I've seen a lot of confusion on the forums about how the REF, rebel sentiment and revolution works, and I've been confused by it myself. I did some research on the exact rules for these, both by looking at the game's actual code and by playing the game, and I thought I'd write up a little guide here.

First, let's talk about rebel sentiment.

There are two types of rebel sentiment: rebel sentiment % in each of your individual cities, and overall rebel sentiment % in your nation. The overall % is NOT the sum of the % in each of your cities. You do NOT need 50% rebel sentiment in each city to allow for revolution.

Rebel sentiment in cities

The ONLY thing affecting rebel sentiment is the rate at which you generate bells - the cumulative numbers of bells generated over time does NOT matter. Here's the way it works.

The rate of bell production is used to compute a target rebel sentiment value. Each bell/turn will ultimately produce 25% rebel sentiment in one citizen. Thus, if you generate 10 bells/turn and have 5 citizens in your city, you will eventually get 50% rebel sentiment.

The rebel sentiment does not change instantaneously to that "target" rate however. The game will slowly "drift" the rebel sentiment from the current value to the target value using a logarithmic type of curve. What it means is, if the current rebel sentiment is 0% and the "target" rebel sentiment is 50% and the game is set to normal speed, rebel sentiment will roughly grow as follows:

- After five turns: 33% of target value (33% of 50% in this example, so 16.5%)
- After ten turns: 60% of target value (60% of 50% in this example, and so forth)
- After twenty turns: 85% of target value
- After thirty turns: 95% of target value
- After fourty turns: 99%

However, as the rebel sentiment increases, you get bell rate production bonuses. So in reality, as rebel sentiment grows, it picks up speed from itself, and the eventual rebel sentiment grows a bit faster than I gave above.

The bigger the city, the more rebel sentiment you need to get a higher percentage (one bell = 25% of ONE citizen). In fact if the city is enormous (pop 25-30) I suspect high rebel sentiment is impossible without serious bonuses from founding fathers.

In practice, I've found a size 12 city with three elder statesmen and a newspaper should reach 50% rebel sentiment in about 10 turns on normal speed. Add +50% for epic and +200% for marathon.

Overall rebel sentiment

As I explained before, overall rebel sentiment is not the sum of each city's rebel sentiment.

City rebel sentiment percentage is equal to 25% per bell generated per turn divided over the number of citizens in that city (not counting units stationed outside).
Overall rebel sentiment percentage is equal to 25% per bell generated per turn divided over the entire population including all units outside cities.

So you could have 100% sentiment in all your cities but if you have a massive army you'll find you may still not have enough to get a revolution going. Personally I don't like idle soldiers bringing my percentages down so I stash the guns and horses in warehouses and wagon trains and keep those citizens working inside the cities until I need them to fight.

Here is another important fact:

For purposes of computing the overall rebel sentiment, individual cities could be generating more than 100% rebel sentiment. What it means is, say you have three elder statesmen in a city with just one other farmer. There's a newspaper in there, so this city is generating 36 bells per turn. 36 bells is enough to turn 9 citizens to 100% rebel sentiment. But there's only four citizens. The city's rebel sentiment and rebel sentiment production will show up as 100% and be capped at 100% - but the extra "wasted" rebel sentiment generated will count towards making five other citizens elsewhere count as independent for purposes of declaring independence. These five extra "rebel" citizens will not show up anywhere as city rebel sentiment or as city rebel production bonuses, but in the overall % needed for revolution it will count.

So let's say your goal is to ramp up bells to declare independence as quickly as possible and you have large cities everywhere. It's a viable strategy to actually start a bunch of new, smaller colonies with only elder statesmen and newspapers in them to ramp up your overall rebel sentiment. Because those cities are small, they will get rebel sentiment production bonuses, and thus bells will be produced faster. You could have several large cities with 0% rebel sentiment yet this could be fully compensated by having many smaller cities with 100% rebel sentiment. If declaring independence is the main goal, then prioritizing your best statesmen in the smallest cities will produce the best results.

36 bells for these elder statesmen with a newspaper will bring 18 citizens to 50%. You probably don't want to wait 40 turns to reach 99% of this value, and the elder statesmen themselves need to be "convinced", so three elder statesmen with newspaper for each 9-12 citizens would be a good rule of thumb.

The Royal Expeditionary Force

The REF is all about bells - and for this it's the amount of bells accumulated in all your cities that counts. After 75 bells the King will increase the REF, reset the bell "counter", and the next REF increase will require 10% more bells. There's a bit of a twist though, in that the next REF increase will also add 10% more units to the REF. The game always rounds down AFAIK, so you won't get 1.1 units added. But over time, if it takes 10% more bells to trigger each REF increase, but each REF increase in turn generated 10% more units, a good rule of thumb is each 65-75 bells generated will hit you with 1 extra REF unit. Game speed affects this, so epic requires 50% more bells, and marathon 200% more.

The type of unit that gets added is entirely random - everything has an equal chance to get generated, except for ships which have half as much chance of being added to the REF. So over time, you can expect the REF to generally have half as many ships as of every other unit type.

Strategies from all this

I don't think the game is all about minimizing REF, so what I'm going to say here doesn't mean this is the "best" way to play. Keep in mind the King having huge REF isn't that much of a problem if he only has a small flotilla of ships to carry troops around while you have decent military production capacilities. You certainly don't need one soldier for every soldier the King has. If you do want to minimize REF, though, here's some tips.

Realize that REF depends on accumulated bells from the start of the game, while rebel sentiment depends on bell production rate. So to minimize REF, you want the highest burst of bell production in the shortest amount of time.


One way to do that is to generate no bells throughout the game until you are ready to declare independence. Declare indepedence the minute you have your 50% overall rebel sentiment. REF doesn't grow during revolution.
Prepare everything in advance: build newspapers, hire your statesmen, but don't use them until ready.
Small cities get their rebel sentiment faster. This generates bell production bonuses, so you get a higher bell rate. Thus, either found new colonies solely for bell production or migrate statesmen to your smaller newspaper-equipped cities to boost your bell rate.
Founding father bell rate bonuses will help quite a bit.


All things being equal, a higher population will require more bells for revolution, and will in turn generate a larger REF. There’s a tradeoff between large cities with high base production but lower rebel sentiment and smaller cities with lower base production but high rebel sentiment.

Understand that every population point you add to your colonies eventually translates into some increase in the REF, there's no way around it. If you want a quick, easier to manage revolution, keep your population and colonies small. If you want a massive war of historical proportions, build a large empire :king:.

Some rules of thumb

Assuming an average of size 12 cities, and assuming we want revolution to be possible after 20 turns, you will need about 2.5 bells per population unit (including units outside cities) and will generate about 0.75 REF per population.

1.9 bells per population will achieve revolution in 40 turns, generating 1.1 REF per population.

About 4 bells per population will achieve revolution in 10 turns, generating 0.5 REF per population. The more leisurely the march to revolution, the better prepared the King will be.

Thus, if bell generation is well optimized to minimize REF (aka 3 elder statesmen with newspaper in all cities and revolution ASAP), you can expect to get roughly 0.5 to 1 REF unit added for each unit of population. If bells aren’t managed you will get much larger numbers.


Overall, the REF/Revolution rules are a bit quirky in that all I've explained is kinda hard to know intuitively, and to be honest there does seem to be a bit of imbalance here. I wouldn't have figured this stuff out without reading the code. The rules do keep the spirit of Civ, though, where each turn you have to make tradeoffs and choices between wasted opportunities and your other needs. Colonization does seem much more punishing if you take a more leisurely approach to micro-managing some aspects of the game.

I think that about covers it - tell me if you have any other questions and I can see what I find. Also, keep in mind I could have made mistakes here, though anyone is welcome to verify any of the assertions I've made here. If I've made any errors I'll be happy to correct them.

Do you have any information on how the production of bells affects when the king expands his army?

Yes it's coming up in these "reserved" posts in a bit :).

Also very curious about how the unit is picked - what drives addition of ships to the REF?
EDIT: Which you already answered - thanks.

It's explained in the third post. Equal chance of any unit, except ships which are half as likely.

The ONLY thing affecting rebel sentiment is the rate at which you generate bells - the cumulative numbers of bells generated over time does NOT matter.


I think I dont get this, wouldnt this mean if I stop bell production the rebel sentiment had to be zero ?


In fact if the city is enormous (pop 25-30) I suspect high rebel sentiment is impossible without serious bonuses from founding fathers.


I already had some 20+ Cities and I didnt notice it was extremly hard to get rebel sentiment up. Maybe I did had some FFs to improve though - cant remember that.

Yes, exactly. If you stop producing bells your rebel sentiment will drift back towards zero again, using the same timetable described in the first post.

So if you start marching towards towards independence by producing bells but then change your mind, that will hurt you REF wise because the REF will have grown but you have no added rebel sentiment to show for it.

Very useful guide. :goodjob:

Especially part about needed around 2 times more bells then population to get 50% per city (or 4 times more for 100%).

Great Guide!

However, Firaxis deserves some serious raspberries for such a stupid mechanic.

With bells being treated as an average for your civ, but cumulatively for the empire, there's just no reason to leave bell production on, unless you care about culture pushing (which hasn't seemed to be much of an issue so far).

I've been trying to figure out why the hell I can't rebel in my current game... I have three elder statesmen and a newspaper in all my cities, along with some nice FF bonuses. Apparently, if you're too successful at building your colony, it gets to be impossible to rebel. I watched my overall rebellion meter get all the way up to 48% before dropping down to 43% or so where it is now. The 300 turns came and went (I'm playing through the 1800s now) with revolution not being possible, even though pretty much all of my money and college trainings went into making elder statemen... and now the REF is in triple digits and I still can't rebel because I have a large army sitting around -- to deal with the triple digit REF... grrr....

Such a stupid bloody mechanic.

With bells being treated as an average for your civ, but cumulatively for the empire, there's just no reason to leave bell production on, unless you care about culture pushing (which hasn't seemed to be much of an issue so far).

You also need them in order to beat other Europeans in FF generation.


P.S.
True, it can happen that total bell generation, even if maxed, is lower then needed to get rebel sentiment for whole population to 50% (in case of small city to population ratio).

In those cases, I guess only solution is to make a few new towns specialized in bell production.

***delete***

Yes, if you're having trouble to rebel the best way is to pop a few bell-specialized colonies (3 elders + 1 farmer w/ newspaper) to ramp up the overall rebel %.

Having huge outstanding armies doesn't help as you may fooled thinking you're ready for revolution with all your cities having high rebel sentiment but the overall rebel sentiment being low.

Thanks for the writeup Axxon. I was especially curious how the game determines which units are added to the REF. I had one game where they had ~200 dragoons/infantry/cannon but only 4 warships and I thought it might have been correlated to the size of my navy (0 warships at the time of revolution). I won the game very easily by building a few ships of the line and killed the 4 warships before even 30 of the other troops were landed. I guess I was just lucky.

In fact if the city is enormous (pop 25-30) I suspect high rebel sentiment is impossible without serious bonuses from founding fathers.

I noticed this and that's how I stumbled upon the exploit of deleting my own population. Basically it happened through pure desperation. Had I KNOWN earlier I would have never had as much trouble beating the easiest of levels. Unfortunately, this method defeats common sense and is why most players will end up beating their heads with a baseball-bat until they discover the problem, or will give up altogether.

Even if it is NOT impossible to get the % to shift up in the quoted case, there is relatively small time due to the limited turn structure of Col. In fact, we went from 500 turns (max) in Civ 4, down to 300. However, you MUST DoW BEFORE turn 300, AND win before that point as well. Hence you have far less turns to work with the flawed bell structure.

Regardless, thank you for giving some of the player-base more insight into this crippling game-mechanic.

You also need them in order to beat other Europeans in FF generation.

You could just produce FF points to get around this.

I have another question; does cannons count as citizens when the rebel percentage is computed? I thought that they might not, since they're built and aren't actual colonists. If that's the case, a good way to achieve 50% faster would be to have only cannons prior to the revolution (stacking up horses and muskets to make soldiers/dragoons later)?

You could just produce FF points to get around this.

Sure, you can build political points. But then you can hardly beat other europeans in FF generation, at least on higher difficulties.



P.S.
No, cannons don't count as citizens.
In short, any unit that has profession counts, any other does not.
Check F5, see total number of units, and then subtract units without profession. That's your actual population.

If your current bells production is above twice that number you'll surely get 50% rebel sentiment after some time.

Thanks for sharing this Axxon. Knowing this, it makes the game even less tempting to play.

So liberty bells are actually a resource you produce for your enemy, but yet you can't declare independence without them. The production % bonus you get from rebel sentiment is peanuts compared to the Man-o-Wars added to the kings REF from thin air. It's a cruel newbie trap.

Assuming Firaxis is ignoring the obvious flaws and couldn't fix the balance even if they tried, I really hope someone is making a mod that combines how colonization is supposed to be played with the new graphics and interface. And freaking add portugal!

I feel bad that i didn't download this game illegal!

It's a cruel newbie trap.

I like that description.

In my last game, I finally won (but on pilgrim:(), and I was able to explode with my liberty bells. I went from not producing any (except for three on accident from the stupid AI), to enough for Revolution in ~10 turns, and I only had two elder statesmen at the beginning of the ten turns (I had 6 by the end of it). I had 4 colonies, 3 with around 15 population, and one with 6. I then proceeded to whoop the King's ass.

In my last game, I finally won (but on pilgrim:(), and I was able to explode with my liberty bells. I went from not producing any (except for three on accident from the stupid AI), to enough for Revolution in ~10 turns, and I only had two elder statesmen at the beginning of the ten turns (I had 6 by the end of it). I had 4 colonies, 3 with around 15 population, and one with 6. I then proceeded to whoop the King's ass.
Yeah, exploding is apparently the only way to beat the game.

The approach most people will take -- building a large colony that makes a ton of money and producing bells over time -- will do nothing but build the REF and still not let you rebel. It's also the approach the game encourages you to take through the other game mechanics.

I guess having cathedrals and firebrand preachers helps, as you can use them to bump your rebel% after declaring independence.

The type of unit that gets added is entirely random - everything has an equal chance to get generated, except for ships which have half as much chance of being added to the REF. So over time, you can expect the REF to generally have half as many ships as of every other unit type.

So the many claims in other posts that the King add's units countering the ones you've build is a myth? It's all pure randomn? Sad!

Also having a big army doesn't worry the king a all? Only bell's count toward REF increase, or is there more to it?

It's a cruel newbie trap.

Problem with current implementation of REF-Increase-Rate is that the REF can grow exponentially ... In a game on marathon where I started Bell-Production from the beginning, around turn 750/900 the REF started increasing by +50 units every view turns ... I wonder if there is a limit for REF-Size ...

Would be a nice idea for a new contest :

Who can generate the highest REF?

So the many claims in other posts that the King add's units countering the ones you've build is a myth? It's all pure randomn? Sad!

Also having a big army doesn't worry the king a all? Only bell's count toward REF increase, or is there more to it?

There is no such thing as "counters" in the code as I can see. Just random.

REF is all about bells, nothing else. Only places in the code where the "revolution units" (as the code calls them) are added, is when bells change and when the game initially starts.

Wow, thanks for enlightening me :)

It's a bit sad how this works, though... I had this problem, having 20ish size colonys, all fully staffed towncentres with newspapers and still didn't get over ~60-70% in my cities, 46% overall. Thanks to some size 1 colonies with statesmen only, i finally could revolt.

Problem with current implementation of REF-Increase-Rate is that the REF can grow exponentially ... In a game on marathon where I started Bell-Production from the beginning, around turn 750/900 the REF started increasing by +50 units every view turns ... I wonder if there is a limit for REF-Size ...

Would be a nice idea for a new contest :

Who can generate the highest REF?


In my last game I tried it out, producing bells from the start till the end. Sometime I was bored and revolted, the king had about 1200 Soldiers, 800 Dragoons, 600 cannons and 180 MoW against me.
But Simon Bolivar just kicks ass :D

I believe in the original game. The king expanded his army depending on the amount of gold you pay in taxes. At least that made some sense. It made trading with natives and fellow europeans more attractive for the right reasons.

Liberty bells?

Liberty balls are more like it!

At least I still have a copy of the 1994 game and it kicks arse. I got so bloody excited when I read about the new colonization - having tried it and reading the stuff on here has put quite a damper on that. At least I didn't buy it yet. I shall play the original game while I hope for a sane patch to be produced to fix some of the more hopeless gameplay issues that plagues this new abomination. Anyone know if Sid was actually involved with this horrid thing?

In the meantime I shall be frolicking on the savannahs and be going to the custom house when in need of refreshments. Enjoying a brave new world where education is free, the only available promotion is that of veteran and burning native villages the quickest way to raise money and train your armies in preparation for kicking old Europes arse into the next century.

I love this new version of Colonization, even if I don't love this particular mechanic. One question about it: why does individual city sentiment matter? I know that "global" sentiment affects whether you can declare independence, and I think it also affects your combat bonuses. What does individual city sentiment affect? Production bonuses inside that city?

Production bonuses inside that city?
.
exactly
.

Ah, OK. Thanks.

Thanks Axxon, this has been a lot of help in understanding the mechanics of the game. If I take your original premise -

Each bell/turn will ultimately produce 25% rebel sentiment in one citizen.

- and turn it round I can calculate that my maximum global rebel sentiment would be (bells per turn x 25/total population).
To take a recent example with 463 bells/turn and a population of 193 my maximum RS would be 463x25/193 = 60%.

Is this correct?

Are there any mods yet which convert bells into a cumulative goal instead of having it be a moving average?

It should be pointed out that production of everything is increased by half your rebel percent. If you have 50% sentiment production of everything in that city will be increased by 25%, and I think that is after all other increases. Food, lumber, tools, bells, everything. This can turn those starving industrial cities into a slight food surplus; it can also lead to serious overproduction of tools and guns. I have laid off about half my blacksmiths and gunsmiths right now. It's pretty bad when the economy even affects your computer games!

Wish I had read this thread prior to me playing my last game. My 4 cities were around 20 or so and I had a huge military. I was accumulating more military every couple turns. I got to the point where all of my cities were supporting revolution at 100% but my overall percentage on the revoluation screen was 46% and shrinking.

I couldn't figure out a way to start a revolution. I had 3 elder statesman in all cities and had built the appropriate buildings. It seems to me this algorithm is very flawed. It makes no sense that all of your cities support revolution at 100% but you aren't allowed to because of the overall %.

I hope you'll pardon me for bumping an old, old thread, but I would like to thank you for providing this information, all the same. I have been absolutely tearing my hair out, sinking countless (apparently futile) hours into Colonization, doing my damnedest to spark the revolution, all without success.

I searched every inch of the Civilopedia, and based on its incomplete advice, I did what so many here have mentioned -- every one of my cities was flooded with elder statesmen and newspapers, every colony was well above 90% for rebel sentiment, yet the revolution advisor consistently pegged my independence at 43% and refused to budge.

In no way did the game ever point out to me, or drop a hint, that my grand army (which I had built up at the game's urging to handle the incoming REF, which was growing larger every 3-4 turns due to my massive and pointless production of liberty bells) were all perfectly content with overseas imperial rule. I was just about to write the game off as bugged. I still may.

At least, now, knowing how the game actually works, I may be able to take another shot at it. I thank you for providing this help, without which further progress would be impossible. Much appreciated!

I'd hate to break it to you all, but it is actually historically accurate to have the revolution be a quick burst. Until 1763, nearly all colonists in America were loyal Englishmen. They effectively declared war in 1776 officially (although shots were fired on both sides before then and they entered a de facto state of war in 1775, and the first Continental Congress was founded in 1774 -- also indicative of intense desire to separate).

So, I guess the sweet spot of about 10-20 turns to build up rebel sentiment and declare independence sounds about right. You don't start rebel sentiment with Columbus...and if people start to rebel, the king is more likely to build up his forces.

I'd hate to break it to you all, but it is actually historically accurate to have the revolution be a quick burst. Until 1763, nearly all colonists in America were loyal Englishmen. They effectively declared war in 1776 officially (although shots were fired on both sides before then and they entered a de facto state of war in 1775, and the first Continental Congress was founded in 1774 -- also indicative of intense desire to separate).

So, I guess the sweet spot of about 10-20 turns to build up rebel sentiment and declare independence sounds about right. You don't start rebel sentiment with Columbus...and if people start to rebel, the king is more likely to build up his forces.Yeah, there was a series of events that contributed to a rapid rise in independence sentiment:
1) Benjamin Franklin publishing (indirectly) letters between a colonial governor and parliament indicating a desire to quash the relative independence the colonials had been enjoying.
2) Thomas Paine publishing Common Sense
3) The various "outrages" perpetuated on the American people by the Brits.

But the game doesn't model this sort of thing at all. Instead it gives an exponential response to the cumulative liberty bells generated, but only allows independence if you kill off enough of your own people to make the instantaneous LB production exceed 50%.

As other people have said, it makes no sense that 100% of your population supports independence but the game equation won't let you rebel due to the brain-dead equation used in the game.

Yeah, there was a series of events that contributed to a rapid rise in independence sentiment:
1) Benjamin Franklin publishing (indirectly) letters between a colonial governor and parliament indicating a desire to quash the relative independence the colonials had been enjoying.
2) Thomas Paine publishing Common Sense
3) The various "outrages" perpetuated on the American people by the Brits.

But the game doesn't model this sort of thing at all. Instead it gives an exponential response to the cumulative liberty bells generated, but only allows independence if you kill off enough of your own people to make the instantaneous LB production exceed 50%.

As other people have said, it makes no sense that 100% of your population supports independence but the game equation won't let you rebel due to the brain-dead equation used in the game.

A bit exaggerated. Your point is well taken, I was just offering some counterpoint that perhaps it is intentionally wrong to want to generate liberty bells from the beginning. I can't think of a simple mechanism to replace the current mechanism with...if people outside cities don't count, then there is a huge exploit in that you just have everyone leave the cities except 1 person per city and you declare independence. So, I don't see a good workaround...at least the present system, you either do it the "right" way (have people join cities and convert) or kill them off and at least take some loss for your exploitation of the mechanic.

I do not think you *have* to kill people off, though, like you said. I also don't believe the game doesn't model what actually happened at all. Printing Press, Newspaper, and some of the more...shall I say...boisterous Founding Fathers give liberty bell bonuses.

It's not perfect, but I think it would be wrong to try to dream up a mechanic that allows one to play such that they produce liberty bells throughout the game. Imagine the ease in which the civ would have been wiped away if Jamestown tried to declare itself independent...

But the game doesn't model this sort of thing at all. Instead it gives an exponential response to the cumulative liberty bells generated, but only allows independence if you kill off enough of your own people to make the instantaneous LB production exceed 50%.

I have played many games of Colonization and never yet had to resort to killing my own citizens in order to be able to declare independence. That tactic may work but it is certainly not my preferred option.


As other people have said, it makes no sense that 100% of your population supports independence but the game equation won't let you rebel due to the brain-dead equation used in the game.

There is a difference between the colony rebel sentiment, which just takes account of the colonists in that colony, and the overall rebel sentiment which includes all colonists. The former may indeed reach (or surpass) 100% but it is the latter that is required to pass 50% in order for you to declare independence.

I have played many games of Colonization and never yet had to resort to killing my own citizens in order to be able to declare independence. That tactic may work but it is certainly not my preferred option.A bit of an exaggeration, but it emphasizes my point. The game forces you to make lots of smaller cities in order to boom LBs, due to a flawed LB mechanic if you have a few large cities. It is counterintuitive, and stupid.

The LB mechanic is the main reason Colonization is a failed game.

There is a difference between the colony rebel sentiment, which just takes account of the colonists in that colony, and the overall rebel sentiment which includes all colonists. The former may indeed reach (or surpass) 100% but it is the latter that is required to pass 50% in order for you to declare independence.I know; it doesn't change the fact that it's a stupid system whereby making large, successful towns hinders your ability to rebel. In real life, Philadelphia and Boston were centers for rebellious sentiment.

Each citizen creating liberty bells can create 3/turn (or 6/turn for a statesman...your "Ben Franklin", if you will). There are 3 slots total per city.

Buildings can enhance liberty bells to be +100% with the Newspaper + Printing Press. This means 6/turn, or 12/turn for Statesman.

50% rebel sentiment is needed. One statesman provides enough for 6 colonists, per Axxon's numbers. You are allowed to have 3 total statesmen in the same city. Therefore, a city of up to size 18 could be coerced to reach 50% rebel sentiment.

Just how big do you want your Boston or Philidelphia to be?!

Just how big do you want your Boston or Philidelphia to be?!It's been a while, but even with max LB production in all my cities (3 statesmen / newspaper) my Rebel Sentiment peaked at around 43% and then slid back down.

I had to kill my own people to get them pissed off at the crown.

Very silly game design.

Thanks for posting this info, Axxon! I've been playing this game for a couple of weeks (didn't have a gaming cpu when it was released, so I'm very late in getting it), and I've been struggling to find the balance. Now that I understand the mechanics of liberty bells, I think I can have a much more enjoyable experience. Well done! :)

I'd hate to break it to you all, but it is actually historically accurate to have the revolution be a quick burst. Until 1763, nearly all colonists in America were loyal Englishmen. They effectively declared war in 1776 officially (although shots were fired on both sides before then and they entered a de facto state of war in 1775, and the first Continental Congress was founded in 1774 -- also indicative of intense desire to separate).

So, I guess the sweet spot of about 10-20 turns to build up rebel sentiment and declare independence sounds about right. You don't start rebel sentiment with Columbus...and if people start to rebel, the king is more likely to build up his forces.

Very good points. At first I thought this liberty bell thing was cheese, but after reading your post, I think this is what the developers were going for in the end. Revolutionaries weren't arriving in 1492 with Columbus. The European powers were establishing colonies, and survival / prosperity was the primary focus of early colonies. I have no doubt that revolution was far from their minds at that point.

I started a new game last night with this in mind, as it seems to make a lot more sense in the spirit of things.

"Revolutionaries weren't arriving in 1492 with Columbus. The European powers were establishing colonies, and survival / prosperity was the primary focus of early colonies. I have no doubt that revolution was far from their minds at that point."



That's very true, but the problem is, this ridiculous "liberty bell" game mechanic doesn't give you a say in the matter. You HAVE to produce liberty bells from the beginning to some degree, (unless you use the unrealistic tactic of creating "elder statesman villages" late in the game) or your competitors will get all the Founding Fathers, the expanding borders, and the production boost. If this happens, they'll grow quickly while you'll be stuck with a little peanut colony that takes 100 years to build a shipyard. A game set in history which rewards you for deviating from it is flawed.

I think it's safe to say that people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine would have been considerably less important had they been able to reach only six farmers rather than the whole of Boston and Philadelphia. The game mechanics could easily have been designed to reflect this.

Axxon, thanks. That explains a LOT. I had 5 cities with 13-19 pop. each, 2-3 statesmen each, and rebel sentiment stuck at 20%-30% each. I could not figure out why RS was not increasing.

I agree with those who think this is a poor game mechanic.

If it is somewhat better in the AOD mod, maybe I will try that.

Axxon, thanks. That explains a LOT. I had 5 cities with 13-19 pop. each, 2-3 statesmen each, and rebel sentiment stuck at 20%-30% each. I could not figure out why RS was not increasing.

I agree with those who think this is a poor game mechanic.

If it is somewhat better in the AOD mod, maybe I will try that.