My views on the game, having played multiplayer Co-op

[Fleme]

Hi

So, me and my friend have been playing multiplayer coop, assigning both of us in the same team and making all the AI nations into coop teams as well on Conquistador difficulty, Marathon Speed, Standard size map (because anything larger crashes in like 3 turns, any ideas on this?) and here are my pros and cons on the game so far.

Pros

-It's Colonization. It was long-awaited and is finally here and it does represent the old game really well.

-Education system was changed so that now the students are the ones in school instead of the masters and you can also train Criminals and Natives to become useful parts of society.

-Automated Wagon trains. I can't remember if the original col had this, but they just make my life so much easier.

-Multiplayer coop is fun. Automated Wagon Trains cross borders on their own and while both players have their own cash, it's easy to work around it and you can even have your friend trade the good that is banned for you. Also, doing this when your taxes are higher than your mate's is handy.

-

Cons

-The other colonies never put up a fight. The AI just takes it and I can pretty much just take a few Cannons and Dragoons and conquer the entire new world with them. I do this to get colonists including free specialists, rob their storages and get treasure. Feels unfair.

-When you have large cities and a standing army/unemployed colonists it's nigh-impossible to get your rebel sentiment to 50%, let alone any higher because the army/unemployed colonists will apparently always be loyal to your king, no matter what and this to me doesn't fit at all. Say you recruit soldiers from a city that is over 50% for independence and all of a sudden as soon as the guy gets a musket he becomes loyal to your king again? This probably hurts my gameplay most of all.

-Even on Marathon, the King will come back to raise my taxes if I refuse for like 5 turns straight. Say I hold a Cotton party... ok, the next turn a Fur party... the next turn an Ore Party... then a Lumber party... Food party... until he finally finds an item that I don't wanna lose and he goes away. Anyways, the thing is that he keeps coming until he gets what he wants and that is stupid, is it not? Losing half of your goods in Marathon in just 10 turns doesn't seem that realistic.

-Indians just roll over and die. They abandon their villages as I encroach with culture, they won't attack me even with -10 relations and to date we've had only one sign of indian aggression that wasn't a result of a direct attack from us.

-The REF is too large. Anyone who sets his cities up correctly will be able to deal with a large number of REF units since they come in waves but towards the end it gets incredibly tedious when you've already dealt with 150 REF units and have another 150 to go. You already know the result because your army consists of supermen at this point but you still have to do it. Some changes need to be made because the way it's set up now is just plain stupid.

-We lost one game because we declared independence rather late (100 turns remaining) and then when the king had just 4 units left, there was 8 turns remaining in the game. Guess what he did? He did not bring those units over and we lost because of that. No big deal, next time we'll declare independence earlier but the point is that it's ridiculous how he just held back and we lost because of that.

-No possibility of foreign intervention, lack of proper diplomacy.

-On some maps it's literally impossible to get certain specialists. We've had games where there have been no Cotton Planter/Tobacco Planter/Fur Trapper/Sugar Planter training villages and the fact that a colonist can no longer learn his specialty just by working in the field kind of hurts the game play.

-The AI always gets the bulk of the founding fathers due to the fact that it starts building liberty bells really early into the game - which is also followed by an early declaration of indepence and an early decimation. So, not only does the AI suck in terms of long term planning, it also fails to realize that starting LB production early will result in a larger REF and declaring independence with basically no army will always result in a loss. Every single game so far 1 or more AI's have declared independence before me and my friend and none of them have lasted more than 20 turns after that declaration.

-It's too easy to destroy the AI's start just 5 turns into the game because they always found their colony with their soldier and then send the pioneer into the field. I've started taking out the French in every game I play just so I can get a Hardy Pioneer from the get-go and ruin their game. I don't like the French. I don't know a possible fix to this because I'd be susceptible for the exact same attack.

-Only one way to win. Cuts replay value.

-Navies are not worth a dime. Privateers are fun though - but this again brings up the point that the AI does not know how to counter them at all and you can just destroy their only ship and wait in the spot their new ship will arrive and just continue to take it out every 6 turns. I can only imagine the taxes they suffer after 10 sank caravels.

So, as I see it there are more cons than pros and I could probably think of more but this is the list off the top of my head. I still enjoy the game but some of these issues really need to be fixed.

[Zealot]

Well, congratulations Fleme. That pretty much sums up the problems of the game. Good artists, acceptable programming, very poor game design and balancing. This game has potential, but it had many small useful items removed (what happened with me pressing G and getting a list of all the possible destinations?), and lack of proper testing of the game. Too much "it's supposed to be like that" rather than "it's really cool that way".

I still don't regret buying the game, but after 2 games (pretty much in the beginning to be honest) and 1 in MultiPlayer I had to stop playing and to wait for the first patch. I was getting far too angry and frustrated and I don't want to accept that a game from Firaxis is making me feel that way again (Civ 3 before patches anyone?).

[joncnunn]

Sounds like the Kings timing wasn't scaled with being on Marathon. Ideally it would be the same # of years between such things on all speed modes.

As to on some maps there not being a resource and not geting a master of it; I think it's a good move to need the resource to be a master of a technology and I'd be more concerned if you could always find a place to settle with every resource nearby than if one or two were occansionaly missing entirely.

[DarthVeda]

Really really really needs to be an extension of time when you declare independence.

[Fleme]

Additions to my previous:

-Having now played the game through on Governor (3rd hardest) and declaring independence roughly in 1650 I can definitely say that the game is too easy. Not only did we get an extremely early independence, I did not even have to arm a single one of my specialists for the war and I still managed to field 25 dragoons (Servants from Every man is Free, which is a funny notion: Getting Indentured Servants when you declare that every man is free) while my mate fielded a similar amount of his own dragoon + a total of some 10 cannons from the both of us. Facing some 120 REF units the fight was settled before it even started. In short: Game is too easy. Tomorrow or the day after we'll start on the hardest difficulty to see how it goes.

The way we play is: We scout around the first few turns to look for the French and once we spot them, we wait for them to settle (always with their soldier) and send their Pioneer on the field. Then we capture the city while the Pioneer does not even budge despire the fact that there's a soldier in the next tile and that the city he was working on is now razed. Capture the Pioneer and board our Merchantmen and continue searching. We usually settle on a distant location and in our latest game it was the very southwest corner of the map meaning that our ships would be sailing the long way to get to Europe (which isn't a big deal when you play this way). Once the l ocation is found we settle reasonably close to each other.

The next thing we do is scout the Native villages for money. Once we get enough, we get a Galleon and ferry back more treasure for more profit and with that profit we get a dragoon or two and 3 cannons. We take out the natives in our immediate vicinity once we've gotten the specialists from them that we need. This to gain a bit of free, safe space. During all this, we build points to get the founding father who decreases travel time to europe by 50%, which totals 6 turns saved, or 12 if you sail from the western end of the map.

After our area is clear we take our cannons and dragoons to raid the AI players. We take them all out, transport their colonists to our spot and then give every AI player one city size 1 back and declare war on the local natives so they raze the remaining cities. Behavior like this prevents the AI from getting any Founding Fathers and since they all have a city left it means we can go back to farm them again when we need more colonists.

Then it's pretty much rinse and repeat this. We usually sell muskets to distant natives for extra money and set up a few huge factory cities for goods and later on arms production but money really is not a big deal when you can just take the AI's colonists and have them work for you.

Then we just play a peaceful game until we are getting ready for independence. Usually 2 cities with Arsenals for 112 weapons / turn and purchase Horses from Europe. By this time we've also trained some new Statesmen in our universities and bought some more from Europe (my city had 2 factories, for Rum and Cigars) and we build bells for approximately 50-70 turns and since the AI is crippled we'll have all the FF's for extra LB's and it's a smooth ride.

For reference, in our Governor game on top of my army of 25 dragoons I still had cities size 26, 18, 15, 8, 8, 5 and 5 so in total over 100 colonists and keep in mind that not a single specialist (except for the Veteran Soldiers stolen from the AI) were sent to war.

It's too easy. Anyways, we're going to try the hardest difficulty in the coming days to see how we fare with this strategy.

PS. It pisses me off when a colonist graduates from school and it just so happens that I don't have enough money to train him. We should be able to postpone their graduation by other means than just taking them away from school 1 turn prior to their graduation... for convenience.

[snoopy369]

On the vanilla game, raiding the AI makes it pathetically easy, indeed...

[Djboomingranny]

lol nice strat. you really don't like the french do you :P

[Steve Clark]

Fleme, nice write up. The problem is that if you ignore the AI civs and the Natives, you would still have similar results.

[Cort Haus]

I really can't understand why it is that when people find an imbalancing exploit, they play it every time, win easily, and then complain about it.

Why not just play a different way, without the exploit?