I want to hear what some of you think of my suggestions.
I feel like the -10% speed from researching Coffee Trade (to get +2 bank Limit) is unnecessary. It feels bad to make Dutch troops slower since this Tech is important to get all their banks up, especially as the game goes on. It already costs you a shipment. You always need to include the Advanced Arsenal to undo Coffee Trade. Coffee Trade doesn’t even give you instant gains and you have to build a church first. I would suggest just removing the speed penalty.
I like how the devs have improved the Dutch in DE. I have some suggestions about the Bank cards though. I have always thought that the two cards (in Age I) that give +1 bank limit should be one card that is +2 bank limit. Another option would be to have 2 bank wagon cards that also increase the bank limit (the second should be in Age III).
In either of these suggestions 3 cards would merge into 2 cards. The recent change that added +5 vill build limit with the bank build limit cards (in Age I) was good but with my suggestions there could be a new card that would rather be +10 vills (Age IV card). This would make it cost 3 cards to give the same value that you currently get from 3 cards.
It just seems that there are cards you need to get but they don’t give you any gain until later after you have spent 700 resources and then it takes long to pay themselves off (compared to other buildings).
It is a free tech, and like all other free Church techs, it has a downside.
You can even completely negate it with Military Drummers from the Adv Arsenal, while other techs of it’s kind have much steeper penalties.
They also vastly improved the Bank of Ammesterdam/Rotterdam cards, to the point that now they are must-slots in almost any Dutch deck.
I honestly do not think they should be touching Dutch in any way right now, unless it is to give them a Musketeer type unit.
Coffee trade is a free tech. They could make it cost ressources, but honestly after some time playing dutch I dont really have a problem with the speed penalty anymore as the benefits are much higher than the downside.
The 7 bank build into FI is an amazing build that I like to do with dutch and it works wonders against a lot of greedy civs and greedy builds. It also makes it easier to get that 2k gold for the blue guard timing and the heavy canons.
Coffee Trade is not free. You have to use an age 2 shipment to get it(equivalent to 700 resources) and you need to make a church (150w) and then before it helps you need to make 2 banks. Banks take like 4 minutes to pay themselves off.
I don’t mind this since it will help you later on but why should it instantly make your infantry slower as well.
Because ALL free Church techs you get with the Church card, have a penalty.
If you remove it from Dutch, you have to remove it from EVERYONE else, at which point you will have Code Napoleon boosting French Eco to the sky, Ports Farmers with +25% gather rate for free, Spanish with speedy Rodeleros with +25% HP, and a bunch of other OP stuff.
In a treaty game this is true but in Supremacy these cards are bad. You don’t want to send these cards until you have 50 vills and by then you need to send factory wagons.
Remove the Age2 Bank Wagon card. Bank of Amsterdam move to age 2 (bank wagon and +1 build limit) and Bank of Rotterdam move to age 3 (bank Wagon and +1 build limit). Then make an age 4 card that gives you +10 vill build limit.
Dutch do feel good now but these cards are still sad in Supremacy.
These buffs happen instantly, with Coffee Trade you only get a speed penalty after you send it. You need to spend 1400 resources to build 2 banks and after 4 mins the banks will pay for themselves. Then only you get benefits. You also need to get Coffee Trade so that you can make up for having less vills then other civs (in late game)
Code Napoleon for example gives you 10% faster gathering, it benefits you straight away.
Maybe what they could do is lower the speed penalty to -5% rather than -10%.
U do spend 1.4k ressources for the extra banks but u gotta consider U are gonna get another shipment almost instantly due to the xp u get from building them.
This tech may not be the best on short term but against greedy builds it works wonders. Also on the long term you will be saving a lot of wood too by not having to build estates which is really nice. Since u have the factories and 7 banks on gold.
Nothing of the sort is needed - Leave Dutch alone. The +1 bank cards already are super useful for midlate and late game, the coffee trade hampers only a little the speed, but with military drummers you can offset that, and advanced arsenal is a staple card of the dutch (since you will want you skirms to get all those sweet gunpowder improvements).
If you dont want to make those 2 extra banks you can just put vils on coin for the mid game (since with their current boost they can hold themselves fine).
Honestly Dutch is a very balanced civ (albeit predictable) in 1vs1 and S tier in team games. Changing it would probably either unbalance too much
Each bank gives you 140xp when built when most buildings give you only 20xp and that makes a huge difference since back on legacy you would only get 70xp by building a bank.
2 extra banks means u have 280 extra xp from building them which makes your shipment curve a lot faster as dutch and shipping the church card will pretty much pay for itself.
So you definitely have some good compensation there.
The only issue I have with dutch right now is how weak they are to early ff timings, specially the spanish one, not even to mention the piro ff or the variation where they come with the guard halbs from the church.
In my opinion, I don’t think they should remove the penalties entirely. The devs should decrease some of the penalties so that they can be reverted completely by investing in some upgrades. For example, the Dutch already do this to some extent where they partially revert the speed penalty from Coffee Trade by getting Military Drummers from the Advanced Arsenal card. However, Military Drummers only affects infantry so their cavalry still gets the -10% speed penalty. My suggestion would be to change the penalty to only infantry units so the penalty is completely reverted by the Military Drummers upgrade. The same idea could apply to some of the other unique church technologies like for the Brits and the Spanish where the speed penalties make their unique technologies almost completely useless.
This way, the unique church technologies aren’t OP (because it’s still a big investment to revert their penalties) and you don’t end up with part of the penalty.
Guys, I want to say that the Dutch, like the Aztecs, Chinese and Russians, are already perfectly balanced, sometimes I even think that you have to nerf them a bit, but that is already an unpopular opinion that I have. Honestly, you don’t have to give Dutch more, it has a very good eco and doesn’t need more villagers and banks than it does.
change the -10% speed to banks are 15% more expensie on wood and food.
This will push back the pay off time of these 2 extra banks and later the 2 banks you will build in imperialge age. Also if you happen to loose banks it will hurt you more too.
But your units arent affected.
But if nothing is changed it is also fineish.
most other thes kind of techs work like this: units extra hp but less pseed, or unit is faster but cost more (german), or villagers gather food faster but everything else slower.
For dutch its different, 2 unrelated things are mixed together, banks build limit but units slower?? Shouldnt it have a downside on banks like with these other examples.
Other topic since muskets on dutch has been mentioned. i found that those highlander mercs are so strong for 200 coin. Fusiiliers are good but cost 300 coin, and have much less hp. If i play dutch and happe d to see these available in the sallon, its can be really strong. on the other hand i tried going fuissiler and failed horribly due to being just too expensive. honestly i belibe highlanders need a nerf