The Netherlands

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'd try it before stating that it is 'still one of the worst.'
G

Played a bit on the new version and it's great in singleplayer... If you're lucky. Got an insanely good location with dozens of CS's which coincidentally wanted me to do things I wanted done anyway, got free +2 Culture (or so I assume, almost all of them were Cultural CS anyway) from most of those "alliances" because the CS's mostly got their hands on rare luxuries. In fact I actually got +4 culture +1faith since I took Goddess of the Festivals too - great pantheon, probably better even than the old ancestor worship.

Got lots of great deals with the AI which made me get benefit from my UA, quickly helping me get an insane (considering it's not even medieval yet) culture and gold, all supported by my decent location, good access to NW which the AI didn't want and other things.


But I still think it's bad because the only reason it works so well is the fact the AI is stupid. No thinking player would ever let you get free stuff like that unless you were in a team, especially since the Luxuries themselves are now much weaker than they were before - nobody except for the AI is going to really want them desperately.

A fine example would be that Darius and Haile generously gave me 1:1 luxury deals and even added some gold with each trade. Even Neby and Elizabeth who hated me allowed me to get trades which were very beneficial to me. As a result I got lots of free GPT and Culture.

But despite that it seems to work great and is quite powerful.

 

[Gazebo]

The same could be said of any UA that requires some level of 'cooperation,' however – luxuries are now the only reliable source of positive happiness (instead of unhappiness removal), so they still have a role to play. Plus, as you noted, you can still get lots of luxuries from CSs, so even if William gets blocked out by major civs, his ability would still be viable with the income from CSs.

G

 

[Strec]

First impression at starting a game with William.

As often, had to reroll the map until finding one with some marsh or flood plains (find marshes, think flood plains are better because useable attending the UB).

UA is very quickly in action and performant, no problem.
I have no doubt on the UU, did use corsair in vanilla.
UB to see in action but seems interesting.

To continue

 

[Senteliks]

I played with Netherlands in my previous session and I won diplomatic victory without any effort putting into it. I had 15-16 CS in my pocket and with Patronage and UA , I was swimming in money/resources, booming with culture.Two areas where I lacked, because they weren't my focus were science and tourism but I could easily switched my focus to either of those or even conquest.All in all it's very fan Civilization.

Oh and their unique ship is so powerful that I pretty much had strongest navy, especially with Imperialism later, not one AI Civ could match me in Navy power.

 

[Funak]

First impression at starting a game with William.

As often, had to reroll the map until finding one with some marsh or flood plains (find marshes, think flood plains are better because useable attending the UB).

UA is very quickly in action and performant, no problem.
I have no doubt on the UU, did use corsair in vanilla.
UB to see in action but seems interesting.

To continue

You do realize that the UI works with all tiles adjacent to lakes as well, right?

I played with Netherlands in my previous session and I won diplomatic victory without any effort putting into it. I had 15-16 CS in my pocket and with Patronage and UA , I was swimming in money/resources, booming with culture.Two areas where I lacked, because they weren't my focus were science and tourism but I could easily switched my focus to either of those or even conquest.All in all it's very fan Civilization.

Oh and their unique ship is so powerful that I pretty much had strongest navy, especially with Imperialism later, not one AI Civ could match me in Navy power.

My biggest problem with the ship is that I pretty much always get inland starts as NL.

 

[Strec]

You do realize that the UI works with all tiles adjacent to lakes as well, right?

Seen that but seen in Civilopedia that can be built on marsh and flood plains. Do you say you can build it on any type of tile?

 

[Funak]

Seen that but seen in Civilopedia that can be built on marsh and flood plains. Do you say you can build it on any type of tile?

I'm not one hundred percent sure if it works on hills or not, but any flatland tile adjacent to a lake should work.

 

[Llednar Twem]

It does work on hills, and it ends up looking really weird with the hill clipping through the polder. That should probably be removed and something else buffed to compensate if needed. Really it might be best to remove lakeside polders all-together since that doesn't really fit with what a polder actually is. Also both marshes and flood plains are 3f tiles, so limiting polders to those will probably make balancing easier.

That said, none of that is what this post is about. It's actually about another probably impossible idea of mine to fix an issue I have with polders as they are now. Polders break farmland adjacency while simultaneously demanding that you build them right where you want to put your farmland. The idea I had to fix this was simple: allow farms to be built on polder tiles without removing the polder. Um...when I said simple I meant "in concept". Quite possibly not in execution.

Anyway, my justification for this is that as I understand it a "polder" only actually refers to wetlands that have been reclaimed by diverting the water. Not the farm itself that is then often cultivated on the reclaimed land. The improvement's yields could thus be changed to pure production while food comes from the farm and underlying terrain. I think it would be a rather elegant solution to polders counter-intuitively making your farmland worse...if it weren't almost certainly impossible to implement.

Edit: Roads / Railroads can share tiles with another improvement. Maybe this could be taken advantage of to make this slightly less impossible to implement? I honestly have no idea.

 

[Funak]

It does work on hills, and it ends up looking really weird with the hill clipping through the polder. That should probably be removed and something else buffed to compensate if needed. Really it might be best to remove lakeside polders all-together since that doesn't really fit with what a polder actually is. Also both marshes and flood plains are 3f tiles, so limiting polders to those will probably make balancing easier.

Please don't.

 

[PurpleMentat]

Here's a thought on Polders. We can artificially clear marshland. Why not artificially flooding grassland? Set things up so a Polder can be built on any flat Grassland or Desert tile with access to fresh water, and have it convert the tile to Marsh or Flood Plains. Balance around that, as it will be consistent. People have been diverting water flow for irrigation since time immemorial, this is just applying that concept a little more vigorously.

 

[Funak]

Here's a thought on Polders. We can artificially clear marshland. Why not artificially flooding grassland? Set things up so a Polder can be built on any flat Grassland or Desert tile with access to fresh water, and have it convert the tile to Marsh or Flood Plains. Balance around that, as it will be consistent. People have been diverting water flow for irrigation since time immemorial, this is just applying that concept a little more vigorously.

Main problem with this is that it would be another river-bonus, and there are already like half a billion of those.

 

[Gazebo]

Here's a thought on Polders. We can artificially clear marshland. Why not artificially flooding grassland? Set things up so a Polder can be built on any flat Grassland or Desert tile with access to fresh water, and have it convert the tile to Marsh or Flood Plains. Balance around that, as it will be consistent. People have been diverting water flow for irrigation since time immemorial, this is just applying that concept a little more vigorously.

Adding features is not supported (functionally) in many elements of the DLL.

G

 

[Llednar Twem]

Creating marshes would also break the fresh water pantheon to a hilarious degree. I actually had that idea a while ago but discarded for both the pantheon reason and because it would encourage actually avoiding natural marshes if grassland by a river was ultimately just as good while also being useful right from the start. Also it probably couldn't be done but that didn't really factor into my decision to abandon the idea without mentioning it. If it did I wouldn't have mentioned this one either.

 

[PurpleMentat]

Main problem with this is that it would be another river-bonus, and there are already like half a billion of those.

Not just river. Lakes and Oasis also give freshwater to adjacent land, hence why you can surround an oasis in (crappy) farms.

Adding features is not supported (functionally) in many elements of the DLL.

G

Ah, fair. I didn't think it was a big deal, because of the Reforestation mod on the Workshop. I suppose making a worker action that creates the feature is one thing, teaching the AI to use it and recognize it's effects is a whole 'nother thing.

 

[Funak]

Not just river. Lakes and Oasis also give freshwater to adjacent land, hence why you can surround an oasis in (crappy) farms.

Oh, that made more sense. Would probably lead to way too many polders however, complete overspam.

 

[PurpleMentat]

Oh, that made more sense. Would probably lead to way too many polders however, complete overspam.

So Netherlands territory would look like the Netherlands IRL. I don't see a problem here

The general idea behind it was, "screw farm adjacency, balance them around using their UI everywhere you'd use a Farm." Then we end up back at the same core disagreement we had in the Inca thread, about whether farm vs ui should be a choice that always needs making.

 

[Funak]

So Netherlands territory would look like the Netherlands IRL. I don't see a problem here

Touché

The general idea behind it was, "screw farm adjacency, balance them around using their UI everywhere you'd use a Farm." Then we end up back at the same core disagreement we had in the Inca thread, about whether farm vs ui should be a choice that always needs making.

I honestly think the Polders are fine right now, but I guess this change would make sense as well. I will allow it.

 

[Llednar Twem]

On one hand, I supported the Kasbah change because I disliked the aesthetic of blanketing the entire desert in Kasbah. On the other hand...

So Netherlands territory would look like the Netherlands IRL. I don't see a problem here

I suppose this IS a fair point, and unlike the Kasbah it would still be limited enough to avoid being a complete blanket in most cases. My main problem with the idea remains that makes natural swamps terrible for everyone...as opposed to now where they're terrible for everyone but the Netherlands. I guess that's not really a huge deal. It's also hilariously strong with the pantheon for faith from marshes, but polders come so late that most religions have probably already been founded anyway.

 

[Funak]

My main problem with the idea remains that makes natural swamps terrible for everyone...as opposed to now where they're terrible for everyone but the Netherlands. I guess that's not really a huge deal. It's also hilariously strong with the pantheon for faith from marshes, but polders come so late that most religions have probably already been founded anyway.

Maybe some marsh-improvement could be added to the game? Like a rice-plantation or something similar to that?

 

[Llednar Twem]

I certainly wouldn't object to that. It would require someone to make entirely new art for the map texture and stuff though, which sounds like a lot of work.