Civ 5 Dutch Civilization
Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings
Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs
Civilization's Leader: William
Civ Bonus: Dutch East India Company
Keep 2 Happiness when your last copy of each Luxury Resource is traded away. This provides the Dutch a Massive Happiness boost.
Unique Unit: Sea Beggar
Requires Navigation, replaces Privateer
Comes with Coastal Raider II (+20% CS vs Cities, steal 66% of Damage done in Gold) and Supply, allowing them to heal outside your borders at a rate of +15/turn. This gives it two more Promotions than the regular Privateer.
Unique Tile Improvement: Polder
Requires Guilds
Gives +3 Food but may only be constructed on Marsh and Flood Plains. Gives +1 Production/+2 Gold after Economics, making those tiles incredibly useful. Save Marshes until Guilds, then get as many of these up as possible throughout your Empire.
| Warmonger Hatred | Wonder Compete | Offense Build | Defense Build | City Defense | DoF | Friendly to Civs | Denounce Civs | War w/Civs | Deception Likelihood | CS Comp | CS War | |
| 6 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 4 | |
| Other Info | William is a wonderful neighbor to have, as he's likely to be friendly and have a smaller Military than most Civs. I've seen him as easily conquered. Unfortunately, the AI doesn't seem to take his UA into account and won't trade away his last copy of a Luxury easily, even though he should. For Warmongers, he's an easy target but will have well-fortified Cities. | |||||||||||
Strategies/Ideas for playing the Dutch:
The Dutch are an above-average Civ when played on Archipelago, decent on Continents -- assuming you use their excellent Unique Unit and can get some Iron to make Frigates to accompany the Sea Beggars. However, their UA provides players an excellent opportunity to avoid Happiness woes that prevent growth no matter what map type you play them on.
Commerce is a must-have Tree for the Dutch. It will aid in income, but the finisher allows them to get the +2 Happiness per resource even when you trade your last copy away, so you can get +8 Happiness from a Resource so long as you can find Trading Partners. That is a very important part of their UA. You need to play friendly for most of the game. There may be opportunity to wipe an another Civ's navy around Navigation and conquer a City or two, but you would never want to do heavy conquest else the UA will be wasted when Civs stop fair trades with you.
Having the +2 Happiness means making early friends is very helpful to your expansion. Getting a Declaration of Friendship, you can better sell your last copy for lump sums of Gold to help purchase Settlers. Regardless, the UA is awesome and allows them to grow Tall very well. Being able to trade the last copy of just a few Resources away is enough to avoid Unhappiness and letting the Cities grow. I would usually play them Tall for this reason, particularly because the Capital benefits greatly from Tradition and your other Cities can grow to great heights with every other Population being free in the Capital.
The Polder facilitates peaceful play. Other Civs are less likely to covet Desert/Marshy lands and you'll be able to do incredibly well there once you get Guilds and later Economics (not far off). A Marsh only provides +1 Food, but jumps to +4 with the Polder. That is not normally possible until Civil Service/Fertilizer depending where the tile is situated. Seek out those lands, and by the time you get Economics, those Polders will also supply +2 Gold and +1 Production. The Dutch playing peacefully and making use of Trading Partners will grow wealthy easily, so long as you find locations with at least 1 Luxury and can make use of the Polder. I did not get to use the Polder in my play testing, but very much wish I could as I had an excess of Happiness throughout the game and could have grown even larger with such great tiles around. Particularly the Marshes. Flood Plains will provide +5 Food straight away, and that's an incredible boost! Consider Petra to make an amazing Desert City. Unfortunately, their Grassland start bias will make that difficult to achieve.
Sea Beggars are an excellent UU, particularly when accompanied by Frigates. You absolutely want to build a number of these, because when upgraded to Destroyers they are exceptionally deadly. If you're using them Offensively, taking 1 point in Exploration is wise. Not having to take Supply as an upgrade yourself, you can focus on Coastal Raider III then get Logistics, which allows for an extra attack. This is a top-tier Promotion that can be acquired much faster than any other Unit. With an Armory, you're able to get this right when they're built. What it does is enable the Sea Beggar to perform hit and run attacks, meaning it can hit a City then flee just outside its attack range. This is doable with either the Great Lighthouse or 1 Point in Navigation.
| Sid Meier's Civ 5 is a deep strategy game. I created these individual Civilization Guides to highlight the strengths of their specials and unique units. If you have an opener or tip for playing this Civ that you would like to share with other readers, please use the comments form below. Some Guides are in need of update and will be improved to a new standard of quality or altered to reflect gameplay changes in G&K and Brave New World. | ||||||
| America | Arabia | Assyria | Austria | Aztec | Babylon | Brazil |
| Celts | China | Dutch | Egypt | England | France | Germany |
| Greece | The Huns | Inca | India | Indonesia | Iroquois | Japan |
| Korea | Maya | Mongolia | Morocco | Ottoman | Persia | Poland |
| Polynesia | Portugal | Rome | Russia | Shoshone | Siam | Songhai |
| Venice | Zulu | |||||
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