Polder placement requirements too harsh

[iammaxhailme]

In my opinion they are far too harsh... you are lucky if you get even one per city, and they aren't so great that one is enough.

I think they should

- Be enabled on marsh again
and
- Have the requirement be lowered to 2 adjacent flat tiles, OR keep it at 3 but remove the hill requirement (but not 2 of any tiles, that would be too easy IMO)

I hope firaxis reads these forums (we know they're here sometimes!) and are open to rebalancing

 

[Cobalt_Blue]

Those together would be way too much.

The flatland requirement makes sense because of what polders are. Needing only two tiles would make creating them way too easy; if you did that they'd need to nerf polder yields.

I could see enabling on marsh tho!

 

[Giskler]

Try playing on archipelago map, it's great for polderization!

 

[Sagax]

I wish existing Polders counted as a tile towards placement requirement. Now that would be some terraforming and landscape planning!

Until then, play on Fractal.

 

[Datian]

Polders are always a better improvement, so it makes sense that you can't spam them everywhere - I mean "always better" as in "you won't hesitate between your UI and one more mine".

However, you need a row of three ones for them to reach their whole potency, and you obviously need to be very lucky to pull that.

I think a good balance would be to ask for "three adjacent land tiles, one having to be flat".

 

[Sostratus]

Polders have the potential to be the best improvement, but that's only possible if you get a perfect lake setup.

Having played a full game as the Dutch, I agree with the OP that they either need to
-remove the flat land restriction, or
reduce it to 2 land tiles. (I would settle for keeping it at 3 if a polder could count as a land tile! Now THAT would be podracing!)

The reason is because the polder itself gives +1/+1. It's entire upgrade tree revolves around polder adjacency. But it's virtually impossible to get more than one polder down.

Seriously, excluding lakes, which are rare enough, play a normal continents map and look at your coastline. Draw out a hex grid and see what kind of terrain you actually need to get 3 land tiles. Then realize they all need to be flat. I found myself getting about 1 per coastal city.

Now, you think "but Sostratus, it goes on the WATER! Surely this gives it an edge case over other UIs!" That was true, but now that we have Liang it isn't. Fisheries give +1 food no matter what. Often 2. You can build one anywhere you can put a polder. So the Dutch UI is roughly equivalent (in a standard gameplay experience) of replacing one fishery for a special +1 production, +4 gold fishery in some of your coastal cities.

This is just emotionally devastating in game- you get your hopes up and they get crushed every time by the terrain generator. Compare with the kampung, which is much easier to place. It's no contest.

If our fear is that letting the dutch line the ubiquitous straight coastline with polders being too OP, then honestly just cut down the replaceable parts boost to land them at having a +1/+1 adjacency.
Realize that harbors, water parks, wonders, and sea resources are competing for those coastal tiles too. (Recall what Australia's carpet of outback station looks like, especially on those petra hills. Yeah, polders don't look so OP now, do they?)

That said, I did manage to get a couple lakes to work out, which just felt amazing to execute- exactly as UIs should. But even then, plenty of the scarce lake spots were ruined by a rogue hill.
One thing, though: polders get really absurd if you can wombo combo the right lake, Huey, Auckland, and standard harbor bonuses. Of course, this will almost never happen, and often you'll be in my situation where that no-hills lake is also in the middle of the snow!

It's maybe the one thing I would actually mod about Civ6, other than carrier fleets not getting +1 aircraft slot.

 

[clapyourhands]

Polders have the same diametric design as they did in V, where they're good enough to be absolutely ridiculous with the right map, but situational enough to be mediocre or even lackluster in a more than a few games. I think one option is to try to preserve this dynamic, but within one game rather than across multiple games.

Instead of having some games where polders are insane and others where they're near-unusable, they could alter the requirements so that some cities could have even better polders than they do now, while other cities might not have any at all. Another poster brought up polders allowing the Netherlands to build more polders, and I think that's a good idea. Keeping the current requirement would be fine if it was changed to "3 flat land tiles or 2 flat land tiles and another Polder". So once the first Polder goes up, it's likely you can get 2 or 3 around the same spot, but limiting it to still needing 2 flat land + a polder keeps from infinite Polder spam. Keeping the non-hill req makes it so not every city can build Polders, which given their strength, is a fair trade, especially if the cities that can build Polders can built multiple of them.

 

[bite]

i think there should be limitations on placement, but the flat land component is a bit too much

 

[frubox]

I mean, i am not debating the polder requirements (nonetheless, play on fractal and be done with it), but if you think the polder have strict placing requirements, try placing a chemamul and come back here.

 

[stealth_nsk]

What about other parts of Netherlands? They have some trade route and district bonuses, so aren't they look quite strong even with limited polders?

P.S. I'm still in hospital, so can't check anything myself.

 

[Tech Osen]

Only playing my first game on island plates, but yeah, they seem a bit scarce. I fondly remember that one game in civ 5 where I got really lucky with swamps and floodplains allowing me 10+ polders on Amsterdam. Wish I had saved a screenshot of that one.

 

[ChocolateShake]

I initially thought polders would count as flat land for the purposes of placement.. not sure if that's realistic or not, but I thought it would be fun.

 

[Leyrann]

Am in a continents game with the Netherlands, I control about half the coastline of my continent and, including lakes, I think I got 5 or 6 Polders down.

Personal idea for placement rules: 3 flat adjacent tiles, for every extra adjacent land tile one less flat tile is required. So if you have 4 adjacent land tiles 2 of them need to be flat, if you have 5 adjacent land tiles only one of them needs to be flat and if you have 6 adjacent land tiles they can all be hills or mountains.

As for polders being associated with flat land, that's mostly because the polders themselves are flat, and so are most of the rest of the Netherlands. It's not actually a requirement. If you have a hilly or even a mountainous landscape with a bay, and you build a dike across the bay and pump out all the water, you still got a polder.

 

[blackbutterfly]

IDK about balance but if you want a map for good polders try Scrambled Southeast Asia (the Malay Archipelago) -> https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1104907946

IMO you'll have better luck with real world maps. (These are made from satellite images)

 

[Giskler]

Allowing polders to count for adjacency would be cool.

 

[Aurelesk]

I wish existing Polders counted as a tile towards placement requirement. Now that would be some terraforming and landscape planning!

Until then, play on Fractal.

Well, if a Polder count as a flat land, the Netherland could transform an Archipelago map into a dry earth. Or at least, they could manage to tranform every coastal tiles into Polder. But the Polders wouldn't have the yield from the Lighthouse, Seaport, Huey Tatloani or Auckland if they are not counted as coastal anymore.

 

[Ornen]

What about other parts of Netherlands? They have some trade route and district bonuses, so aren't they look quite strong even with limited polders?

Well, that's actually a problem in my opinion –– the Dutch's other bonuses actually aren't that strong. I'm on my first game with them now and can't say I'm very impressed. +1 Loyalty is pretty unexciting. When loyalty has come up in my games, it's typically been do or die. Governors make a difference but a couple trade routes don't, which makes sense based on the numbers. You would need 8 trade routes to equal 1 governor, or 2 trade routes per city to equal the loyalty bonus Amani gives nearby cities.

The river bonus might be their best power, I'm not quite sure yet. I've gotten some use out of it, but not as much as I would have hoped.

So yeah, I'm all in favor of giving the polder a boost. I agree that right now it feels too situational, especially since you need adjacent polders to really get the most out of them.

 

[marius_kaparius]

Well, that's actually a problem in my opinion –– the Dutch's other bonuses actually aren't that strong. I'm on my first game with them now and can't say I'm very impressed. +1 Loyalty is pretty unexciting. When loyalty has come up in my games, it's typically been do or die. Governors make a difference but a couple trade routes don't, which makes sense based on the numbers. You would need 8 trade routes to equal 1 governor, or 2 trade routes per city to equal the loyalty bonus Amani gives nearby cities.

The river bonus might be their best power, I'm not quite sure yet. I've gotten some use out of it, but not as much as I would have hoped.

So yeah, I'm all in favor of giving the polder a boost. I agree that right now it feels too situational, especially since you need adjacent polders to really get the most out of them.

I'm also playing as them and the bonuses I'm getting value out of are the river adjacency and the culture per turn for foreign trade routes. The river adjacency is the big one since you usually settle on rivers and it means you can get a +2 Campus without having to buy tiles, sacrifice hills, or needing a city near mountains. I even found some spots that were +4. The culture per turn is a small bonus but culture is so hard to come by that a +1 for trade to a city state is worth it.

 

[Sostratus]

The river bonus might be their best power, I'm not quite sure yet. I've gotten some use out of it, but not as much as I would have hoped.

The reason the river bonus is easily their best right now is that beyond giving you more production from IZs, (+4 with the card is always welcome!) they allow you to almost guarantee campus and theater squares get +3 with good placement, as long as you have a river; this in turn means it's possible to get Rationalism or Grand Opera's adjacency requirement fulfilled nearly everywhere. That's +50% from buildings that other civs are forced to use world wonders or mountains (i.e. get lucky.) It also means you can have a much more consistent era score bonuses for the 3 affected districts, if you need it.

Well, if a Polder count as a flat land, the Netherland could transform an Archipelago map into a dry earth.

If the requirement was [2 flat land tiles and (a third land tile or a polder)] then you could never fill in the whole sea. You'd effectively be able to line much of your coast with them, but you could never place a polder that wasn't adjacent to two actual land tiles. It's an easy tweak to the logic, and wouldn't require sacrificing the sea tile aspect. Again, since you also have to drop harbors and water parks and other things on those same coast tiles, it's not as crazy as it sounds. Honestly, I think they should let people do it- we allow some crazy stuff already. (Cough outback stations.) We can always nerf the civil service and replaceable parts boosts a little, perhaps +4 gold down to +2 gold, and +2/+1 adjacency down to +1/+1 would be a fair exchange for getting to build adjacent polders in the first place.

but if you think the polder have strict placing requirements, try placing a chemamul and come back here.

Doesn't the Eiffel tower work with Chemamulls? I agree 4 appeal isn't so common, but between coast, wonders, mountains, NWs, there's more than a handful of spots per continent you can build them on before Conservation (unlike polders right now.) Admittedly you have to be careful of mine placement, but remember that Firaxis also nerfed Australia's district bonus on breathtaking appeal too; presumably because it's more common than one might think.

I hope to play a map like fractal or archipelago to get my polder game on, but most games are continents or pangaea. A lot of civs become better if you optimize the map settings; abundant resources for Hansas, wet (more woods/marsh/jungle) for Mbanzas and stave churches, etc. And of course Indonesia on islands maps is just cheating. I think we should consider the standard settings for balancing. Right now, the dutch may be a perfectly fine civ, but you just don't get to use one their most exciting aspects, and that feels really un-fun to experience in game.

 

[Sostratus]

Okay, time for some pictures. I just rolled up an Information era Archipelago map, old world (fewer hills.) This is the optimal polder map settings. (Maybe island plates, low sea level... but still, far better coastlines than normal!)

Again, I stress that these are map settings to maximize polder locations. In a normal continents game you'll get a fraction of this. Here's a screenshot around the starting location, with polder locations under current rules in green:

Spoiler 3 Flat Land Tiles Rule (Now) :

Note that there's a very slim amount of adjacency available, and even then only 2. **I'm aware I forgot to mark the southwest lake tile. It's polder-ready.
Now, if we were to allow any 3 land tiles to work, we'd get this: green is currently okay, yellow are the ones that would be newly allowed.

Spoiler 3 Land Tiles Rule (Proposed) :

There's substantially more, but we haven't been able to litter the whole coast with them. Remember that this is THE BEST type of map that you can have for Polders. I even turned down the hill settings!
Harbors, water parks, reefs... all cut into polder spots. I don't think it'd be too strong. Just draw out the kind of terrain you'd need to actually get 3 polders adjacent. It virtually never happens except on some lakes.

Please, Saint Sid, hear our suffering!