Netherlands a bit underwhelming?

[chazzycat]

None of their other abilities are too strong, so I was expecting the polder to be a very good UI. And on paper they seem good...if you can build them together.

But that's the problem. In my first attempt, on an archipelago map, I'm up to about a dozen cities, and still don't have a single place where I can put two of them next to each other. All the good bonuses come from being next to each other, so I'm getting barely anything out of it. It's not helping that there's amber and reefs everywhere either.

Am I just getting unlucky?

 

[Zaarin]

Yeah, as you say, polders are incredible...if you can find a place to put them. In my Netherlands game on archipelago, I had six polders in my entire empire: three of them were adjacent to each other...because they were in a lake. They should really ease up the placing restrictions on polders, because there are just too many hills in game to expect to find many coastal tiles with three adjacent flat tiles.

 

[liv]

Their boats are amazing.
that makes them better than Tamar I think

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Part of me wants them to loosen the restrictions--but if they do they'll need to tone down the adjacency benefits. They'd get crazy if you could get a bunch of 3 adjacency polders.
Untitled by sammykhalifa, on Flickr

I wonder if they could change the programming so you could put them on swamps?

And has already been mentioned, the boats are awesome.

 

[3 EMS]

I had a hard time just finding places to put Polders to begin with. Fortunately, with fisheries I was still able to make some really strong cities. Those boats though. I was able to just steam roll the AI. As if frigates and Caravels/Ironclads wasn't strong enough.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The UA is quite good too. It's like Amazon or Meiji but it doesn't go away as you chop jungle or start slowly like Meiji.

I've had better luck with Polder in lakes than on the coast.

 

[Zike]

Her leader bonus is just like a bad version of persia

> Your Trade Routes to your own cities provide +1 Loyalty per turn for the starting city. Trade Routes to or from foreign cities provide +1 Culture to you.

> +1 Trade Route capacity with Political Philosophy civic. Receive +2 Gold and +1 Culture for routes between your own cities. Roads built in your territory are one level more advanced than usual.

I'd much rather 2 gold, a free trader and bonus roads over 1 loyalty and maybe a few culture from other civ's traders.

 

[liv]

I did use the loyalty trade routes when I played them. The incredible strong ships allows for taking coastal cities sometimes far away so trade routes added in keeping the cities from flipping while trying to get more cities and lower pressure. But 1 loyalty is a bit on the weak side.

 

[chazzycat]

They should really ease up the placing restrictions on polders, because there are just too many hills in game to expect to find many coastal tiles with three adjacent flat tiles.

yeah that's what I was thnking too. Every time I have 3 land surrounding a coast tile one is a hill. It's just too restrictive.

I do agree the unique ship is pretty powerful against cities. Just seems like if the polder stays this way, they have to be played as a warmonger, which is a bit of a bummer

 

[Scaramanga]

I think the idea is to stack trade routes in far-flung cities.

 

[Datian]

They look a bit like Australia or another DLC civ, as a civ with a bunch of bonuses which are more about numbers than about flavour... Only thing is, the numbers are disappointing.

Polders ? You can't count on using them.
Super ships ? Yes they're powerful, but when was the last time anyone thought "meh, frigates are underwhelming, I wish I could build a stronger one" ?
River adjacency ? Ok this one is juicy.
Loyalty or culture in trade ? +1 per turn is so tiny, it won't make a difference nor actually protect a city.

At first glance, I thought it would be the builder civ in the expansion... how disappointing !
The good thing is, they could easily be buffed.

 

[PhilBowles]

They look a bit like Australia or another DLC civ, as a civ with a bunch of bonuses which are more about numbers than about flavour... Only thing is, the numbers are disappointing.

Really? They strike me as exactly the reverse - most of the bonuses are very flavourful for the Dutch as a trading civ, and the loyalty/culture buff from trade is a nice nod to Wilhemina's specific role in Dutch history.

The Dutch secret weapon is the adjacency bonus as it comes into play immediately with an easily-met condition, and is secretly good for boosting era score as well as for its actual buff.

The trade boost adds up over time - it's not among the best boosts out there, but it's additive with the adjacency buff and the loyalty can be relevant with several trade routes in play.

I like the Dutch a lot - they're a solid, versatile civ that makes use of a mix of established and new features.

 

[Zaarin]

You know, the more I think about it, the more it looks like the Dutch could really benefit from an inland start. Lakes are much easier to polderize than coast, there are a lot more rivers to take advantage of, and who cares about ships (except Harald and his one longboat )?

 

[kingofsealand]

In my own Netherlands game lakes were the key to taking advantage of polders. Got one diamond shaped lake as well as a couple three tile lakes that were able to be filled with polders. On the other hand I had a 4 tile lake in my capital but the hill restriction made all but one space unable to host a polder. So it really is a matter of luck I think, I was playing large fractal if anyone was curious. So annoyed I got beat to the Huey...

I did get practically every other wonder I went for though. That river bonus is potent with really any district but industrial zones especially. Most starts are lucky to get one or two +5 adjacency industry zones with the Dutch you can get one anywhere you find a river and a couple hills.

Their trade route bonus I do find underwhelming. The free culture is nice but the loyalty seems like something you'd control with governors or policies. The ships are ridiculous.

 

[Sostratus]

The river bonus really helps in leveraging the reworked Rationalism / grand opera cards, since you can get so many more +3 adjacency campuses and theatre squares. The IZ part is just glorious. +16 IZ's! wooo!

As for polders, even if they dropped the hill requirement, 3 flat land tiles is surprisingly hard to achieve. See the screenshots in this post. Note it's a low hills archipelago map, so polder-optimized.
I think the best solution would be to make it 2 flat land tiles.
1) you could actually reliably use them along a fair amount of coast
2) with harbors, reefs, and wonders/districts, you can't even spam them as hard as you'd think.
As compensation, just nerf the flat gold bonus to +2 and cut the replaceable parts food adjacency to +1 instead of +2, and I think you're set.
It's one thing to have a hard to place but powerful UI- see Chemamull. It another to have a conditionally powerful UI you can never actually follow through on. It's just joy sucking.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Polders don't even show up until about 40% through the game, so they should be able to be produced in large quantities AND be powerful to make up for being relatively late compared to most unique improvements. Outback Stations come with the same civic, and you can spam the crap out of those, and they're just as powerful (probably)

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Their UU is very powerful.

I guess you're just playing on Pangea, which may not be a very suitable map for Netherlands?

 

[Leyrann]

Their UU is very powerful.

I guess you're just playing on Pangea, which may not be a very suitable map for Netherlands?

He's not talking about the UU though, but the UI.

Or are you saying you get to build more than one Polder per 30 tiles of coast? (okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration (right..?) but you get the idea)

 

[blue heron]

Don't underestimate the adjacency bonus - it will create a few very good districts right from the start, and you can really snowball from there with the extra science and such. And as someone said before, with the double bonus cards for adjacency you can become really strong. And on top of that, the bonuses do not push you in one direction as so many civs have - The Netherlands are very versatile.

 

[Temppu]

Yea I find the Dutch quite strong due to river adjacency bonus as well. Youd expect to build a billion of Polders as the Dutch, and maybe get some other bonuses. But instead, you only build a couple of Polders and get other, stronger, bonuses. That doesnt make the Dutch underwhelming; theyre just different than what was expected, and perhaps hoped.