colonies

[patcon]

This is a continuation of comments started in the "air superiority" thread.

In addition to the connectivity issues of far-off colonies, it always bothered me that one of your colonies could be lost simply by having another civ's borders expand to include that tile, without any repurcussions, except that any defenders of that colony are now invaders.
Perhaps this might work. A colony can be founded by a worker in the usual way, but this colony is a 1-tile town (central tile only) at the start, with its sole citizen employed in the business of the colony - mining iron, trapping fur, etc. - in other words only the central tile gets worked so there is no extra food for population growth. The "business" of a coastal colony would be sea trade (i.e., a harbor), possibly combined with resource extraction if it were lucky enough to be a coastal ivory tile, for example. Borders of the town could be expanded by the usual method of building culture-producing improvements, but there wouldn't be any population growth unless more workers were sent there to join the colony. If workers join before the city-radius expands, the player gets to designate 1 tile in the 8 adjoining tiles to be worked. That could lead to a food surplus and population growth in the usual way.

[Niptium]

I have to say that the colonial era was very poorly implemented in all of Civilization's iteration. I always thgought that a portion of the map should be inaccessible until the Reanaissance - but that was a rough idea. I don.'t really know how Firaxis could implement such a thing in Civilization 5.

Oh well ! Let's just do Colonization 2 instead !

[sophist]

I don't understand why you would want colonies to be so powerful with so many abilities and yet be unwilling to build an actual city.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by sophist
I don't understand why you would want colonies to be so powerful with so many abilities and yet be unwilling to build an actual city.

You get a lower population cost, lower maintenance costs, and more use out of the resource for much slower population growth, not having the ability to build most improvements, and not having the ability to build most units. That's just an idea.

[Bogdanovist]

This sounds like an unneccessary complication. Cities are cities, they do what they do, colonies let you access a resource outside your borders. It's simple and it works. This is the kind of change Firaxis had been clear they want to avoid, making existing features more and more complex with each iteration of the game becoming more and more complex nad harder for new players to get into.

Don't mean to sound to harsh about this suggestion, but it seems it's motivated from a realism view (what should happen when a rivals cultural border swallows your colony?) rather than a game balance, and funness view. Would this change be more fun? No. Would it address a game balance issue? No. Would it add a new level of strategic options? No, just build a city if you want to really secure the resource.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by Bogdanovist
This sounds like an unneccessary complication. Cities are cities, they do what they do, colonies let you access a resource outside your borders. It's simple and it works. This is the kind of change Firaxis had been clear they want to avoid, making existing features more and more complex with each iteration of the game becoming more and more complex nad harder for new players to get into.

Don't mean to sound to harsh about this suggestion, but it seems it's motivated from a realism view (what should happen when a rivals cultural border swallows your colony?) rather than a game balance, and funness view. Would this change be more fun? No. Would it address a game balance issue? No. Would it add a new level of strategic options? No, just build a city if you want to really secure the resource.

Not being mean or anything, but I couldn't give a hoot about casual players who can't even grasp the concept of a "colony." And colonies as they stand now, are hardly ever used. Whatever happens to them, they need to be changed.

You're wrong, it would add a strategic option, and you seemed to have ignored my points on why a colony would be better than a city in some respects.

[Proteus_MST]

I agree with Lord Nuclear and patcon.

I never used Colonies in Civ III for the reasons mentioned above (i.e. that my precious colonies are gone as soon as any other player builds a city nearby (or has cultural borders which expand over the location of my colony))

But I wouldn´t make Colonies this powerful.
Make them 1 Population cities that don´t grow and have no expanding cultural borders, as patcon says, but don´t allow them to build any city improvements.
But of course, with the addition of another worker, they should be allowed to grow into a real city (after all these 2 workers [the first to found the colony, the second to turn it into a city] would cost roughly the same as one settler [at least in Civ III])

[1889]

If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

Once again, you have ignored my points on the differences between a colony and a city.

[LDiCesare]

Colonies would be more useful if building too many cities had bad consequences. Or if they didn't flip. Getting rid of them wouldn't hurt gameplay a lot either.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

With a settler you have just one unit to move along.

But aside from this it isn´t difficult to further encourage players to use the settler instead of buildings 2 workers which first buil a colony and then upgrade it to a city:
Just make 2 Workers somehow more expensive than one settler, for example by assigning a worker costs of 12-15 hammers wheres a settler costs just 20 hammers.

[Sandman]

I agree with sophist. What's the point in having a super-duper colony when you could just have a city?

On a related note, it would nice if the game didn't penalise having overseas territories as much. Maybe you could get better trade deals by having a single trade city on a farflung continent or something.

[korn469]

If colonies simply had an innate port feature, so that they players wouldn't have to connect them by roads, then colonies would become far more useful. Giving colonies a built in port (and maybe even airport) ability then players could establish colonies across a body of water without building cities on the new continant. I would find that very useful.

[patcon]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

Colonies are very seldom used, to the point of being essentially worthless. First you have to build a road to the resource, then use up a worker to build a colony, then put a defender there if you want to hold onto it. By the time that all gets done, borders have changed and who knows how long you'll either need it or be able to use it. You might as well use all that prep time to build the road with your worker, build a settler in a nearby city, and establish a city instead of a colony. The only times I can recall using a colony is when there was iron or coal deep in the mountains where a city couldn't be built and where borders would take forever to expand to cover, maybe twice in all my playing. And if that resource is not within roadable distance from your territory (say on a distant shore) putting a colony doesn't help since the colony is not connected by a trade route.

I could live with a "dock" colony which could serve to connect colonies to the motherland. This would be pretty expensive (at least 2 workers and 2 defenders and the time to build connecting roads) for a potentially short-lived benefit, as other civs are likely to establish cities nearby and swallow up your colonies. You'd have to land the 4 units, send the defender to the tiles you want to colonize, have the workers road the tiles in between, then have the workers establish the colonies.

Having colonies act as "villages" doesn't make them equal in any real sense to cities estabilshed by settlers. They would grow extremely slowly, if at all, and would require a substantial investment to turn into a city. Perhaps limit the production of a colony to units, not improvements, until the population reaches say 3 or 4.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear

You get a lower population cost, lower maintenance costs, and more use out of the resource for much slower population growth, not having the ability to build most improvements, and not having the ability to build most units. That's just an idea.

All of those things can be done with a city. Plant a settler, make its single citizen an entertainer or something, build no improvements or units besides a harbor, and there you go. There's no maintenance if there are no improvements. There's no need to add a new thing or change colonies as they are to achieve that. Stop focusing on the word colony; think of it as a camp.

I do support being able to build an harbor that can exist outside a city, though. Build a colony on one tile and such a harbor on a neighboring tile if it's hard to reach. That way, you have four levels of possibility with only a single, minor addition to the game: colony by itself, colony with harbor, tiny city, and real city.

You shouldn't be able to claim land just by planting a flag. You need a real presence, which in Civ is a city. If you make a half-assed land grab using a colony, and that colony is swallowed up by another civ that's willing to put in the investment to build a city nearby, tough. It's not like that possibility sneaks up on you; you know the risks when you do something like that.

[Alex]

I like the concept of colonies, but it was badly implemented in Civ3, for the reasons outlined in other posts. Sometimes I use them in my games, but it is a rare ocurrence.

I like korn's idea of giving them an innate port feature. This would make them more useful in the game.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Alex
I like korn's idea of giving them an innate port feature. This would make them more useful in the game.

Same here

Besides, since they have a port, colonies would open you a trade route with the contient's indigenous Civs, if their coastal cities don't have any harbours. Such trading posts between Europe and the far continents were extremely important during the whole colonial era, outside of America (until the 19th century, the western presence in Africa, India and the rest of Asia were pretty much only trading posts).

[sophist]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Besides, since they have a port, colonies would open you a trade route with the contient's indigenous Civs, if their coastal cities don't have any harbours. Such trading posts between Europe and the far continents were extremely important during the whole colonial era, outside of America (until the 19th century, the western presence in Africa, India and the rest of Asia were pretty much only trading posts).

That's a good point. I think it would be especially useful if you had more advanced technology than them, so you could reach them but they couldn't reach you. In Civ3, you'd have to wait for them to get the tech (or give it to them) and also wait for them to build a harbor. This way, you can trade with them but not have to give away the tech or wait for them to build a harbor; in effect, you could monopolize their access to the outside world, at least for a time.

Now that I think about it, though, that doesn't seem to work because you'd have to establish the harbor in unowned territory. Might as well build a city, then. Perhaps a thing to do would be to build a city on their contact before establishing contact, but that assumes you want to and it's worth it. Clearly, the existing mechanism doesn't work for that.

One thing that Civ4 seems to be doing that will clear up a little confusion is by having resource-specific tile improvements. It appears that you'll need to build an improvement as well as connect a resource in order to use it. It's possible that colonies as we know them would get either eliminated or folded into that. That frees up the term for a more historically accurate usage.

Half-baked idea: there should be a way for you to found a city on foreign territory that does not cause offense. This city would be a colony in the sense of being a trading post, a way to connect your main trading network to another Civ's trading network. It would remain yours, but you would have to make certain concessions to the host nation for it not to be a threat. Think of Hong Kong or Nagasaki as examples, as well as Pondicherry, the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, Arab colonies around the Indian Ocean, and others.

You could negotiate with another nation to place a colony on their territory. This colony would have various restrictions (either by it being a special game concept or negotiated with the other civ) on it to prevent it from encroaching on their territory. If you violated those terms, it would be a casus belli. Otherwise, you have a small foothold that you can use to connect your trade network to theirs. This is also something you could demand in negotiations as well, like Commodore Perry in Japan or the British with Hong Kong. Maybe there could be a lease agreement.

I'm not sure how such a thing would work in Civ4. Apparently, the AI is much more willing to give up a city, but the level of control is pretty different. Also, it sounds like borders are either open or closed, with no middle ground where you could channel all interaction through a single city like Nagasaki. I also don't know if Civ4 supports trade monopolies; not in the sense of monopolizing supply, but demanding that another nation trade with you and only you. Those would be good things to explore.

Perhaps this mechanism could also be used to create overseas military bases, like the USA has around the world.

[Az]

I agree with Lord Nuke - this isn't the question of utility in game play, it's a question of attempted realism.

I guess it all stems for my dislike of the fact that building settler costs any resources, generally ( think colonization)

[MxM]

How about this:
The colonies should work exactly the same way as they are right now, expect that they have borders the same as the basic town (3x3). Similar like small cities, the colonies can be culturally converted (they have 0 culture).

However in future, if you want to upgrade the colony into a city, then you have to use SETTLER to plant city on top of it, or in one of the nearest tiles. In this case the colony would disappear, or become some tile improvement, depending on the recourse (e.g. mine for iron). Whatever.

The main idea is the need of the settler to convert a colony into a city, and giving borders to the colony, the same as for the smallest city.

As for ports and airports, I think this can be improvements build by worker on the tiles. As long as the colony is connected by road to port or airport, the colony will use it. Actually I think it is may be more realistic this way - quite often initially ports are separated from the place where the resource is collected.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by sophist

All of those things can be done with a city. Plant a settler, make its single citizen an entertainer or something, build no improvements or units besides a harbor, and there you go. There's no maintenance if there are no improvements. There's no need to add a new thing or change colonies as they are to achieve that. Stop focusing on the word colony; think of it as a camp.

If you leave out colonies, then you leave out a crucial part of history, which IMO, is disappointing. If you make a city with an entertainer and build not units, you still don't have a colony. A colony does have improvements that focus on things that matter to a colony, not temples or marketplaces. A colony has half, or even less of the growth speed of a normal city. Not to mention that the city you just made cost two population/the building of a settler, while the colony only costed one population/the building of a worker. One population makes a lot of difference in the early game.

[Ninot]

I forget, could overseas colonies be made without making an accompanying port city?

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by MxM
How about this:
The colonies should work exactly the same way as they are right now, expect that they have borders the same as the basic town (3x3). Similar like small cities, the colonies can be culturally converted (they have 0 culture).

However in future, if you want to upgrade the colony into a city, then you have to use SETTLER to plant city on top of it, or in one of the nearest tiles. In this case the colony would disappear, or become some tile improvement, depending on the recourse (e.g. mine for iron). Whatever.

The main idea is the need of the settler to convert a colony into a city, and giving borders to the colony, the same as for the smallest city.

As for ports and airports, I think this can be improvements build by worker on the tiles. As long as the colony is connected by road to port or airport, the colony will use it. Actually I think it is may be more realistic this way - quite often initially ports are separated from the place where the resource is collected.

So a colony now costs a settler and a worker? I don't like that idea.

[Az]

I'd play along, as long as the city is size 3, and the colony will have a harbor. ( not the city, though. hmmm, problem )

[MxM]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear
So a colony now costs a settler and a worker? I don't like that idea.

No, a colony cost only a worker. The UPGRADE of a colony to a CITY cost a settler.

It is not that expensive as you may think. You put colonies in the beginning of the game, when the settlers are expensive, and you do not have extra population. You just want to claim the resource. Later, however, you can make a settler without any problem, so you do it and upgrade the colony into a city.

This gives you more options, more choices in the game. Do you build a city right now, which is more expansive now, but cheaper in a total run, or you build a colony now and have to spend a settler later? More choices = more interesting gameplay.

[Niptium]

Wait a minute. I'm talking about colony in the COLONIZATION kind of sens - not in the Civilization 3 house-on-a-hill thingie that was the most worthless thing ever.

I'm thinking about unveiling 1/3 of the map only when Navigation and caravelles are uncovered.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear

If you leave out colonies, then you leave out a crucial part of history, which IMO, is disappointing.

I agree. Hence my half-baked suggestion above.

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear

If you make a city with an entertainer and build not units, you still don't have a colony. A colony does have improvements that focus on things that matter to a colony, not temples or marketplaces. A colony has half, or even less of the growth speed of a normal city. Not to mention that the city you just made cost two population/the building of a settler, while the colony only costed one population/the building of a worker. One population makes a lot of difference in the early game.

The game would suffer from having two things that are too similar to each other. That's the core of my disagreement. These things make a colony into a quasi-city, not a thing unto itself. Either make it a city or make it something unlike a city, but splitting the difference is no good for gameplay.

I also think people are getting too hung up on the name colony. Dictionary.com's (relevant) definitions of the word are:

1a. A group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant territory but remain subject to or closely associated with the parent country.
1b. A territory thus settled.

2. A region politically controlled by a distant country; a dependency.

That definition says nothing about what form the settlement takes. Historical colonies were real cities. They may have been small ones, but they were real cities. The only real factor that distinguished them from their home cities was distance.

[patcon]

Originally posted by Ninot
I forget, could overseas colonies be made without making an accompanying port city?

In civ 3 you can put a colony on any resource tile you want in unclaimed territory. Once a civ's (hopefully your own) territory expands to cover the colony, the colony ceases to exist. Of course a colony does you no good at all unless a road trade route exists from the colony to one of your cities.
So yes, you could put a worker on a boat, sail to some distant shore, unload and build a colony on a resource tile. But unless that colony is connected to a city with a harbor, and you have a harbor back in your main territory, you get no benefit, nada, zip, zilch, nicht.

[MxM]

Originally posted by Niptium
Wait a minute. I'm talking about colony in the COLONIZATION kind of sens - not in the Civilization 3 house-on-a-hill thingie that was the most worthless thing ever.

I'm thinking about unveiling 1/3 of the map only when Navigation and caravelles are uncovered.

Yes, I was talking about that colony or worker camp, not colonization type of colony. This was not obvious from this thread.

[Boris Godunov]

IMO colonies in Civ3 are pretty useless. The time and cost of getting them pretty much negates their usefulness as opposed to just building a nearby city.

I like the Europa Universalis model: Start off with a trading post that can then upgrade to a colony which can then upgrade to a full-fledged city.