Col II is a Sloppy Product

dalgo said:
It took me a while to get used to the way trade routes work but now I much prefer it to the original game. In Col 1 you were restricted to one wagon train per colony and it never seemed to be enough. Now there is no limit and no maintenance to pay so you can have as many as you want.
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Couldn't agree more Dalgo, trade routes automation is so simple that you even won't need to care for an specific wagon train, you just need to ensure a fair amount of them to get things running smoothly and efficiently enough according to the volume of goods, distances and schedule (times) you have automated. It is hard to get used to, but once you do it is great; until the WoI were everything goes to he..l. But hey!! It is supposed to.
Whilst not commonly necessary, some thing that might be nice would be to have the ability to stock certain volume of an item for an specific route; so you ensure, under low productivity, to have this paramount item delivered to port.
 
The overall of the game is pleasuring me
But there is just one thing that annoying me
Why does we must do WOI if we want to win???
It's a bull**** for me.
Independence isn't just about war (military).Some country get their independence trough diplomatic, or maybe economic.

Honestly, it's really insult a peaceful player like me that prefer build my colony than go to war with enemy that have an enormous troops .
 
dalgo said:
I'll have to take that back. I was so sure there was food lost but when I went back to a saved game in Col 1 to test it I found that is not the case. My comment on maintenance was related to the current game. Removing the restriction on one wagon per colony might have been balanced by a maintenance cost but fortunately it wasn't.
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I must say I am relieved. I always monitored the population growth carefully, often transporting food to the colony where I wanted the next colonist to be born, so if I had missed something on the lines of what you previously suggested, I would have felt very silly indeed.

As for the one wagon per colony restriction, I never disovered it since I never built that many wagons and only automated real nobrainers such as "tobacco to big colony with cigarmaker" or "wood to colony with puny wood production". I preferred to monitor other transports myself -not least the very important trade with the Indians.

P. S. I never felled every forest in any colony. To me, it might mean very annoying breaks in building production if no wood came in from any other colony.

Incidentally, I think the ability to transport wagons to another continent/island is one of the best improvements on the old game. Even so, I mean to resume a game of the original Col I started a couple of days ago. The music, tne not strictly "necessary" but enjoyable moments ("Discovery of the Pacific"; "The Fountain fo Youth", "Discovering the Inca Empire"), the general feeling - well, I just think many things in that primitive old game are still so very appealing.
 
I have enjoyed the original Colonization a lot, and still playing it from time to time. When I have found about this remake I was thrilled, but after playing through, I am quite disappointed. It looks to me just like a cosmetic and shallower variant of the original.

- Hardware intensive. Quite unacceptable for this genre. It's lagging on my machine especially later in the game. I have good CPU and plenty of memory but below average graphics card. But this game should not be about graphics!

- Maps are ridiculous small, the huge here is like the small on the original. I like to explore and find something new till the end of the game. Here, one scout is enough, two to get first all the treasures, then let them sleep for more than half of the game because there is nothing left for them.

- Game is too short, 300 turns is not enough to enjoy it at your own pace, giving about only 6-7 hours to complete a game. When I managed to set up a working economy, the game announced me that I have 100 turns to win the game. Way to kill the fun! I was not even near of rebel sentiment 50%, not to speak of army to stand REF. By the time I was able to declare independence, I had to choose between losing the game because the turns run out or facing the swarm of REF with a pathetic army. Can the number of turns be modded ?

- In my game, the other nations seemed like non-existent. The same for natives. Except trading 3 or 4 times and establishing 3 missions that gave some converts, I have turned down every request of alliance and everyone left me alone. It's not like in Col when you never knew when the natives will launch a sneak attack on your colony.

- It looks to me that many small details of the original that made the salt and pepper, were left out in this version.
 
DragosP said:
- Maps are ridiculous small, the huge here is like the small on the original. I like to explore and find something new till the end of the game. Here, one scout is enough, two to get first all the treasures, then let them sleep for more than half of the game because there is nothing left for them.
Click to expand...

I was very disappointed with the size of the maps too, I like exploring big maps and felt somehow cheated when my scouts retired so early. However there is a very easy change that can be made to the map sizes, see this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293755

I changed the huge maps from 60x38 tiles to 96x60 tiles and my scouts had plenty to do. They visited 75 indian villages which is on par with the size of maps in Col 1. However a word of warning if you do try this. There are the same number of indian tribes so this change makes them each much stronger - and consequently much more aggressive. You can no longer afford to ignore them for the whole game.
 
Thanks for the kind welcome. I am a fan of the original Colonization game and fascinated of this part of history, as well as of sailing ships and a novice in wooden ship modeling :crazyeye:
 
I might try that huge-huge map trick. In my last game, i extended the max number of turns from 300 to 500, and decided NOT to declare independence, just build Liberty bells, beef up my economy, build a large number of regiments and start mopping up all the indian tribes. At the end, after dozens of native settlements in cinders, it was way more fun than the usual, opressive Colonization game where everything i make is toward my better chances toward winning the WOI. To the hell with the King, the new World belongs to me. He can stuff his awful ring up his fat <CENSORED> for what i am concerned! :)

Right now, i am in Brazil, the French are almost dead, the Spanish are barely struggling, the natives are no more, and the Dutch are strong, but they are way up in Canada. It will take me a while to reach and eradicate them :)
Freedom!
 
Öjevind Lång;7320162 said:
No, but in my opinion, it clutters it up. There is a line between an intricate game and a game where there simply is too much stuff.
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I agree. Ditch the dark jedi! Opps I meant jesuits :blush:
To much startrek for me ;)
 
An additional complaint: Why does the king not have any diplomatic relations with anyone except you? Does that make any sense? Does that improve the gameplay?
 
Reading this thread I can only say I’m happy I didn’t play the original Colonization and therefore can judge the game for what it is and not for the changes I like or dislike. I love this game and I’m happy they still make complex games like this.

You can’t really expect a game to be designed exclusively for you so you have to take the good with the bad. The beauty of Firaxis games are that you can change almost everything. I played the game for a couple of days and I didn’t like the way the King increased the taxes so I changed it. Now the maximum tax raise is 1 % giving me all the time I need to trade and build up my Colony.
 
Bluetooth said:
I love this game and I played the game for a couple of days and I didn&#8217;t like the way the King increased the taxes so I changed it.
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You've played the game for a few days now and you've already changed something.
Can't wait to hear from you again after several weeks or months. :lol:
 
As I said: that’s the beauty of Firaxis games, you can change almost everything. I will probably make more changes and play it for months.
 
MASSIVE Props to the OP for creating an extensive to-do list for Col 2 modders. Yes its a harsh review of a game I happen to like, but it highlights some of the major areas which do need improving.

I think that Snoopy/Dale's PatchMod addresses some of your complaints already, particularly points #12, #22, and partially #24 (no more indians training in their own villages) which for me seemed to be everybodys biggest gripes.

My top 3 requests at the moment to increase my replayability of the game are:

1. (relates to your point #24, though I think you have a typo saying #25!) Indians give you presents every 5 turns (approx) but have no demands. I want to see one in every 3 of these visits where he needs something from you. Lets say the Incans have run out of food, so that native that has been coming to your village with gifts now comes and asks for 50% of your food store. If you give it to them, he then presents you with the 16 sugar or whatever else you were normally going to get. If the demands are not met they will "not forget this", and your relations suffer a penalty. This has an added bonus in that you might have to think twice about that 'just buy as many guns and horses as you can to sell to the indians' strategy that everyone seems to value).

2. (relates your your point #1) Im with you on the horses, but I do think that horses in the warehouse might not be able to reproduce. I want to see the Stables building generate +1 horses per turn automatically, with the Ranch producing +2 horses, preferably without any food penalty.

3. Finally I think the Founding Fathers are a rush-job and ill thought out. There seems to be no correlation with history for the related bonuses, and many of them are frankly a waste of the political points you have to spend to get them (ineveitably then the AI ends up with these poorer ones). I want to see them redesigned with a view to their personal history, and also to add some balance, strategy, and usefulness to the weaker ones.

again, props for the effort in the original post :)
 
I miss that at the end when you declare independence, Other nations would help in the fight by giving you some of their armies.

Or how throughout the game, other nations would offer you men and ships for sale.
 
jenks said:
MASSIVE Props to the OP for creating an extensive to-do list for Col 2 modders. Yes its a harsh review of a game I happen to like, but it highlights some of the major areas which do need improving.

I think that Snoopy/Dale's PatchMod addresses some of your complaints already, particularly points #12, #22, and partially #24 (no more indians training in their own villages) which for me seemed to be everybodys biggest gripes.

My top 3 requests at the moment to increase my replayability of the game are:

1. (relates to your point #24, though I think you have a typo saying #25!) Indians give you presents every 5 turns (approx) but have no demands. I want to see one in every 3 of these visits where he needs something from you. Lets say the Incans have run out of food, so that native that has been coming to your village with gifts now comes and asks for 50% of your food store. If you give it to them, he then presents you with the 16 sugar or whatever else you were normally going to get. If the demands are not met they will "not forget this", and your relations suffer a penalty. This has an added bonus in that you might have to think twice about that 'just buy as many guns and horses as you can to sell to the indians' strategy that everyone seems to value).

2. (relates your your point #1) Im with you on the horses, but I do think that horses in the warehouse might not be able to reproduce. I want to see the Stables building generate +1 horses per turn automatically, with the Ranch producing +2 horses, preferably without any food penalty.

3. Finally I think the Founding Fathers are a rush-job and ill thought out. There seems to be no correlation with history for the related bonuses, and many of them are frankly a waste of the political points you have to spend to get them (ineveitably then the AI ends up with these poorer ones). I want to see them redesigned with a view to their personal history, and also to add some balance, strategy, and usefulness to the weaker ones.

again, props for the effort in the original post :)
Click to expand...

Thank you! :) Though I seem to be hexed when it comes to numbering the items in the original post. :blush:

I very much like your suggestion about the Indians. Something similar happened in the original game, though there, they completely stopped offering you free gifts after a while. And offering *them* gifts at times could have very worthwhile effects in many ways.

As for the Founding Fathers, I completely agree. "Zzzzzzz... What? I've got another FF? OK... ZZZzzzz."
 
After these months, I have two basic issues with Col II:

1. The very sloppy and buggy design and programming. Incidentally, this also goes for the manual and Colonizopedia. It's all amazingly careless. And now it seems they don't even bother to keep the Col II website functioning.

2. The way it now functions as a game. Months ago, a poster at Apolyton put it better than I have managed to do: "Colonization should be about Colonization. Col 2 should have been renamed The War of Independence, because that's what the game is all about, from turn 1 right through to the end. The thing I liked about Col 1 was this it was a pure builder game with a war punctuating the end. Col 2 is a pure wargame where you spend hours preparing for war. In that sense, it fails as a wargame, but in the same sense it fails as a builder game."

Thats' exactly it. This is not the old colonization game, which was about building colonies, although usually one also fought some wars before the WoI at the end; now it's all about preparing for the big war against the king, and anything not directly geared towards that goal is actively hurtful to your game. And that, to me, kills the fun. You get one taste instead of a dozen. I'm back to playing the original game instead and enjoying myself immensely.
 
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