tealbeard mentions in another thread that colonies should be able to grow into cities.I like this idea but it should be done differently.Colonies should have cultural borders but only in the square that its in,so in other words a rival cant build a city near your colony and erase it.As for building units,I don't think this should be allowed or there would be no point to get settlers to build cities.The colony should only be able to grow if it is producing food on the sqare that it is built,It shouldnt produce shields until it grows to a small city,(pop. of 3).That way cities still have an advantage over colonies and colonies are still good for getting resources

I'm not sure if i like this idea or not. As it stands now of a rival builds a city near the colony it will be erased, so that is no different. I do however see haveing a food box as a good idea for the colony to become cities. However I know of situations where i want a colony but not where i want the city when i finally expand out to that point.

This brings up another thought about city/colony building. We can keep the steeler/worker system, but there is also another factor to cause cities to develop. Across the map there could eb some kind of background population level. Not cities persay but the presence of people. There coupld eb many factors for changes in this level; terrain, tiel development, forts (many cities in the world are locations of old forts), nearby cities, and colonies. Now there should eb some kind of radius around a city that would prevent spontanious generation of another one to prevent unwanted overlapping city radii. A colony would create a city by drawing the background population intothat square, and when that threshold is passed, as city is created.

I disagree with colonies growing into cities, having culture borders and building units and improvements (like I said in the other thread). If you want a small city, build a city and let it grow to a 3. If you only want the resource build a colony. I do like the idea of building colonies in the ocean on undersea oil, like an offshore oil rig.

croxis, if your suggesting that cities spring up outside of another cities radius due to background population, then isn't that the same thing as a player building a city, except that it is semi-random? I don't like the idea of taking city construction out of a players control.

Colonies have to be done differently, because as it is now almost no one ever builds them. Why build something that will be erased when you can put a settler there instead?

I think the whole idea of colonies is silly. A colony is merely a population 1 city. By all measn create some kind of resource extraction facility as a tile improvement, but making it cost a worker is overpriced.

FWIW, I have never built a single tile improvement that costs the worker. Just not a reasonable cost.

I've suggested changing the expansion model to be this kind of thing. Instead of building a city with a border encompassing 9 tiles you make a settler that creates a colony (consider it "zero" pop city) that has a border of 1 square.

To grow a colony into a towne/city a small number of improvements have to be built. Something like Towne Square (commercial center which provides base gold for the city square and contributed to the national economy), Blacksmith (industrial center which provides base shields for the city square) and Towne Gate (government center which provides 1 culture pt/turn only after all three improvements are built) none of which cost upkeep.

It should take between 10 and 20 turns to build all three improvements after which the city will be self-sufficient and increase population and borders. Growth does not begin for any of the above until all three improvements are completed. If all you want is access to a particular resource, plant a colony and build just the Smithy or Towne Square or both. Later on build the Towne Gate to begin it's growth. When the towne reaches a culture value of 1 (due to the Towne Gate) it grows to the first tier of 9 squares and 1 pop to work in those nine squares.

Doing this should greatly extend the land grab portion of the game and make it more of a challenge to boot.

Here is an idea that would have people using colonies more:

Colonies do not dissapear when they are inside your cultural borders.

Instead of needing only a road (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101533) connected to your resource/luxury, you must have a colony. Colonies have to be connected to your cites by roads (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101533), or in the later ages there could be a more advanced connection like oil pipelines (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101645) for an oil colony. Maybe you'd have to change them so that workers built them insead of sacfraficed themseleves, but I think it would make sense, and give you more strategic targets to destroy when attacking.

plastique, having colonies a required piece of infrastructure would go a long way towards making them useful. However, they really ought to be renamed if so, as it doesn't make sense for an actual colony to stay the same size forever if it is in fertile land.

@Dwarven Zerker
Problem with that colony model is how ca that colony build anything at all until it has built the blacksmith. If we are going to have true colonies, I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)

How about all new cities start out as colonies initially?

rhialto, a colony, by any other name, would smell as sweet. http://www.chatcity.com/images/winking.gif

I don't like any of this changing how you build a city. I see nothing wrong with the settler costing 2 population and going out to found a new city. All this random development is taking control away from the player. Do you really want to be sitting there waiting for the computer to decide that your Sparta colony can become a city now?

Plastiqe is right. The player needs to be in control.

This is why so many people dislike culture flipping as it currently exists in Civ 3. Aside from packing an immense number of units in a city, the process is basically random and a player has no real control over when it happens. Sure, you can build a lot of cultural improvements or not, but that's really an abstract way of looking at it. It still doesn't mean the player is any happier about the situation.

I'm pretty happy about culture flipping and feel pretty in control of culture.

But yeah, moving away from colonies, and more towards various refineries for each resource is an interesting proposition.

i really dislike seeing a resource on another continent and having to build a city there. the city is useless due to corruption yet it still needs the harbour/airport upgrade to actually do something.

@Dwarven Zerker
Problem with that colony model is how ca that colony build anything at all until it has built the blacksmith. If we are going to have true colonies, I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)


Forgot to detail that. Sorry. All colonies would start with 1 shield of production. After building the smith it would then gain base shields for the square regardless of whether it becomes a towne or not.

Although the civ concept works on the principle that you have complete control over every aspect of your tribe (to the point of even being able to decide when a revolution will occur). In other words, you play god.

Having automated settlement would change one of the key concpts behind civ.

That said, I would not personally not be opposed to having this and similar features (e.g. uncontrollable revolutions, defecting units, partially-uncontrolled immigration and emmigration, etc.).

It wouldn't take much to make this optional: if toggles on, cities appear automatically according to population growth and availablity of appropriate city spots.

You could also have an in-between like the example given in the thread topic (i.e. cities may from from Colonies): towns may appear near large cities (i.e. near large population--population may spread to surrounding areas).

Here is an idea that would have people using colonies more:

Colonies do not dissapear when they are inside your cultural borders.

Instead of needing only a road (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101533) connected to your resource/luxury, you must have a colony. Colonies have to be connected to your cites by roads (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101533), or in the later ages there could be a more advanced connection like oil pipelines (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=101645) for an oil colony. Maybe you'd have to change them so that workers built them insead of sacfraficed themseleves, but I think it would make sense, and give you more strategic targets to destroy when attacking.

Hey I really like this idea :)

I think that colonies should not have their own cultural borders. The only modifications that should be made are they should act as harbors so if built on another continent they dont need a nearby base to send supplies off to the rest of the civ.

Second, when an enemy unit enters one, they should have the option to capture it, as if it still were a worker unit, or actually turn it into a worker so they can be used for other things.

@Dwarven Zerker
I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)

I don't like this idea. The player should have complete control on these issues. Many players (myself included) would probably not buy the game if the growth of your empire were a function of uncontrollable events. My model gives the player complete control of growth yet extends the land grab portion of the game. It also adds another dynamic to the game that will increase it's interest not to mention be something more like reality. Consider the colonization of the US. Many colonies started as a resource acquisition community for the nation that invested resources in the colony, which brings me to a shortfall in my idea...

Certain basic improvements need to be allowed to be built in a colony. Such as a Harbor. Deciding which improvements can be built in a colony before it reaches towne size could be difficult. I would consider a barracks okay but not a library (why would any "scientist" go to a colony to do "research"?) Perhaps the cut off would be the first building of a series. In this case the economy, industrial and culture would be the basic buildings to make a towne (as proposed in my initial post in this thread) and add to it a barracks (for military outposts) and harbor (if a coastal colony for transportation of material (resources & personnel) to and from the controlling nation.

Please forgive me for "thinking out loud." A lot of that last paragraph worked itself out as I was typing. :blush:

In retrospect, perhaps that aspect of MoM wont work for civ. When I describe models of how older games did things, usually Im not reciomending it as teh best idea so much as throwing fuel into teh discussion fire by reminding people (many of whom entered the civ arena long after these games) about what has gone on before.

To answer one of your points though, many scientists DO go to what would be colonies in civ3 terms. These colonies are called research outposts, and there are many in Antartica.

However, I'd say anything that multiplies productivity or collects resources should be disallowed. Mobility, defence, and repair structures should be possible, albeit very slowly built (unless we allow workers to build them as a pseudo-tile improvement). That way you can have what amounts to a military base. Not sure how you could really create a research base. Allowing libraries in a colony won't cut it, as it merely multiplies nothing by 1.5, resulting in nothing.

I'd also add that colony placement should be limited exactly as civ3 cities are now. Not sure how to reconcile that with requiring colonies as resource gatherer sites though.

What about this? Colonies could stay as we know them. However, if the player wants the colony to grow into a city, just send a settler over to "join" the colony. It could then go from the colony to a size 2 city, and you would get the option to name it something other than "Oil Colony, Azecs".


(Of course, you can do this now- but you'd only get a size one city.)

What about this? Colonies could stay as we know them. However, if the player wants the colony to grow into a city, just send a settler over to "join" the colony. It could then go from the colony to a size 2 city, and you would get the option to name it something other than "Oil Colony, Azecs".


(Of course, you can do this now- but you'd only get a size one city.)

Totally different dynamic than what I would like. I'd like to have to manage a colony into a towne. Instead of founding a city, settlers would found a colony and then you'd have to build it into a city. Instead of "Iron Colony, Persia" it would read "Persian Colony" until it is developed & grows to a size 1 city.

Well, a colony is just a resource extraction site, like a mining camp or lumber camp. While there is some limited economic activity at such sites, keep in mind that while large towns have grown up at some such sites, in others the city just dried up and blew away when the resource played out. If you want growing towns from these, then you should also have the city disband sometimes if the resource is used up. Do you really want to model things that way? Suddenly you get the dreaded message: "This source of iron has been used up!", and all of a sudden, where you had a nice little size 6 city with half a dozen improvements, there is only a settler, waiting to wander off to greener pastures.

Maybe when a colony falls under the domain of another Civ, you would have to pay gpt per turn, or part of the resource as tribute, in order for the colony to remain. Of course the other civ could have the option of ordering you to leave, or declare war. This could make for some interesting gameplay and negotiations, especially if a new resource system such as I and others have suggested is implemented, in which there is a set amount of the resource to be extracted per turn, available to store or make units/improvements, with the possibility of much more being available on the site discoverable through new techs. Here it would be useful to have the resource exploited through a special tile improvement that takes several turns to build; if you do have to leave, your people pack up all the tools and equipment and take them back home, leaving the other civ to take 10-15 turns building a new mine, oil derrick, what have you. This would make negotiations more attractive, as the out of luck civ would have time to consider military options for reclaiming that tile, and in the meantime, the civ taking it over would not be reaping any benefits from it at all.

Over time, it would be possible for the colony to gradually fall under the influence of the other civ, and you would lose it, gaining only a worker wandering back to your lands, representing your own loyal diehards; the rest of the colony workers having fallen under the other civ's spell through daily interaction with its citizens.

It costs 1 pop to build a colony, and yet the colony has no population whatsoever. That doesn't make sense, and combine that with the fact that colonies can be easily destroyed/absorbed when a border goes over it and you have to ask yourself: what's the point of colonies? I've only ever built 1, I think, to see how they worked, and since then I've just built cities instead. For 2 pop points you get so much more.

I originally posted that a "colony" would be a pop zero city with a 1 tile radius - implying that it can't be absorbed by another civ. Since the player has control of it (like any other city) it wouldn't disband unless the player abandoned it. My proposal is to change the dynamic of creating a new city from drop a settler for an instant city to develop a colony into a city.

This could allow for 1 pop settlers as only settlers could be allowed to build colonies and workers would be allowed to only improve tiles. Both cost the same pop but have two very important and different aspects to empire growth.

Actually, I think the whole city idea stinks. Cities should form around state-owned improvements, not the other way around.

Colonies should form around resources in a similar way, with allegiance being controlled by whichever military occupies it.

But, hey, it's just a game... so who cares! :)

Actually, I think the whole city idea stinks. Cities should form around state-owned improvements, not the other way around.

Colonies should form around resources in a similar way, with allegiance being controlled by whichever military occupies it.

But, hey, it's just a game... so who cares! :)


Could you start a thread about this? I would like to discuss it more, but I don't want to hijack this thread.

Could you start a thread about this? I would like to discuss it more, but I don't want to hijack this thread.

Why not start your own thread on the subject? :mischief:

Here's a better solution for all:

Provide maximum moddability in the Editor to allow tiel improvements to reatin anty characteristic. So, let's say you want to have an improvment that extracts x (i.e. can only be built on those squares) and must be connected to city by x (road, oil pipleline, etc.) in order to allow the building/maintaining of x but that has the ability to become a functioning city after x turns. Even if Friaxis mucks it up and gives you some stupid equivilant improvement, you can just mod it to your preference in 5 minutes flat. Civ3 does not provide this level of moddability--certainly not for tile improvments which are on of the game's ost hard-coded features.

IMO you should be asking for 100% flexibility in an easy-to-use Editor. The trivialities like what the default type should be get left to the wayside.

Granted, moddability is fine but you need the game mechanics to exist first. IMO better to have than not to have. If you have a feature that not everyone likes, it can be modded to suit individual tastes. You can't mod what isn't there.

Personally, I rarely play the vanilla game. I mod things so that they work according to what I feel is the best game possible within the limitations of the available game features. I really pisses me off that you can't add tile new improvements and that on top of that, the number of available tile improvement types is even lower than it was in Civ2!

Given the specific topic of this thread, an example of what I've said above in Civ3 terms would be to provide options for improvements in the editor. So the 'Colonize' Worker Job (this isn't actually one of the available selection in the Workwer Jobs screen so I'm making it up) would have a 'Consumes Worker' option that could be unchecked by those of you who don't like losing a worker and a 'Disappears in Borders' option for those of you who get pissed when your colony vanishes when you borders expand ofver that square. Simple enough? Apparently not because these options were never added so all you can do is buy and accept the Civ3 you've been dealt.

If you don't want the same thing to happen in Civ4, perhaps you should emphasize the need for these features you're proposing to be completely moddable (i.e. no hard-coded effects) so that you don't have to wait around for Civ5 to get what you wanted--within reason--in Civ4...or Civ3, or even Civ2 for that matter.

well what about if they didnt grow,didnt produce anything and just stay colonies.The only change i want to see is that they arent erease when a rival civ builds a city near them.The square that it was built in should be the only borders it has and it could never expand.I also like the harbour idea suggested by jack the ripper.:)

Here's a better solution for all:

Provide maximum moddability in the Editor to allow tiel improvements to reatin anty characteristic. So, let's say you want to have an improvment that extracts x (i.e. can only be built on those squares) and must be connected to city by x (road, oil pipleline, etc.) in order to allow the building/maintaining of x but that has the ability to become a functioning city after x turns. Even if Friaxis mucks it up and gives you some stupid equivilant improvement, you can just mod it to your preference in 5 minutes flat. Civ3 does not provide this level of moddability--certainly not for tile improvments which are on of the game's ost hard-coded features.

IMO you should be asking for 100% flexibility in an easy-to-use Editor. The trivialities like what the default type should be get left to the wayside.

Granted, moddability is fine but you need the game mechanics to exist first. IMO better to have than not to have. If you have a feature that not everyone likes, it can be modded to suit individual tastes. You can't mod what isn't there.

Personally, I rarely play the vanilla game. I mod things so that they work according to what I feel is the best game possible within the limitations of the available game features. I really pisses me off that you can't add tile new improvements and that on top of that, the number of available tile improvement types is even lower than it was in Civ2!

Given the specific topic of this thread, an example of what I've said above in Civ3 terms would be to provide options for improvements in the editor. So the 'Colonize' Worker Job (this isn't actually one of the available selection in the Workwer Jobs screen so I'm making it up) would have a 'Consumes Worker' option that could be unchecked by those of you who don't like losing a worker and a 'Disappears in Borders' option for those of you who get pissed when your colony vanishes when you borders expand ofver that square. Simple enough? Apparently not because these options were never added so all you can do is buy and accept the Civ3 you've been dealt.

If you don't want the same thing to happen in Civ4, perhaps you should emphasize the need for these features you're proposing to be completely moddable (i.e. no hard-coded effects) so that you don't have to wait around for Civ5 to get what you wanted--within reason--in Civ4...or Civ3, or even Civ2 for that matter.

Sometimes simple ideas are very difficult to program. For CIV3 colonies it would have been nice to have those toggle options in the editor but considering the massive overhaul they did I can do without the "like to have features." Considering CIV2 didn't have resources as we have them now it wouldn't be realistic for the developer to make some of these features available.

For CIV4 it would be nice for the developers to make it as open as this for modding but considering that they are building CIV4 from scratch they probably won't have time to do things like this. They are trying to get CIV4 done in less than 2 yrs so there's probably a lot of changes that could have been accomplished by modifying the CIV3 code that won't be included in CIV4.

With Soren's comments about catering to the modding community I think we'll be surprised at what we can mod in the upcoming installment of Civilization. :king:

Adding optins is actually in designers' interest as it is easier to make changes later (i.e. designers 'mod' just like you do without having to mess with the program code). At the same time it is not in the developer's interest because it means that the product will last a long time and when it comes time to develope anther cash cow players will say, 'what can you give me that I can't already do now?' Then the developer will have to spend more on being more innovative (as opposed to just overhaulling a previous installement) and that means less profit and that's a no-no.

In other words, the reason why they don't add obvious stuff in is because they don't want you changing the basic mechanics that they've put together. It's a matter of them telling you what you want and you accepting it. It takes no time at all to add such featurettes. An amature could add them in but can't because we're not talking about freeware.


No, you have to make moddability a #1 priority: ALL features must have moddable effects regardless of what they are...and you have to include this in every idea you post otherwise the guys at Firaxis will not get the message and you'll end up getting hard-coded features in Civ4 as I said previously. It's a question of what YOU want--and if you're the type who just accepts whatever get plopped into the bowl, then at least don't prevent others from getting what they want (as long as it doesn't ruin the game's central concept of course--although I doubt such suggestions would be appleid to Civ4 anyway; i.e. trust that Firaxis won't do MORE than they have to, assume they will do less).

Dunno about cities, but small townships would be an alright idea.

I was just writing about this in another thread, how I’d like to see a variety of types of settlements. Every city might start out as a colony as someone suggested here, and always require a settler, not a worker as in colonies in Civ III. What you do with it and build inside it after that would determine how large it would become and what sort of settlement it becomes. Farmland areas would likely create agricultural towns with a mill, a marketplace, granary, etc. and maybe in modern towns some industry if industrial resources were found nearby.

I’d like to see fortresses or castles as small occupied military buildings with no other function. You might have a small mining town up in the mountains. Some of these might not require military occupation or protection, unless you don’t want it pillaged. In order for an enemy to occupy and posses it, they would have to take cities or towns in nearby areas to bring the colony or mining town or settlement built to utilitize a resource into its borders...just like they take in the local population on the lands when they take over political borders.

So, I’d like to see the need to build or create other kinds of colonies and settlements within your own lands to utilize resources, defend roads or sites or mountain passes, farms to bring in food from farmland outside of cities, etc. More like real nations which aren’t just a bunch of similarly spaced megalopolis cities everywhere. Truly large cities would only arise in very favorable locations of commerce, climate, and whatever other features would make it desirable to a large population (not food primarily).

I mean, here in the U.S. we have a few truly large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta, and then quite a few medium sized cities, but they are quite spread out with many towns and suburbs and farmlands or even wilderness inbetween. That’s another thing. Some places like stretches of desert and tundra should be unbuildable entirely except to small outposts of some kind...a settlement on an oasis, an oil rig in the tundra, but not cities or even towns. You’d never have the reason or draw to bring that many people there. It would never grow into a town or city. It’s not just about could you feed them. It’s a cultural/aesthetic/quality of life/availability of work, and culture in a location which grows population.

It would be quite interesting to see a great diversity of settlement sizes and types and part of the fun would be in seeing what kinds of habitations you could get different kinds of settlements to grow into over the ages. An agricultural town could be transformed into an industrial town one day when coal is discovered nearby and it’s on a river for processing and transport.