In [B. De Bruyn, P. Vandecasteele, Near polygons with a nice chain of sub near polygons, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 108 (2004) 297–311], we determined all dense near 2n-gons of order (2,t) with a nice chain of subpolygons, i.e. a chain F₀F₁F_n of convex subpolygons satisfying (i) F_i, i{0,…,n}, is a near 2i-gon, and (ii) F_i, i{0,…,n−1}, is big in F_i+1. In the present paper, we describe a method which can be used for classifying general dense near polygons with such a chain. We will use this method to determine all dense near polygons with a nice chain of subpolygons if every hex is either classical or glued. We will apply the latter result to determine all dense near octagons of order (3,t) with a nice chain of subpolygons.