Colonies?

[Teekay]

Although rather ashamed of myself , I have to admit that I haven't been following the development of Civ III as well as I should be. Trying to play "catch up", I'm trying to figure out what exactly the colonies I've heard reference to are... Are they the little suburb-like things I saw outside all the cities in the civ3.com gallery? What purpose do the colonies serve? How do you build them? Can they grow into cities?

Thanks to anyone who can at least answer me.

(S hit, I'm asking newbie questions. What has become of me )

[Buck Birdseed]

Colonies allow you to harvest special resources located outside your borders. They absorb the worker that builds them, essentially requiring one population point to build. They need to be connected by road to one of your cities to work. Once your borders expand to cover them, they dissapear and you can allocate workers as usual to work on them. They do not grow to cities or serve any other purpose.

[Martinus]

Also, you can take a decent tutorial on resources (and colonies) here: http://www.civ3.com/devupdate_resources.cfm

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Snapcase
Colonies allow you to harvest special resources located outside your borders. They absorb the worker that builds them, essentially requiring one population point to build. They need to be connected by road to one of your cities to work. Once your borders expand to cover them, they dissapear and you can allocate workers as usual to work on them. They do not grow to cities or serve any other purpose.

I guess time will tell whether it's a useful thing to do. I'd hate to loose one population point...but perhaps I'd consider it if the resources are really valuable.

I do have the feeling that the AI will target those colonies first thing in the morning!

[Edward]

Originally posted by Martinus
Also, you can take a decent tutorial on resources (and colonies) here: http://www.civ3.com/devupdate_resources.cfm

This is probably not the correct place to ask this, but you seem to know your way around the civ3.com site.

How do you get to past developer updates (like the one you just linked to)? All I can find is the most recent one (by clicking on "Developer Update" on the left navigation bar).

Thanks!

[Martinus]

When you are on the Developer Update screen, down on the left bar you will find Previous updates - you should choose "Resources" from the menu there.

[Provost Harrison]

Son of a b*tch, I never noticed that pull-down menu in developer update before. I have been patiently waiting for an update for so long not realising that there has been this there all along. Bah!

[TechWins]

Damn I never saw that scroll bar, either. I'm glad somebody pointed it out finally or else I would have never seen it. Going to go read the other updates right now.

[Scrooge]

I would also like to share some of my city growth / colony thoughts.
----------
Well, just look at the map of any country - see big population centers surrounded by hundreds of small villages and towns, which, with time, assimilate as the city grows. I'd like the Firaxis team to implement all of the below ideas:

1. expanding city radius, dependable on the city's population, from 1sq to 3sq away (like in CTP); when the pop/radius grows, then the city "assimilates" colonies and gets the pop points back (they are still your people, the city doesn't kill them)

2. colonies, not only for special resources but for ONE of any kind - food OR shields OR special; if you choose to have lots of these, well, it's your kind of play, and you'll have to decide what to extract and still try to expand the nearby city (to get the remaining benefits)

3. fish trawlers or whalers, also offshore mining platforms not within city's radius (they're offshore, right?); "colonies" for water-based resources conveying food or shields to cities, sometimes even far away. That way sea harvesting gains strategic importance (check out the Cod Wars)

4. colonies could also solve the land-based army resupply problem, about which, I've been reading in a different thread; they could double-up as resupply depots, allowing armies within, say, 5sq to resupply and perform field repairs ("heal" with time) when an army is outside it's nation's borders. The colonies would have to be connected by roads, and cutting either the road or destroying (pillaging) the colony on the route would count as cutting the supply lines disabling the "heal" process (Napoleon in Russia). This could also limit the indiscriminate expansion problem early in the game and provide a strategic challenge of defending your sup lines (against eg. paratroops).
The ideas on resupply have been already put >please click< here.

[Shoeless]

Hmm

Lets say you build a colony to get a resource. Then your borders expand and your colony is no longer needed, so it disappears. What if later you lose some culture (sabotage, whatever), and your borders become smaller, and the resource is out of reach. Does your colony come back automatically, or do you have to rebuild it?

Shoeless

[Scrooge]

Re: Hmm

Originally posted by Shoeless
Lets say you build a colony to get a resource. ... (see above)

You'd have to rebuild it. So watch out and don't let your borders shrink.

[Sandman]

Apparently building cities right next door to yours is now an act of war. But does this apply to colonies?

Also, a colony disappears when it ends up inside your borders. What happens if one of your colonies is 'absorbed' by an enemy civ? I hope that you'll be able to negotiate it's future, rather than it just disappearing.