The Netherlands

On the other hand, rivers usually make for "fertile" land which means starting locations. If you give them a coast bias they might get both fairly often, whereas if you give them a river bias they might end up nowhere near the coast. Also fresh water is pretty common so if you start near the coast you will almost always find fresh water, but the other way around is less likely.

 

On the other hand, you always know where the coast is while freshwater can be wherever.

Another point to bring up is that the seabegger is not extremely useful outside of heavy watermaps, and those maps usually force coastal starts anyways, so river is probably the way to go.

 

Perhaps what the sea beggar needs to feel perfectly useful is to have the capital on the coast consistently.

 

Actually, what it would need to feel perfectly useful is a lot of naval warfare, which usually isn't present on land-heavy maps anyways. The seabegger isn't like a Ship of the Line, it can't crush coastal cities by itself. It can however crush ship of the lines.

 

I always thought the sea beggar was really strong against cities. AI tends to leave smaller unprotected cities on their "weak side" that are good prey for them

 

I guess you could be right, haven't tried them out since the ship promotion changes. The fact that they aren't naval monsters that can pretty much dominate an entire era like the ship of the line is still true however.

 

As I have discussed this with Funak on my stream, the Dutch seem to have some anti synergy amongst its UI and UU. The UI encourages inland cities while the UU requires the coast. While there are situations where you can get both, it isn't often.

But in other news, the sea beggar is pretty dominant once they start. Being able to take over an entire navy is pretty overwhelming. Having 3 promotions base (supplies, raider 2) may be a little too strong. But I think that's the only appeal to playing the Dutch.

 

Never actually seen a UU been that effective ever, I mean it was crazy, but it was more on the side of crazy fun than crazy boring


As for the Anti-synergy, yeah absolutely, it seems to be a theme of sorts.
The UU wants coastal cities, the UI wants inland cities.
The UU wants to rape reap and pillage all your neighbors, taking their cities and their lives, and the UA wants you to stay peaceful with as many people as possible so you have a chance to trade.
The UA itself is kinda an anti-synergy, you want to collect as many luxuries as you can to be able to trade them away to get more gold, but you also want to control as few luxuries as possible so there are more luxuries to trade for to gain more culture.
As mentioned the thing that actually hold the dutch civ together despite the massive anti-synergy is the fact that both the unique improvement as well as the unique unit are crazy powerful.

 

I wouldn't call the UA anti-synergy, it just rewards you for dealing in luxuries as much as you can whether you're giving them away or selling them.
Same goes for the coastal city-inland city thing, it's supposed to be you getting something whether you're coastal or land, shining when you get a good chance to combine the two (which fits the Dutch very well IMO)

I agree with you on the UU though. I feel like a unique cargo ship would fit better but I have no clue what'd you even give it.

 

I agree with that - I came to the same conclusion in my desert dutch game.

However:
The Polder is one of the strongest UI, and the Sea Beggar is one of the strongest UUs. So even if they can only utilize one of them to the max, they are fine.

 

The UA is not anti-synergy at all. What you do is collect luxuries and sell all your copies of them, then buy them from the AI. That way you get the bonus from exporting AND importing them. Essentially if you sell your last copy of a lux to one AI and buy it from another, you're getting +4 gold and culture essentially for free (more in later eras). Not to mention the huge boost from CS; mercantile CS basically give as much bonus as cultured CS when you ally them. It's not that hard to get 50+ CPT from the UA in the midgame, which probably translates to at least one or two extra policies (sometimes the UA gives me more culture than all my cities combined).

 

Does it possible to import lux which you already have even though you export last copy of them?

 

I'm like 95% sure you can do this, had it get way out of control in the last game I played as the Dutch.

 

Yes, I have done it many times. Once you hit Medieval the culture you get from doing this is pretty crazy.

 

I think we need a Dutch guide, I'm sure a lot of people (myself included) never thought to do it that way.

 

Yeah, we need something like zigzagzigal guides. Who wanna start? Please do it in the Strategy Section.

 

Playing Dutch isn't exactly rocket-surgery, you settle rivers you settle at least one coastal city, you trade away all luxuries you gather and you buy all luxuries you can, you rush for guilds to get started on polders, then to Astronomy, start working towards navigation, and start building a few Seabeggers, you Dow the closest neighbor with a large fleet and/or a lot of coastal cities, you use the beggers to steal his fleet (should be all galleasses and caravels at this point) send suicidal 3 coastal raider + glory hound promoted seabeggers into his coastal cities, earn a ton of gold from it (like 300 per hit) use the money gathered to upgrade his caravels to Seabeggers and his galleasses to Frigates(once you hit navigation). You should be able to keep taking his cities and still gain gold even if he instantly takes them back, but you can bring a few landunits to watch the coast for you if you want to. Once that AI have no coastal cities left you move on to the next one and do the exact same thing.

Once you've got Navigation you start teching towards Economics to get that sweet polder upgrade, you should also keep your eyes open for any exposed city with massive freshwater, if you find one nearby use your massive gold-pool from seapillaging to raise an army and take it.

Once you reach Ideologies you pick Autocracy and pick up Military-Industrial Complex, adding +3 science to every polder tile, and at that point you can pretty much finish the game however you want.

 

Alright we can now check the guide off the list

 

In the Japan thread, Gazebo had mentioned not having many coastal civs.

What if Polders were a water improvement?

 

I like it, but then again I've been asking for coastal polders since forever (not on actual water-tiles, but on the coast)