I do this post to open the following debate, is the Dutchs currently the most powerful civilization in the game?
If you ask me, after the nerfs to Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Japan, Hausa and Ethiopia, it is definitely the most powerful civilization.
I say this for three reasons, first, it has a very solid economy, thanks to its banks (of all the buildings that produce automatic resources, they are the ones that have the best HP and offer the best option for turtle) and the gold collection bonus for the villagers.
Second they have a very good army, skirm in second age, possibility of having Halberdier with logistician, and the Ruytier, despite being one of the weakest dragons, is very cheap and efficient in my opinion.
Third and not least, it is one of the most popular civilizations, not only in the high level, where it is used very often by the players higher up the ladder, but also in the middle and low level it is extremely popular… And let’s not deny that many of us like to play for fun, but we also like to win more than anything.
So the following is an unpopular opinion, but I think Dutch needs certain balances.
I can only think of 3 things, move the skirm to Age III, and enable crossbowmen that cost gold instead of wood. Reduce the HP of the banks (Which was a good idea for other civilizations with automatic resource producing buildings.), or third, eliminate or reduce the bonus of collecting gold from the villagers.
I listen to their opinions, in my personal experience, in the ranked games that I play, Dutch is the most popular civilization, and I really have a hard time beating him (I would dare to say that I won 40%), and in Streams no way, he is very popular in the top players. I make this debate because I consider that all the advantages of Dutch is already unfair to the other civilizations.
dutch seems powerful cuz its special to play, if you don’t know how to play against them so yes its strong, you need to timing control map against dutch, if you let dutch semi 4 bank or 5 without damage so yes dutch is strong
Pretty much this. It is very important to do checks on them in the early game and not let them go about their business. Once the banks are up it is very difficult to put them down.
In fact, the problem with Dutch is that you have to have a well designed plan and execute it perfectly. In my experience, there are 2 possibilities, the first is an initial push to annoy the Dutch and do damage, kill villagers or take down some economic buildings, then go up to third and try to win. The other possibility is to go as fast as possible to fortress and take as much map control as possible.
Since Dutch received the gold bonus, they advance faster in age, masse more skirms and even stay in colonial and with mass of skirms + huss win. If you leave them boom alone, it is very difficult to beat them. That’s why I think that if you make a mistake, the Dutch will overexploit it and beat you. The worst thing is that it is very difficult to punish a Dutch in early game, the banks are too resistant, the skirmishes and the militia is enough to stop any rush. I think that gold collecting bonus was too much for Dutch, they should remove it and put it back as before. If not, just take out the skirmish and hand them crossbowmen.
Taking care of that with Holland apparently is easy, because the banks build them at their base and also obstruct the passage, the guerrilla, the sending of the 8 pikemen and the good exploration thanks to the emissary, Also, Holland is very popular lately, The problem is that really pressuring them is not easy since they age very quickly. They are specific civilians that can beat the Netherlands in an early rush, such as the rush of the Aztecs and the native of the Incas. The truth is that for me that pick is already being annoying, I had said a long time ago that the Netherlands needed a nerf, I want them to return 15% of the gold collection as it was before, once it goes to third and already has the 4-5 banks ago what he wants, in fact today I played a game against a Dutchman that I did the piroshiki where I destroyed his banks and a lot of villagers, but even so he could keep in production and took out and took out dough,
This is Japan all over again. If you cant beat them early then you need to macro up and beat them in industrial. Despite having banks, they have fewer villagers, so it is surely possible to outmacro them in the late game. They will have an edge in fortress and very early industrial, but that’s essentially how all macro civs work.
If they wall up then it will be harder unless your civ has good artillery though. But this is more of a problem with walls rather than Dutch balance.
I also found that masses of cavalry are very effective against dutch. Their pikemen shipment can only defend so much.
We would talk about very late game, because the Dutch do not start with fewer villagers as France does, but they start with 6 and have good initial drawers, a limit of 50 population, the 5 banks in like 25 more villagers in gold, considering that you can Having 7 either with cards or being in imperial, then it would be 85, unlike other European cities like Spaniards, it would only have 14 less villagers, which is reasonable considering that these banks do not occupy population. If I agree that you can win with a start doing only macro but it is not easy, because if you do not hurt it and it manages to make the 5 banks without delaying you have to give it up for lost, because you have the spam of 10 ryters + 5 guerrillas for every 40 seconds
It will be a bit off topic, but I think you could rename this civ in the Netherlands. Belgians could become a new revolution option for this civ (also for French civ).
I also agree that after the generalized round of nerfs in the last patch, a reversal of their last coin gather rate buff is more than justified. Being forced to always rush a civ becomes predictable and over time invariably lopsides in favor of the defender as the meta evolves.
I think the issue with dutch is that it’s really hard to balance them.
They have really good match ups, a civ like hauds have a really terrible time against them, but then on the other hand they have pretty bad and almost unwinnable match ups too, they have a terrible time against the British for example.
Also they have very poor options when it comes to fighting for the trade route in high tp maps where on the other hand they are very strong on no tp maps.
Maybe reverting the coin gather rate buff could be a start.
Maybe I’m biased because I am a Ports lamer and Ports just out booms everyone and cassadores are the nuts against skirm + ruyter? Probably.
But I must say I dislike a lot radical proposal like replacing skirmishers for crossbowman’s, that’s straight up destroy the whole civilization.
I don’t like reverting the gold collection rate either.
Rushes don’t really work well against Dutch. They are much more vulnerable to age 3 timings, specially with 2 falconets, since they don’t have 2 falconets of their own to counter it. Or, like Kevin pointed out earlier, just suffocate them on their base.
This whole concept of “you are forced to rush” is quite a exaggeration. Ok, some civilizations like Aztecs can beat Dutch via a rush, but they can also be defeat through suffocation (Like against Russians and Indians), age 3 timings (Spain, British and Russia) or by straight out outbooming Dutch (Portugal and China can do it)
