Whats with these 'colonies'

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Darkknight
Eventually you're going to be colonising there as well so why build a colony (1pop) then later a city (2pop) spending 3pop points when you can build a city and get all the benfits of that while spending just 2pop.

Because some resources may be in areas not suited for cities.

[dainbramaged13]

I think colonies will be used a lot earlier in the game, and not so much later.

[KrazyHorse]

The thing I would really like to see developed further is the trade sub-network idea. It would be nice if each city would be able to build different units, depending on whether or not it itself was connected to the required resources. Foreign trade (for required resources) would have to take place only between sub-networks connected to each other.

From the Game Revolution Preview:
"Gone are the tiresome caravans and freight units. Instead, simply connecting two cities with a road (or building ports in both of them if they are coastal) establishes trade routes"

I'm sorta glad about this. Trade caravans basically took up the entire game, and if you knew how to use them properly, you had an unbeatable edge.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
The thing I would really like to see developed further is the trade sub-network idea. It would be nice if each city would be able to build different units, depending on whether or not it itself was connected to the required resources. Foreign trade (for required resources) would have to take place only between sub-networks connected to each other.

I thought this was exactly the case with Civ 3 already... has it not been established that e.g. Iron is only available in the cities connected to an Iron resource, and you can only trade Iron from a neighbor if you have a connection to a network of his which is connected to Iron resource? Some cities might have access to different resources than other cities, if they are not connected. I think you can even see in the city-screen screenshots that for each city it is shown what resources are available there.

[KrazyHorse]

Unfortunately, no. It's been stated that a resource need only be connected to your capitol in order to be available to all of your cities.

[C. Gerhardt]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Unfortunately, no. It's been stated that a resource need only be connected to your capitol in order to be available to all of your cities.

I thought it said that you have to connect al your cities to the resource for construction and if connected to your capital if needed to trade.

I´m getting a bit now!

[KrazyHorse]

Really? I might well be wrong. I'll try to find the review I saw this in.

[KrazyHorse]

You're right, Gerhardt. I went to the firaxis page, and in the resources update (11/05/01) they say "For example, if there is an iron tile anywhere within your borders, all of your cities that are connected to that tile via road will have access to iron". This still leaves the fact (according to you) that the resource needs to be connected to your capitol in order to be traded with other civs. I don't see the necessity of this; If French colonies in Quebec wanted to trade furs for tobacco from the British colonies in Vrginia, did they have to connect their resources back to Paris and London, respectively?

[MORON]

Why waste time building culture points when it does not affect city production and cheap colonies deal with the resources? Since culture building is slow, it is unlikely for early cities to expend onto a resource square and most likely most players either will build a new city or a colony over the resource square.

I'll just save the money on culture and RUSH the lamers. Culture is useless when you are dead.

[Kurgan]

If you establish a colony, and later it falls under the cultural/political boundaries of another civ, Will you have a casus belli?, Will the presence of a colony prevent the engulfment of that territory under the borders of other powers?, If it falls under the borders of another civ, will you still get the resource, as if it were a "concession"?

I think that colonies should mean that a "kind" of territorial ownership is implied.

Also it would be rewarding that once you build a colony it did not disappear as long as your borders do not shrink, so it look much better to have the graphics of the colonies than just the resource and the road connecting it to the cities.

Does anyone knows if this part of the mini-tutorial means that any city connected to one resource will be able to have access to it "For example, if there is an iron tile anywhere within your borders, all of your cities that are connected to that tile via road will have access to iron". For me this means it, and there is no need (as I have read somewhere else) that the resource be connected to the capitol.

[Kc7mxo]

I think the main reason for using colonies will be because you can't build as many cities as you desire to for cultural and economic reasons.

But has anyone noticed the apparent abundance of resources in all the screenshots? How could you ever have to trade for ANYTHING. The dang things are all over the place.

[Provost Harrison]

I dunno, my question is how are these resources going to work quantitively, ie, will one resource of iron be able to support the construction of 1 tank or 3 legions at once, for example or could one resource of iron support just the general construction of those units possessing that resource? I like the concept, it would be nice to know some of the intricacies, although I suppose it is good that they withhold a lot of the information, makes the game more of a mystery when we receive it rather than have huge chunks of information and have figured out major strategies before we even start playing it.

I like some of the implications of the locations of resources, ie, central America would have no horses in the real world, thus they would not be able to build any mounted units, ie, the Europeans. But native Americans will eventually be able to trade for horses so they too could build mounted units!

My interest has always been regarding colonies oversees...I presume they would be able to ship back resources to a city with a harbour, so this would work like the colonies of North America, for example.

[Provost Harrison]

To add. It may be interesting to ship some rare resource from a totally distant area of the world which is not abundant in your area of land, and this would be useful later in the game where establishing a city would be too much of a nuisance...yeah, I can see interesting uses for these colonies already; so you don't have to control some distant city and all the problems that would bring...

[Provost Harrison]

I just thought of another question. I presume there will be resources out at sea which are beyond the reach of cities. Would it be possible for some form of getting at these to be available later on in the game? For example, we now get oil from underneath the sea by constructing offshore oil platforms...

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
I just thought of another question. I presume there will be resources out at sea which are beyond the reach of cities. Would it be possible for some form of getting at these to be available later on in the game? For example, we now get oil from underneath the sea by constructing offshore oil platforms...

I hope this is true, at least about oil resources, there isn't much deep-sea metal mining. Oil resources however should be limited to shallow or medium depth water as it is only the continental shelf that holds offshore nat. gas or oil reserves