My turn to vent

[stratozyck]

I know about half the posts on here are people complaining about the game. I feel its my turn...

I played the first one for a long time, and consider it one of the best games ever.

As is, this one is rediculous.

I'm sick and tired of companies using the first buyers as beta testers.

But, there are good things.

Pros:

No longer do the Europeans surround your settlements with units even while at peace to prevent you from working the land.

Pioneers are much cheaper and don't run out of tools.

Indian settlements can be assimilated peacefully.

Converts can now become free colonists.

Cons:

You basically can't build more than three cities and expect to make the deadline.

You can have all your cities at 100% pro revolution and STILL be at 45% total because they count all your units, not just the ones actually working in the towns. This is frustrating because I've had more than one game end because I just keep cranking out too many units, diluting the support for the revolution. This despite having 100% in every colony.

Previously the King would send 5-10 Man O wars. With the size of his navy now well above what is historically believable (British navy usually had 100 - 200 capital ships in the wooden days for the WHOLE world), building any navy is pointless. In the first one I could always pick off a few and maintain my fleet.

Fortressess are pointless. They even took away the bombardment that sank many man o wars in the first one when you placed cannons in them.

This game has/had potential, depending on how they tweak things in the future. I'm disappointed they took away the foreign intervention that I often depended on in the first one.

For those out there arguing that the King's navy should be as dominant as it is, remember in the revolution the US actually won an engagement here and there (John Paul Jones), and with the French intervention won an actual naval battle (Yorktown).

Logically, if your going to have a godawful amount of superior quality troops, they shouldn't get beat by a small lesser quality bunch. Really there should be no way to win in the intervention when the King fields 200+ units vs my 40. But, its possible (I have beaten the game several times).

Eh, I just want to vent. This is the second game in a month I've bought that seems to be half assed (Spore was the first). It also seems game developers are making a general trend to quicker, more shallow games. Colonization is definitely pretty shallow in that there is only one way to win the game. Sure, you can conquer the natives or not, but really the things you need to do are the same every time. I feel like everytime I play it theres a timer going, "Don't enjoy it because you have x turns to do this or you lose."

I'm not going to buy another game for a while - definitely not on the first week of release. Theres just too much hype for games that turn out to be so so.

There, I feel like my frustrations were not in vain.

[Dale]

*takes away the soapbox*

[Felch]

Re: My turn to vent

Originally posted by stratozyck
Logically, if your going to have a godawful amount of superior quality troops, they shouldn't get beat by a small lesser quality bunch. Really there should be no way to win in the intervention when the King fields 200+ units vs my 40. But, its possible (I have beaten the game several times).

I know logic and historical realism aren't important in game design, but the original had the cool idea of the foreign intervention to make this more plausible.

The Rev war was won with help from allies. Not only the French, but the Spanish and United Provinces also declared war on the Brits, and created a strategic distraction that diverted resources from the North American campaign. This isn't found anywhere in the game.

Unlike customs houses, there isn't even an excuse. It's just gone.

[Bkeela]

I feel your pain stratozyck, and appreciate your post.

I couldn't get the game to run on my computer. I don't really care either.

In the original I definitely enjoyed sprawling empires. If playing as English, I would virtually colonise all of North America. If playing as the Spanish, I would colonise from the East Coast of North America, all through Mexico, and all of South America. Brilliant fun. So having three colonies seems like a sick joke to me.

I hope Alpha Centauri 2 fares better.

[Aerion]

A bunch of us here feel your pain.

[DarthVeda]

Everything he says is completely accurate and true about the game. They are all legitimate gripes that need to be addressed. He even missed a few.

[The diplomat]

Re: My turn to vent

Originally posted by stratozyck
You basically can't build more than three cities and expect to make the deadline.

You can have all your cities at 100% pro revolution and STILL be at 45% total because they count all your units, not just the ones actually working in the towns. This is frustrating because I've had more than one game end because I just keep cranking out too many units, diluting the support for the revolution. This despite having 100% in every colony.

When I play, I can usually build 5-6 cities in time to make the deadline. Remember that the game is based on a militia army model instead of a standing army model. You can switch people back and forth from worker to soldier anytime you need to fight. When there is no fighting, put everyone to work! So, unless you are fighting someone, you should not have any soldiers outside your settlements at all! They should all be working either on a tile or in a building. It is the number of guns in your stockpile that you should care about, not how many units you have.

Logically, if your going to have a godawful amount of superior quality troops, they shouldn't get beat by a small lesser quality bunch. Really there should be no way to win in the intervention when the King fields 200+ units vs my 40. But, its possible (I have beaten the game several times).

You should not produce any Liberty Bells until late in the game or you will indeed see a massive ROF. What I do is wait until late in the game. Then, I switch as many citizens as possible to producing Liberty Bells in every colony to produce as many Liberty Bells as quickly. I also do not have any military units outside the settlements at all. Doing this, I can go from 0% to 50% rebel sentiment very quickly and the King only has time to add units to the ROE maybe half a dozen times. So, the ROF stays rather small, at about 35-40 units total. After I declare independance, I switch all my workers to soldiers right before the ROF arrives.

You do make some good points in the rest of your post. I definitely would like to see the Foreign Intervention back.

[probablymike]

but the 'game' itself is what's silly -- pretending the revoltion, with only civopedia reference to any possible reason for revolution. just use the game as a base for modding some kind of economic reality, and modeling it onto some 'map' so that it looks fun and you can play with maps, and sort of feel realistic. checkers is a simple game and meant to be simple... this ought to be more like chess than checkers, but it isn't -- it's made for dull kids. i was talking with a twenty year old... well, anyway, kids don't know much about history, and this game is just supposed to teach them some 'words' and places and show how... what? how far away from europe america is? or is it about the movies? that, 'people from history can look funny'?

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Dale
*takes away the soapbox*

English idiom... does not compute.


Enlighten me please.

[Dauphin]

You stand on it to make a speech about something important to you, but pretty much no-one is listening.

[Heraclitus]

Thank you.

[Clio]

Re: My turn to vent

Originally posted by stratozyck
...
You basically can't build more than three cities and expect to make the deadline.
...
Previously the King would send 5-10 Man O wars. With the size of his navy now well above what is historically believable (British navy usually had 100 - 200 capital ships in the wooden days for the WHOLE world), building any navy is pointless. In the first one I could always pick off a few and maintain my fleet.
...

Ok, I disagree with your points here.

First off, I've had successful games in which I've built 8+ colonies, all integral part of a larger organic whole - not one colonist and what it produces going to waste in them.

Crosses, money generated from a variety of sources (trading, both to Europe and to the natives, exploration, military campaigns), as well as missionaries dispatched especially to native nations with the impressionable trait, do generate a stream of colonists who can easily populate that many colonies. Though the proposition is indeed expensive, especially when it comes to producing enough liberty bells to take them to the revolutionary status in a agreeably short time, having so many colonies pays back especially in one productive endavour which can be easily overlooked: carpenters working in lumber mills.

You see, these little fellas and the hammers they generate are invaluable in any serious game looking to win the revolution, because hammers can be converted into points with which you can purchase founding fathers without paying the penalty of a larger REF, i.e., through avoiding the generation of liberty bells in the mid-game. Two or three lumber mills, fully staffed with master carpenters, generate a meaningful amount of political points.

Which brings me to the second point I disagree with you, namely the ineffectiveness of fleets. I've just finished a game yesterday with the dutch where I had had two coastal cities with lumber mills and shipyards producing ships-of-the-line, supported by two other cities producing the requisite tools and armaments, and by the time I declared independence I had a flottilla that outnumbered the King's by 2 to 1 - about 30 to 15. Not one city of mine fell in the independence war. (the 25% bonus to production one of the leaders of the Dutch have helped, as well as the very significant bonus of the founding father who increases hammers production by the tax rate.) So: going ape with SoL production in an attempt to sink the Royal Navy is certainly an feasible strategy, provided that you have the right setup for it, at least on Governor difficulty.

As for those who claim that the game has little depth (the OP included), I beg to differ. I've had games where I've declared indepence on turn 136 with the British, others where I produced no trade goods and still won with a basically autarchic (self-sufficient) economy, still others where I produced few crosses and went instead for multiple missions in native villages and put that steady income of (my choice of) free colonist/converted native/whatever expertise that the village in which I put the mission in offered into good use in my colonies, games where through shrewd trading of horses and guns to natives frustrated the expansive endavours of my European competitors, and so on. Each of those games took a different path to victory (or got lost wandering), and I daresay that the depth the game offers, in its focused 300-turn timespan, is comparable both to Civilization, and to that ancient boardgame, chess.

There is one more approach that I want to try, but havent actually attempted yet - the good old ICS, with many colonies, deliberately kept small. There are four or five founding fathers (and mothers) who produce libery bells/crosses/trade goods from unmanned buildings. May turn out to be an interesting approach.

Balancing such a complex game is a very difficult act, and there are some mistakes in this initial version of the game. Some of the founding fathers seem unlikely to be picked by anyone in their current state (+1 movement to scout in a mid-game FF?). But that's small beer in comparison to what has been already accomplished, namely a meaningful update to a classic design that bears witness to the fecundity of its creator. Hell, I would have bought the game if it was nothing more than a mere graphical and UI update to the original.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
Thank you.

huh?

You say somethin?

[Steve Clark]

Just finished my first game on Explorer level, mostly just working out the mechanics and priorities. It ended up being very easy that I won, without trying very hard, by 1656. I only had one large city plus two tiny cities, one for sugar/furs and the other for a little bit of silver. Got my economy going ok, with a number of good specialists, and started buying guns, horses and cannons. I was pretty much ready by 1600 and then cranked up the Liberty Bell machine. Only took about 30 turns to get to revolution. I then shut down everything, converted the remaining units to Dragoons and waited. I had 16 Dragoons and 9 Cannons against a total of 15 Regulars, 5 Dragoons and 11 Artillery and easily won all of the battles. I basically had twice as many troops than was needed, so I could have started the mechanisms earlier. Would've been the same results though.

Overall, it was fun, simple game with some gamey elements. I really had fun working the economy and trades, as well as exploring. By 1600 though, the Founding Fathers started coming up fast and furious and within a few decades, I had maxed out nearly every single category. Once I had enough (actually, too many) troops, there was no reason to do anything else since the game ends when you win Independence. And I kept those troops out of cities so I could attack the King's troops very easily.

Not sure if bumping up the difficulty level will make much difference, the game will play exactly the same way: set up 1 coastal city (plus 1-2 feeder cities), trade to get gold to buy guns, horses and cannons, and then convert everyone to Dragoons.

[Asmodeous]

My question is how the heck do you get FF's without making statesmen? :/

I never generate enough politics points unless I start developing liberty bells right away, which of course makes it so that the king's army ends up being 5x as large as any militia I can field.

Me.