My issues with Colonization

[Wiglaf]

None of that was true in real life. THEY DID NOT SAY OH HELLO POCHOANTIS WE'RE GOING TO REBEL IN A FEW YEARS SO WHERE SHOULD WE ERECT OUR TENTS? NO NO NO NN O NO. They had Thanksgiving and ate Turkey and had the unprotected Sex, forming George Washington who fought for Britain in numerous wars with Pochohontis before ultimately vetoing their taxes and liberating the country by sneak attacking at Oxford with token help from the French naval attache, riding on his horse to the white house with women in tow.

[Dale]

Who cares, it's a game. It's not a real life simulator. Go play Sims if you want that.

[Wiglaf]

B

[wilebill2]

Agree Devin. My impression is that the current balance was to maintain challenge for the highly experienced beta testers. Quite a bit of the game became "legacy" in the process.

This is not so much a game as a puzzle. Once you solve the puzzle, no game at all.

[peege]

I like using games like this to get in the habit of conservation and organization. Then when I stop playing the game, those qualities resonate in my personal life. I don't actually play them to win a war.

Play chess a few weeks in a row every day, and soon you see people playing chess at work, business and everywhere. It becomes easier to spot and deal with.

Games like this are rare like that. Even if the mechanics of game play aren't perfect, it accomplishes the side effect of helping the sub-conscious mind align itself with productivity. A wonderful ability for a piece of art to have. Most games just entertain, but this has positive side effects.

yeah. it also has some imperfections too. as does football, baseball, craps, pinnacle, life, etc. It will get ironed out in time. This is just one of those games where the journey is more fun than the end result.

[player1]

The thing I don't like with linking bells (not rebel sentiment) to REF size is that REF will be scaled in some way to your population size.

That pretty much discourages expansion, as means to the end. You get better king gets better, and since bigger territory or higher population means more waste (less gold per population earned, due to various factors) you pretty much get anti-Civ4 (bigger is really not better, and can actually make things worse).

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by peege
...
Play chess a few weeks in a row every day, and soon you see people playing chess at work, business and everywhere. It becomes easier to spot and deal with.

....

I am not sure if i understand You correctly. Do You mean like, when You play chess for long enough, You start seeing real people as pieces ? I remember, had this once, at the times, when i played Panzer General a lot. I saw two people in a fight, and when a third one would come to the aid of one of the two, i instictively saw the third person as the ´supporting artillery´. (Well, i was on drugs a lot, too, back then... )

[peege]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11


I am not sure if i understand You correctly. Do You mean like, when You play chess for long enough, You start seeing real people as pieces ? I remember, had this once, at the times, when i played Panzer General a lot. I saw two people in a fight, and when a third one would come to the aid of one of the two, i instictively saw the third person as the ´supporting artillery´. (Well, i was on drugs a lot, too, back then... )

Sort of. But not really parallel relationships between pieces and actions. Just people using force maneuvers in their daily routines. Using the things around them to get what they want. Similar interactions with someone repeated over time is like playing the same person over and over, and using variations of the same opening until everyone knows who comes out ahead and who is alpha or whatever. Like someone always willing to trade a bishop for a knight, or always escalating confrontations at inappropriate times knowing that people find it awkward.

Basically, "Given these circumstances, I'm going to do this, and I'll keep doing it until you figure out a response that MAKES me stop" kind of stuff. Whether they know it consciously or not. That is chess to me.

When you train yourself to see those things consciously from playing a game, it sticks. It helps to avoid unnecessary patterns of force from people who use those tactics, knowingly or not.

[AdamWright]

Agreed with the original poster, and to a large extent, disagree with Dale/Snoopy. I think I can sum up my view of the design choices in four words: It just isn't fun.

Want to spend time building up a large colony? Wrong! That's a *bad* choice.
Want to investigate founding fathers effects on early/mid game play, i.e. get some military help to beat off the evil French? Wrong! That's a *bad* choice.
Want to fight a war of attrition with the REF by hunkering down in huge fortresses with cannons blaring? Wrong! That's a *bad* choice.

I could go on and on. But it seems to me that, at each choice point in your strategy, the C4C designers have made it binary - you can do it right and win, or do it wrong and have a really, really, really slim chance of winning. There is no strategy - the choices are pretty much defined. Now, if you're like Dale, and think that every choice should optimise your War of Independence, that's great - the right choices are probably the choices you'd have made.

But for me, Col I was never like this - it was about, well, Colonising. The WOI was an endgame sub-game, that if you'd built a good new country, was winnable. Now, the game is better titled "Civ 4 : The War of Independence (And how to prepare for it)".

There should be more than one strategy to win a strategy game, so players with different tastes can do it. The poster who said it's like a puzzle is right - once you've "worked out" the "correct" choice at each step, that's it. It's like replaying the old point-n-click adventures. If you remember the correct response at each step, you win. Otherwise, it's Game Over.

And it's just no fun, for me.

[ParticleHustler]

Originally posted by Dale
Because for me, the game is all about becoming independant. Everything in the 300 turns is a means to that end. Pure and simple.

I take land that is easy to defend against a outnumbering enemy. I build cities which will either generate money to buy soldiers, or generate guns to arm colonists.

Every colonist, every unit, every action I perform is geared towards me gaining independance.

For me, this game is perfect.

Yeah, I don't agree with this at all, either from the historical perspecitve, or from an enjoyable gameplay perspective. The first game seemed to strike a perfect balance between early game colonists struggling to just live a simplistic life and making due for themselves, exploring the new-found territory, establishing a basic economy, etc., and then as time wore on and they became self-sufficient and the King more overbearing in his demands, that is what eventually pushed them to decide to move towards independence. Not only do I not want to be thinking "independence" on turn 1, but it doesn't even fit the true historical context that the game is supposed to be played in.

I'm not sure what kind of modding can be done to change the vision problems a number of us are seeing with the basic concept and design of this game, but I hope they eventually come, because this game isn't as fun as the original. And that's, ultimately, the bottom line for me.

[Aerion]

Originally posted by wilebill2
...

This is not so much a game as a puzzle. Once you solve the puzzle, no game at all.

Bravo!! Well said!!

This is exactly what we're trying to say!

[ebonyknight]

Originally posted by Dale
Have you guys tried the Snoopy/Dale patch? It addresses a couple of things you've mentioned, particularly the REF rampup.

Their patch does well to fix some of the glaring flaws. But the game is BROKEN. I don't understand why you mods have such an apologist attitude towards the game. If this is how Sid is going to release games from now on, I am no longer a fan of his.

I mean come on. How much effort was there to make sure that the starting points for the human players were at least random?!?!?!?

The game is broken and I see too many rationalizations as to how we are playing it wrong or actually it should have been this way or any other number of apologist arguments.

Whats the deal?

[nepereta]

I like the fact that Colonization is the way it is. You build a giant civ and test it by fire. Which is good in a way civ never was tbh. In civ you get swallowed by microing at the end in col all your creations are covered in gasoline and you have to scramble.

The other thing about col that I like is different interchangable growth forms.

More money can buy more colonists. More colonists means more trade. 1 giant city can more easily offload populace. Resources created in 1 city can be used in another. More diplomacy/exploration can be used to generate more colonists. Its all pretty good imo.

[Aerion]

originally posted by Dale:
...
For me, this game is perfect.

That's great for you, I guess. But we're stuck with an end game that we hate because the only two people with the skills, resources and wherewithall to acutally make the extensive mods necessary to make this game enjoyable for the rest of us seem to be happy with it the way it is.

Nothing personal, but I sure hope you get tired enough of solving the same puzzle over and over again to do something to open up the strategy some. I'm not saying that the current path to victory shouldn't be a viable path - and maybe even the easiest path. But the rest of us think there should be some other viable paths as well.

[ParticleHustler]

Originally posted by Dale
I think you might get a bit disappointed with Col then. Because Col is, has been and always will be, a game of the road to independance and the war.

However, I'm sure someone will very quickly mod in other victory paths, such as economic. It's just a matter of time to be honest.

The type of ultimate victory isn't the issue (at least for me, although additional options are always welcome). It's the limited path we are forced to take to get there that is the problem.