Natives Welcome Genocide

[Legin]

Why on earth do the natives willingly give you their settlements when your borders encroach on them? They'll even do this if it's their last settlement and it means their extinction.

This shouldn't happen. At no point should the natives say "oh, go ahead and take our cities...we don't mind...we'll just go off and die now".

If anything, the tribe should automatically declare war on you if their cities are in danger of flipping.

I've also read some other threads here complaining about the game, and its all pretty accurate. I've been playing Sid Meier games since Pirates and Railroad Tycoon in 1987. Played Colonization back when it was released as well. It was no Civilization, but it was alright.

But this new interpretation is just really poor. I played it for a day and I'm already done with it. The game seems to be a collossal rush job just like Civilization 3 and Civilization 4 were. Just chock full of half-baked ideas. I don't know how much input Sid has in these games anymore, but everything really turned to excrement after Alpha Centauri.

[DarthVeda]

I'd think they should attack you, depending on the number of cities you overtook on mid-to-high level difficulties.

[Ironwood]

I'm not playing the game just yet due to insufficient hardware, but if I understand this correctly, "culture" flipping (as introduced in Civ3, which was the last Civ I played) is being allowed to flip native settlements?

That's just wrong. If it's also true, it's one of the reasons I was concerned about building Colonization on a Civilization platform. The old Col certainly had native conversion; natives would come to live in my settlements in response to missionary activity. But actually acquiring the land of the remaining tribals should only be doable in one way, the old fashioned way: buy it or steal it. And if colonial encroachment threatens the very existence of a native community (to the point where they lack the resources to support existing population), they should erupt into violence.

I'm also reading that another Civ-legacy induced change is that Natives are now organized into centralized states, and not loosely organized federations. You never have to worry about the Indians next door, unless you have to worry about ALL of them. I'm not liking this. Is it true?

[bigcat55404]

While I understand why it might feel like these cultural takeovers should elicit violence, part of me wonders whether it's simulating a kind of recognition of your culture getting stamped out. As it stands, if your culture starts to push into their cities, they get a reaction penalty labeled: "Your evil culture are interfering with our way of life" (Well, not exactly that, but something like that). If that doesn't push them to violence, one assumes that they're otherwise not ready to start a fight. Imagine a sub-culture that lives within the borders of a country that feels like it's slowly fading away... that doesn't always lead to all-out war.

Once the takeover happens, though, I can imagine just giving up... if you've ever held onto a city that's enveloped by someone else's culture, you'll notice you just don't have any squares left to work and you're pretty much pooched. I know they have other cities to attack you with, but it's just another way of looking at the situation.

[DarthVeda]

In the original, you'd alarm them more the bigger you'd got, and then they'd attack you. Not so here, where they will happily let you take over. I like this, but not the fact that it has no ramifications.

Also to answer your last question, yes, all natives are now organized into nations, rather than city-states.

[snoopy369]

They alarm mostly based on your founding on their land, which becomes increasingly hard as you found more cities, I believe.

[DarthVeda]

Only if you don't pay them.

[Ijuin]

Moving soldiers adjacent to their settlements (even if the soldiers were just passing through) also alarmed them in the original Colonization.

[Legin]

Originally posted by Ironwood
"culture" flipping (as introduced in Civ3, which was the last Civ I played) is being allowed to flip native settlements?

You don't get the cities as in Civilization 3 or 4. The cities are just destroyed and a ruin is left behind.

The leader will contact you and offer the city as a "gift". The soldiers in the city seem to move off, but I dont know if they go to another city or just disappear. Its completely idiotic in any event.

Maybe if they would found a new city elsewhere it might make the whole thing moderately less stupid. Like in real life, the natives were moved off and they settled elsewhere. But I'm pretty sure the natives dont build new cities in this game.

[Krill]

There were no barb cities in Civ 3. There are in CIV 4 and you can capture them so long as they are above size 1 IIRC (and maybe if they had culture and were size1? Not sure on the last point).

[samsmithnz]

why don't the indians have culture (borders)?

[Ironwood]

Originally posted by samsmithnz
why don't the indians have culture (borders)?

They really should. Particularly during the early colonial period, nearby indian cultures had at least as much, if not more, influence on the colonies as the colonies had on the nearby indians. Particularly troublesome to wealthier colonists, particularly plantation owners in the Carolinas, was slaves and indentured servants that would leave to join tribes. Indeed, a particularly large multi-racial, non-European nation arose in Florida at one point: the Seminoles. (This was before Florida was turned over to the U.S. by Spain.)

It's also entirely possible the settlers at Roanoke were absorbed into nearby tribes, as well. And then there's the extraordinary esteem placed upon the Iroqois by certain of the founding fathers, to the point of emulating the Iroquois political system in the establishment of their own.

I believe it was Jack Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" I was reading, which said there were far more whites that left colonies to "turn indian" than indians that joined the colonies... but I'm not sure.

[snoopy369]

They do have culture, and borders. They're just not as defined as colony borders.

[alh_p]

Originally posted by Legin
Maybe if they would found a new city elsewhere it might make the whole thing moderately less stupid. Like in real life, the natives were moved off and they settled elsewhere.

This would make sense.

Ideally the settlements should react either violently or peacefully to the colony's expanding culture.

If you trade with them and are "friendly" (defensive pact, buy land instead of stealing), the settlement should decamp in the current way, but maybe a proportion of the settlement's population choose to "convert" and become converted natives. The proportion of converted population should increase if you had a mission in the settlement prior to the move. The converts would spawn on the ruins of the settlement, so you could immediatly found a settlement on the old indian settlement's location.

If you treat the Indians with contempt and don't respect their land etc, don't trade with them or exploit their trade by paying low prices (consistently), the settlement or nation as a whole should react violently to the spread of your cultural influence.

[johnmcd]

The natives absolutely do found new cities, if you whack, they build more. I don't know if they found to a some capped limit or not and I've never seen a native tribe found cities without first losing some.