Colonies

[tniem]

I have been looking at the new screen shots provided at PC Zone and have been wondering, where are all the colonies?

If you notice in the screen shots, there are no colonies. Which leads me to wonder if colonies are not going to be as important as Firaxis first said they would in this thread.

There Dan said the following:

As for colonies, the resources go to whoever builds a colony and connects it with a road first. Consequently, colonies become key while your borders are expanding, and if you leave them unguarded or weakly guarded, you will pay the price. Also, since colonies need to be connected to a city with roads, an enemy can destroy your roads and sever the connection to that resource.

This can be disastrous, especially when you're relying on goods to pacify unhappy citizens. I had a game going this week and the CPU destroyed my roads at a key juncture and sent four cities into revolt.

It would appear now that at least in my way of thinking that those that tested the game found it easier to defend their resources by expanding culture and borders to accumulate new resources. I may be wrong but the screenshots seem to point to the death of colonies whether that be strategically or actually the coded element of the game.

[Darkknight]

Some people use them and some don't. Since everyone at Firaxis is playing their own game of civ3 ( AARGH!!) they only take screenshots from the good games and maybe the good players dont use colonies

[Inverse Icarus]

when u build a colony, and your borders extend over it, the colony is "swallowed", and you are given nothign for it.

most of these screenshots are either, too early for colonies (in this one, there arent even roads to a second city), or the borders are enroaching other civs, and all colonies were swallowed.

new question now...

say i build a colony on a silk near the zulus, and their borders grow onto it... is that an act of war?

[tniem]

Originally posted by Darkknight
Some people use them and some don't. Since everyone at Firaxis is playing their own game of civ3 ( AARGH!!) they only take screenshots from the good games and maybe the good players dont use colonies

But that is exactly my point, if the good players don't use colonies - then colonies are in essence useless and will not play a part in the actual game. So then reason would follow that colonies must be dead.

Originally posted by UberKruX
say i build a colony on a silk near the zulus, and their borders grow onto it... is that an act of war?

Good question...

I would have to guess that it would be included in diplomatic negotiations and that you could set up a situation where the colony would remain in one players possession while the borders would extend around it.

[Your.Master]

It could be like caravans/freight. You can win ANY difficulty of civ without them. But are they useless? No. If you take the time, trade is very lucrative. Maybe colonies are like that: very helpful, but many people (especially at first) just don't use them.

[TechWins]

Maybe a way to have colonies be more worth while could be to have every colony generate one extra trade arrow to every city that it's connected to. As well, as providing the resource(s).

Another way could be to have colonies create a small border area. An 9 square colony radius. All resources that are in the radius could be distributed to all the cities, if linked to the colony from the resource then to all the cities.

These two ideas could add some importance to colonies. While, in my opinion, adding a little bit more of realism. What are your thoughts on these ideas?

[JellyDonut]

I expect colonies to be something like real life. First a civ does well without them until a race begins to claim uninhabited or poorly defended land for yourself, which could result in things like the British and French Empire. It would be kind of like a phase of the game.

In real life the empires collapsed because the colonies wanted independence and made their own civs...err...nations. But that's too realistic

[JellyDonut]

There IS a colony cut off at the bottom of one of the screenshots:

http://www.gamesdomain.com/news/images/civ03.jpg

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by JellyDonut
I expect colonies to be something like real life. First a civ does well without them until a race begins to claim uninhabited or poorly defended land for yourself, which could result in things like the British and French Empire. It would be kind of like a phase of the game.

In real life the empires collapsed because the colonies wanted independence and made their own civs...err...nations. But that's too realistic

Yes history is rather interesting in that it showas that land wasnot only grabbed for the need of the colony , but a lot of time simply to deny another nation getting access to it or nearby land.. also much colonisation was doen just to show how much better the mother country ws, again not because they needed new resources or such like

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by tniem
But that is exactly my point, if the good players don't use colonies - then colonies are in essence useless and will not play a part in the actual game. So then reason would follow that colonies must be dead.

If the colonies are useless, they are made useful. Yet another reason for Firaxis to take its time to tweak the game.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

As thisng stand at the moment I don't see the reason to why bother to colonise whenm you can just expand.

We will see when the game ships.

[Dr Strangelove]

I had this crazy idea a long time ago that the the map should be considered as inhabited at the outset. Goody huts would be more densely distributed, say one in every 4 X 4 block, each one containing a native population, some containing additional goodies (money, scrolls, etc.). When advancing into the tile the population would either submit peacefully, fight, or leave. If it submitted the player would either leave it and start a city or move it as a settler. There would be a chance of rebellion the first few turns, the chance would be higher if the natives were moved. If the natives fought they would either be destroyed or submit. Over periods of time, one or more centuries, the population would become completely integrated into the civilization. Alternately, this process could be speeded up by sending settlers into the area and adding them to the native population.

To me true colonies should be settlements physically seperated from the parent civilization. The oportunity fior rebellion might be tied into certain government advances, such as the discovery of republic, or democracy by the parent civ or an adjacent civ. The probability of rebellion and forming a new civ might be linked to the degree of integration of the colony with the parent, the happiness index or even the disparity in the development and wealth between the parent civ and the colony. A successful rebellion might even trigger a civil war in the colony between the native and non-native populations.

[Inverse Icarus]

great catch doughnut!

ANYWAY...

colonies were made, IMHO, to harvest resources you couldn't get otherwise.

it's to stop that "ONE SPOT OVER" city palnning. when you take over a city you won't have to disband it to get the resource.

also, it would let people harvest desert / ice resources (oil) while still maintaining fairly large cities. you dont have to build IN the desert to get the oil.

with all the anti-ICS and happiness problems this game is EXPECTED to have, colonies will probably be very useful.

[Imran Siddiqui]

There IS a colony cut off at the bottom of one of the screenshots:

Where? You mean the little thing all the way at the bottom? How do you know it is cut off?

[Inverse Icarus]

eyes open IRMAN

der colony: