What Colonization is missing

[DarthVeda]

So I took a break from Col shortly after the game came out--and I did try multiple times to absorb the "fun" from the game. The economic game is very compelling, and very close to the original while taking it and improving important aspects to streamline the experience. I played at least two dozen different games -- not including restarts in the first 5 turns (which amasses dozens more). I did not finish a single one because the end-game is revolting. I *REALLY* wanted to like this game and play it into the ground.

A number of the fundamental aspects of the game are very good: economics, discovery, the player reward structure for investing in their colonies.

However, one of the four tiers of this 4x game is severely lacking. And that's the combat portion. It falls flat because this game explicitly discourages the player from combat. Attacking a native village brings the entire nation upon the player. Building up active military forces directly limits the player's ability to win or even progress in the game. The King's forces are incredibly overpowering to the player. The end-game is completely non-intuitive.

Even the payout from military conflict is also extremely limited. Unlike Civilization, the conqueror does not obtain additional cities from conquest of native cities. The payout for conquering those cities is generally small and not equivalent to the military forces spent in conquering them. Warring against the European powers is significantly less attractive the later the game progresses. It's also generally lopsided.

The game needs to do more to encourage the player to build a military - and use it! The original colonization penalized the player less for wiping away individual native settlements, challenged them more when they did, and paid out more. It also did not harshly penalize the player for stockpiling military units for the inevitable conflict with the King.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Have you tried AoD II? AI has been improved, and you may find natives and europeans being significantly more aggressive.

Frankly, I also think military is a bit "one dimensional", units are limited and the lack of technological progress makes things even more predictable.

I wish there was a way to implement technological progression (eg railroads and factories). This could include buildings, as well as musket technological progression: arquebus, musket, flintlock musket, rifle musket...

Tactical units like grenadiers (with their true anti-infantry use), light infantry, heavy infantry, musketeers, light and heavy cavalary, light and heavy artillery.

But... nuff said. I am now talking for a different game. Dale has already done wonders to transform a bugged and out-of-date game to a little miracle!

AoD II is by far the best you can get now!

[Hermann the Lombard]

However, one of the four tiers of this 4x game is severely lacking. And that's the combat portion. It falls flat because this game explicitly discourages the player from combat. Attacking a native village brings the entire nation upon the player. Building up active military forces directly limits the player's ability to win or even progress in the game. The King's forces are incredibly overpowering to the player. The end-game is completely non-intuitive.

Even the payout from military conflict is also extremely limited. Unlike Civilization, the conqueror does not obtain additional cities from conquest of native cities. The payout for conquering those cities is generally small and not equivalent to the military forces spent in conquering them. Warring against the European powers is significantly less attractive the later the game progresses. It's also generally lopsided.

The game needs to do more to encourage the player to build a military - and use it! The original colonization penalized the player less for wiping away individual native settlements, challenged them more when they did, and paid out more. It also did not harshly penalize the player for stockpiling military units for the inevitable conflict with the King.

The key truth that you wrote is that the endgame (and many other things) are counterintuitive, leading many players to your conclusions. You are not alone!

However, it's possible, even easy to follow a very aggressive military strategy. There are threads here and in the CivFanatics strat forum that detail some of these, but here are some specific thoughts.

Attacking native villages is terribly easy and would be trivial if you didn't have to consider a response from the rest of the tribe. Only on very large maps will you face truly powerful tribes, and generally speaking you only have to face one major reactive effort before the remaining villages go passive.

You can build up a huge, active military force without adding a single unit to the REF, just delay creating Liberty Bells. Unless you request and take military aid from the King via diplomacy, buying soldiers and cannon or building your own doesn't alarm the King in any way.

If you want the challenge of facing a large REF then generate Liberty Bells along the way. If you want to face a small one just generate all your Liberty Bells in a surge to independence; that tactic doesn't give the King time to add many units. In the minimalist approach you may face an REF like 10/5/8/5 or so, easily handled by 10 or 15 dragoons or 10 privateers, and that's more force than you need.

OTOH, dalgo and others state that you only need about 1:9 odds to face an REF of 500 units, and that is a real challenge for the military gamer.

If you gained towns from stomping on native villages then the game would be even easier and even less "realistic." Massacring Wounded Knee didn't add a town to the United States, I don't think any native village did. Even the cities of the Aztecs and the Inca were basically rebuilt from scratch.

Most tribes didn't have substantial wealth to be stolen, and the exceptions are in the game: conquering the Aztecs or the Inca brings in a lot of treasure.

It can be profitable and is strategically useful to seize fledgling colonies from the other Europeans, in particular capturing pioneers (especially French Hardy Pioneers). If the town is nearby it may be a useful addition to your domain (it seems that my second town is often named "Quebec"). Assuming you ever let them get established, later on you can grab well-developed towns (though they can be difficult to defend unless you dump them before or at independence). Privateers can rob them blind, and privateer/merchant combos sometimes capture incoming colonists. In other words, there are plenty of reasons to go to war. [In AoD II those wars won't be as lopsided, but may be more necessary because rivals can and will beat you to independence if left undisturbed.]

So I heartily agree with Prince Myshkin that AoD II is a substantial improvement, I encourage you to check it out...and to live the life of the ruthless conqueror and mighty power, even in Vanilla!

[DarthVeda]

The problem I have with the natives is: I think how successful the original Col was in depicting every Native village was its own nation-state. While you'd still be at war with the whole tribe, eliminating a village was a huge triumph, and the natives were powerful but rarely attacked you as an entire collected nation. Thus, there were a lot more meaty and delicious military targets for early conquest.

One big plus of the new colonization is that they also serve as VERY good trading partners.

[Lancer]

Each colony is under the foriegn policy control of the king up to a point. When England went to war with the French so did the colonies, yes? So europe should be starting wars that have to be fought out in the new world as well. Wasn't this in the original Colonization btw?

Also, privateers were not pirates, well, most of the time. They are private ships hired by a government. The ships even carry pirate flags in the game, that's not accurate. A privateer carried a Letter of Marque from the king which allowed ot to prey upon a certain enemy or enemies, not anyone that happens across its path.

Don't know how that could be applied to the game, just thought I'd throw it out there.

[DarthVeda]

So I recently played Civ: Rev and it does perfectly what this game fails to do. Provide the player with consistent military objectives that give good bonuses and reasons to explore and build a military. Specifically, in Civ: Rev, there are numerous barbarian villages that can be picked off by the player. Doing so gives an immediate reward along with "the next thing" to pick off.

If natives worked in this way in Colonization, the military game against natives would be MUCH more fun.

They're a disorganized band that mostly serve as fodder on lower levels of play -- this is how natives should be. The real threats should be the European powers.

[Dinner]

The main problem with Col is that the AI sucks therefore you have to play MP but there is never anyone on the MP board who wants to play. There was for about a week after it was released but now it's a ghost town.

[Greybriar]

If they had merely updated the original Colonization's graphics and fixed a few things (like pathing and trade routes), I would have been pleased with this version.

Instead they "reimagined" the game.