Renewable resources: The death of colonies?

[Grumbold]

Up till now I have normally found myself defending the role of colonies against those who argue that blanket coverage of the landmass with cities is a better approach. My chief arguements have been that to connect to an inconveniently placed resource can help you expand all your city borders faster or give you quick access to the iron or bronze you need to survive. In deserts, mountains and tundra they have no need of food.

Now Sid has announced that new sources of discovered resources can be spontaneously found by population utilising city tiles. This implies that no matter how badly placed a resource may be, it is in your best interest to end up with a city capable of working that tile and the surrounding ones because that is the best way to get more of the same. Unless colonies and units have this ability to prospect (without endless micromanagement tedium) then 100% tile city coverage is even more necessary.

I'm amazed that a bunch of farmers would know how to locate oil, coal or uranium in the first place. "See, Hank, I was out digging holes for my new fence when I struck a gusher". "When my eldest son Joey turned green and his hair fell out, we knew his rock collection was really special!" *Sigh* I thought that we had to send highly trained people around the world to do these surveys and that they felt no need to remain constrained to city limits. Spotting oil in Antarctica is going to be an interesting challenge.

[Miatezhnyi]

Re: Renewable resources: The death of colonies?

Originally posted by Grumbold
Up till now I have normally found myself defending the role of colonies against those who argue that blanket coverage of the landmass with cities is a better approach. My chief arguements have been that to connect to an inconveniently placed resource can help you expand all your city borders faster or give you quick access to the iron or bronze you need to survive. In deserts, mountains and tundra they have no need of food.

I still think colonies would be useful in the ways that you mention, I doubt enough resources will just pop up in the cities to supply the whole empire. Cololies could also be useful for denying a resource to a competitor.

[SIZE=1]
I'm amazed that a bunch of farmers would know how to locate oil, coal or uranium in the first place. "See, Hank, I was out digging holes for my new fence when I struck a gusher".

Or like the Beverly Hillbillies
"Come 'n listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed
And then one day, he was shootin' at some food
And up through the ground come a bubblin' crude
Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea"

[TechWins]

I doubt enough resources will just pop up in the cities to supply the whole empire. Cololies could also be useful for denying a resource to a competitor.

I don't know if you have seen most of the screenshots so far but resources appear to be way too plentiful. If resources weren't plentiful and were spread out very well then colonies could be important. From what we know that doesn't hold true (resources being non-plenitful). Which in turn leads me to believe that colonies aren't that important. Oh yeah, they might be slightly useful but I don't think they are going to be a neccesity. I think building that temple to get the resources would prove to be a lot more valuable in the long run. Building a colony right away (very beginning of game) might prove to be somewhat useful then. If you decide to build the temple early on instead of the colony I think it would pay more dividends in the long run. A colony will hamper a cities growth by taking away 1pop point, will decrease production, food intake, and trade for awhile from lack of a population. All in all this is only speculation but it's still my opinion on colonies.

[Fidel]

well, this seems to depend on several variables:
- abundance of resources (easilly tweaked)
- probability of discovery (again, tweaked easily)

it just may be that you have a clearly visible deposit of something and that once in 100 yrs your farmers stumble upon something else (certainly not silk)

what would be the alternative? to have everything flashing on the map the minute you discover fission? i remember imperialism 2 system where one had to send engineers to do some drilling here and there. it was fun in the beginning but was getting really boring really fast. the less micromanagement there is, the better....at least this is how it seems to me.

this said, grumbold has a really valid point. random discoveries have to be really rare in comparison with those that would happen with engineer (worker) lurking around....this would give a bit of an incentive to engage in a bit (but not too much, and it should not be crucial) geological research (you'd send them around if you are, say, really pressed for oil or uranium...otherwise you can relax and wait).

[Grumbold]

I'm all for a micromanagement-free approach, i.e. a slider that lets you invest 0-1000? gold/turn prospecting in all friendly territory and the same (at double cost) for neutral territory. What I object to is the idea that new sources will only be discovered on land being utilised for agriculture or industry. That is just ridiculous.

[Fidel]

true. some level of abstraction has to be used.

[One More Turn!]

Where I think colonies might be useful, and I am still not sure I understand exactly how you can connect to them across water, is gathering resources that you don't have access to within the primary boundaries of your civ. For example, you have a civ that has no tropical land types, and you need a tropical resource or luxury. You could set up a colony to get it, and maybe eventually replace it with a city, or maybe not.

As I am way too lazy to look through the forums for this information, maybe someone here can answer this question:

When you have a colony that is on a different land mass from your civ, is it automatically connected to your civ if it is adjacent to an ocean square and you have a port in one of your cities? Or do you have to physically connect the colony to a city via road, and then between ports?

[Grumbold]

The latter definitely works. I'm not sure if an out-of-city port will ve constructable by an engineer for those really barren spots where you don't want a city anywhere nearby.

[Urban Ranger]

Since it seems it's highly plausible that both the abundance of resources and the chance of accidental discoveries can be customised, you can configure a game so colonies are very important. It is nice that there are more than one way to do things in Civ 3 so a player is not forced to use some prescribed algorithm.

[korn469]

like i realized today, the most important thing about colonies, is that before you can utilize a special resource you must first build a road to it...so early on i think that colonies will be viable, though later i do not know how valuable they will be

[Urban Ranger]

I just realised what you can do with colonies. You can use them to deny access to special resources by competing countries. That makes colonies focal points in a border conflict.

[korn469]

urban ranger

your idea raises a few questions

do enemy borders envelope colonies like friendly borders do? if not then is building a colony in enemy territory an act of war?

though it seems that parking a military unit on that special resource would be a better way of handling the situation

[Grumbold]

If you anticipate trouble you would surely be better advised to have a city because it can construct and repair armies and have walls for additional defence? If it is inconvenient for the city to be right on top of the square you can build a fort on it.

the most important thing about colonies, is that before you can utilize a special resource you must first build a road to it...so early on i think that colonies will be viable, though later i do not know how valuable they will be

You need to connect all your resources and cities with roads/ports to benefit. That is true whether the end-point is a colony or a city so I don't understand the advantage.

Colonies are definitely going to be a possible choice and probably good for grabbing an early culture boost, but it seems more and more they will be a minor footnote that becomes irrelevant pretty fast. You may start with a colony there but want to replace it with a city later to get the discovery potential to replenish diminishing resources.

[korn469]

so if you build your city on top of a special resource then you have access to that resource?

but my points about roads and colonies are this...culture will take a while to extend your borders (it looked like it took between 9-12 turns possibly more for cultural borders to extend out from a newly founded city to three squares away) but then even after your cultural borders have enveloped a special resource you will still have to build a worker to build a road to that resource...so it seems like a worker who is going get turned into a colonist will provide your civ access to resources and luxeries much sooner than either building a 2 pop settler founding a new city and then building a worker to connect roads between the two cities...and it seems like it would be much much quicker than building a worker, then building a road, then building a temple and a library and waiting for your borders to expand

so early game i think that most good players will use colonies but mid to late game i can't see a need for colonies, especially if one resource can provide for your entire civ

[Grumbold]

I see your point. IMO you will have to have workers to quickly connect your cities with roads (something that might have waited in Civ2) to benefit from any resource. So the worker who disbands themselves to form a new colony will be an extra one. Certainly in Civ 2 my workers were constantly occupied from the start of the game to the point where no more expansion or terraforming was practicable and the loss of one which had to be replaced was a noticable setback. One thing I have found strange with the Alpha screenshots has been how little sign of workers hard at work developing the terrain there has been.