea is that a large navy is rarely an element to success when compared to say science or expansion.

joncnunn said:

Some AI problems in Civ V trace down to the flavor combinations. Some flavors (such as high science) work well; others such as (high expansion + low happiness) wouldn't work for a human even on Prince but due to AI handicaps can for the AI, and yet others (low science) doesn't even work for the AI.

Yet other flavors desirability is situation dependent. Netherlands has a low land unit flavor. With peaceful neighbors it works well, with aggressive AIs next door it doesn't. I also note though that all AIs, including Netherlands have a high flavor for their UU. And so if Netherlands were fighting a Naval war in early Industrial era (after having a shot to build its naval units) it would do well.

Yes, Netherlands doesn't use its UA at all. It does give you a discount compared to other AIs in this situation though. All other AIs want 3 of your luxuries for their last copy. Netherlands only wants 2 of your luxuries for their last copy. It's still normally not a good deal.

On some maps there won't be any Marsh or Flood Plains to use its UI.

Click to expand...

The thing is in the game so far he hasn't even barely built a Navy. I think i've seen maybe a 1 gally throughout the whole game and i'm getting close to battleships. Also this is a Small Continents map so :\...

InspCallahan said:

An interesting pattern I've seen is that all AIs with a naval flavour tend to suck or at least perform below average. I guess the idea is that a large navy is rarely an element to success when compared to say science or expansion.

Click to expand...

This is map type specific:

High land army flavors suffer if playing Large Islands or Tiny Island while High navy flavors are actually better than normal on these two map types.

Science is King; which is why the high science flavors are the biggest long term threat. (If not wiped out early by an aggressive AI starting right next to them)

Expansion: Only useful if you build the science buildings to go with them and have the happiness. If you are playing on Immortal+, the high expansion AIs are relaying entirely upon the happiness bonuses and in fact even with those bonuses a glance at the Trade route available screen will often show them to be behind in science.

Fatheredpuma81 said:

The thing is in the game so far he hasn't even barely built a Navy. I think i've seen maybe a 1 gally throughout the whole game and i'm getting close to battleships. Also this is a Small Continents map so :\...

Click to expand...

For the Dutch, it not so much an across the board naval flavor they have but instead its for their Naval UU, which replaces the Privateer. (I normally only see a few naval units from them until they've reached that tech, afterwards I see a swarm of their UU) It sounds like they are behind you in techs, a glance at trade routes available will tell you how far behind they are if any of their cities are within trade range.