Many times you will see the price of "Hurrying" a colonist is FAR greater than just buying the same one from the Purchase area in Europe. This must be a huge bug, right? Why bother with Crosses then (except to wait for the free guys to appear) if it does not lower the price of partially converted colonists?

Every time you get a colonist, the number of crosses required to get the next one increases. There's a gold per cross amount to pay to hurry; it's feasible that after recruiting a lot of colonists that hurried ones will exceed the cost of buying straight from the list. I'm not sure what the fix for this situation would be, an increased cost in buying new colonists?

It would have to be that or capping the immigrant cost at something like the highest priced recruit. However, those prices also go up as you recruit more of particular specialties. For example, you first cannon costs something like 750, the second is something like 900, the third is even more and so forth. Buy enough of them and your next Cannon or Veteran Soldier could conceivably cost more than a Ship of the Line.

I think the aim of the increasing price on the docks was to get the player to focus more on producing his own colonists and look at the docks as being gravy by the time you reach the mid-game.

Example: I take a ship to Europe. The 3 guys waitng to be recruited all cost $2000+ to "hurry". I can just click on the Purchase button, and get the exact same thing for $800. Happens all the time when I play, and it's silly and useless :rolleyes:

Yeah I have a feeling that it'll be best to not get too used to the current game mechanics before they change. Or maybe I just have a "hope". The roughness of some of the game features rivals the Final Frontier mod that was bundled with BtS. I'm hoping they support this game better than if it was just a mod.

I'm sure they will, I need to just be more patient; it has been out only one week, after all.

Like I wrote on another link: Guess I'm spoiled by Stardock. They sometimes reply within an hour of a post (especially about game breaking bugs), and let you know what they are doing within days.

I think the point is that this isn't a bug, it's just something that needs to be rebalanced/corrected from a gameplay pov. There are far more dramatic issues afflicting the game right now that has probably grabbed their attention.

ColPaladin-

I haven't experienced the Stardock forums, but I know what you mean. I used to help play-test the FreeCol project on Sourceforge and the programmers/developers were great about correcting errors and keeping you updated.

BTW, is this forum even semi-official? I'd hate to think that my bug reporting was futile.

In other news, I don't appreciate having to pay to be a part of this game's ongoing beta testing :^[

I think the point is that this isn't a bug, it's just something that needs to be rebalanced/corrected from a gameplay pov. There are far more dramatic issues afflicting the game right now that has probably grabbed their attention.

I'm calling major bug. Though only because of the knock on effect from another bug...i think.
There is another bug floating around where some maps won't produce cotton/fur/sugar training villages. Am i right in thinking that these units could eventually come over from europe? I've seen the cost of units on the dock go 10k+ so this pretty much prohibits them from ever appearing as you'll rarely be able to afford them.

It never happened in Col1. I think I've seen a pricetag as high as 34 thousand on a colonist in Europe.

It's almost funny: Imagine going to a real store. The clerk says "Welcome sir, if you give me $250, I'll run as fast as I can, and grab you a totally random item from the store. Or, you can pay $50 for any specific item you choose" Decissions, decissions :rolleyes:

It never happened in Col1.

The price of "paying the way" of a colonist in Col1 does increase with each new colonist. And yes, I have seen the cost of a dock monkey be more than getting the same thing from the Royal University (in Col1).

I guess I should have written my post in a way that the context couldn't be mistaken. In Col1, I never encountered dock prices as high as I have in Col2.

What's more is that if you were especially vigilant, you could wait until almost all the crosses produced a colonist, then choose one of the three for next to nothing lest you risk getting a petty criminal instead of a juicy statesmen. They oughta let you pick the one you want rather than leave it to chance.

I would be in favor of them capping the maximum price for dock colonists at the cost of the most expensive specialist to buy outright.

I would suggest that removing the ability to "buy" from the docks outright would be the best "fix"; every complaint I've read here would be solved.

I would suggest that removing the ability to "buy" from the docks outright would be the best "fix"; every complaint I've read here would be solved.

Seems the most elegant solution. Or, only make it possible to buy the dock monkey when the price drops under 2000 gold.

Seems the most elegant solution. Or, only make it possible to buy the dock monkey when the price drops under 2000 gold.

If you remove the docks 'hurry' mechanic enitrely it will make some of the UI on the docks screen defunct. (i.e. no point showing what the next 3 immigrants might be, as the choice will be entirely beyond the players control)

I'd suggest just reverting to the way col1 handled it - a linear increase in crosses for subsequent colonists, rather than the geometric increase that col2 has.
Though it is entirely a balance thing, and with the balance of so many other aspects of the game totally out of whack, this is in my mind a low priority.

I would like to not know what I can expect as the next immigrant and, even more realistic, not know IF they are ready to immigrate. How do the people in the new world know that someone needs transport until they actually send ships back to Europe? It would make more sense for the immigrants to be unknown and then they all appear on the docks (and stay there) as soon as any of your ships arrive.

How do the people in the new world know that someone needs transport until they actually send ships back to Europe?I seem to have no trouble to know when the King got another one of his silly ideas involving kissing his ring. No matter if me (let alone him) sent a ship. :mischief:

I get your point tho.

Overall i think it's not entirely wrong to have some influence on who will immigrate. Sure they had no "Green Card" establishments back then, still actions of the colonial Goverment could and should encourage/discourage the immigration of certain proffessions.

Right now "rushing" the guy, who you really want, from the 3 is the way to do this... Not the best way (it would be much cooler, if it depended on the Labour Market in the Colonies - what ressources you have, what workshops you have made...) - but as long as it's the only way, i wouldn't like it gone...

I think Dales idea to disable the option untill some threshhold is reached is good. (tho 2000 seem awfully high - maybe rather 500 or 1000).

I agree that this feature is broken.
I might buy a couple of colonists at the beginning of the game, but unless there's a particularly juicy one, it's always cheaper the just use the specialists option and get whatever you want.
I miss the dilemma in Col1 where you either had to pay through the nose for specialists or make do with whatever [disproportionately lousy] recruitment options you're given at the docks.

You will get more and more loosy (-> Criminals) people from the docks here as well.

Right, but the problem I have with the way this feature is implemented in Col2 is that you'll pretty much never take those lousy colonists unless they're going to come over from crosses next turn anyway because they cost more than a frigate, while an expert farmer or lumberjack is available from the experts menu for less than a grand, so you're going to have very few of those criminals / servants [or even non-specialist free colonists, for that matter] to have to deal with.