Balance issues

[Vesayen]

The game is great and I really love it…. but there are a few glaring balance issues that need to be fixed in a patch, preferably sooner rather than later.

1.The king raises taxes to absurd levels, rapidly. By 75 turns in you may have taxes of 30%.
2.The AI is generally, not aggressive enough. I do not know what others are saying, but playing on high difficulties, I am never attacked, even leaving my settlements undefended.

3.The kings army grows incredibly fast. There is just no good way for the player to keep pace, the only thing he can hope to do is use defensive bonuses to his advantage but with royal artillery getting +50% v city attack it is hopeless.

4.You can grow your own population and make your own guys to get an army, but it is MUCH quicker and cheaper to just buy cheap units in Europe, equip them with a gun and sail them back to America as soldiers. Guns are too cheap, though it needs other balance changes before this one is brought up.

[snoopy369]

2. is a bug, not a balance issue, and will be addressed (check the bug fix thread).

1. and 3. are probably valid concerns, though I'd be okay with the tax increases iff trading with the natives/other colonies was easier. But that's unlikely, so...

4. is not really true, I don't think. It's quite easy to grow population locally... four cities with a 20 food surplus each gives a ton of population. Guns should go up over time, definitely, and eventually should be 19/20 probably; that does probably need addressing.

[Vesayen]

I had a city with a 220 food production and another with 90 food production. I had another city which was able to crank out 100 guns a turn and another cranking out 80 guns a turn. This means I get 1 population every turn and 190 guns a turn(enough for 2 soldiers). It was still quicker to important farmers with guns. I imported as much population as I possibly could.

My tax rate hit 83% before I finally declared independance, it was still quicker to import farmers with guns then to grow and arm my own.

[Vesayen]

Another big problem. Artillery can reduce the defense bonuses of an entire stack in a city. Artillery in a city cannot bombard an entire stack of units. This is just poor parity.

[snoopy369]

Bombard never did that in Civ4, either. Arty in Col have a defensive bonus, though, inside a city...

[kibbles7272]

I don't think 30 percent tax is that bad. Weren't the American colonies taxed at an absurd rate? I'm just asking, I have hardly played yet.

How many years is 75 turns? How many turns are in one game?

Is it possible when the king's army attacks that you might be better off fighting a guerilla war where you stick guys in mountains, forests and chokepoints? I'm only saying this cause it's kind of the way the American revolutionary war was, at least from what I've learned in school (lol), the rebels were not holed up in cities and being seiged, they were more, aggressive in their defense.

Have you tried building a strong navy? Can any of the king's army be sunk before they even get to land?

[Vesayen]

I do not know how many turns are in one game, but you may get tax increases of 5% of 7% at a time. My current strategy is to get a boon of tools and schools up quickly so I can essentially try to not trade with europe, at all.

It is not viable to stick to "choke" points because there are not any. The king takes ships and lands them near random cities.

You have to destroy the kings entire army. If you destroy their navy they are stuck in europe and you lose.... but it is not viable, it will always have a massive unstopable fleet compared to your own.

[kibbles7272]

your post almost makes me not want to play haha

about to try my first full game, so i have a better idea what you're saying, but this does sound quite unfair

[Dale]

Originally posted by Vesayen
You have to destroy the kings entire army. If you destroy their navy they are stuck in europe and you lose.... but it is not viable, it will always have a massive unstopable fleet compared to your own.

You're incorrect there. If you destroy all his MoW's he surrenders. I've halved what I had to face by sinking MoW's before they hit the coast. He still had a good chunk of army in England when he surrended.

[snoopy369]

You have 300 turns total in a game (75 turns is 25% in).

[Dale]

Re: Balance issues

Originally posted by Vesayen
The game is great and I really love it…. but there are a few glaring balance issues that need to be fixed in a patch, preferably sooner rather than later.

1.The king raises taxes to absurd levels, rapidly. By 75 turns in you may have taxes of 30%.

Screenshot or it never happened. I've never seen tax rates of 30% at turn 75. You realise you have probably only been back to Europe 3-4 times, probably with half full loads in your caravel. I don't believe you'd have 30% then. Maybe turn 175, not 75.

2.The AI is generally, not aggressive enough. I do not know what others are saying, but playing on high difficulties, I am never attacked, even leaving my settlements undefended.

Yeah huge problem.

3.The kings army grows incredibly fast. There is just no good way for the player to keep pace, the only thing he can hope to do is use defensive bonuses to his advantage but with royal artillery getting +50% v city attack it is hopeless.

Stop producing bells so much. Less bells, less REF. The growth of REF is balanced against the bonuses of higher production rates and faster FF's.

4.You can grow your own population and make your own guys to get an army, but it is MUCH quicker and cheaper to just buy cheap units in Europe, equip them with a gun and sail them back to America as soldiers. Guns are too cheap, though it needs other balance changes before this one is brought up.

Agreed to an extent. Use both methods near the end to get a massive army.

[gianni989]

Wait... do you get colonist whenever your colony grows..? Where do you find that guy?

[Dale]

He becomes active outside the colony as a free colonist.

[Dactyl]

You don't have to accept all of those big tax increases. Early on, I concentrate on trading basic raw materials such as food, lumber, ore. If the king asks for a small tax increase, I'll accept it. If he asks for an outrageous increase, say 5% to 7%, I refuse it, with the intention of moving on to the trade of manutfactured goods later on.

I also often refuse about half of his requests for money, and it hasn't seemed to have any particular negative effect. However, I tend not to hold onto large sums of cash so the king won't ask for it.

There are seven difficulty levels. I don't recall the name of the one I'm playing but it is the fourth one.

[Dale]

You can reject every offer other than tax hikes with zero negative effect.