Some balance needed for the early game

Babibo

Immortal
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Jun 13, 2007
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Location
France
Increasing the size of your colonies is the most important thing to do in the early game. For that purpose, you have multiple alternatives :
A increase your crosses output by building churches, having firebrand preachers
B earn money and buy people at the docks
C conquer your European neighbours and steal their colonists.​

To earn money, multiple alternatives :
B1 produce goods and sell them to Europe
B2 trade with the natives (selling guns, in particular)
B3 explore your continent, visit every village, and explore every "burial grounds" on the map with a seasonned scout​

For the game to be more fun, there should be multiple viable strategies, some of which will be better in some context, so that the player is challenged with strategical choices. Unfortunately, it appears some strategies are really better than others whatever the context. Strategies B3 and B2 are much much much better than developping your economy like in strategies B1 or A. You gain so much money by visiting Indian tribes, that the price of rushing a colonist at the docks will soon be higher than the price of purchasing a specific one, which makes strategy A completely irrelevant, and hence any strategy based on religious founding fathers not viable.

Although the game is funny as it is, I'd like to see different opening strategies (like in Civ4), based more on economic development. Here are my suggestions to improve the game :
  • make it more difficult to earn money in Indian villages. Multiple things can be done here :
    • increase the chance for a seasonned scout to be killed during exploration, or to anger the natives by pillaging burial grounds
    • indians should attack undefended treasures roaming through the continent
    • diversify the events when visiting indian villages (gain a specialized colonist, establish a mission, or whatever) and at least halve the money earnt when simply visiting a village
  • decrease the money Indians will give you when you sell them guns. For example, the first guns could be sold at 15/gun, but the price should decrease very fast as you sell them guns. By the way, the player should be incited to sell to the indians the good they want, and not only guns
  • Last but not least, I think that for multiple strategies to be possible, the Founding Fathers tree should be rethought - I can't believe there is a very costly founding father who will only give you a caravel (at a time where usually, I'm about to declare independance !), or that some late founding fathers decrease by 25% the price of native land (since at this late stage of the game, indians and money aren't such a factor !) while Peter Minuit will give you such a powerful advantage ! How in hell did the designers think the game would be played ?
Good luck to modders !

P.S : another thread about the combat system and the founding fathers tree has to be done. These broken mechanisms have not been addressed yet.
 
I agree the game is unbalanced at the start with too much cash available from the natives. However if you ignore your own infrastructure to chase the quick bucks you could suffer later in the game. There is only a limited pool of money per tribe available and you soon run out of villages to visit. Burial grounds can be dangerous too, I've had a lot of scouts killed while exploring them and also started a very unwelcome war with the Arawaks at an early stage of the game.

As for the Founding Fathers, I kind of like the fact that they are so different. My early game strategy revolves around getting enough points for both Cabral and Minuit, two of my favourite guys (faster trips to Europe and cheaper units when you get there). Later in the game when I an offered someone who is no help at all I am happy to decline him knowing that the AI will waste their own points picking him up.
 
Burial grounds can be dangerous too,
AFAIK, seasonned scouts never provoke wars or get killed.

As for the Founding Fathers, I kind of like the fact that they are so different.
Would you like it if in civ4, 75% of the wonders were expensive and completely useless ? I'm not talking about variety, but about gameplay... Please... Am I the only one to think this founding father thing was designed in about 5 minutes ? (Ok. Development probably took days, but the idea was clearly not tested enough)
 
One problem I have early in the game is when Spain (for example) drops a colony right next to me and starts to expand. If I put people in city hall to expand and hold my ground, it makes REF grow. If I don't it allows Spain to starve out my colonies.

"Sire, we are struggling to hold the land in your name, for the good of England and the Glory of Her Empire."

"What?! You rebel scum! I shall make preparations to crush you at once!"

"Huh?"
 
You should welcome other Europeans when they settle next to you cause they are settling cities for you... (a couple of cannons do the trick).
 
Especially the exploration FF are out of whack. My first game, I've already discovered the entire map by the time I got the option for the FF to reveal all burial grounds.

Maybe to fix it, we would go back to something similar to the old colonization (amazing how just about every "new request" can make the game better by doing it like the old one?), or maybe a bit like the great people in Civ. Here's my idea:

You have political points, and they should be so that early on, in your first 30 turns, you should be able to get 1-2 FF without doing anything, and 4-5 FF if you have maybe one statesman working. What it would be would be that every level of FF political points, you will have an option of 3 FF to choose from - basically, you take all the religion/trade/etc.. points, and divide them amongst the 3 FF. So let's say early in the game, you've explored a lot, so you have 2/3 of your points as exploration, and 1/3 as trade. Then you'd be given a choice of 3 FF to pick from - 2 exploration ones, and 1 trade one. However, it would be semi-random, based on "era" (year). So, obviously you're not going to get Hawthorne (3 Elder statesmen) as your first possibility. Now, here's the kicker - you have to pick one of the 3, and the other 2, you can't get until you've completely run out of FF to choose from (to give the other people an opportunity to grab them, but late in the game, if you're running 3 ES in all your towns and pumping out political points, then you'll maybe have an option to go back to some of the ones you passed over.

This would it so you're sometimes forced to pick a worse FF, or may have to pass over a good one, but it would still depend on what you've done. If you're in the midst of your massive explorations, you'd be getting all your exploration FF early, then as that scales down, and trade and religion build up, you'd get more options for them. And then in your final push, as you get more military and political points, they'd be the ones more likely to be willing to "join your cause".

Otherwise, I definitely think that any unaccompanied treasure should be attacked by any native tribe who you're not at least +2 with. At least then in the old game, you always had to bring your scout back to accompany the treasure until it got back to port, opposed to now in the game where at any point, I have about 6 treasures wandering unaccompanied through the jungle to make it to my cities. This would at least slow down exploration slightly, make it so you don't have the entire continent mapped out by the time you have your 3rd city.
 
Especially the exploration FF are out of whack. My first game, I've already discovered the entire map by the time I got the option for the FF to reveal all burial grounds.

de Quesada (reveals all tiles with burial grounds/ancient ruins) is only the 3rd Exploration FF on the list so the exp points he needs are very easy to get. However he also need political points and if you are not generating those then yes he might appear too late to be of any use but that is your own choice. For myself de Quesada pops up while there is still plenty of the map left to uncover but I still don't take him because I am saving points for more valuable FF later.
 
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