No LB's until last moment ... that's the strategy?

[fumanchu72000]

So, I've been playing the new Colonization. I never really got into the original (it came out a bit before I had good access to a computer).

I started playing a few times, learning to set up a working economy when the computer kept getting all the FF's. So I played a few games and found that generating LB's allowed me to compete with them for FF's, and I got production bonuses. Excellent! Then, way before I expected I was pressed for time on the WoI, so I checked the king's army and saw it was way larger than I could manage.

So I played a few more games, trying to build up a number of cities, generating LB's and arms, and again the deadline was coming up way too soon and the king's army way too large.

So I come on here and read about the 3 city, don't generate LB's until the last moment strategy. I go home, try it, and lo and behold I beat the game.

Wow am I disappointed. LB's generate a lot of good things (especially cultural boarders that "push" the natives out), but the game seems completely rigged against generating them.

Well, at least I still like Civ 4. I'm hoping a patch fixes some of this ... but I fear the problem is more of a core design/goal issue than just a simple balance issue.

I was really hoping for more of an economic game than a straight RTS build a quick base and pump out units before the zerg shows up.

Robert

[snoopy369]

It's certainly one strategy. As I and Dale and a few others have noted ... you CAN fight a large REF. You just have to try.
If you prefer an easier game, the PatchMod (topped thread) Dale and I are working on makes the REF scale more substantially for lower levels, and does some other useful things also.

[crantor]

it wouldn't be much challenge if you could produce liberty bells, which are a huge bonus for your colonies, without any kind of disadvantage. PRoduce them early, you get a stronger start, but you need more troops later to fight the REF. I am not sure tying REF to librty bells exclusively is the best idea, but cranking out libery bells needs to have some sort of effect or it would be a no-brainer to always produce max of em ASAP.

And 3 colonies? I just finished a game on conquistador+1, 7 colonies, OUTNUMBERED the REF (except warships, which I had none) with a few units.

A tip is to "build" FF points if you need em early, but don't want to alert the king.

[fumanchu72000]

I can see there needing to be a downside to generating LB's, especially since there are production bonuses. I'd prefer the natives get hostile rather than just roll over. They are hard to deal with military wise, so expanding your borders would be dangerous with strong tribes nearby.

They probably are beatable with the larger armies, but I need more experience to pull that off, especially a larger colony will take more time, which will have the tax man all up in my profits.

I've also read about the building FF points without using LB's. I could sacrifice a city to that purpose to keep up with the Jones ...

That'd be a 4th city, so I'll need a 5th one to feed that ... hey wait. I see what you did there.

Maybe I was more disappointed with how easy it was doing the three city, crash LB's thing was after how interestingly hard it seemed early on.

I'm also tinkering with just playing like the revolution will never happen, and just taking the loss when it happens. I don't think any game police will arrest me for playing to not win.

Robert

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by fumanchu72000
I can see there needing to be a downside to generating LB's, especially since there are production bonuses. I'd prefer the natives get hostile rather than just roll over. They are hard to deal with military wise, so expanding your borders would be dangerous with strong tribes nearby.

This, right here. On lower levels this is a much better method of stopping rampant LB production than having them end up having to defeat 150+ units in 20 turns when it generally takes lower-difficulty players longer to build up to begin with.

Especially considering there's such a short span of time to the game.

Me.

[fumanchu72000]

Since I've been learning, I am at the lower levels of difficulty right now. I'd like to try building a larger empire and then fight off the large military rather than advance in level and keep to the few city rush strategy.

I think the initial shock is that expanding your borders has always been (Civ 4 here) a good thing, something to be done early and often. In this game, there is a huge backhand slap that new players simply aren't ready for when you generate LB's.

Dealing with 400 of the kings army may be possible, but even on the easier levels I doubt many of us newbies could pull it off. Even more so now that I've seen how easy the alternative is.

Robert

[fumanchu72000]

Expanding on my thought processes ...

I think it would make for a more interesting narrative (and game) if there was a more natural progression in the game. You land, explore, expand, and fight to develop your economy ... bringing you into conflict with the land and the natives. You end this phase with the basic economy and a small number of military units.

You get your basic economy running well, money is coming in, and you've pushed the natives out of your slice of the new world when you start coming into competition and conflict with the other European colonies. You end this phase with a big economy and a core of combined arms troops.

Then, after that you have a strong economy and stable borders, your conflict with Europe comes into play. The colonies gear up to have every man and women armed and ready for the big fight.

I'd love to play that game. I'm learning more about this game, but I'm not convinced the whole game isn't a blitz leadup to a massive fight with Europe, with nothing inbetween to prepare you for that fight.

I think when I started I was playing to win a different game then the one I bought. Hence the frustration in my original post.

Robert

[snoopy369]

I think that would be interesting, but I think Col is a bit more open ended of a game than that. It's not really a "phase" game...

[Becephalus73]

Originally posted by snoopy369
It's certainly one strategy. As I and Dale and a few others have noted ... you CAN fight a large REF. You just have to try.
If you prefer an easier game, the PatchMod (topped thread) Dale and I are working on makes the REF scale more substantially for lower levels, and does some other useful things also.

That you can fight a larger REF is in my opinion and I would assume the opinions of others and extreme weakness of the game.

The British didn't lose the war because they were losing, they lost because they French intervened, they had a MUCH MUCH more important rebellion going on in India, and the support on the home front was really mixed.

Beating the king should take great tactics foreign help, and good timing, not a 10 to 1 kill ratio.

[snoopy369]

I think that's a 'realism' argument; this is however a game, and gameplay is more interesting when you're doing the majority of the 'winning'. I certainly think that if you could have a Foreign King intervene on your side for some small effect it would be 'fun', simply because it sounds cool; but you'll find that for most people, it's more fun to fight with your own units and have the 'winning' determined by your own actions, rather than by random chance or the computer's decision. At the end of the day, the King intervention should be a 'fun' event and not a game-changing element.

Actually, that brings an interesting idea to mind. There have been a lot of problems with the REF not being finished off in time not because of the player's actions but because of some other problem. Perhaps the Foreign King could intervene on your side and cause the REF to surrender after some reasonable amount of time has gone by with no REF action, or some other measurable, and cause you to win instantly (as a protection against the REF getting lost, and also just an interesting element, allowing 'bunkering down' rather than just active destruction).

[fumanchu72000]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I think that would be interesting, but I think Col is a bit more open ended of a game than that. It's not really a "phase" game...

Perhaps my use of phase was too strong. I used phase to describe what I think would be an interesting progression in the game. The whole game would flow together seemlessly, but your goals along the way would shift to larger concerns as you meet your more local concerns.

Lets say you spend the first part of the game exploring and setting up your colonies. You are engaged with the local tribes, warring with some, allying with others. Once you've grown and expanded, you are now in in direct competition for resources and space with the other colonies. Now you negotiate and war with them. Once you are able to stablize your colony through that, you are now ready to go to war with your home country.

I think if these interactions were necessary, and organically grew from the game rather than forced it, one would be more naturally able to deal with the European forces.

Colonization is completely about the end war. Doing anything else but preparing for that war will lose the singular goal of the game. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm saying that I think many of the frustrations from us new players stem from the lack of progression. I remember reading a review (maybe PC Gamer) that pretty much stated the same thing. Something like, "The game is good, but nothing you are asked or required to do will prepare you for the coming war with Europe. Only if you know this ahead of time and start preparing for it 100+ turns in advance do you have a chance to win it".

I think what I'm getting at is if the military and competition concern more gradually ramped up, you may be more prepared for the end game rather than having the end game hit you like a runaway freight train. This is the first game I had to come online to figure out what I was doing wrong and found out I wasn't even close to the right solution (mostly that I never considered that a major mechanic of the game, LB's, were actively hurting my chances of winning) ... in over 20 years of gaming, I think that says a lot.

Or I'm just getting old.

Robert

[snoopy369]

And what I mean is that Col - like Civ - is intended to have many ways of playing. Having one set pattern is not really intended- obviously you to some extent must simply because you start with nothing, but there should be many ways of getting from (nothing) to (win), rather than simply following the realistic path.

You have a point that the lack of militarism early in the game makes it ... harder ... later in the game. I think that people can learn to deal with that, though (and that in and of itself is not unrealistic - the colonists fighting in the RW were not generally thinking 'war in a hundred years' when they came over, either...

[Becephalus73]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I think that's a 'realism' argument; this is however a game, and gameplay is more interesting when you're doing the majority of the 'winning'. I certainly think that if you could have a Foreign King intervene on your side for some small effect it would be 'fun', simply because it sounds cool; but you'll find that for most people, it's more fun to fight with your own units and have the 'winning' determined by your own actions, rather than by random chance or the computer's decision. At the end of the day, the King intervention should be a 'fun' event and not a game-changing element.

Actually, that brings an interesting idea to mind. There have been a lot of problems with the REF not being finished off in time not because of the player's actions but because of some other problem. Perhaps the Foreign King could intervene on your side and cause the REF to surrender after some reasonable amount of time has gone by with no REF action, or some other measurable, and cause you to win instantly (as a protection against the REF getting lost, and also just an interesting element, allowing 'bunkering down' rather than just active destruction).

I think the gameplay would be just as interesting with an REF only double your size that had defensive bonuses (you seem so anti-realism, but then break out the realism argument here where it hurts gameplay badly, not to mention the fact it isn't even realistic...). It would also be nice if the REF didn't play like a complete idiot. This is what I am talking about.

For me personally and i would assume some others having 70 kills and 8 losses is not fun. It really pulls me out of the game, because it just IS NOT HARD or interesting.

Some features/victory conditions that interest me more:

Hold on to 60% of your cities for x turns (where x is based on your total number and the average distance apart (so you don't squirrel some away)). If you do so another King intervenes and saves you.

Bribe another king to help you: Maybe this costs 1k per citizen/cannon you have, and he sends a force 1/3 the size of the REF?

Randomly changing REF sizes, I cannot stress enough how this would make people have more flexible planning, and thus make the game feel like less of a straight jacket.

X turn the REF shrinks by 25% X+15 turn it gains 40% etc. All around whatever is settled on as the ideal size. No longer are you on a single plodding path to some date you chose before the game even started.

Maybe being able to Bribe politicians in your home country (or opinion makers or propagandists or whatever to reduce the REF size.

Anything that makes this game something other than
(get #statesmen = 3(#city)
(have guns/horses for everyone else)
(or maybe just the statesmen and cannons)
(make bells)
(win after slaughtering the piss out of an army twice as good and 3 times as large as yours)

[The Rusty Gamer]

See my suggestions for change at http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=181042

The first thing I'd do if I knew how is change the trigger from LBs to political points.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by snoopy369
And what I mean is that Col - like Civ - is intended to have many ways of playing.

It is liek Civ only if Civ is set up as a dual game with only the Domination victory condition. But it still will be a Build Food City-Sell Stuff-Buy Guns/Cannons/Horses-Buy Statemen-Win Independence game. Unless the clever people can think of a way to make your actions have more consequences.

[kulak]

Originally posted by snoopy369
And what I mean is that Col - like Civ - is intended to have many ways of playing. Having one set pattern is not really intended- obviously you to some extent must simply because you start with nothing, but there should be many ways of getting from (nothing) to (win), rather than simply following the realistic path.

What I liked about game mechanics of Civ4 is that most "penalties" for doing something were just the opportunity cost of not doing something else.

There was no need to balance science by creating negative effects of researching technologies. Instead the "penalty" was only the fact you didn't do something else you could have...like build a military...

So I would've thought the ideal way to balance the benefits of Liberty Bells (assuming they're overpowered) would be to either mitigate their benefits, or to increase the benefits of alternatives (crosses, hammers, whatever).

The current way feels like the game is "moving the goalposts" - it's the equivalent of Civ4 saying that if I have a larger empire, that my spaceship needs to be bigger. Just doesn't feel right.

[rf_900]

For me it is the same case as Civilization with only one victory condition. If you play Civ4 with only one victory condition your gameplay will be affected, the strategies will be more limited and you will be force to take certain actions.

I think that if we add victory condition to Colonization it will allow for a more varied gameplay. They could be other victory conditions that allow you to achieve DoI in a different way.

[joncnunn]

If foreign intervention was brought back in, I would sugest it be a certain percentage of that foreign REF that comes over and not based upon your own REF.

France's forces that came over was based on what France could afford to send over here without losing too much elsewhere. (And not so much based on how much England intended to commit over here.)

[joncnunn]

Back on the LBs at the last moment, the more I think about, the more I'm convinced that a lot of the problem is that per turn cap on REF increase from Liberty bells making it artiically easy to win with the few cities no LB until last approach and not as much the too hard to win with traditional approach (if already on the highest difficulty level).

What it's basically done is made it such that you should either produce no LBs for NO increase; or a massive amount of LBs in a single turn way above what would cause the max cap per turn REF increase.

If that per turn cap were removed, then the player's REF would be about the same size either way by DOI weather he built a few LB a turn for several turns or a lot of LB per turn for a few turns.

[fumanchu72000]

Well, I've played a few more games now. I tried creating a larger colony and generate LB's at a more inuitive linearly increasing rate.

Keeping a small colony and rapidly jumping your LB's over a few turns is just more effective and a whole lot easier.

Although both large and small colonies are viable, I believe the "difficulty" is skewed toward the tiny colonies that shotgun LB's at the end. For me, this doesn't pass the "feel" test.

It was a huge task to stockpile the necessary weapons and horses for a large colony to repel such a large number of the king's forces (and I failed at that, I tried for about 100 colonial forces and it wasn't enough given my "linear" LB growth test).

So, some changes I'd like to see are ...
1. Anything that encourages more a more linear LB growth rate. One shouldn't be so massively punished for using a major game feature. Perhaps move the "opportunity cost" toward hostility with the natives.
2. Change the way the kings army is generated. Mosty to help with point 1.
3. I understand the need to make combat less of a "hide in the city" affair, but for all that is holy and good a fortified city should not be an instant deathtrap.
4. I think there needs to be a different way to stockpile goods beyond building an army of wagon trains and just have them sit in cities acting as warehouses. I think one more warehouse upgrade that allows unlimited storing would work. Maybe make it prohibitively expensive so you're only likely to build in it one city. That way you can use your exsisting wagon train network to bring everything to that one city. I don't think the wagon trains were meant to be used as warehouses.

Well, now to create a large colony strategy help thread.

Robert

[Steve Clark]

Excellent summary of the major weaknesses/exploits of the game and what can be done to improve them. I fully agree on all 4 points. Wagon Trains (and Ships) should not be used as Warehouses; LB should not slammed in at the end; and the city should not be a death trap for the invading army.

[wodan11]

If the unlimited warehouse is prohibitively expensive, then why wouldn't I keep using wagons as warehouses? They would be cheaper.

It needs to be cheaper than the wagon option. Actually, quite a bit cheaper, because wagons have the added benefit of flexibility / mobility.

The main problem is that I need enough horses/guns to be able to convert pretty much my whole city population to mounted troops. Especially now as I have to evacuate when the REF arrives. So, I need effectively unlimited warehousing in that city.

And, I need to repeat that action possibly with other cities. Certainly with other cities, if I guess wrong on which city is going to receive the brunt of the attack.

So, either the unlimited warehouse needs to be able to be built at multiple cites AND it needs to be less than 1/2 the cost of the wagons, or it's going to be a less desirable option in my book.

Good idea though.

[fumanchu72000]

I'm not that good at game design, otherwise I'd be making games.

I didn't think about the resource mobility/cost of wagon train angle when talking about the elusive unlimited warehouse. I brought up making it expensive as it's clear they wanted resource limits to be an issue that had to be dealt with. As it is, wagon trains negate the need to care how much of anything you have, as long as you are willing to build another wagon train to store it.

I could add a point 5.

5. Units outside of a settlement should want to rebel at the same rate as workers inside a city. Kinda odd that most of the population want's to rebel, and the workers doing land construction and the standing army all have paintings of the king they carry around with them. This is another penalty when trying to interact with the natives and other colonies.

This is more of a "what the heck" moment. I had a colony on a large island, that blocked most direct movement to the island behind it. I had a city on one coast, which diagonally touched a native city that touched the other coast because the land mass became a bit narrow where we were. I could sail my ship from my colony, to the native colony, to the other side of the island. Instant Panama Canal! Hehe.

Robert

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by kulak


What I liked about game mechanics of Civ4 is that most "penalties" for doing something were just the opportunity cost of not doing something else.

There was no need to balance science by creating negative effects of researching technologies. Instead the "penalty" was only the fact you didn't do something else you could have...like build a military...

So I would've thought the ideal way to balance the benefits of Liberty Bells (assuming they're overpowered) would be to either mitigate their benefits, or to increase the benefits of alternatives (crosses, hammers, whatever).

The current way feels like the game is "moving the goalposts" - it's the equivalent of Civ4 saying that if I have a larger empire, that my spaceship needs to be bigger. Just doesn't feel right.

There's one thing where Civ DOES have direct penalties though, and you have hit it on the nose: city count. There is a direct penalty (monetary) for having more cities, to prevent you from just building as many cities as you can. Col needs this too; and that is the LB -> REF increase (at the moment).

What else would you do to counter ICS (just building as many colonies as you can)? There's very little opportunity cost in that ...build a few fish colonies, and then go crazy.

The only thing that comes to mind for me is a much stronger native presence ...

But at the end of the day, the way to make sure it's evenly fair for people to play with many colonies and fewer colonies, is to make the REF (the major block to victory) effectively depend on the size of your colonies. It's not moving goalposts; it's making it fair for many playstyles.

[peege]

For the record,

I just won on marathon with a large map.

12 Settlements:

4 of them over 15 with one at 19.

Most all of them but 4 had lumber mills, and warehouse expansions.

It was a fun game. I enjoy NOT expanding my borders, to be honest, because I like good relations with the natives. It's not in my interest to kick them out.

I waited until later for the LB, using political, military points to generate FFs. But I had elder statesmen in every settlement working the fields. The colleges and University pumped out the statesmen for everyone after the 1st one was bought.

It was a really fun game, with specific trade automation for the flow.

The REF grew quickly to over my size, but I had enough guns in every warehouse and only needed to stockpile guns in two cities. Slightly inland. All the people armed up and evacuated the coastal cities, and armed in the secondary cities.

I lost a lot of troops, but easily took root in the woods and won several key battles in the woods.

Fun game.

I don't like only having 3 settlements. I also don't understand why people think they need to stay so small to win.

Having a pumping economy is really easy if you expand, and it isn't that hard to get those people ready for revolution, if you get some key FF's. But with 4 cities with Master Carpenters working in Lumber mills, its easy it generate those FF's every few turns on political points.


Main argument for expansion:

Converted Natives get ONE tile to work at +1 if they go in an existing settlement.

If they start a settlement, you get the center tile for free AND the tile that they harvest at +1. In some cases, the equivalent of putting an expert on a single tile of an older settlement.

AND MORE WAREHOUSE SPACE in every new settlement.


The downside to this: The automation list is ridiculous. Not in any order at all. So it is like looking for a needle in a haystack to create routes.

[Steve Clark]

I also don't understand why people think they need to stay so small to win.

Because you can. Why build 5, 9 or 15 cities when one city will do (assuming it's in a really, really nice spot)? It's almost like if Civ4 had the option to go for an Ancient Age spaceship victory. Just because one can go for an easy early victory doesn't mean that you should; but it does mean that there some fundamental gameplay flaws. Like I said before, you have to force yourself to play bigger (like what you did) or have some house rules to prevent the easy early victory.

[kulak]

Originally posted by snoopy369


There's one thing where Civ DOES have direct penalties though, and you have hit it on the nose: city count. There is a direct penalty (monetary) for having more cities, to prevent you from just building as many cities as you can. Col needs this too; and that is the LB -> REF increase (at the moment).

What else would you do to counter ICS (just building as many colonies as you can)? There's very little opportunity cost in that ...build a few fish colonies, and then go crazy.

The only thing that comes to mind for me is a much stronger native presence ...

But at the end of the day, the way to make sure it's evenly fair for people to play with many colonies and fewer colonies, is to make the REF (the major block to victory) effectively depend on the size of your colonies. It's not moving goalposts; it's making it fair for many playstyles.

I agree there needs to be a targeted measure of some sort to discourage ICS. However the effect of the LB penalty is not so much to discourage ICS, it is to discourage LB-generation. I am a classic builder, so I normally like to aim for the culture / science / etc stuff; maybe this is partly why I don't like the LB penalty, as it doesn't suit the way I like to play.

Tougher natives would be a better idea.

Other possibilities might involve:
-- making it harder to generate large surpluses of food, or harder to gain population through food;
-- reducing the efficiency of small cities, eg the founding citizen counts only for the city square, reducing the storage space available to small cities, increasing the cost of wagons, etc.

Anyway, there seems to be enough sentiment along these lines that I'm sure some kind of mod which suits me will pop up at some point. Of course I could make one myself, if I had any talent...

[Ijuin]

Hmm how about changing it so that the city square generates only food and no trade commodity? That would mean that a city would not generate any trade commodity without a colonist working the land, and would reduce the profit to be gained from small cities.

[armyjournalist]

I think that would make it prohibitively difficult to get your colonies off the ground to begin with.

[Djboomingranny]

you could always make it so that citys don't start with the refining buildings, and that you have to build them... (no weavers house, tobaconists house etc)