Should colonizing other continents be buffed?

kaspergm said:

I think the problem is not with colonizing other continents, but settling new cities post renaissance in general. People talk at length about how settling new cities is not a handicap in spite of science penalty (at least not after a handful of turns and hard-buying a library ) but what people seem to forget is discussing what these new cities actually benefit you, and most often the answer to that question will be: Nothing but trouble (for starters: Happiness and diplomatic relationships).


That is actually a very interesting proposition. This might make a great finisher benefit to the Exploration (or rather: Expansion) tree. Imo. this is a very neat way of coming around a number of balance issues with late-game new cities without breaking early-game new cities.

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Yes?

Of course if you settle a new city later in the game you have to invest in it to grow it faster. Either get policies or tenets that help with food or hammers, run an internal trade route to them or outright buy buildings.

Calouste said:

Yes?

Of course if you settle a new city later in the game you have to invest in it to grow it faster. Either get policies or tenets that help with food or hammers, run an internal trade route to them or outright buy buildings.

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Still, this begs the question: Why even bother?

This thread has been super helpful. I'm currently designing a community Expansion pack that adds Colonialism and an Enlightenment Era to the game. Here is a bit of a preview regarding the Colony idea:

Colonization Mechanic:

New Colonization Technology:

Unlocks the Belem Tower Wonder and the Colonist Unit. Also unlocks the ability to see “Colonial Resources”.

Upon researching Colonization, the Settler unit becomes obsolete (this is to make the AI still use it).

New Unit - Colonist:

• Has 2 Movement, but ignores terrain cost. In addition, it also has a low combat strength.
• The Colonist founds a city that claims the surrounding tiles.
• If built on the coast, it receives a city connection to the Capital (if the Capital has access to water or is connected to a Coastal city with a connection to the capital).
• For all intents and purposes, the "Colony" is a Puppeted city.
• All tile yields worked by the Colony contribute directly towards the yields of the Capital (For example, if Player 1 founds a Colony that has access to a Gems with a Mine on it, the Capital will receive the Gems + the yields of the Mine).
• No tile yields will be given to the Capital if the Colony does not have a City Connection
• Colonies contribute 3 Unhappiness and +1 Unhappiness per Population point.
• If your Global Net Happiness dips below -5 Unhappiness, the Colony will enter a phase of resistance and separatist rebels will spawn.

Pros:

Colonies can grab vital resources and make your Capital very powerful

Cons:

You cannot choose which tiles will be worked and given to the Capital.
Lots of Unhappiness.

There will also be Colonial Resources such as:

• Flax - Base: +1 Production, Improved: 5% bonus for building Naval Units, +1 Production
• Opium - Base: +1 Food, Improved: 5% Happiness, + 1 Gold.
• Rubber - Base: +1 Gold, Improved: +5% Bonus for building Armored Units. +1 Gold. +2 Gold after Plastics is researched.
• Tea - Base: +1 Food, Improved: +2 Food, +1 Gold. +2 Gold after Economics is researched.

TheGrumpyBuddha said:

Oh sure, they own 1/4 of the world, stole lots of things from said places, but I don't know that in their internal beefs or whatnot those colonies helped a lot.

Here's a list of wars the UK was in (damn, busy) -- it's not like pre-1776 they were getting soldiers from the people born in the colonies in the soon-to-be-States and Africa and India, I would guess, similarly, not a lot of scientific development coming out of the colonies themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Great_Britain

I may be talking out of my butt on this, of course, but I still say power --> territory more than territory --> power.

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You have some base power, that's right. Then you use that 'little' power to expand/colonise & increase your empire's size. This enables you to have a larger manpower & wealth from new lands (distinct natural resources/specialities of people from different areas). This increases your power & allows you to achieve more ambitious goals. So in a way colonisation made European countries more powerful & enabled them to subjugate other nations in the past few centuries. I am sure if the British empire was stripped of their major colonies in WWI & WWII, they would have been badly beaten by their foes by a large margin.

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kaspergm said:

Still, this begs the question: Why even bother?

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More science, gold, culture, faith, tourism? In other words, win quicker or more reliably?

Calouste said:

More science, gold, culture, faith, tourism? In other words, win quicker or more reliably?

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Or: just plain more fun.

My expansionist games are way more fun then games where I just have the same few cities all game. It's not even about the resources...after a point you can't break even from settling--but if I'm gonna win by 30 turns who cares if I instead win by 10? I still won...and it was way more engaging. I think this is the issue. In civ, colonizing is fun...it's a big part of the legacy of the series. A lot of players wish it wasn't so nerfed. Right now, the game discourages you from colonizing past the Renaissance and imposes some severe penalties.

Civ is about: representing history, and freeing the player to pursue their own valid strategy to victory. Right now, colonization, which is a huge part of history is not a valid strategy. If you settle more than a couple new cities by the industrial it is very difficult to make them anything but a liability--they actually hurt you. Massively increasing policy costs and adding +200 beakers by industrial and rapidly climbing with progress per tech. As a result, all players that wish to play optimally turtle for this phase unless they are warmongering.

Once I discovered Huge settings I've had difficulty going back. Reason? Penalties are reduced so the optimum city point is shifted upward. Forces you to try a little harder on settling and development if you want to stay competitive.

Bump. I feel like this thread could use a little more discussion.

Calouste said:

More science, gold, culture, faith, tourism? In other words, win quicker or more reliably?

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danaphanous said:

Or: just plain more fun.

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Win quicker? Most likely not, a three-city tall strategy will almost always win faster than any wide strategy.
More reliably? How is it more reliable?
More fun? Yes, I agree, but that still raises the issue of balance.

I think that the more wider you go, then less stability in your country you should face, but you get a lot of important bonuses like gold and science. Many of the European nations invented key important technolgies, and they were very wide empires, like Great Britian. (They've invented more than any other nation in the world). So why is science good for small nations? That doesn't make sense to me.

CraigMak said:

I will agree that expanding has been nerfed to oblivion. It seems like staying on 4 cities and making them as massive as possible is more beneficial than founding new cities. This should not be the case.

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Four? Whew, that's wide! On immortal, I usually go two. One inland, one coastal. Any more than that slows me down on those all important national wonders.

Xiao Xiong said:

Four? Whew, that's wide! On immortal, I usually go two. One inland, one coastal. Any more than that slows me down on those all important national wonders.

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Whoa, you, Sir, are definitly not an expansionist!

In my mind, 4 5 cities is "nomal", 7,8 large and 9+ is huge!

Too bad it's usually a wet dream on higher difficulties ahah

Buffing colonization won't fix the core problem, which is that the devs think that the most powerful nations in history had 4 really big cities & the nations like America, Rome, Britain, etc. we're in fact terribly unhappy, uncultured, Stone Age civilizations, which is just wrong. So buffing colonization won't really make a difference. Changing the core mechanics of the game to make expansion an option that's viable however, would.