Idea number 62967b: Revitalize Colonies

[notyoueither]

1. Colonies should not automatically disappear when overtaken by cultural borders. They should disappear only when they fall inside the usable space of a city. Add 1 pop to city.

1a. Prior Rights. Colonies that come to be within another civ's cultual borders should remain functioning for the original civ. So my colony can stay in business even though someone elses borders have expanded to include the square with my colony. Such a colony would disappear when it's square came to be usable by a city of the encompassing civ. Add one alien pop to the city. Having a colony in such a situation should not be seen as hostile. Building a colony within another civ's cultural borders would be an act of war.

1b. The square that a colony occupies would always be considered as the territory of the colony's civ for the purposes of unit occupation. You can leave your garrison on the colony. The civ whose borders encompass the colony can not force your withdrawal.

2. Resources that are not within the usable area of a city, but are within your cultural borders should require a colony to be used. Who's out there extracting the goods?

3. Occupying a colony, and thus destroying it, should not be an act of war unless that colony is inside the cultural borders of it's own civ. It might make the colony's civ furious with you, and maybe they will declare war, but the destruction of the colony in the wilderness is not itself a causus belli.

How's that?

[Minuteman]

Sounds good to me, and I agree with every point you made, except for #3.

I don't think that an attack against a colony can be construed in any other way than as an attack on that nation...just for logic's sake, of course.

[nbarclay]

If you want something that can try to withstand expansion of a foreign civ, use a settler and build a town. Otherwise, you don't have enough people in the area to justify your claim. The ability to use settlers/towns instead of workers/colonies provides a much simpler and more straightforward way to accomplish your legitimate goals than any realistic extension of the colony mechanism would. (No, it is not realistic to expect a nation to simply shrug off having a group of foreign nationals too small to even be considered a town claim control of important resources within its borders.)

Nathan

[notyoueither]

The idea is to make colonies useful so that people will use them.

One of the biggest problems with colonies is the absorbtion effect of other civs. The proposal would make those outlying colonies less of a waste of time and more likely to be used.

BTW, I should add one point. It is a total rip off from Thrawn05 in another thread. Pity I didn't think of it myself.

4. Colonies should function as a harbour (with Mapmaking) if on the coast. That way 2 colonies on a distant island can get the resourse back to the home cities.

4a. Colonies acting as harbours would also act as links to other civs. Similar to the situation of Rome and Ostia in the ancient world. Ostia was Rome's port.

4b. Airports? Would that mean they could also be Air Bases? I'm not sure about this one.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The idea is to make colonies useful so that people will use them.

I disagree with the idea of making something more useful just to try to bribe people to use it more. Colonies are a feature that is only rarely useful, but that can be very useful indeed in certain situations where borders haven't quite reached a resource yet.

For example, in one game, I captured two Aztec cities positioned so that a tile containing a luxury resource would be the ONLY land tile a city positioned to exploit the resource would have that wouldn't overlap other cities. A colony gave me access to the resource without waiting to bring in a settler (I used a captured worker) and without waiting for one of the captured cities to grow to a cultural radius of three. (The fact that that region was highly corrupt at the time further dissuaded me from wanting another city there.) The resource wasn't one I could buy from anyone, and even if I could, it would have cost 20 plus gold per turn or equivalent. So I regarded the colony I used to exploit the resource as a very good investment indeed.

Colonies are what they are. They aren't something you should expect to use in most games, but it's nice to know they're there in case they're needed.

Nathan

[notyoueither]

Yes. It is good in those rare cases where they are useful.

I think that most people just expect more from a feature that was much ballyhoo'd (word?). I'm all in favour of any ideas that do not increase complexity very much, but that add greater variety (flavour if you wish).

The fact is that many people are very disappointed with colonies. Ideas to improve them would seem to be productive.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The fact is that many people are very disappointed with colonies. Ideas to improve them would seem to be productive.

The trick is to find improvements that would not imbalance the cost/benefit ratio of colonies. Otherwise, colonies go from something with pretty well balanced cost/benefits but that isn't useful all that often to something that is useful often precisely because its cost/benefit ratio is imbalanced.

Personally, I think the real problem is in calling them "colonies" rather than "work camps." Too many of us are too used to thinking in terms of colonies that have well-developed cities and harbors in them, when the "colonies" in the game are smaller than the smallest towns. That misnaming raises people's expectations above what is reasonable. For example, real-world colonies don't get particularly worthwhile harbor facilities until they have a reasonably sized town with a harbor in it.

Still, since the misnaming exists, there might be ways to leverage it without imbalancing the game. Someone on another thread mentioned the idea of letting colonies evolve into towns, and that might actually be workable if it would take a "colony" something like 60 turns in the ancient era and 40 in later eras to evolve into a size 1 city. (If the colony is on a mountain, the town could crop up adjacent to the mountain, but only if there is suitable adjacent terrain available.) I would also be inclined to only let a colony evolve into a town if there would not be any overlap with the city radius of any existing city; otherwise, the colony would more naturally fold into the influence of the existing town.

That would maintain settlers' role as the only way to found towns at all quickly, but would reflect the real-world scenario of tiny settlements evolving into towns and eventually cities. The question, "Do I want my town quickly or am I willing to wait for a colony to evolve to create it more cheaply," might actually add an interesting dimension to the game. Another possible idea in conjunction with this might be to have a settler forming a town on top of or immediately adjacent to a same-civ colony form a size 2 city because part of the population price for forming a city has already been paid.

Of course then there's the problem that if Firaxis changes the abilities of colonies without modifying the AI to take good advantage of the new abilities, it would give the human player too much of an advantage. So such improvements are probably best saved for Civ 4 (or possibly an expansion pack if Firaxis gets ambitious).

Nathan

[notyoueither]

The ideas in points 1 through 4 would be a far cry from creating UberKamps.

First, they would still be easy to knock off. Just build a city right next to them. Gone. Point 3 allows anybody to kill an ungarrisoned colony in unclaimed territory without immediate war as a result.

They would be more useful though for those resources that are the 3rd square into a mountain range (and sometimes the 2nd) because no civ could ever absorb them.

Thrawn's idea about harbour abilities would result in less micromanagement since you could get the resources off the far flung islands without cities.

Also, point 2 is all about requiring colonies in many more circumstances. Roads and big culture would no longer mean auto resources. You would have to build a colony (or a city) on any resourse futher than 2 squares away from your cities even if your borders encompassed that square.

As for whether there is a point, hmmm. The designers are still making adjustments, apparently some of them are based on player input. Did you know that it will be possible to have lethal bombardment in the near future? Why do you think they are making that change?

As for the AI. Well, it is one of the areas more under development if I don't miss my guess. I think they would probably stick with it long enough to see the job through since AI is one of the compelling features of the game. Don't fret for Soren. I think he can take care of himself and the AI if he is given enough time.

So thanks for the input, but I believe I will continue to try to contribute to the development [and the discussion] in any lame-brained fashion I am capable of.

[Capt Dizle]

I would like to point out that this overwhelming focus on maintaining the status of the AI's ability to compete is working against changes that might make multiplay special.

There are thousands of things that could be added to the game to make it great for multiplay. Humans don't have to be programmed to use them!

So, we have a great problem. Design for SP good, multiplay boring, design for multiplay good, SP boring.

For this reason I hope they completely rework the game for MP and charge $50 bucks for it. I'll buy.

[notyoueither]

Good point jt.

I would think that improved colony mechanics would help both SP and MP.

Less micromanagement in both if you can rely on colonies under more conditions for resourses and luxuries that you need. Fewer cities > less management.

Greater *fun factor* if there are more interesting situations that can come about. Again, good for SP or MP.

What do you think?

[Skanky Burns]

Colonies and cities are two distinct entities, and to make the one into the other is pointless. We already have cities, we want colonies to do something else.

And thats the problem right there, they don't do anything else. Right now their only use is to get a resource "20 turns earlier than cultural expansion would allow". Which is almost never worth the cost of 1 population.

Colonies should allow us to exploit resources on a tiny island that is too small to support a city, but colonies need cities with a harbour just to transport the stuff across, leading to even less use of colonies. I believe to make colonies worthwhile, they should start off with harbours (or perhaps get them after X amount of turns). Airports might make them too useful.

Not being absorbed by other cities culture is also a big one!! You build a colony specifically because you don't have culture there. But the AI wants that resource, plonks a city down, and you suddenly don't have access to that land anymore?? You spent that population point for a reason, but now you have NO population point back, and NO resource. And you can't prevent the AI from stealing your resources unless you build a city there first. And since you are building a city there, why waste a pop point making a colony??

As you can see, if colonies don't have their own cultural border, they are worthless to build.

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Personally, I think the real problem is in calling them "colonies" rather than "work camps." Nathan

Bingo! (ie - I agree)

But here's my suggestion on making them more interesting:
"Colonies" - the things you create with the Worker, are "Trading Camps". They have a gold cost to create, but barbarians don't attack them (because they're trading the resources with the owner - or working in the mines, or whatever). If the "Colony" goes within the Cultural boundries of another Civ the other civ the trading screen pops up and the other civ must either purchace the colony or trade the resource to the colony's civ. If neither of those deals work then the civ owning the colony gets the option to declare war over the colony. If war is declared the colony acts just as colonies do now, but will never be merely "absorbed" via culture. Another civ will have to move a military unit into the colony square, or it could "flip." (It might need to use a different flip formula). Plus, the owning player gets some extra military units in the colony - armed "natives" - the ones the colony was trading with. If war is not declared the colony peacfully changes hands.

[Uncle Thade]

I think i read elsewhere, can't remember, that a la "SMAC", have colonies within your borders, that act like the supply crawler did. Otherwise certain resources that are buried deep within mountain ranges with no possibility of building a city near them are useless. Like in my current game, have urainium within my borders but no cities footprint can reach it. It remains there useless to me.

Arghhhh! Just my cent and a half.

[Todd Hawks]

Your proposed changes sound good but I don't think they would work.
The AI always drops a city near a colony and has a high city density so the case where you have a colony within enemy territory but outside its city radius would never happen.

I like the idea of having to use colonies within your borders to get the resources. Not only outside city radii but everywhere.

[notyoueither]

OK Skanky. I hear ya. I have seen others suggest that colonies should have a cultural border of one square (ie, theirs). That would keep colonies in foreign culture regardless of city placement. I would be happy with that. In fact it might be more intriguing. Could really get some crazy patchwork going. Boy would it ever be annoying sometimes!

UncleThade. Build a road to it? That's all that is required as of now. Idea number 62967b would require you to build a road to it and build a colony on it.

Tarq. Armed natives? Would you be happy with a cultural border of 1? In other words, no need for fancy mechanics and special cases.

TH. Wouldn't needing colonies everywhere kind of slow things down a bit too much? And where would be the fun of anticipating the *harvesting* of that plum 1 pop when the cultural borders expand so that it's square is now included in the usable tiles of one of my cities? Hmmm.