The Netherlands

General change, they have ocean startingbias now instead of whatever they had before(atleast I think so, and it really makes sense)

UA - Each luxury resource increases Gold income by 5%.

I think this one is fine. However in the latest CEPverson I played there was a bug(?) leading to them still having their old UA aswell, that really isn't needed and could probably be removed.


Unique Building: Trade Office - Harbor replacement with a merchant slot, extra gold, and extra gold on land or sea routes

Never got a chance to try this one out a lot, so it probably need some adjustment done to it after it is implemented and people have had a chance to try it out.

Unique Improvement: Polder - Available at Civil service.
Improvement, restricted to tiles next to coast, restricted to flat land, +2 food base. +1 food on tiles with freshwater access at Civil service, +1 food for tiles without freshwater access at fertilizer.

Basically acts as a farm with +1 food, but only buildable on non-hill tiles next to coast.
Might be nice to make it buildable next to laketiles(for flavor) aswell, but I don't know if that's even possible.
Other than that I love it, feels way less random than the old polder since you're way more likely to find coast than you are to find marsh/floodplains

Trade Office: It might be enough if it only is a combination of harbour&caravanserai (meaning the dutch need only one of the two buildings)

Polder: It'd be nice/thematic if they were additionally still buildable on marsh as well, but maybe that's too complicated a trigger...

mitsho said:

Trade Office: It might be enough if it only is a combination of harbour&caravanserai (meaning the dutch need only one of the two buildings)

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Like i said, probably actually need to try it out before I can give a valid response.

Polder: It'd be nice/thematic if they were additionally still buildable on marsh as well, but maybe that's too complicated a trigger...

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Marsh give -1 food, meaning the tile would give the same value as a normal farm, making it pretty pointless

Hmmm. Do normal farms not replace the marsh with grassland? If that's the case, then the polder would still get it's +1 over a farm.
As for the polder on river tiles. I am speculating here, but if you can code for 'only on coastal' you can code for 'coastal and river'. The check is already in game for stuff like water mills, right?
Another question: do we/you want to keep the upgrades polders get at Economics? (+1 production and +2 gold?)

BigBadBear said:

Hmmm. Do normal farms not replace the marsh with grassland? If that's the case, then the polder would still get it's +1 over a farm.

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Farms need to remove the marsh first, polders however don't, and in fact you can't even make it remove the marsh first because that makes the polder unbuildable . That's the reason why vanilla Floodplain polders gives one more food than vanilla marsh polders btw

As for the polder on river tiles. I am speculating here, but if you can code for 'only on coastal' you can code for 'coastal and river'. The check is already in game for stuff like water mills, right?

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Lakes, not rivers and like I said I have no idea if it is possible, have to ask one of the programmers

BigBadBear said:

Another question: do we/you want to keep the upgrades polders get at Economics? (+1 production and +2 gold?)

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Nah, forgot to mention that, that would be crazy . The CEPpolders only really grow at fertilizer, and I suggested the freshwater change to make it always one point better than farms becasue when they had the same value automated workers(which people shouldn't be using but some use them anyways) gets confused when two improvements give the same amounts and keep replacing them with eachother.

If we can give terrain specific-bonuses I wouldn't mind making marsh +1 food for the Dutch in general thus making the polder "useful" again here. Yes, that's mostly symbolic I know

mitsho said:

If we can give terrain specific-bonuses I wouldn't mind making marsh +1 food for the Dutch in general thus making the polder "useful" again here. Yes, that's mostly symbolic I know

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Probably possible to make polders buildable on marsh with +1 food, but is it really worth the work?

So... no unique unit at all?

The sea beggar is a bit situational, but lots of fun to use. Healing outside your territory is very useful and in combination with the free promotions, it makes for a pretty playable unit that can snowball into a decent navy if used correctly - and is still good when upgraded.

I'd rather see the UB part baked into the UA than losing the unique unit, especially when the UU is fairly solid.

I don't think the Dutch need a UB, as they have a strong UI and a fun UU. I've buffed the Polder to give more production early on (starts with +1 Production), but I'm going to keep the Marsh/Floodplain focus for the sake of balance. Spamming the coasts with Polders would look odd, and makes Polynesia's ability less unique.
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Gazebo said:

I don't think the Dutch need a UB, as they have a strong UI and a fun UU.

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That was the way CEP handled it, and I really think it was fine that way. I don't really feel the way firaxis does about UUs that every civ needs atleast one of them. Also while the idea behind the seabegger is great and its promotions are nice it still suffers from being a melee ship in a game where melee ships are only used for the last hit on a city after it has been bombed down by ranged ships.

I've buffed the Polder to give more production early on (starts with +1 Production), but I'm going to keep the Marsh/Floodplain focus for the sake of balance. Spamming the coasts with Polders would look odd, and makes Polynesia's ability less unique.

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There was never any real problem with the base game polder, only that it created completely unbalanced situations, for example citylocations with tons of floodplains. I have no idea why CEP changed it, but my guess would be to smooth out those imbalances by giving you a easier pre-req with a weaker UI.
Also the part about it looking silly really goes the same way for floodplains.

Main issue however is that the useless vanilla UA remains.

Funak said:

That was the way CEP handled it, and I really think it was fine that way. I don't really feel the way firaxis does about UUs that every civ needs atleast one of them. Also while the idea behind the seabegger is great and its promotions are nice it still suffers from being a melee ship in a game where melee ships are only used for the last hit on a city after it has been bombed down by ranged ships.



There was never any real problem with the base game polder, only that it created completely unbalanced situations, for example citylocations with tons of floodplains. I have no idea why CEP changed it, but my guess would be to smooth out those imbalances by giving you a easier pre-req with a weaker UI.
Also the part about it looking silly really goes the same way for floodplains.

Main issue however is that the useless vanilla UA remains.

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I trained the AI to better use the UA a while back - William actually trades away his resources now, which is nice. The problem with the 5% gold UA is that it isn't terribly flavorful- it is dull. That's largely why I've kept some of the vanilla UAs, even where weak - I don't want to exchange 'perfect balance' for 'dull sameness.'

Gazebo said:

I trained the AI to better use the UA a while back - William actually trades away his resources now, which is nice. The problem with the 5% gold UA is that it isn't terribly flavorful- it is dull. That's largely why I've kept some of the vanilla UAs, even where weak - I don't want to exchange 'perfect balance' for 'dull sameness.'

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I agree, the CEP UA isn't fun, at all actually, but atleast it does something. The vanilla UA used to be great back in vanilla civ5 when you could trade your luxuries for huge piles of gold early on and expand really fast. But with the restriction that you can only sell luxuries for flat gold to friends, your early game economic lead has turned into a extremely situational minor happiness boost.

And honestly I'm not even sure if it works with your luxury happiness changes, do you now get 2 happiness for trading away a 1 happniess luxury?

TLDR: CEP-UA is boring but the vanilla UA is boring and bad imo.

Vanilla William have always been the extremely situational leader, he got a waterbased UU with no ocean bias. Some games you get a start in the middle of a huge pile of floodplains and get a way unfair advantage because of that. Some games you find a ton of different luxuries and a lot of AI to actually trade them with (Which is rather rare now I'm afraid) and get ahead because of that.
While some people might enjoy that kind of playstyle (People who love the restartbuttn? ) I really don't think that's something worth keeping

The new Dutch ability rewards trade, but in a more effective and tangible manner than their previous UA. It is similar to Morroco's UA, however the bonus is more clearly tied to expansion (grabbing as many luxuries as you can) instead of trade routes. This, combined with a slight buff to the Polder, makes the Dutch pretty strong.

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I'm sceptical about this new Netherlands ability - again, in multiplayer it'd be useless as the only thing it does is ensure nobody would ever takes a Luxury from William even for free (happiness is quite generous in Community Patch, I doubt giving 3 GPT to my enemy for 1 happiness is a good trade).


It's still probably better than what it was though, at least it has some use in singleplayer now but still one of the worst.

Enrico Swagolo said:

I'm sceptical about this new Netherlands ability - again, in multiplayer it'd be useless as the only thing it does is ensure nobody would ever takes a Luxury from William even for free (happiness is quite generous in Community Patch, I doubt giving 3 GPT to my enemy for 1 happiness is a good trade).


It's still probably better than what it was though, at least it has some use in singleplayer now but still one of the worst.

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I'd try it before stating that it is 'still one of the worst.'
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Gazebo said:

The new Dutch ability rewards trade, but in a more effective and tangible manner than their previous UA. It is similar to Morroco's UA, however the bonus is more clearly tied to expansion (grabbing as many luxuries as you can) instead of trade routes. This, combined with a slight buff to the Polder, makes the Dutch pretty strong.

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I'll go back to my original point about polders. They were really good before you buffed them, probably too good, and your buff wasn't really needed.
The reason why I wanted them changed in the first place wasn't because they were weak, but because they are random. I've had starts with 20 workable floodplain tiles, that just completely breaks the game. The marshpolders are fine since marsh is pretty rare, and even when you get some of it it's usually just clumped up with 3 or 4. But floodplains, some places have floodplains all over, even if it's just one river you're still going to have atleast 6 polders next to eachother (and the fact that floodplain polders are actually better than marshpolders doesn't really help the issue).

Removing the ability to build polders on floodplains wouldn't help either, you'd be forced to buff the marshpolders to make up for their being less locations to build them and you'd still run into this problem if you find a good marshclump in a game.

The CEP-verson of polder was probably weaker than the vanilla verson i most cases but had the added bonus of being consistant(since there usually is coast ), which is probably something to go for.

And about the UA, I'm not completely sold on it from just what I've been reading but I'll try another game around now.

The problem with the coasts setting is the AI's understanding of plot value. I'd have to completely rewrite the AI's evaluation model for cities for William if I changed that. I'd...rather not. The variability of William settling near floodplains/marshes is simply a risk/reward feature of his UI – other civs have this same dynamic (looking at you, Spain), so I'm not sure that this is a problem.

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That's a good gameplay reasoning, ... but how does it work for Kamehameha then?

His UI also goes for 'coasts', no? The Polder would then be just a superfarm near the coast?

Gazebo said:

The problem with the coasts setting is the AI's understanding of plot value. I'd have to completely rewrite the AI's evaluation model for cities for William if I changed that. I'd...rather not. The variability of William settling near floodplains/marshes is simply a risk/reward feature of his UI – other civs have this same dynamic (looking at you, Spain), so I'm not sure that this is a problem.

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Couldn't that code just be stolen from CEP?

Honestly, if you think it would be too much work, don't do it. I'm just saying that the current floodplainpolders are out of control and could quite possibly be a major balanceissue.

mitsho said:

That's a good gameplay reasoning, ... but how does it work for Kamehameha then?

His UI also goes for 'coasts', no? The Polder would then be just a superfarm near the coast?

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Yes, but the AI has its own logic for Kamehameha based around culture and tourism. It gets really complicated, and is quite dumb, but Firaxis hardcoded a bunch of flavors for civ settling based on their traits.

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