For starters The dutch vils cost coin and not food, that was a wierd shift for me but a fun one. The vils costing coin means you have to be more inventive with your builds. Building early markets are more worth it than with other civs. You can trade some of your early coin for food and age faster, sell some wood or food for coin to get more vils, and also benefit from the market techs earlier (thanks to the shipment tech that makes market upgrades cheaper).
Banks are pretty handy though they are pretty costly. they help to keep the hard to get dutch citizens doing other chores like gathering food and wood. At over 300 food and 300 wood they are an expensive proposition but they do pay for themselves in time.
Ruyters the Dutch ranged cavalry is awesome against other cavalry though not so potent against infantry, they aren't very great raiders but they are fast so they can flee faster than infantry raiders.
Fluyts are a slow warship resistant to building fire that allows you to train troops in, though in the build I have I have yet to see their combat effectiveness due to no good water maps but imagine 3-4 Fluyts pushing out Ruyters right near your shore with your shore batteries barely hurting them at all.
The Envoy is a scout unit that you get free when the game starts, they offer no attack but they are a good spare unit to start with to find nice resource spots and treasures.
What is interesting is Dutch do not get Crossbows... they get Pikes and Halberdiers with Skirmishers for their ranged infantry unit. I think this is because they also get one of the few ranged cavalry units in the game.
A tech that is shipped from the home city called Stadhouder makes your explorer better in combat and allows him to train a dog that in any regard kicks some serious ass. This helps to give Dutch treasure hunting a major boost as you won't have to wait until age 2 to get enough troops to take out the medium sized gaurdians to get the better treasures.
The Dutch are a pretty interesting civ and I am surprised at how well they are balanced even though they need to use a seperate resource to train the vital villy. I will say that in the right hands the Dutch will be deadly on water maps but also a mighty force on land! The more I play the more I like AoE3, good job ES I think Age of Empires 3 has earned it's place in the Age of Series! "I've kicked more ass on accident than most people have on purpose" [This message has been edited by TheGoodEvil (edited 08-18-2005 @ 10:04 PM).]
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