it's 4.5 vills. banks ain't that great.

yep it costs about the same as 9 villies in vs but only does the production of half of that.

but with banks you never have to worry about coin.

Also banks are unraidable, they keep producing coin ewven when you're being attacked.

Banks in late game own, its because of them they give you 50 more pop to do military and stuff. Banks are great.

Also saving you the 800w for plantations later on.

banks are just necessairy or you'll be outboomed with the 50 vil cap.

yep, but banks cost double the cost of the vills that would do the same work.

They are good early and mid game, but i find that when you reach late game, they begin to lag behind.

Plantations have many more upgrades avalible to them, the only upgrade possible for banks is tulip speculation, which only raises their effectiveness 10%.

Assuming they are the equivalent of 4.5 villagers, that means that once you get 8 banks you have in effect 36 villages on gold, but that still makes the opponents economy alot stronger as 86 villagers are easily beaten by 99.

If Tulip Speculation was made to 20% or something it might help. As it stands i usually have to set my factories on gold in order to keep up with food production.

Is the 4.5 villies equivalent on mine or plantation?

and maube I am just being stupid here, but how does 700 resources=9 villies?

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in late game it doesn't matter about population, but resorce flow.

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mine.

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it's actually about 7 vills

350 food is 416 VS
350 wood is 700 VS
one bank costs ~1100 VS

700 coin to mine(to train seven vills) is ~1100 vs

so a bank costs about the same as seven vills but only does the work of 4.5 vills. that's why banks suck.

Banks are fine... the problem is the lack of upgrades for them.

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it doesnt quite work like that.

1st, u r dutch. so vils are more expensive, 350 food and 350 wood is about 6.something vils.

2nd, even though banks do less res-to-productivity return than vils, as dutch you dont really have an alternative to spend this 700 res to have it transformed into prductivity. bank is all you got.

3rd, as far as for the first 4 banks goes, no one really chop wood for them. they are built with shipped wood. in that sense the cost of banks are a lot less than one would think, since you dont really need to ship gold once you have banks and you almost never need to send food. shipping wood didnt have oppotunity cost.

4th, there is a lot more to banks than 4.5 vils on gold. firstly it doesnt run out, so you dont need to have 20 vils walk 30sec to get to the next mine; secondly you dont need to spend wood on towers, you dont need to micro mining vils when they are chased; lastly every 2 banks saves you 100 wood on houses.

[This message has been edited by ultimitsu (edited 05-28-2006 @ 06:27 PM).]

One of the problems with banks is the number of cards used to get their full effect. Youn need three shipments to get all 8 banks, and one more for the 10% increase. Also, as ultimitsu said: people usually use wood shipments to build the banks, at least one if not two. I don't know of any other civ that has to use as many as six shipments just to have an econ that is comparable to other civs. Imagine those shipments going into resources for ff or units, makes a big difference. I know dutch players don't get all of these right away, but it really puts a dent in the strategies that can be used when you have to delegate a quarter of your deck to just staying even.

You can say that dutch doesn't need to send these cards and they can be used for something else, but then were does that put them: with 50 vills and 4 banks (roughly 68 vills). I don't think 68 vills is going to win many games.

People also forget you get 140XP for every bank you make. The earlier you make them the faster you get some shipments.Which really helps early on.

i knwo banks and dutch suck, heres an idea.

what if the market upgrades for gold affected banks?

or the plantation or minign cards?

^^ You know, now that you mention it, not such a bad idea.

Gotta make sure the % rate per upgrade is a LOT less though...

Tbh though, it doesn't make sense logically. Placer Mines are for M-I-N-E-S, not banks. But...

*waits for Mokon's famous line*

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no they're not. the 350 chords from the shipment could have built something else. just because someting is 'free' doesn't mean there wasn't a cost.

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it most certainly does. the opportunity cost is the next best age 2 card. there is no such thing as a free lunch.

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which must make the dutch even weaker if the only worthwhile economic building in the early game is the bank.

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very true, but i'd rather have the vills. but that's just me.

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what is ther to build? what can be more important than banks?

we dont manor boom, we get good XP from building banks, we dont need market easly since we dont chop lots of wood, nor mine lots of gold, all our good troops are on gold....

you get 600 wood from start and aging, then 700 shipped, then 600 or 1000 shipped, that is quite enough for 4 banks + barrack + foundry.

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well... the next best is possibly 700 go.d but by then you'd be in age3 already.

when i play dutch, it is always 700 wood > 4 vils/600 wood > 700 gold/4vils > fortress.

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not really.

only a hand ful civs have the choice of put more res into production before age3:

british manor
port second TC
ottoman mosque vil train time improvement

port second TC is the best of the lot,since it is free.
british manor rivals well against dutch banks.
ottoman mosque improvement competely sucks comepared to banks.

all other 4 dont even have similar options.

As stated before, i love to play dutch.
In an ideal game yes the first 6 banks are built with shipped wood.
The prduction of a bank is or was more equivalent to 4 miners or 5 plantation workers. This is expensive but the exp gains combined with others like saved time not walking to mines make them decent early on.
Of course there is trade off. All that wood could go to mili buildings etc or troops etc.

Banks break down late game though. An upgraded plantation will outproduce 2 banks by a good margin. Then your forced to send 4 cards to really compete with banks, advanced church, 2 bank cards and tulip. Your opponent is sending no cards to get the full and greater effect of plantations. In fact, he is probably sending troop cards to beat you down while your wasting cards on banks that will be outproduced anyway.

The only good window for dutch to excell is after the 6 banks which youve hopefully outboomed so far and hitting them hard with a large army and non stop pressure. If you fail there and they get to max econ youre only advantage is the 150 mili pop and your weakness is a gimpier econ.

Maybe this is a silly question, but how do people feel about whether or not Dutch villies should be cheaper since they effectively cost more (in VS) than other Civ's villies? Their train time is 25 seconds like everybody else right (except Otto)?

Just curious.

True cost of a bank:

350f = 416 vs
350w = 700 vs
30 seconds to build
subtotal: 1146vs

Subtract 140xp
To subtract XP you have to convert that to vs. The average cost of the first 6 shipments is about 430 XP and let's say the average return on a shipment is that of 700g. 700g is worth 1070vs counting crate gather time, so 1 bank is 140xp/430xp x 1070vs = 348 vs

Total cost of a bank: 798vs

True cost of 4.5 vils:

4.5 x 100g / 0.6 gathering rate = 750vs
4.5 / 10 pop for house = .45 * 100w / 0.5 gather rate = 90vs
Subtract 45xp. 45xp/430xp x 1070vs = 112vs

Total cost of 4.5 vils: 728vs

You could argue that the house cost for vils is nothing because you'd build the house anyway, but most games don't go to 200pop and a Dutch in 1v1 is more concerned about what his payoff is for the first 10 min or so.

So banks are only 9.6% more expensive than vils, yet have the intangible benefits of providing an immediate boost in eco, never running out, being unraidable, ensuring you always have enough resources to make vils, and later on saving you 600w for a TC and 800w for a plantation.

Banks make it easy to build more artillery than your opponents, especially with 8 banks in late game.

Think of building a bank as getting 4 villiagers WHILE producing villiagers out of your tc. I think the dutch could get an advantage early on in "villiager population" if you include each bank as 4.5 villiagers.

1 bank generates 2.6 coin per second. 5 banks generate 13 coin per second (+ tulip = 14.3 coin per second).

1 villie on plantation 0.5 coin per second. so you need 26 villagers to equal 5 banks (then again, plantation have some usefull upgrades).

Right, banks do not suck. Here's why:

Banks gather at 2.6.
1 vill on a mine gathers at 0.6 per second.
1 vill on a plantation gathers at 0.5 per second.

I'm talking about banks late game here: Unupgraded bank vs unupgraded plantation = 2.6 / 0.5 = 5.2

Therefore 1 bank is equivalent to 5.2 vills not 4.5.

Right but late game everything is usually upgraded so we'll see how that affects the number of vills.

Tulip is a 15% increase not 10%:

Tulip 'bit' in techtree:
<Effect type="Data" action="AutoGather" amount="1.15" subtype="WorkRate" unittype="Gold" relativity="BasePercent">

2.6 * 1.15 = 2.99 coin per second per bank

For upgrades for plantations I'm going to assume that only the non home city upgrades are used because hardly anyone uses the HC ones as well. You have 3 upgrades for a plantation, a 10%, 20% and 30%. In total thats a 60% increase.

1.6 * 0.5 = 0.8 per vill per second.

1 bank = 2.99 / 0.8 = 3.7375 vills on a plantation with everything upgraded.

8 * 3.7375 = 29.9 vills. + 50 thats 79.9 vills.

Conclusion: banks suck late game. A bit contrasting with the beginning of the post but meh. Can anyone spot any mistakes?

[This message has been edited by MoNo Ager (edited 05-30-2006 @ 09:09 AM).]

<<<You have 3 upgrades for a plantation, a 10%, 20% and 30%. In total thats a 60% increase.>>>

bonuses are not stacking but are figured off the base line.
Plantations can be upgraded 30% at the plantation.
Banks get 0% at the bank and can only reach a 15% with a card.

2 banks equals roughly 1 unupgraded plantation. each upgraded done on a plantation will thus increase its effectiveness, and ,god forbid, someone send a 25% boost to a plantation with a card and you have a severe imbalance.

<<< Banks make it easy to build more artillery than your opponents, especially with 8 banks in late game.>>>

3 upgraded plantations will way outproduce 6 banks. 4 upgraded plantations will grossly outproduce 8 banks. just as easy to spam artillery with plantations as it is banks late game. Easier in fact. Late game dutch are suffering with a weak econ and only have the 150 mili pop as an "advantage".