colonies becoming cities?

tealbeard mentions in another thread that colonies should be able to grow into cities.I like this idea but it should be done differently.Colonies should have cultural borders but only in the square that its in,so in other words a rival cant build a city near your colony and erase it.As for building units,I don't think this should be allowed or there would be no point to get settlers to build cities.The colony should only be able to grow if it is producing food on the sqare that it is built,It shouldnt produce shields until it grows to a small city,(pop. of 3).That way cities still have an advantage over colonies and colonies are still good for getting resources

I'm not sure if i like this idea or not. As it stands now of a rival builds a city near the colony it will be erased, so that is no different. I do however see haveing a food box as a good idea for the colony to become cities. However I know of situations where i want a colony but not where i want the city when i finally expand out to that point.

This brings up another thought about city/colony building. We can keep the steeler/worker system, but there is also another factor to cause cities to develop. Across the map there could eb some kind of background population level. Not cities persay but the presence of people. There coupld eb many factors for changes in this level; terrain, tiel development, forts (many cities in the world are locations of old forts), nearby cities, and colonies. Now there should eb some kind of radius around a city that would prevent spontanious generation of another one to prevent unwanted overlapping city radii. A colony would create a city by drawing the background population intothat square, and when that threshold is passed, as city is created.

I disagree with colonies growing into cities, having culture borders and building units and improvements (like I said in the other thread). If you want a small city, build a city and let it grow to a 3. If you only want the resource build a colony. I do like the idea of building colonies in the ocean on undersea oil, like an offshore oil rig.

croxis, if your suggesting that cities spring up outside of another cities radius due to background population, then isn't that the same thing as a player building a city, except that it is semi-random? I don't like the idea of taking city construction out of a players control.

Colonies have to be done differently, because as it is now almost no one ever builds them. Why build something that will be erased when you can put a settler there instead?

I think the whole idea of colonies is silly. A colony is merely a population 1 city. By all measn create some kind of resource extraction facility as a tile improvement, but making it cost a worker is overpriced.

FWIW, I have never built a single tile improvement that costs the worker. Just not a reasonable cost.

I've suggested changing the expansion model to be this kind of thing. Instead of building a city with a border encompassing 9 tiles you make a settler that creates a colony (consider it "zero" pop city) that has a border of 1 square.

To grow a colony into a towne/city a small number of improvements have to be built. Something like Towne Square (commercial center which provides base gold for the city square and contributed to the national economy), Blacksmith (industrial center which provides base shields for the city square) and Towne Gate (government center which provides 1 culture pt/turn only after all three improvements are built) none of which cost upkeep.

It should take between 10 and 20 turns to build all three improvements after which the city will be self-sufficient and increase population and borders. Growth does not begin for any of the above until all three improvements are completed. If all you want is access to a particular resource, plant a colony and build just the Smithy or Towne Square or both. Later on build the Towne Gate to begin it's growth. When the towne reaches a culture value of 1 (due to the Towne Gate) it grows to the first tier of 9 squares and 1 pop to work in those nine squares.

Doing this should greatly extend the land grab portion of the game and make it more of a challenge to boot.

Here is an idea that would have people using colonies more:

Colonies do not dissapear when they are inside your cultural borders.

Instead of needing only a road connected to your resource/luxury, you must have a colony. Colonies have to be connected to your cites by roads, or in the later ages there could be a more advanced connection like oil pipelines for an oil colony. Maybe you'd have to change them so that workers built them insead of sacfraficed themseleves, but I think it would make sense, and give you more strategic targets to destroy when attacking.

plastique, having colonies a required piece of infrastructure would go a long way towards making them useful. However, they really ought to be renamed if so, as it doesn't make sense for an actual colony to stay the same size forever if it is in fertile land.

@Dwarven Zerker
Problem with that colony model is how ca that colony build anything at all until it has built the blacksmith. If we are going to have true colonies, I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)

How about all new cities start out as colonies initially?

rhialto, a colony, by any other name, would smell as sweet.

I don't like any of this changing how you build a city. I see nothing wrong with the settler costing 2 population and going out to found a new city. All this random development is taking control away from the player. Do you really want to be sitting there waiting for the computer to decide that your Sparta colony can become a city now?

Plastiqe is right. The player needs to be in control.

This is why so many people dislike culture flipping as it currently exists in Civ 3. Aside from packing an immense number of units in a city, the process is basically random and a player has no real control over when it happens. Sure, you can build a lot of cultural improvements or not, but that's really an abstract way of looking at it. It still doesn't mean the player is any happier about the situation.

I'm pretty happy about culture flipping and feel pretty in control of culture.

But yeah, moving away from colonies, and more towards various refineries for each resource is an interesting proposition.

i really dislike seeing a resource on another continent and having to build a city there. the city is useless due to corruption yet it still needs the harbour/airport upgrade to actually do something.

rhialto said:

@Dwarven Zerker
Problem with that colony model is how ca that colony build anything at all until it has built the blacksmith. If we are going to have true colonies, I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)

Click to expand...

Forgot to detail that. Sorry. All colonies would start with 1 shield of production. After building the smith it would then gain base shields for the square regardless of whether it becomes a towne or not.

Although the civ concept works on the principle that you have complete control over every aspect of your tribe (to the point of even being able to decide when a revolution will occur). In other words, you play god.

Having automated settlement would change one of the key concpts behind civ.

That said, I would not personally not be opposed to having this and similar features (e.g. uncontrollable revolutions, defecting units, partially-uncontrolled immigration and emmigration, etc.).

It wouldn't take much to make this optional: if toggles on, cities appear automatically according to population growth and availablity of appropriate city spots.

You could also have an in-between like the example given in the thread topic (i.e. cities may from from Colonies): towns may appear near large cities (i.e. near large population--population may spread to surrounding areas).

plastiqe said:

Here is an idea that would have people using colonies more:

Colonies do not dissapear when they are inside your cultural borders.

Instead of needing only a road connected to your resource/luxury, you must have a colony. Colonies have to be connected to your cites by roads, or in the later ages there could be a more advanced connection like oil pipelines for an oil colony. Maybe you'd have to change them so that workers built them insead of sacfraficed themseleves, but I think it would make sense, and give you more strategic targets to destroy when attacking.

Click to expand...

Hey I really like this idea

I think that colonies should not have their own cultural borders. The only modifications that should be made are they should act as harbors so if built on another continent they dont need a nearby base to send supplies off to the rest of the civ.

Second, when an enemy unit enters one, they should have the option to capture it, as if it still were a worker unit, or actually turn it into a worker so they can be used for other things.

rhialto said:

@Dwarven Zerker
I'd suggest the MoM model where your settler builds a colony, then depending on how fertile the land is, it may eventually grow to a size 1 city. In civ terms, the settler builds a ize 0 city which is good for food gathering only, and its growth has a strong random element which could cause it to die out in especially poor terrain. Once it is size 1, it takes deliberate sabotage to starve away, unless it is in a non-food producing tile (in which case how did it grow to size 1 in the first place?)

Click to expand...

I don't like this idea. The player should have complete control on these issues. Many players (myself included) would probably not buy the game if the growth of your empire were a function of uncontrollable events. My model gives the player complete control of growth yet extends the land grab portion of the game. It also adds another dynamic to the game that will increase it's interest not to mention be something more like reality. Consider the colonization of the US. Many colonies started as a resource acquisition community for the nation that invested resources in the colony, which brings me to a shortfall in my idea...

Certain basic improvements need to be allowed to be built in a colony. Such as a Harbor. Deciding which improvements can be built in a colony before it reaches towne size could be difficult. I would consider a barracks okay but not a library (why would any "scientist" go to a colony to do "research"?) Perhaps the cut off would be the first building of a series. In this case the economy, industrial and culture would be the basic buildings to make a towne (as proposed in my initial post in this thread) and add to it a barracks (for military outposts) and harbor (if a coastal colony for transportation of material (resources & personnel) to and from the controlling nation.

Please forgive me for "thinking out loud." A lot of that last paragraph worked itself out as I was typing.

In retrospect, perhaps that aspect of MoM wont work for civ. When I describe models of how older games did things, usually Im not reciomending it as teh best idea so much as throwing fuel into teh discussion fire by reminding people (many of whom entered the civ arena long after these games) about what has gone on before.

To answer one of your points though, many scientists DO go to what would be colonies in civ3 terms. These colonies are called research outposts, and there are many in Antartica.

However, I'd say anything that multiplies productivity or collects resources should be disallowed. Mobility, defence, and repair structures should be possible, albeit very slowly built (unless we allow workers to build them as a pseudo-tile improvement). That way you can have what amounts to a military base. Not sure how you could really create a research base. Allowing libraries in a colony won't cut it, as it merely multiplies nothing by 1.5, resulting in nothing.

I'd also add that colony placement should be limited exactly as civ3 cities are now. Not sure how to reconcile that with requiring colonies as resource gatherer sites though.

What about this? Colonies could stay as we know them. However, if the player wants the colony to grow into a city, just send a settler over to "join" the colony. It could then go from the colony to a size 2 city, and you would get the option to name it something other than "Oil Colony, Azecs".


(Of course, you can do this now- but you'd only get a size one city.)