I am playing a game as the Germans (Bismark) on a Terra map, warlord difficulty. I have a little problem with luxury resources though, limiting my city growth to about 14 (once I have temples in all cities). I am running 3 SE cities, 1 CE and 2 production (unit and naval). I cannot expand further on my current continent without a war, but considering Mansa Munsa is the only diplomatically bad relationship on the continent (and near the northern tundra, where I have southern location), I don't want to stir up a hornets nest (I also neglected my military a little). Now I am beelining for the caravel and galleon to head for the new world.

The question, is it better to release your newly founded city on the "new world" as a colony, or keep control over its expansion? Keeping control of its expansion would be economically crippling until Versailles and/or forbidden palace is built, but would allow me to secure those valuable happiness and late game resources as I need/reveal them, without relying on the AI city placement. I can only see negatives to colonies, but I am sure there are positives. What are they?

Edit: My apologies, I just saw a thread on colonies (despite the fact that my thread search came up with nothing useful)

I'd recommend against colonies unless you need them for an AP vote win or something.

FP can take care of the expenses enough that the colony makes you money/research. Later on state property completely eliminates the penalty.

Also, colonial maintenance doesn't start getting bad until you have 3-4 cities so getting FP up before you utterly screw yourself shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world.

yeah colonies are nearly useless...unless you're playing with permanent alliances

Sometimes colonies are not that bad. You get extra happiness and I've made colonies when I declare war on another continent and conquered 2 cities, then liberated them, they get 2 defensive troops and after that I can continue invasion without holding my forces in the cities.

Colonies are only really worth making if you can't be bothered to manage the cities in the first place. In virtually any situation the cities will be worth more to you than in the hands of a colony if you put the time in to build them up, but that time may be a lot for a minimal impact on the game. Hence colonies are a means of reducing micromanagement (e.g. for large numbers of tiny island cities).

Ya, colonies are pretty much broken TBH.

Colonies and Espionage need a bit of work IMO, then they could be awesome. E.g. catching a Spy should let you declare war without penalty and colonies should have a point...

Oh well... State Property FTW! :D

Cheers, I decided against a colony, and founded 1st city on the new world. Once my courthouse is up I will get the FP/Versailles in. My economy is still healthy, but a 2nd palace is required to rex the new world without it collapsing. I may switch to US to and gold rush it.

Colonial maintenance doesn't really start getting bad until you have 3-4 cities that are colony cities on the same land mass. Granted, a newly founded city will take a long time w/o rush buy unless you chop like crazy, but do note that you have some time to get the FP up!

The only time I can recall creating a colony was just to see how it turned out. It was after I had won the game, though, and had no impact on anything.

E.g. catching a Spy should let you declare war without penalty and colonies should have a point...
Minor derail here, but I have been giving a lot of thought to the Espionage mechanics, and I think it would be cool if you could use it to frame other AIs, SMAC style. That would add a lot of flavor to the idea of an EE, especially when you want to put two AIs at each others throats, and you just cant bribe them or get friendly enough to make them fight. A little AI framing would be sweet.

As for colonies, I have never used them. I prefer to manage my cities myself, and SP is my favorite civic (although Slavery is tied with it)

I only use colonies for flavour...they could use some work. Many new elements that have been added to the game since the original release (vassals, espionage, colonies) could use some work imo.

Minor derail here, but I have been giving a lot of thought to the Espionage mechanics, and I think it would be cool if you could use it to frame other AIs, SMAC style. That would add a lot of flavor to the idea of an EE, especially when you want to put two AIs at each others throats, and you just cant bribe them or get friendly enough to make them fight. A little AI framing would be sweet.

Yes! SMAC had some awesome features and this was one of them.

On topic..

Colonies degrade foreign relations, trade away all of your techs, and are utterly useless in war. They are only effective for the AI because two AI put together are just as stupid as one AI, but they pay less in upkeep. I think they were introduced to kick it up a notch for the human, not ever intended to actually be used by the human.

Their main use is land denial. If you get to Astronomy first you can put a couple of settlers on an island that is too far away for you to use without crashing your economy and not valuable enough to want to put FP on or switch to State Property for. But it might be close to an AI and therefore much more valuable for them.

Joao would probably get a good payoff from settling colonies on all the vacant islands on the map by sending pairs of carracks.

I've tried several times playing as Joao to dominate the new world, but I never do. I'm always just too busy with the old world to get a monopoly on the new world.

The only possible uses I've seen for colonies are area denial, vote rigging, and tech trading. The latter is highly situational, but it is possible for the AI to be willing to trade with your new colony as they don't have all your diplomatic minuses and friendly relations mean that you can circumvent WYABTA.

I havent done the maths, but i grant always colony status when i have 3-4 underdeveloped cities on a foreign (far away) continent. I COULD get a surplus after development, but i get more money NOW (+1 Happiness aint that bad btw). And ressources are secured anyway. Thing that really sucks is that those cities need to be on same island, bad for small islands..

it would be cool if you and another nation that has good relations with you and reasonable close on power can draw out a portion of land overseas, and then divide that land between the two of you. And you two can also declare another civ as Savage if they are a good amount of techs behind you and then from that point on you can attack and conquer their cities without declaring war and you won't have diplomacy with whoever that nation is. Also it would be cool if you can set up some colonies as apart of Trading company and maintence goes down 50% and yeah i was just thinking.

After getting wtfpwned in futurehermit's game I did a little extra experimenting with using them in a more practical way.

In addition to the uses I outlined earlier, you can use them when pushing for fast conquest or "UN vote acquisition". Basically, everytime you liberate a city to a colony the colony gets 2 musket/rifle/infantry/mech infantry there (depending on its/your tech). I've used this when looping coastal cities off an AI to get 2 infantry magically placed in garrisons instantly, generated from NOWHERE to defend. This is not insignificant. 2 infantry will shred pre-industrial stuff pretty badly, and if you retake it you can re-liberate it AGAIN for two MORE infantry :p.

So, if you're pushing for conquest or domination or "diplomation", they have some use as free unit factories :p.

I think it would also be interesting to make like 6 carracks of worker/settler and throw them into the new world and instantly liberate the six cities. That AI would likely spread like wildfire.

In addition to the uses I outlined earlier, you can use them when pushing for fast conquest or "UN vote acquisition". Basically, everytime you liberate a city to a colony the colony gets 2 musket/rifle/infantry/mech infantry there (depending on its/your tech). I've used this when looping coastal cities off an AI to get 2 infantry magically placed in garrisons instantly, generated from NOWHERE to defend. This is not insignificant. 2 infantry will shred pre-industrial stuff pretty badly, and if you retake it you can re-liberate it AGAIN for two MORE infantry
I'm confused. You're taking an enemy city and then giving it to your colony, which gets two free defenders. How are you using this to your advantage? Unless your colony is Montezuma, they're going to use those troops for a garrison, not attack with them.

I'm confused. You're taking an enemy city and then giving it to your colony, which gets two free defenders. How are you using this to your advantage? Unless your colony is Montezuma, they're going to use those troops for a garrison, not attack with them.

The garrison is very useful for shredding the AI counter-attack stacks at minimal cost to you. Oftentimes they'll take it back and then you might even want to keep the city the second time if you really want it :p.

What this does is prevent you from having to use troops of your own as garrisons, especially when you have infantry to make magically appear. This can make intercontinental assaults easier/faster, at the expense of potentially being unable to control the city.

If you're going to whore the UN for a win, it doesn't matter if the pop in that city is yours or your colony's...similar for conquest (once you have sufficient cities to carry your war machine through all the AI's and vassal them, whether that city is yours or not won't matter).

This adds up quickly. If you take 5 coastal cities you have generated 10 rifles/infantry. Stacks of 20+ medieval or renaissance units (assuming the tech lead that is usually a good idea for intercontinental forays until very late game) are going to take a TON of damage trying to dislodge those garrisons, and may lose the entire mobile SoD. From there you can keep remaining cities, or just capitulate the opposing AI once it's weakened enough and move on ASAP.

Your colonies will also trade techs with you rather freely (proly not Space Race techs though). If they are liked by some of the civs that hate you, you can still indirectly trade with those civs. + Running state property is not always good now in BTS that corporations are so powerful. Free market is much stronger and so forming colonies can be a wise move.