No LB's until last moment ... that's the strategy?

[snoopy369]

Multiple victory conditions are high on our priority list, don't worry about that ...

[Hermann the Lombard]

Some thoughts from a noob...

I don't think an infinite-capacity warehouse is the way to go, though it might be easier to script. A better approach would be to be able to build an improvement specifically for military storage, a "magazine" perhaps. That way you still have to worry about storage for mundane items.

As for the mobile warehouse problem, perhaps add "spoilage" of wagon-borne goods. Now that might be tough to implement without undermining the original purpose of wagon trains since any method that comes to my mind would be subject to micromanaged exploits.

LordBiff: By preference I'm a builder too, but from snoopy's posts I can see it's possible to win with a builder strategy, it's just harder. The same used to be true back in the cuneiform-keyboard days of Civ2, an ICS/military blitz was the easiest way to win but the builder was a viable alternative (and so was the OCC, in the other direction). I look forward to that thread about a builder/LB-heavy strategy.

[kulak]

Originally posted by snoopy369
The purpose for what we're (technically incorrectly) referring to as ICS in Col is to have more citizens == more money. In Col, more citizens directly equates to more money=more arms=easier REF; and more cities gives you more citizens (if you build food-producing cities, which is trivial). (This is also the original purpose of ICS, by the way - initially to get more small cities, but ultimately to get more large cities.)

I don't think there's a need to differentiate strategically between many small cities and fewer large cities - both have advantages, and disadvantages. It's only many large cities that are the problem. If you prefer to think of it as 'population', which is certainly more accurate, do so - but ability to fight the REF increases at least linearly with population, and I'd argue at a greater speed than that. Hence there needs to be an effective counter.

Okay, so in your view the LB penalty is meant to be a counter to population. In my view, this doesn't make sense for two reasons.

Firstly, if it's meant to be a penalty on population, it's very indirect. Far more straightforward to penalise population directly.

Secondly, if your argument that heavy population growth is an overpowered strategy holds true, then this should be balanced by making it harder to heavily grow population, and / or making it less rewarding if you do. This would avoid the need to introduce an "unfun" game element like the LB penalty.

My guess is that it was not meant by the developers as a penalty to population; instead, I would guess they deliberately set out to create a "double-edged sword" game dynamic in LB generation. ie strong benefits (founding fathers, colonist efficiency, border expansion) with a countering cost, the increased REF.

However the result is that by pursuing a builder-ish game through LB generation (with a reduced focus on, say, gun production and population growth), your reward is to have to fight a bigger REF.

To me this just doesn't feel right.

Fortunately, as predicted in an earlier post in this thread, someone has helpfully created a Mod which combines the awesomeness of PatchMod with a Col1 style REF. Hurray!

[Unimatrix11]

What annoyed me also about the ´prohibition´ of LB-generation in early game, is that if an AI settles next to you, and starts generating LBs, it will push your borders back (the whole border popping thing is not quite how i like it anyways). If he defends well (and that actually did happen to me once), that means you are pretty much screwed - either in the short run, by starting a war you will loose (or exhaust yourself winning maybe), or in the long run, when you start producing LBs way too early, in order to pop the border back peacefully, and thus have to face an enormous REF later on...

[armyjournalist]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Nah, it's easier if you do but it's not required. You can win Col1 with as few as 5 colonies.

You could win in Col1 on Viceroy difficulty with ONE colony!

[DarkCloud]

-That must have been an exciting tale!

How large was the city?

[armyjournalist]

Size 21 or so, I believe (it was 12 or 13 years ago). I was trying to declare independence as early as possible. I did it on the historic map, placing the colony near Cape Cod where I could use expert fishermen to great effect. Productivity went through the roof once the city hit 100% rebel sentiment and I trained a slew of veteran soldiers through the university (my land army was considerably larger than my colony population). For commerce and as a place to put colonists waiting to get trained, I used the "infinite rum factory worker" exploit (you could put as many colonists as you wanted into the rum factory and it made 3 rum per person without any sugar) My privateers raided foreign merchantmen at ease, so I bought up a bunch of cannon. The man-of-wars got slowed by my fortress and were chewed up by all that cannon I had. Also, with Francis Drake, you could actually win sometimes when you sent privateers against man-of-wars. (Don't think that helped much, even with no ships left the Tories still got a bombardment bonus)

I declared independence super early and the REF couldn't take the city no matter what they did. I ended up getting a continent named after me at the end of the game.

I only did this once, though. Didn't think it would be fun to try a second time

[TimmyKGB]

The bare bones idea is painful.. if you start in an area without a lot of wood in multiplayer you're in a basically auto-loss situation, because you won't have any decent production to get goods going.

Also I reiterate that COL is much better than civ at nerfing ICS because:

1) You will need to defend those cities if you anger all the natives by pushing their borders around or you will pay a higher cost for those cities if you buy the land.

2) You will need to pay for the setting up of a trade network to move all the goods to places you can ship them.

3) While the city square provides a big advantage, the "specialists" are much more powerful in Colonization 2, giving more incentive to larger cities.

4) Population growth using food doesn't depend on the size of the city in Col2 One of the big reasons ICS was amazing in Civ2 was abusing the lower growth cost for population points when you had a bunch of size 1 cities.