Dutch balance.

[36drew]

I'm not one to usually suggest changes for Fanpatches and such, because I don't feel like I really know the game well enough (my understanding of balance seems limited and my rationale for changes usually doesn't look at the big picture well enough).

However, I was thinking about Dutch last night I was laying in bed. Their fundamental flaw is that their early Fortress agenda is just too strong. Their mass is too good, their units counter well, and their economy is amongst the best at this point in the game.

A dutch player who is not allowed to age can be strong in colonial, but their real strength lies in their fortress capabilities. Having 2 RI and 2 RC shipments to choose from, along with 1k wood, swiss pikes, halbs, and combat cards is well... just a bit much.

But if we take this a step further and think about it, it doesn't seem to be so much the cards as it is the speed. Take the instant Curr or 2pop Curr card that existed for the longest time. These cards were not balanced. This has nothing to with anything but the card itself.

Dutch cards are fine. What is not fine is the speed and strength of the early mass. This is not rocket science and I am not an expert -- but I believe we could all agree on this.

What I propose is that skirmishers and ruyters do not auto-upgrade to veteran status upon reaching age iii. The implications for this are quite large. Besides the fact there is a resource cost or 200w/200c for each upgrade (total of 800 slow gathering resources), this slows down their early spam.

A dutch player is forced to make some tougher decisions then:
a. Do I research the upgrades right away and loose some resources and unit train time?
b. Do I ship and train colonial skirms and ruyters?

This allows the dutch early fortress to be slowed down somewhat, and the quality of units become delayed and slightly more costly.

This does not affect their colonial agenda or lategame agenda.

Thoughts? Discuss.

[generalbuschmann]

i would agree with skirm, skirm dont need to be auto upgraded
but for ruyters i dont think it would be fair since wood is not the ressource dutch gather much early on and they dont get ruyter in colo like skirms

[Sporting_Lisbon]

Dutch atm are broken. Their colonial age is crap unless you turtle and go early hussar/minutemen + skirms later every single game.

Playing dutch on colonial age is very frustrating:

Other euros can go xbow/pike and be fine, or xbow/hus and be fine most of the cases.

Since skirms are only cost effective early on vs pikes and/or when turtling, dutch has to start every game with hus, use minutemen to fence of early pushes and then add skirm/pike. 5 pikes cost 200f 200w, a bank costs 350f 350w. That wood is very precious, so any ideas of going offensive are set aside since you're gonna need that 135 ranged attack from your tc vs cav, (as well as the minutemen).

After this turtle, skirms miraculously auto-upgrade, a 9 ruyter card miraculously solves your anti-cav issue in addition to super cheap ruyters from your stables, and the dutch also happen to have a monstrous economy backing up! After having a skirm/ruyter army up, your eco is good enough to pump 3-4 falcs. And to make sure the enemy bites dust, you can even try to get the best mercs out there, those swiss pikes.

Now the tough part is the way to fix it. Imo dutch colonial should be boosted while the fortress age gets nerfed. Extra 10f to ruyters price and reducing the card from 9 to 8 ruyters shouldn't be a bad start. What if the banks price was reduced to 300f 300w but you could only build 2 in colonial age, 3 in fortress age and 4 in industrial age? Overkill? Something around those lines would be nice.

[deadhanddan]

i hate playing vs dutch on fp , everyone uses them - does exact same b.o. - you know what to expect - you try to counter it- and fall flat on your face

what i'd luv to see would be to increase ruyter cost in age 3 , but add in a bonus to the guard tech that lowers price to normal , while nerfing bank cost to 300 f and w with a lowered coin intake but returning the normal cost and flow with tupi speculation card. the manual upping in fortress is a good idea as well

[36drew]

Actually all of the dutch ideas in this thread sound very good. If any of them were choosen I would be a happy man.

[StrokeyBlofeld]

Balance is a difficult one for me, I find that it tends to be different slightly because I play team games and not 1v1's.
In my opinion, ruyter food cost should go up by 5 and the 9 ruyter shipment in fortress should be 7. They are just way too spamable. Also, the train time lengthened very slightly too. I have other ideas for dutch, but would take to long to explain my reasoning.

[Aaryn_GenD]

in my own little individual changes, i would have
-removed the 100 starting wood crates
remove skirm autoupgrade and
remove the 0.8x dmg vs anticav for hand cav, they're good to go :-)

replace x2 dmg for ri to ranged cav to sth like 1,5 (along those lines), put all ranged cav to melee resistance, that way hand cav does less dmg vs ranged cav , as they should (melee resistance) and ri still does the same damage against ranged cav (since ranged cav lost their rr)

the fp went bonkers with this simple cavalry change, every goon unit got 10% off their rr, ruyters didn't since they had only 10% rr to start with

why are they, after your opinion, strong in fp and weak on RE? they are the exact same unit. the outer changes which can be seen if you look at it in a bigger picture is the difference

[deadhanddan]

no , i disagree on the hand cav negative vs. range cav , your forgetting what hapens when units such as heckapell , mams , spahi , gendarme ,or uber carded uhlans or unctioned cav doo to range cav. the ngative attack is a good thing , hand cav has range resist so range attacks do less vs. them , this applies to ranged cav attacks as well, while hand cav deals out full damage to range cav with the exception of cav archers - keshiks will always be keshiks : weird cav archer/goon hybrid that is overpriced and too weak. ruyter are too good because they are easily spammed and hard to kill on fp while on RE patch they are rather weak and on RE in some cases you actually need to go halb/ruyter to fend of pure handcav spams

[Sporting_Lisbon]

Indeed, when melee cav get their hands on ranged cav the ranged cav is decimated, even with this 0.8x nerf. Uhlans are the perfect example. And dont give RC melee resist, i like to melee them with ma tomas

[Kaiser_von_Nuben]

Dutch midgame... it's always been broken and always will be. I laughed when I read Dan's post about exactly expecting the Dutch strat, yet always still losing to it. So true: If you can't punch them out early, you're looking at 30 gosh-darn ruyters and cannons coming at you. Nothing beats that at 11:00. Whatcha gonna do? Waste your early resources on a culverin? That just isn't viable. But if you stay colonial, you're pwned. I've only succeeded against the Dutch with significant early pressure, so that they can't match me by the time they hit fortress. Killing their obligatory stable is helpful.

Early ruyter mass. This is the problem. They get too many too fast. In case you didn't know, it's hard to beat large numbers of ranged cav, especially early on in the game. If you go cav, pwned (sorry, your 8 hussars don't do it against 30 ruyters, and it's hard to transition your econ for RI once you've lost all your cav). If you go HI, pwned (cannons, my dear... oh wait, ruyters beat HI, too, just because the Dutch crank out so many so cheaply). If you say "I know! RI beat RC!" the cannons blast you to pieces. And he can even raid you with ruyters... whatcha gonna do? Chase down 30 ruyters with your slow-footed skirms? (or xbows?) Yeah, right!

I agree with all the suggestions made here. Even in team games, people lame the heck out of ruyters, especially on maps like Deccan where a FF is relatively safe and fast. Dual rax ruyter + 9/8 ruyter by 10:00 = forget it. Tell your uhlans to go home.

I'm in favor of getting rid of the 0.8X modifier, as well as imposing mandatory upgrade costs and higher prices. The 0.8X modifier only really comes into play later-game, when the opposing side at least can rival the Dutch spamming capacity. Quite frankly, that modifier doesn't mean anything at 10:00, when the Dutch have the biggest mass advantage over the smallest amount of inferior enemy cav.

And ditch the extra 100 wood at the beginning. 50 is fine. It's incredible what the faster early bank did for FP Dutch.

[thanster]

i never play 1v1 on tad.... i played 1500 games of 1v1 on nilla, sick of it lol
and imo, dutch are not great in 2v2. if they ff, then the two enemy rushing civs will overwhelm thier ally, and then you have, um....say 40 jans and 50 lb vs 20 ruyters with cannons coming. they will tear down foundry asap if they are a good player and then the dutch is screwed. if they dont go ff and they do colonial combat with skirms, they are much better, but ive found playing agaisnt dutch, its best to do abus with otto, because very rarely do dutch do cav ( need food for banks ) and if they are going skirms, thier ally will probly go with some sort of anticav, which means abus can go wild. but from what ive heard above, dutch must be a real pain in the ass in 1v1

[deadhanddan]

[quote=""thanster""]i never play 1v1 on tad.... i played 1500 games of 1v1 on nilla, sick of it lol
and imo, dutch are not great in 2v2. if they ff, then the two enemy rushing civs will overwhelm thier ally, and then you have, um....say 40 jans and 50 lb vs 20 ruyters with cannons coming. they will tear down foundry asap if they are a good player and then the dutch is screwed. if they dont go ff and they do colonial combat with skirms, they are much better, but ive found playing agaisnt dutch, its best to do abus with otto, because very rarely do dutch do cav ( need food for banks ) and if they are going skirms, thier ally will probly go with some sort of anticav, which means abus can go wild. but from what ive heard above, dutch must be a real pain in the *** in 1v1 [/quote] fanpatch dutch pretty much best civ with best eco , france - brits are 2nd place contenders

[deadhanddan]

im only a 2nd lt. but i'm constantly playing fanpatch , if you do get it i'd be happy to play some with you.

[JBCaesar]

:-D drew, did you have this thoughts after our game a few days ago?

I don't think Dutch are to strong...I totally agree with sporting, it is very
difficult for an Dutch player to win when he is not able to make a fast fortress,
for example versus India our Iro.

I think that it is true, that the dutch are maybe the strongest civ in mid game, but every civ needs a advantage...you can't play late game with dutch, the most civs have a much stronger economy than.

Maybe I only got these impressions, because I like to play Dutch, but hopefully I appreciated impartially.

[generalbuschmann]

@thanster: we play much games on fp we even get 4v4 games on it (unrated) with mostly only clanmemebers and some other guys