colonies

[patcon]

This is a continuation of comments started in the "air superiority" thread.

In addition to the connectivity issues of far-off colonies, it always bothered me that one of your colonies could be lost simply by having another civ's borders expand to include that tile, without any repurcussions, except that any defenders of that colony are now invaders.
Perhaps this might work. A colony can be founded by a worker in the usual way, but this colony is a 1-tile town (central tile only) at the start, with its sole citizen employed in the business of the colony - mining iron, trapping fur, etc. - in other words only the central tile gets worked so there is no extra food for population growth. The "business" of a coastal colony would be sea trade (i.e., a harbor), possibly combined with resource extraction if it were lucky enough to be a coastal ivory tile, for example. Borders of the town could be expanded by the usual method of building culture-producing improvements, but there wouldn't be any population growth unless more workers were sent there to join the colony. If workers join before the city-radius expands, the player gets to designate 1 tile in the 8 adjoining tiles to be worked. That could lead to a food surplus and population growth in the usual way.

[Niptium]

I have to say that the colonial era was very poorly implemented in all of Civilization's iteration. I always thgought that a portion of the map should be inaccessible until the Reanaissance - but that was a rough idea. I don.'t really know how Firaxis could implement such a thing in Civilization 5.

Oh well ! Let's just do Colonization 2 instead !

[sophist]

I don't understand why you would want colonies to be so powerful with so many abilities and yet be unwilling to build an actual city.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by sophist
I don't understand why you would want colonies to be so powerful with so many abilities and yet be unwilling to build an actual city.

You get a lower population cost, lower maintenance costs, and more use out of the resource for much slower population growth, not having the ability to build most improvements, and not having the ability to build most units. That's just an idea.

[Bogdanovist]

This sounds like an unneccessary complication. Cities are cities, they do what they do, colonies let you access a resource outside your borders. It's simple and it works. This is the kind of change Firaxis had been clear they want to avoid, making existing features more and more complex with each iteration of the game becoming more and more complex nad harder for new players to get into.

Don't mean to sound to harsh about this suggestion, but it seems it's motivated from a realism view (what should happen when a rivals cultural border swallows your colony?) rather than a game balance, and funness view. Would this change be more fun? No. Would it address a game balance issue? No. Would it add a new level of strategic options? No, just build a city if you want to really secure the resource.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by Bogdanovist
This sounds like an unneccessary complication. Cities are cities, they do what they do, colonies let you access a resource outside your borders. It's simple and it works. This is the kind of change Firaxis had been clear they want to avoid, making existing features more and more complex with each iteration of the game becoming more and more complex nad harder for new players to get into.

Don't mean to sound to harsh about this suggestion, but it seems it's motivated from a realism view (what should happen when a rivals cultural border swallows your colony?) rather than a game balance, and funness view. Would this change be more fun? No. Would it address a game balance issue? No. Would it add a new level of strategic options? No, just build a city if you want to really secure the resource.

Not being mean or anything, but I couldn't give a hoot about casual players who can't even grasp the concept of a "colony." And colonies as they stand now, are hardly ever used. Whatever happens to them, they need to be changed.

You're wrong, it would add a strategic option, and you seemed to have ignored my points on why a colony would be better than a city in some respects.

[Proteus_MST]

I agree with Lord Nuclear and patcon.

I never used Colonies in Civ III for the reasons mentioned above (i.e. that my precious colonies are gone as soon as any other player builds a city nearby (or has cultural borders which expand over the location of my colony))

But I wouldn´t make Colonies this powerful.
Make them 1 Population cities that don´t grow and have no expanding cultural borders, as patcon says, but don´t allow them to build any city improvements.
But of course, with the addition of another worker, they should be allowed to grow into a real city (after all these 2 workers [the first to found the colony, the second to turn it into a city] would cost roughly the same as one settler [at least in Civ III])

[1889]

If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

[Tassadar500]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

Once again, you have ignored my points on the differences between a colony and a city.

[LDiCesare]

Colonies would be more useful if building too many cities had bad consequences. Or if they didn't flip. Getting rid of them wouldn't hurt gameplay a lot either.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

With a settler you have just one unit to move along.

But aside from this it isn´t difficult to further encourage players to use the settler instead of buildings 2 workers which first buil a colony and then upgrade it to a city:
Just make 2 Workers somehow more expensive than one settler, for example by assigning a worker costs of 12-15 hammers wheres a settler costs just 20 hammers.

[Sandman]

I agree with sophist. What's the point in having a super-duper colony when you could just have a city?

On a related note, it would nice if the game didn't penalise having overseas territories as much. Maybe you could get better trade deals by having a single trade city on a farflung continent or something.

[korn469]

If colonies simply had an innate port feature, so that they players wouldn't have to connect them by roads, then colonies would become far more useful. Giving colonies a built in port (and maybe even airport) ability then players could establish colonies across a body of water without building cities on the new continant. I would find that very useful.

[patcon]

Originally posted by 1889
If two workers could build a city for 20 shields then why build settlers?

Don't be too quick to judge a feature just by how often it is used. Colonies, airfields and paratroops don't show up in every game, but they are very useful the way they are.

Colonies are a way to get resource much sooner than if you had to put down a city. It won't last forever, but is still very worth while some times.

Colonies are very seldom used, to the point of being essentially worthless. First you have to build a road to the resource, then use up a worker to build a colony, then put a defender there if you want to hold onto it. By the time that all gets done, borders have changed and who knows how long you'll either need it or be able to use it. You might as well use all that prep time to build the road with your worker, build a settler in a nearby city, and establish a city instead of a colony. The only times I can recall using a colony is when there was iron or coal deep in the mountains where a city couldn't be built and where borders would take forever to expand to cover, maybe twice in all my playing. And if that resource is not within roadable distance from your territory (say on a distant shore) putting a colony doesn't help since the colony is not connected by a trade route.

I could live with a "dock" colony which could serve to connect colonies to the motherland. This would be pretty expensive (at least 2 workers and 2 defenders and the time to build connecting roads) for a potentially short-lived benefit, as other civs are likely to establish cities nearby and swallow up your colonies. You'd have to land the 4 units, send the defender to the tiles you want to colonize, have the workers road the tiles in between, then have the workers establish the colonies.

Having colonies act as "villages" doesn't make them equal in any real sense to cities estabilshed by settlers. They would grow extremely slowly, if at all, and would require a substantial investment to turn into a city. Perhaps limit the production of a colony to units, not improvements, until the population reaches say 3 or 4.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear

You get a lower population cost, lower maintenance costs, and more use out of the resource for much slower population growth, not having the ability to build most improvements, and not having the ability to build most units. That's just an idea.

All of those things can be done with a city. Plant a settler, make its single citizen an entertainer or something, build no improvements or units besides a harbor, and there you go. There's no maintenance if there are no improvements. There's no need to add a new thing or change colonies as they are to achieve that. Stop focusing on the word colony; think of it as a camp.

I do support being able to build an harbor that can exist outside a city, though. Build a colony on one tile and such a harbor on a neighboring tile if it's hard to reach. That way, you have four levels of possibility with only a single, minor addition to the game: colony by itself, colony with harbor, tiny city, and real city.

You shouldn't be able to claim land just by planting a flag. You need a real presence, which in Civ is a city. If you make a half-assed land grab using a colony, and that colony is swallowed up by another civ that's willing to put in the investment to build a city nearby, tough. It's not like that possibility sneaks up on you; you know the risks when you do something like that.