Most people who think this only looking at the 700res for 4.5 vils worth of gold point of view. but banks are far more than just that. unraible gold generating machines gives 140 build XP and can be built any time requires no TC idle time and no pop space - they are great! But who is to say dutch should have unlimited benefit from the banks? imo this is a good way to limit dutch's exploit of the banks, my view has always been you only need 4 banks for the first half of the game, by the time you need more banks, you should have already sent all urgent cards, so u can afford to send the bank cards. Well it is, and there is no reason why it shouldnt be, it is a choice every dutch player has to make. Most of the time I choose not to use, and I am doing just fine with 6 banks; when i do use it, it would be in very late game when micro is not a big part and I no longer rely on skirms and pikes for offence, massed hussars and artilleries are not hurt by -10% speed. No it is not. Firstly 95% of all my games i finish with less than 50 vils made, so the vil cap rarely matters. Secondly 95% of my dutch games I finish with more res then my opp. Thirdly most maps have either water or trade route which can be used to balance vil count issue. Lastly, of all the dutch games I had, 100% of them, I have never once felt i was disadvantaged by that 50 vil cap. i am responsible for saying this for a long time, and now i think it has been mostly addressed in 1.08, hussar and skirm both got reasonable boost to make them usable. halbs and nadiers are still crap, sure, but we got falcs and vet pikes, we dont have to use them. This is true, and this is something to fix - if it is to be fixed. Dutch gets no 5 hussar card or 4 hussar politician which means dutch has to make hussars in its FF game; dutch gets no skirm politician which also means some very cool strats are very hard to pull off; dutch dont get muskts, which is one of the best all round unit today; and dutch's 5 halbs is just utter crap compared to all the options everyone else gets. However, having fast start and good eco, maybe this is what dutch is meant to be, maybe it is ES's way to keep dutch checked from some insanely fast and powerful FF strats. [This message has been edited by ultimitsu (edited 08-27-2006 @ 01:59 AM).]
Dutch players who dont know how to take advantage of banks need to learn that.
Strategy by Ultimitsu
Guns and Biers
British Anti-FF explosion
For TWC only Ottoman FF on non-water non-TP maps
For Vanilla only Dutch Fast Colonial Uber Bank