Should colonizing other continents be buffed?

Minus the Pangea and tiny islands maps, normal maps such as Fractal, Continents, ect is what I'm really talking about here.

Since in the real world nations started colonizing other continents, i.e Portugal, England, Spain, ect. I feel that colonizing in Civ V should be buffered in some way. Just like the Indonesia bonus.

Lately, we all now Tradition is the most picked Social Policy tree by far in the early game, people could just go Tradition, have four cities, go into Rationalism and duck down. I feel Liberty, which is just basically expansion could be buffered, I'm not saying Liberty social policy tree should get buffered, but the colonization should do. Since I see barely any human players do it, just do the four city style camp. Especially in MultiPlayer.

I was also thinking the social policy for Exploration could be buffered, to give more bonuses for Colonising other parts of the world, just like the Europeans did, but in the world of Civ, we all know the only real reason to plant a city across the world is for uranium.

Above is not needed and doesn't go to the root of the problem which is that every new self founded city requires yet another copy of all standard buildings that you haven't built national wonders for.

Much easier to conquer a city (which will be much bigger after conquest than size 3 and leave as a puppet until it builds the missing buildings and then annex.)

I don't see this being fixed until Civ VI.

If you can afford sending ships to explore&colonize new lands, you are reach enough, you need no bonus. Think about 1492, what was next.

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.

Go order an Aesthetics. Culture will be no problem. cities will start with 3 pop. Get a Pagodas and send a missionary. BAM 2 happiness, 2 culture, 2 faith. Your city will be up to speed in no time.

But yes, if you've gone tradition then you're handicapped. That's the downside of tradition--way better in the beginning but much worse for expansion later. I've seen some AI take Tradition the Liberty after ward so they get the best of both worlds. Dutch did this on my last game and now have amazing core cities, wonder-spamming, and own 20 cities and are rapidly colonizing. I kinda helped them though by sharing my 2-religious-building religion. I'm doing the same thing. I had no idea just how powerful religious buildings with happiness buffs were for wide empires. I've been able to expand 50% more AND haven't suffered much in policy acquisition as a result of the instant culture.

Maybe the Order policy "Resettlement" should be moved to the Exploration tree. And maybe add a new policy to Exploration where, once you build a National Wonder, any city founded thereafter automatically starts with the requisite Building for that NW. So if you have already built the National College and Circus Maximus, new cities start with a Library and Coliseum.

+1. definitely - apart from it being massive 'free stuff'

shaglio said:

Maybe the Order policy "Resettlement" should be moved to the Exploration tree. And maybe add a new policy to Exploration where, once you build a National Wonder, any city founded thereafter automatically starts with the requisite Building for that NW.

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Whoa, that's an incredible idea. It would really make Exploration more competitive. Here's what I would do with a mod:
1) Add +1 local happiness and +1 or 2 base food to Harbors. (Figure fish markets are like seafood granaries.)
2) Remove the Exploration policy that gives happiness for sea buildings, replace it with Resettlement.
3) Replace Resettlement in Order with a new policy that gives automatic NW buildings, as described above. That might be too powerful upon reflection... maybe just give a free Workshop in all new-founded cities. That's fitting with Order's production theme.

On the other hand, it's not like Spain or England got a lot more powerful from their settlements in the New World. Other than all of the $$ they stole (for which there is a scenario, I believe). It's like someone alluded to above -- they were able to settle because they were powerful, they didn't become powerful because they could settle.

I have started playing with the Reform and Rule modpack which nerfs Tradition a bit and ramps up Liberty and Exploration. If you don't feel dirty playing mods (ohnos, no achievements!) you might want to check it out.

subtledoctor said:

Whoa, that's an incredible idea. It would really make Exploration more competitive. Here's what I would do with a mod:
1) Add +1 local happiness and +1 or 2 base food to Harbors. (Figure fish markets are like seafood granaries.)
2) Remove the Exploration policy that gives happiness for sea buildings, replace it with Resettlement.
3) Replace Resettlement in Order with a new policy that gives automatic NW buildings, as described above. That might be too powerful upon reflection... maybe just give a free Workshop in all new-founded cities. That's fitting with Order's production theme.

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Seems like a good idea on the whole, don't even think the order idea is such a concern of it being OP as it would come so late in the game which is why Resettlement seems so pointless to me because it is very situational. Before BNW where my preferred tactic was to burn every city that didn't have a world wonder and rebuild it where necessary for access to any resources it had it would have been nice obtaining it later in the game when i would do my main conquesting but in BNW where it's generally better and easier just to annex puppets when resistance goes away it seems pointless because who really settles new cities that late in the game?

TheGrumpyBuddha said:

On the other hand, it's not like Spain or England got a lot more powerful from their settlements in the New World. Other than all of the $$ they stole (for which there is a scenario, I believe). It's like someone alluded to above -- they were able to settle because they were powerful, they didn't become powerful because they could settle.

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I think you are overly simplifying the impact of colonisation. Colonies in the Americas brought exotic luxury resources & boosted trade. It was also much easier to expand in the New World than fight wars in Europe. Let's not even talk about other benefits such as manpower.

In short colonies indeed helped Europeans powers to dominate the world scene for centuries to come!

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TheGrumpyBuddha said:

On the other hand, it's not like Spain or England got a lot more powerful from their settlements in the New World. Other than all of the $$ they stole (for which there is a scenario, I believe). It's like someone alluded to above -- they were able to settle because they were powerful, they didn't become powerful because they could settle.

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You never see historical world map where United Kingdom owns 1/4 of the world then

Now that I've given it more thought, maybe they could move Resettlement from Order to Exploration and rename it "Colonization." Due to Indonesia's UA, the coding exists for "on another continent" concepts, so they could make Colonization allow cities built on another continent to start with 3 citizens (and possibly my "National Wonder dependent buildings" idea as well). That might encourage settling other continents more viable on Terra maps. I'm not sure if it would make Archipelago maps broken, but Exploration tree comes late enough for it not to be an imbalanced early game issue.

I have been going through a phase playing wide and looking at the downsides and upsides so I have some things to say:

1. All this is great and would reduce the penalties a bit by quickly getting cities up to speed, however, it still doesn't erase the fact that settling late is never worth it from a cultural standpoint. Each city in the late policy game adds 10-20% on costs that are already like 2000+ depending on map size standard->huge. This is massive and no new city will ever overcome it. I think the real issue is the policy nerf so either quickly finish out all the ones you care about or reduce the penalty in your mod. I've just gotten into the habit of zooming through the trees early and not caring when I nerf them by expanding. Religious buildings that you can buy help with this and border expansion immensely due to the instant happiness and culture.

2. I've found the science penalties hardly matter. So you lose a turn off the next 3 or so? I don't care...I'm probably already ahead. Plus, unless you're founding in the modern era the city will eventually be science positive, Just ship a food ship over there and purchase aqueduct. with the order policy that city will be huge in no time.
I shoot for finishing all my settlements by early industrial as I looked at average tech costs vs. science output in cities and average progression rates and this seemed the break-away point. All cities built before this point will do okay...any built after never seem to get up to speed due to the massive amounts of new buildings and the fact that your core cities are so much bigger.

For vanilla here were my average science cost results and calculations:
(age, cost, 5% increase)

• Ancient: 55, 2.75
• Classical: 105, 5.25
• Medieval, prior education: 335, 16.75
• Medieval, after education: 460, 23
• early renaissance: 790, 39.5
• later renaissance: 1360, 68
• industrial: 2800, 140
• modern: 4700, 235
• atomic: 5400, 270
• information: 6000, 300

Notice the giant jump in cost penalty when industrial starts due to the higher base cost of sciences. Because of this completing all settlements by late renaissance is advised. Doing late renaissance strategy: you need to overcome 68 science per with each new city. This is easy. If they are probably taking you 7 turns: 68/7 = 10. So get 5 pop plus library and university. done. The city is no longer losing you science points and from thereafter if you keep it fast-growing will probably help your science. Policy costs, however, at this point end up nearly impossible to overcome with new cities.

3. Moving the order policy resettlement is a brilliant idea. It comes so late I'm usually done colonizing so if it helps it only helps with a few cities. This is because as I said, in the modern era it's too late to build a new city and make up the loss in science in all likelihood.

4. The order policy -33% purchase costs in all cities, and especially with big Ben is killer. I just settled 6 new industrial cities with this strategy and its beginning to pay off in science after a lull due to the huge new populations, though my policy costs went through the roof. Having the -33% on purchases was amazing for colonization So maybe adding a purchase cost reducer to the exploration tree instead of giving free buildings? If you really care about the city you shouldn't be too cheap to buy some buildings--just hold off on bribing a few CS's for a dozen turns or so. I took aesthetics and piety as my empire was religious-wide strategy so my new cities had no trouble building monument-shrine-temple by themselves. I could then buy aqueducts, granaries for 650 gold. Buying a quick worker and one other cheap building put me around 1k for each city which is accetable for late-game income. Emphasize food, and worry about science buildings once pop hit 6 as they do almost nothing before then...not even worth buying...workers make a bigger difference than anything else.

5. Someone said an order policy of free workshop in every city. Or windmill? This is more balanced and helpful...the workshop takes forever to build in a new city--and production in new cities is sooo slow...plus once you have it it starts fending for itself in production. usually worth buying but it is an expensive one.

In summary: good idea, yes to moving resettlement, having all starter buildings is OP but a policy providing one of them might work, maybe try a gold-purchasing reduction to help you buy new buildings? Buffing harbors would work too.

The name change is a good one. But I don't think it's worth the effort of limiting it to other continents; by the time you're 3 policies deep into Exploration, who cares? By then there will be so few new-founded cities on your own continent that it won't make much difference.

Thinking more about the replacement for Order, another idea: instead of NW buildings or a workshop, how about a free windmill in every new-founded city, maintenance-free and regardless of terrain. It would make windmills, which seem to be criticized and largely ignored right now, more useful. A colonizing power that combines the two policies would get 3 tiles to work, plus extra production, plus 10% production bonus for buildings. That town could get up to speed very quickly, even if it was too far away or too war-torn for trade routes.

@Danaphanous that's a good point about policy costs... maybe another policy that decreases the policy cost increase by 33%, stacking with the Liberty policy. So if you went Liberty + Exploration, the per-city increase would only be 3.3% instead of 10%. So if the base cost of a late policy is 10,000, with a 10-city empire you could drop the cost from 20,000 to 13,300. Quite a difference. But where to put this? Maybe add it to the closer? That plus hidden antiquity sites would make Exploration very valuable for culture. Too much? (Seems okay historically - colonial powers have tended to benefit culturally from their outposts.)

It does seem that expansion is nerfed too far as of now, however, one reason the European colonial powers colonized in the first place was to gain access to resources they didn't have at home - and the map scripts succeed at modeling that, for the most part. Notice how luxury resources of the same type tend to bunch up? Often, on a Continents map with two continents, one continent will have all or most of the copies of some luxuries, and the other continent will have all or most of the copies of the other luxuries. (There may occasionally be lone single copies of a luxury that aren't grouped with the rest of their kind.)

I like this thread, I always pick Exploration since I play mostly naval civ. I read in this forum someone who proposed a new unit, a colonist, which could found either a "normal city" or a puppet city.

The thing with colonising is that there were people living there in the first place. I like the idea of Terra maps that portray the era of (European) exploration, but it seems they skip the whole 'genocide of indigenous peoples through guns, germs and slavery' bit in favour of 'empty continents full of barbarians'. It's an understandable gaming mechanism, but it's also racist erasure.

I'm working on a thing - might be a mod, might be a game - where 'new world' civs like USA, Canada, Brazil et al are a catch-up card you can play if you're invaded and wiped out by an invader. The colonies declaring independence and gaining Manifest Destiny or Carnival is much more interesting than stone age Washington and Pedro getting trampled by everyone before they get to bring their mid to late game bonuses into play.

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).

shaglio said:

Maybe the Order policy "Resettlement" should be moved to the Exploration tree. And maybe add a new policy to Exploration where, once you build a National Wonder, any city founded thereafter automatically starts with the requisite Building for that NW. So if you have already built the National College and Circus Maximus, new cities start with a Library and Coliseum.

Click to expand...

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.

poom3619 said:

You never see historical world map where United Kingdom owns 1/4 of the world then

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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.