Shouldn't there be a Colonial Era...

Exploration (or Colonization) Era was the Renaissance for Spain and Portugal. Those very religious countries were still in the Middle Ages in terms of culture, fighting their own personal Crusades, persecuting Jews and Muslims. Spain had some great artists, but their works were purely religious in nature, differently from Pagan themes commonly seem in Italy - that is, they had the technique, but not the mindset of Renaissance. Portugal was never a cultural powerhouse. So at the same era Italians were rediscovering the Ancient World, Spain and Portugal were discovering India, China, Indonesia, Japan and America.
 
Contemplating the several excellent counterpoints, I'm thinking a Social policy tree would be the best approach to insert the Colonialism effects and benefits/limitations. Just don't unlock the tree until the player hits the Renaissance.
 
I think the best way to implement a colonial era is to tie it in to the exploration tree which needs a bit of tweaking to make it competitive with Rationalism.

The problem now is that Rationalism is the best of the later era policy trees and most players need to take at least some points in rationalism to keep up on science. And you don't have a lot of time to fill out a whole new tree just for naval expansion/conquest in the mid-game before ideologies kick in.

I think the exploration tree could function for both peaceful naval trading civs and for aggressive colonial empires. Perhaps something like this would work. So you can pick either the aggressive expansion policies or the passive economic policies. So the tree now benefits 2 styles of naval expansion. The finisher is a bit more boosted to put the exploration back into exploration :) making archaeology a bit better with fossil sites as well.

Exploration Tree

Opener: +1 movement and sight for all naval and embarked units. Unlocks building the louvre.

Maritime Infrastructure: All coastal cities gain +3 production

Colonialism: Receive a free Conquistador and a free Caravel at your capital (or nearest coastal city). Cities settled on new landmasses gain +1 population, +1 happiness, + 5 defense and +50HP (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Imperialism: Gain +20% productivity toward Renaissance era land and naval military units (requires Colonialism).

Naval Tradition: +1 happiness for every lighthouse, harbor or seaport. A great Admiral appears. Great Admirals gain +2 movement. Great Admirals are earned 25% faster (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Treasure Fleets: Receive 1 additional trade route. A free cargo ship appears in the capital (or nearest coastal city). Gain +2 happiness and +3 gold from improved luxuries on foreign landmasses (Requires Naval Tradition).

Adopting all policies in exploration grants 2 free archaeologists and allows you to see hidden antiquity and fossil sites (give science benefit to museums or produces a fossil dig-site providing science to city). Allows you to purchase Great Admirals with faith from the industrial era.
 
Redaxe, I think your policy changes are pretty brilliant.

I feel like Imperialism could use a little change though, as you would get it late renaissance, and then it would be useless 20 turns after you got it. Also, the Conquistador is a little suspect considering that it's a spanish UU, and giving it to everyone would be kind of bad, even if it would be awesome. Still though, yeah, change exploration to an exploration/colonization tree, and it could become a really interesting playstyle.
 
redwings1340 said:
Redaxe, I think your policy changes are pretty brilliant.

I feel like Imperialism could use a little change though, as you would get it late renaissance, and then it would be useless 20 turns after you got it. Also, the Conquistador is a little suspect considering that it's a spanish UU, and giving it to everyone would be kind of bad, even if it would be awesome. Still though, yeah, change exploration to an exploration/colonization tree, and it could become a really interesting playstyle.
Click to expand...

Hey thanks for the feedback.

Ummm firstly I should clarify for Imperialism the bonus is for units that are from the Renaissance era which is regardless of what era your currently in. So for example you just entered the industrial era but since you haven't got the replacement for Frigates you still get the +20% production when building Frigates.

And for the free Conquistador yeah I thought about that being the Spanish UI but that was all I could think of. Volunteer Army gives you access to the French UU so UUs are not always exclusive and remember its only 1 which is just to help you get a footing onto a foreign continent with your free Caravel.

Or perhaps Colonialism should unlock a new unit called "colonist" that replaces the settler but has the same strength as the Musketman. The main thing is that the tree should actually influence your strategy beyond just giving static bonuses. 20% production boost for renaissance military units may seem a lot but it does take a lot of time and effort to found a maritime empire and I think there needs to be a good incentive to do it. Tbh it's often easier to sit back and rush the Architecture wonders. The colonial and Imperialism policy I feel really launch you into an aggressive seafaring Empire.

The other policies I guess are tailored to reward your expansion by making the new luxuries and cities more valuable and easier to establish. I.e the +1 population can represent the extradition of prisoners to your new colony.
 
I don't like those policy changes at all. I think "Exploration" was a misnomer for the original policy tree, and whereas the proposed tree is much more in line with what I'd imagine an "Exploration" tree should be, it's effectively removing the "Maritime" tree from the game and replacing it with a "Colonialism" tree, which stinks if what you wanted was the Maritime tree.

EDIT: Oh, it's also wildly overpowered as proposed but almost every piece of fan-suggested content I've ever seen is.
 
Redaxe said:
I think the best way to implement a colonial era is to tie it in to the exploration tree which needs a bit of tweaking to make it competitive with Rationalism.

The problem now is that Rationalism is the best of the later era policy trees and most players need to take at least some points in rationalism to keep up on science. And you don't have a lot of time to fill out a whole new tree just for naval expansion/conquest in the mid-game before ideologies kick in.

I think the exploration tree could function for both peaceful naval trading civs and for aggressive colonial empires. Perhaps something like this would work. So you can pick either the aggressive expansion policies or the passive economic policies. So the tree now benefits 2 styles of naval expansion. The finisher is a bit more boosted to put the exploration back into exploration :) making archaeology a bit better with fossil sites as well.

Exploration Tree

Opener: +1 movement and sight for all naval and embarked units. Unlocks building the louvre.

Maritime Infrastructure: All coastal cities gain +3 production

Colonialism: Receive a free Conquistador and a free Caravel at your capital (or nearest coastal city). Cities settled on new landmasses gain +1 population, +1 happiness, + 5 defense and +50HP (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Imperialism: Gain +20% productivity toward Renaissance era land and naval military units (requires Colonialism).

Naval Tradition: +1 happiness for every lighthouse, harbor or seaport. A great Admiral appears. Great Admirals gain +2 movement. Great Admirals are earned 25% faster (requires Maritime Infrastructure).

Treasure Fleets: Receive 1 additional trade route. A free cargo ship appears in the capital (or nearest coastal city). Gain +2 happiness and +3 gold from improved luxuries on foreign landmasses (Requires Naval Tradition).

Adopting all policies in exploration grants 2 free archaeologists and allows you to see hidden antiquity and fossil sites (give science benefit to museums or produces a fossil dig-site providing science to city). Allows you to purchase Great Admirals with faith from the industrial era.
Click to expand...

That looks like a nice reform to the exploration tree. Main tweak would be imperialism. Extend it to industrial era as well. As for colonialism, the main issue is that it turns the Spanish Conquistor UU into a semi-unique unit like the foreign legion.
 
Peng Qi said:
I don't like those policy changes at all. I think "Exploration" was a misnomer for the original policy tree, and whereas the proposed tree is much more in line with what I'd imagine an "Exploration" tree should be, it's effectively removing the "Maritime" tree from the game and replacing it with a "Colonialism" tree, which stinks if what you wanted was the Maritime tree.

EDIT: Oh, it's also wildly overpowered as proposed but almost every piece of fan-suggested content I've ever seen is.
Click to expand...

I don't understand. Arguably every suggested policy offers a boost to maritime empires in some way. You get all the same things from the existing tree as well as some new benefits. There's a reason no one seriously chooses Exploration in its current state because its crap. Exploration is supposed to help you go wide over the sea but the current tree doesn't really help that much. Mainly because every new city you build is going to increase the cost of technology, culture and golden ages as well as decrease your happiness.

Right now you can spend 30 or 40 turns just getting a settler to a new continent to get a 1 population city that is going to penalize your empire and also require at least 1 trade route to supply it with food and productivity. Then if you are near an aggressive rival you risk losing that city as well.

The bonuses from Colonialism and Treasure Fleets just help to offset those penalties and risks.
And +20% productivity toward Renaissance era units. Ok maybe that is a bit overpowered but it's only a temporary bonus and if your rival picks Rationalism they'll nearly double their science output so by the time you have a good fleet of frigates they might already have subs and artillery.
 
Redaxe said:
Right now you can spend 30 or 40 turns just getting a settler to a new continent to get a 1 population city that is going to penalize your empire and also require at least 1 trade route to supply it with food and productivity. Then if you are near an aggressive rival you risk losing that city as well.
Click to expand...
There should be something to reflect the "dumping" that many nations engaged in. Something like new _distant_ Colonies start with 3 population, but 2 of them will be Unhappy immediately. (Which doesn't really matter as Happiness is calculated from an empire-wide POV.) And by NOT taking that policy is mirrors that not all nations engaged in "dumping".
 
Really, the era between Renaissance and Industrial should be called "Modern" but that would apparently be confusing.

Not that having "Modern" be two eras behind where we're at now isn't, of course.
 
I think the developers are too buisy working on Civ6 (2015 release) these days + the new patch.
 
Colonial Era is actually during Late Renaissance Era and Industrial Era. Timeline represented by the techs in the game goes like this, considering you have "normal'' Science output:

Renaissance Era (Late 12th century or early 13 century to about Early 17th century or Late 17th Century)
Industrial Era ( Early or Late 17th century to about 1830s or 1840s)

If the Colonial Era was from (1600 (although I would count it even from 1500s when the Spanish began colonising) - 1800. There you have it Late Renaissance and pretty much the whole Industrial Era. The thing is that the Industrial Era judging by it's techs and units (excluding the Gatling Gun, for which I don't understand why is it there) covers the period of imperialistic 18th century as well as the Early 19th century. The true 19th century Industrialisation, we mostly refer to is covered in what the game calls "Modern Era''.
 
What keeps you from wanting to add more cities is because you don't have your nationals finished. Once your nationals are finished its easier to add more cities and I believe the AI does this. We humans don't bother with it.
 
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