Whats with these 'colonies'

[Slax]

I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed. I would think of it as a "work camp" or something.

[Grumbold]

Yeah. The Caesar series called it an industry but work camp is a good choice. Perhaps the name should have been targetted to the type of resource so copper would get "build open cast mine" where horses would get "build ranch". They could have graphics to match so that it was wasy to see which resource they are producing (perhaps it already does.) Calling it a colony gives misleading connotations of them declaring independance and growing into huge cities in their own right.

[senowen]

Originally posted by Slax
I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed. I would think of it as a "work camp" or something.

I think you are absolutely right about that. After all, most European colonies were more agricultural than anything else. A "colony" in CivIII seems to have no agricultural value, as far as I can tell. Plus, colonies had their own borders.

[Fiera]

Harlan brought up this interesting point:

I'm sure there will be times when I will want to build colonies, but I'll probably try to minimize them as much as possible, since I see them as ultimately a dead-end, while building a city is the start of something big. I want to play for the long term, and not go for the short term "quick fix" unless I absolutely must.

I guess to each their own styles, but the question is: will players who avoid building colonies consistently beat those who do, in the same way that players who build tons of cities consistently beat those who build a "reasonable" number of cities - the ICS problem.

There's a lot of questions about colonies floating around this thread, and until/if we get answers to them, we won't really know how useful colonies are.

I think the only way tomake colonies useful fopr the long run, is that they have the chance to convert into cities (it seems Dan has stated something about this, but it's not clear enugh). Maybe there's this chance when they too far away from "home" and have been running for a long time, or maybe when they're depleted, etc.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Fiera
Harlan brought up this interesting point:



I think the only way tomake colonies useful fopr the long run, is that they have the chance to convert into cities (it seems Dan has stated something about this, but it's not clear enugh). Maybe there's this chance when they too far away from "home" and have been running for a long time, or maybe when they're depleted, etc.

*As far I know* (which doesn't mean this won't change, who knows) colonies do not ever "convert into cities". Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.

I know you all have a lot of questions about colonies and resources, and how they work, but right now a lot of that stuff is in flux and things aren't absolute, so I can't give you answers to a lot of your questions. My intention with posting earlier in this thread was to give you some general parameters to with which to mentally frame colonies so you have a general idea of what we're trying to do with them. I can't really delve much deeper into them right now because they just aren't "done" yet.


Dan

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.

Good! Why not keep it that way? No backdoors to ICS, please. Also, colonies that automatically turns into cities tends to mess up city-placement strategies, in much the same way that Civ-2 goody-hut "advanced tribes" did.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Slax
I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed.

Yes, I agree! Firaxis should change the name.

Originally posted by Grumbold
Perhaps the name should have been targetted to the type of resource so copper would get "build open cast mine" where horses would get "build ranch".

Context-sensitive resource-luxury work-camp names? Well, thats even better. Just not "colonies" - thats too misleading.

[Slax]

In my opinion, a "colony" would have some resource gathering function, a defensive bonus (same as fortification?), and give a bonus when converted (by the player, not automatically) to a city.

[Harlan]

Kudos to Dan for telling us what he's told us. I'm really glad to hear that things like colonies are still works in progress, and Firaxis isn't locking concepts in stone this far ahead. I noticed too that in just the last month or so, the description of armies has changed a bit, so hopefully a lot of things are getting tweaked and improving.

I also hope Firaxis looks at some of the concerns and questions posed on this thread as they continue to tweak. The biggest concern here is how colonies totally disappear. I think having them conver to cities is extreme and could lead to ICS, but having some legacy or value after they're overrun by city borders or made useless by a dried up resource would be key.

[Fidel]

Why don't they simply give us away some betas to help them with tweaking?
That 'satanic video' really made me mad. Someone is actually playing CivIII at the moment...grrr....

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Slax
In my opinion, a "colony" would have some resource gathering function, a defensive bonus (same as fortification?), and give a bonus when converted (by the player, not automatically) to a city.

I had similar opinion about resource (food/shield) and having back population point if converted (not if conquered).

I simply accept that they are matter of balancing, not real game milestones, so I don't want to turn it into a "war of religion"

Concept of colonies (villages) sounds very promising, it only needs to be tuned right.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


*As far I know* (which doesn't mean this won't change, who knows) colonies do not ever "convert into cities". Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.


Dan

Absorb? Does this mean that a colony disappears and adds one to the closest city? Or does it turn into a worker again? Since the colony idea isn't 100 % yet, Dan, you guys should think about having the colony turn back into a worker so that ppl can decide what they want to do with it. Then it could be added to the city pop or moved to another area and it could build another colony. Sorry that's just a cool looking face.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Absorb? Does this mean that a colony disappears...

No, only the colony-graphics disappears. The resource-tile it self is still working 100% as long as its still road-connected to your capitol city, and as long as it isnt depleted (= resource-graphics disappears). Infact, you can regard all road-connected swallowed up colonies inside your culture-borders, as "invisible colonies". So reclaiming that worker/pop-point back to the mother-city really is unjustified.

If I have understand it correctly a special resource in any secondary non-capitol city, can only produce output if...

• inside your culture-borders and road-connected to your capitol city.
• outside your culture-borders but pinned-down by a colony, and road-connected to your capitol city.

This means that as long as that special resource/colony is road-connected ONLY to your secondary city (and not to the capitol one) it will NOT produce any output. (at least this is how I have come to understand it).
Each and every city founded after that initial capitol city MUST - directly or indirectly - be road-connected to your capitol city. That is; if your ambition is that each special resource shall produce outputs to the common empire resource-market.

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
5) The reason the goods need to be somehow connected to your capitol city is because it's a trade network. You can actually have many different subnetworks, for example, and each of them might be connected to the capitol in one way or another, but a crafty adversary could, for example, occupy your sole harbor city that links one subnet to another, effectively cutting off an entire continent's trade from the capitol city's continent.

My underlining. As you can se; inter-city road-connection becomes much more important (also early on) in Civ-3, then it ever was in Civ-2.

[Harlan]

Ralf,
You continue to insist that a colony doesn't disappear, but it does. If a city border expands to encompass a new resource, and you have a road to it, then you get the use of that resource. But this is true if you had a colony on the resource previously or not.

If say, I build a colony and then a turn later the city boundary overtakes the colony, what have I done? I've just thrown away a worker. If you can't see that, then I'm going to crush you when it comes to playing multiplayer Civ3 .

The fact that I can continue to get resources from that tile is irrelevant, what I'm focusing on is that I just lost a population of 1 from one of my cities and have nothing to show for it, except however many turns the colony lasted before the city caught up to it.

Let's say the city grows and overtakes the colony, but then its attacked and loses some population, so the city borders shrink again. Will the colony reappear? I bet not. Because it is no longer there.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Harlan
If say, I build a colony and then a turn later the city boundary overtakes the colony, what have I done? I've just thrown away a worker.

Yes, but is this a likely scenario? A turn later? Or even 10 turns later?

The fact that I can continue to get resources from that tile is irrelevant, what I'm focusing on is that I just lost a population of 1 from one of my cities and have nothing to show for it, except how many turns the colony lasted before the city caught up to it.

Exactly! My underlining. Its not that you have to place only 1-2 culture-expansions away. You have a choice. Reserve your colonies for resources further away only. Also, there is most likely a border-limited size that perhaps stops around max 4 continued culture-expansions at most. Ever thought of that?

I guess, that Civ-3 resource mini-tutorial at Firaxis website is partly to blame. They showed us a constructed unrealistically fast step-by-step example how the idea works in princip. But suddenly everybody misinterprets that and thinks that expanding your culture-borders 3 times can be done just as easy as in that mini-tutorial. My godness! 3 whole culture-expansions, and still only a tiny 5 pop city. Why should I ever want to use the colonies???

Read below list one more time (from a prior reply), and you can see: Expanding your ever-growing array of cities with fast-expanding culture-borders isnt necessarily such an easy-going and quick process as you might think. I say: make use of those colony-founding workers - you cannot afford to wait too long.

• In order to expand your culture-borders, you must build shield-expensive cultural & spiritual city-improvements. Its not that any old city-improvement expands the culture-borders. You are also forced to build other, perhaps more highly prioritized city-improvements that DONT expand your culture-borders. In other words: spirit & culture (= border expansion) must wait.
• In order to support combat-units you must empasize trade-tiles (not shield-tiles) and special resources.
• In order to build city-improvements you must empasize shield-tiles (not trade-tiles). Counter-acting priorities.
• In order to build city-improvements and combat-units reasonably FAST, you must avoid sending pop-draining settlers all over the place.

Let's say the city grows and overtakes the colony, but then its attacked and loses some population, so the city borders shrink again. Will the colony reappear? I bet not. Because it is no longer there.

No, I dont think your city-population have that much influence on your culture-borders. It is instead your added cultural & spiritual city-improvements that determine your culture-border expansion-rate. So your culture-border will most definitely NOT shrink just because you have lost 1-2 city-pops.