Civ IV inspired by ... Colonization

jkp1187

jkp1187

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Has anyone noticed the emphasis on the idea that "small is better" from the previews of civ IV? That plus the importance of specialists makes it sound like this game has take a step toward the mechanics of Sid Meier's Colonization (for those of you old enough to remember!)

Anyone care to offer thoughts on how this will impact gameplay (particularly military strategy)? I recall that Colonization could be played and won with just a single city.
 
your thread is confusing. small is better isnt colonization/imperialism so this isnt going towars Sid meiers colonization (i never playd it before but by the point of the game is put in the title). Yes it is going to change the military strategy/. I doubt it was possible to win the game with only 1 city. In civ 2 i needed at least 10 to take control of the globe.
 
Yeah, I think I see what you mean.

I don't remember a lot about the game (I was about 12 when I played it!), but I seem to remember at least one specialist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to declare a revolution, you needed to have produced a certain amoutn of liberty bells or something? If I remember, you could make a "statesman" specialist that increased your production of liberty bells.

Wow that was a long time ago.
 
I don't think that the importance of specialists will be any more than in Civ3. In fact, except for the fact that they are limited by your civic/technology/wonders, they seem identical to how they were done in Civ3. (And, yes, I played Colonization).
 
I think that the smaller size of empires in CIV IV will definitely suit my playing style.

BTW, Civ III could be played and won with a single city. It's called a One City Challenge (OCC), and was all the rage for a while.
 
jkp1187 said:
Dude, you clearly haven't played "Colonization". Play the game and then try responding again.
Click to expand...

Hey JKP1187,

I haven't played Col in eons and am curious about your claim, "small is better". I KNOW Col was all about specialists (which, actually, in Col were probably a bit more detailed and pretty specifc in their functions), but what mechanics were in play to encourage the player to not over expand?

I really think Civ 4, while introducing some all new shoot, has Firaxis dipping deep into the best of all of the previous Civs, Col, and SMAC. The question now is do all of these great ideas smoothly work together? I'm thinking the streamlining of stuff by having the player able to do morer stuff in fewer screens and menus can only be good and yet at the same time I have to wonder if trying to do non-intuitive shoot will be harder (like, say, pillaging one of your own improvements...i.e. something that you could do in Civ 3 but rarely would ever bother to do so).
 
Yes you can play and win in colonization with a single city. The liberty bells someone mentioned worked like this: As long as over 50% of your population supported independence, then you could declare it. So if you have your one city and 53% of the people in that city want to declare independence, you could do it.

Was this a good way to play? Not really. The chances of 1 city having all the resources that you would have liked to collect was pretty small. Since the cities only had 1 adjacent square they could work off of, instead of 2 like in civilization, it encouraged you to build cities near other resources you find like: Silver, sugar, tobacco, special ore deposits, etc. This encouraged inter-city trade where you would have automated wagon trains bringing loads of excess ore from a mountain city to a grassland tobacco/sugar type of city, so that you could have two cities producing tools and muskets.

A move to a style like this with a smaller number of cities that are more specialized could add a strong strategic element to civilization 4. I can't wait to see how they put it all together for us. The 24th is 6 days and counting folks.
 
warpstorm said:
I don't think that the importance of specialists will be any more than in Civ3. In fact, except for the fact that they are limited by your civic/technology/wonders, they seem identical to how they were done in Civ3. (And, yes, I played Colonization).
Click to expand...

Have you read any of the previews regarding Great Person generation? It's all about the specialists. I could ignore specialists in Civ 3 and it would have almost no impact on my game; in Civ 4 - if I want Great Persons - I must manage the specialists to get what I need.
 
Yeah, I smelled quite a few things from Colonization in there. As Colonization was my first encounter with Sid, I'm pretty excited about this. It was a really great game, maybe even better than civ2. Aslo noticeing some things from Call to Power, and althogh I never play it people constantly mentioning SMAC- I have high hopes that Civ4 will be the UBER-CIV mixing all the best from everthing that has come before. :D
 
LordGek said:
Hey JKP1187,

I haven't played Col in eons and am curious about your claim, "small is better". I KNOW Col was all about specialists (which, actually, in Col were probably a bit more detailed and pretty specifc in their functions), but what mechanics were in play to encourage the player to not over expand?

I really think Civ 4, while introducing some all new shoot, has Firaxis dipping deep into the best of all of the previous Civs, Col, and SMAC. The question now is do all of these great ideas smoothly work together? I'm thinking the streamlining of stuff by having the player able to do morer stuff in fewer screens and menus can only be good and yet at the same time I have to wonder if trying to do non-intuitive shoot will be harder (like, say, pillaging one of your own improvements...i.e. something that you could do in Civ 3 but rarely would ever bother to do so).
Click to expand...

Gek,

I remember reading (I don't remember where, but I'm sure the Internets will have the answer,) that Colonization cities were originally supposed to have the big "X" style city grid straight from Civilization. During playtesting, however, it was discovered that you could easily play the entire game and win it with just one city -- one mega city was easy to keep under control and defend during the "revolutionary war" phase of the game, and allowed you to declare independence a lot earlier, leading to a very high score. For that reason, they reduced the Colonization city grid to a 3x3 box. It was still possible to win the game with just one city, though. Smaller empires were better, because you didn't have to worry about excessive number of loyalists in the distant provinces and whatnot.

I appreciate Warpstorm's comments, too -- I was wondering how detailed the specialists got, whether you had to "educate" them as in Colonization. That sounds like it'll be pretty streamlined, then.
 
UCFCSGuy said:
Yeah, I think I see what you mean.

I don't remember a lot about the game (I was about 12 when I played it!), but I seem to remember at least one specialist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to declare a revolution, you needed to have produced a certain amoutn of liberty bells or something? If I remember, you could make a "statesman" specialist that increased your production of liberty bells.

Wow that was a long time ago.
Click to expand...

There were a LOT of specialists in Colonization. You had to educate the "basic citizen" into things like miners, iron workers, etc. You were also able to "buy" trained citizens from Europe. (Some would also just immigrate on their own, depending on your own policies and nationality.) Eventually, you'd have to have statesmen producing "liberty bells" to get the people ready to support a declaration of independence. I think this was handled like the way scientists produced lightbulbs in Civ III.

Come to think of it, some of this sounds similar to Tropico....
 
Wow Colonization!!! Long time since I heard that name... :lol:
Anyway I think the new Civ 4 is taking alot of ideas here and there...
Colonization and definitely SMAC's Social Engineering (I think....)
Civ is gonna rock!! :D
 
Alphidius said:
Wow Colonization!!! Long time since I heard that name... :lol:
Anyway I think the new Civ 4 is taking alot of ideas here and there...
Colonization and definitely SMAC's Social Engineering (I think....)
Civ is gonna rock!! :D
Click to expand...

Word. I was *****in' up a storm about how much the SMAC social engineering needed to be included. Glad Firaxis was listening. :D
 
Stuie said:
Have you read any of the previews regarding Great Person generation? It's all about the specialists. I could ignore specialists in Civ 3 and it would have almost no impact on my game.
Click to expand...

Great Persons and specialists are two totally different beasts. GPs are one shot special effects that are spawned by cities by the various things you build and do (it's not all about the specialists). Specialists are just the scientists and entertainers from the previous civs.
 
What they mean by 'smaller is better' and comparing to Colonization is that in previous Civs, the way to win was to cover the planet like the Borg. In Colonization this was a LOSING strategy, as you couldn't possibly defend them all during the revolution. Colonization placed importance on having powerhouse cities instead of many weak towns.
 
Sullla said:
Specialists are the main way to generate Great People in Civ4, and they're going to play a much larger role in the game than specialists did in Civ3. :)
Click to expand...

I know they generate GP points, but there are other ways to influence the creation, but I guess this is the easiest as you have a lot of control over when you change people to specialists.
 
LostKing said:
Yeah, I smelled quite a few things from Colonization in there. As Colonization was my first encounter with Sid, I'm pretty excited about this. It was a really great game, maybe even better than civ2. Aslo noticeing some things from Call to Power, and althogh I never play it people constantly mentioning SMAC- I have high hopes that Civ4 will be the UBER-CIV mixing all the best from everthing that has come before. :D
Click to expand...

The new government civics are definately a throw back to SMAC's forms of governments. You could pick and choose various option just like you will be able to in Civ 4, depending on what you're aiming for.
 
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