Yes that is a pain to not be able to disband a colony because of a stockade, couldn't they just burn it down so as not to allow natives / competing europeans from using the stockade/fort?
My trick was to take advantage of the AI's propensity for building colonies in stupid places. Sometimes you could starve the stockaded colony off the map, or get hostile Indians to attack it to death.
Don't forget too that there was a customize map setting much like civ with climate settings, random map generation, landmass etc.
This is something else I had a love-hate relationship. Sure, there's something to be said for getting away from the familiarity of the Western Hemisphere, but that was always mitigated by hearing:
"We are the Aztecs, a nation of 21 cities..."
Someone mentioned earlier about colonists being actual units, not just a population point. I am very curious how this will be done, I'm guessing they will keep that style as it was so intrical to the game.
Yes that was me, and I'll say it again: If they don't have individual colonists with different specialties and the ability to be changed back and forth from colonists to pioneers and soldiers, then it isn't Col.
On the AI clearing forests, they were pretty impressive with regards to obtaining tools, sometimes being more developed than me on terrain hehe.
What? The AI cheated? Surely you can't be serious!
Anyone remember the Spanish AI going crazy conquering natives? The AI was pretty agressive in many aspects of the game.
I remember thinking that the AI was nuts, until I saw them pulling down 8-10K for destroying Aztec and Inca cities. Then I was hooked. Now I'm a bigger Indian killer than the Spanish.
Also I've seen a sort of Capitulation in the original, never to me but a msg saying that all of 1 AI's colonies have been turned over to another AI, like "All of Frances colonies in the new world are now part of New Spain!"
Yes, the nation in fourth place is eliminated at a particular point. Just makes for fewer nations to destroy, if you ask me...
About an improved custom house, that would be cool but would take away something from the traderoutes you could create for ships / wagons. Having to actually Use a unit for trading was so cool, alot more fun than just clicking blockade button to actually sink / capture cargo and cripple enemy trade! Though custom houses have some prereqs as well so maybe it would be ok, or make it an upgraded one that is a higher level building (factory the highest?)
I
really like the idea of an upgradeable custom house. Another idea is to make it a "national building" (a la a national unit, to limit the number) or better yet, to make them like Cathedrals and let the number of cities you have determine the number of Custom Houses. Once I got them into all of my colonies, I hardly ever put to sea.
Hopefully someone is reading all of these ideas!