Useless colonies!

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Zorkk
Colonies SHOULD have borders. Think about it, real life, or game, doesn't matter. You've gone out there, and established some sort of control over an area, and sent some of your people there to work in it. As far as i'm concerned that would be MY land, and I want to keep it. Having it so the AI can just move a settler in, plop down a city, and get rid of your colony is terrible.

Zorkk

Wrong, if the ai can plop a city down close enough to assimilate your colony immediately you have established NO control over the area.

You sound like people who attack a size 20 city on a hill with 1 modern armor and think the combat system is broken because it doesn't beat the pikeman defending it.

Just because a particular unit or feature is not useful in all circumstances or is not useful on its own without any integration with other tactics does not make it useless.

[player1]

There is NO WAY of estabilishing control over area (this is no civ2, no zoc)

Exept:
-going to war,
-or using insane strategies like having 8-12 units closing your borders.

That's the reason why things are not going as some people think they should.

That's the reason why I think colonies should have radius of 1.

The way mechanic is now, colonies are rarely usefull.
And I think firaxis didn't put interesting feature to be RARELY usefull.

[Fidel]

i am not sure that you necessarily need 8 warriors to shield it off. 1 square radius MIGHT work.....i am wondering if firaxians will implement it....

[player1]

Plus, it's not fun to:
-be forced to make useless cities (at least for 200 turns, until High tech)
-be forced to go in war every 2 minutes, to protect your colony

The only use of colonies, now, is getting early some luxury resouse.
Plus, it should't be to far from you cities (2 or 3 tiles).
Anything farther woulf be absorbed by enemy settlers.

[Fidel]

alternatively, you can make 8 additional colonies around it that will fend off absorption for a while

[Strollen]

I have used colonies before. My last game my only saltpeter was 1 hex outside my border on a mountain, put on a colony connect it to road network viola, I can build cannons, and cavalry. Later when my culture expand it disappeared. Very useful in this situation but pretty useless in general.

I do agree that you shouldn't be able to make a colony disappear by building a city next to it, so maybe instead of a 1 hex border just a rule that you can't build cities next to colonies.

[Zig]

Originally posted by JHood
I wish you could choose to raze a city that you acquire by culture. Now that would be funny.

That would be great!

City on an arctic island: "We love your civilization! May we join it?"

Me: "No you may not. But now that you have asked, I think I will make your city mysteriously burst into flames."

[GePap]

Their luck!

Hey, they wanted to join because of our superior television, not our enlightened governing

[Kolyana]

Placing a city inside your opponents territory is an act of war. Assimilating your opponents outposts and colonies by placing a city next to them should be the same.

To me they are a stunning idea that doesn't ... quite ... work ... right.

Nowadays if I want a resource I try and figure out where to place the city, not how to get a colony there. This kinda defeats the whole objective of them, doesn't it?

[fred]

Colonies work fine.

It is not the colony's fault that the computer likes to expand their empire while you are unwilling to support a villiage.

The reason why there is no border? Let me see a border is based upon culture. Does an oil rig in the middle of the Atlantic generate any culture? Minimal if any.

Now to look at this more indepth, you are commiting a worker (population of 1) to a colony. To a city you commit a settler (pop 2). Now we look at the oil rig are there colonists on the oil rig farming, building houses, churches, temples, libraries, universities so that the oil rig workers can send their children.... ops i forgot the oil rig is full of workers and just workers. There are no families.

And what is stopping say "the russians" from taking over the oil rig? International curtisy and the military might of the former controllers of the oil rig. So if you want to keep you non culture producing colony defend it.

And as you can see a colony is not a colony as in the sense of "the founding colonies of america". Its a little tiny workshop/ trading post. They do not generate borders past the wall the surrounds them.

A colony should not generate any borders, it would totally unbalance the game. I would just build colonies around another civ and block them off from the rest of the map. Since they have no corruption, no settler req. only workers which are cheap.

If you know how to use colonies effectively use them, if not too bad for you. Its imporant to learn strategies. If you want a game that molds exactly to your play make your own game. Its not the game/designers fault that you are unable to use one of the many features of the game effectively. Colonies offer great uses, if used right. Try and adapt to your game instead of complaining.


And just to prove it can be used correctly, the computer built atleast 6 colonies around resources near me, that they needed. They were out of the reach of my borders and provided much needed resources to the computer player, since i had the resources already, and felt no agression to the player i let them exist. But the computer player could provide neccesary resources (iron, saltpeter) to the civ which was half way across the map, situated right in the middle of my land. And the amount of colonies all over the map was fairly large in the mid medival age. Of course a lot disappear with borders and expanding. But they are required in the early game more then later game. And they are used effectively to gain those resources you dont have early in the game so that you can start producing the neccesary military units. They are and will be highly effective when expanding early in the game, if used correctly.

[Akaoz]

You can only build colonies on resources. You can’t build 8 to surround another like LaRusso suggested, and you can’t wall in an enemy.

-Alech

[Fidel]

i had colonies very late in the game. a coalition of freedom loving countries annihilated english superpower and razed their cities to the ground (too high culture, and we kept just the last ones). well there was oil aplenty in some tundra down there and settlers were not around or slow to produce, so chinese, japanese and me made some oil rigging colonies

[gaikokujin]

Fred:

LOGIC in an argument would also be nice. So, you claim that the critics of colonies don't know how to use them, but you give no examples of your own brilliant use of colonies.

Instead, we're treated to the _AIs'_ use of colonies. Ironically, had you played as the AI does (at least on Regent or above), you would have rushed a settler or two right over there to absorb the AI colonies. You simply _chose_ not to do this, but the AI rarely gives us the choice.

It is telling that the AI rarely uses colonies - I've never seen one in any of the games I've played, and I've played enough now to discover that colonies are of marginal use. They have all the earmarks of a game concept that didn't quite work out.

A 1 - or even zero - radius border would be a quick fix.

[player1]

Originally posted by fred
A colony should not generate any borders, it would totally unbalance the game. I would just build colonies around another civ and block them off from the rest of the map. Since they have no corruption, no settler req. only workers which are cheap.

Colonies should be buildable only on resouses.


But having forts with boder of 1 is a nice idea.
Of couse conquering the fort sould give a benefit to new rules.
And they should be more expensive to balance thing out.
Also if enemy city has very high culture your fort-borders should srink.

[smellymummy]

i agree that colonies should produce a border, however a radius of 1 is too big IMO, better off having a border size of 0. That way the AI can't settle in the immediate tile beside your colony.

The colonies should still be consumable by other towns, although the more military units you would have stationed there the harder it would be. It would be fairer IMO, after all when a high culture city is beside a spice colony, I would expect it to eventually go to it's nearest nicest looking neighboor.

One game I played (standard earth map), in the late game after razing the african cities, I sent colonies, each heavily defended (fortress, mechs, tanks and artilery). Of course the AI soon came in and built towns near my colonies, but not overlapping them. One of the AI's town did eat up 2 of my colonies, yet in another case where I had 2 colonies near the AI's town, the AI's town turned over to me, even though my cultural borders where far away.

The town turned, I had no culture borders touching it, only 2 colonies bordering it with plenty of units. Maybe there is something to colonies that we're missing? If you ask me, FIRAXIS seriously needs to clarify things up.