An Idea from Sid Meier´s Colonization

Dear Civ Fans:

In 1994, Sid Meier created Colonization, in honor of the 500th year of the discovery of the American continent, though it had been released two years after this historical event celebration. One thing that Colonization had and no other civilization game had was the commodity production system: instead of producing shields, you had to produce lumber, ores, siler, tobacco etc. My idea should be placed into an EP in a customizable option - you should opt to play producing shields or commodities. Certain techs or civ-specific techniques produce commodities or combining x commodity to y commodity should have a z commodity. The units should be produced if you produce some required commodities. What do you think? It would reflect the historcal happening of industrialization, trading and it would make the game even more realistic.

There would have to be some considerable fiddling with population growth to make it properly like Colonization, too. Building a unit should cost 1 population point, as in Colonization you got ore, made tools, then took the tools and made guns, but you still had to sacrifice a population point to have men to arm with the weapons.

It would be nice, too, other thing: the continents should have an specific ecosystem. For example tobacco is from America, banana is from asia... when your civ reaches to another continent, it should produce a commodity from a continent to other, just like happened in the real history of the colonization of America, in the age of the great sails. Other thing: before the discovery of currency, you should exchange coomodities for others, without using gold. When you dicover the currency technology, gold and silver would be avaliable.

I am looking into making a colonization mod. Probably will have to wait for the SDK though.

Yay! Colonize rules!

HORRA!! When will colonization 2 be released?!

Dikaioma said:

I am looking into making a colonization mod. Probably will have to wait for the SDK though.

Click to expand...

I hope Sid will listen to us. I think civ should have certain things that colonization had, especially producing commodities, instead of shields. You will need to produce certain commodities to produce units (civ 3 had given us such a pale idea for this concept, when you need an iron ore icon to produce legions or swordmasters). Some things colonization 2 should have would be Portugal as a playable european power (colonizated Brazil), the indians should be playable and some extra founding fathers like José de Anchieta, who was responsible for breaking up a confederation of indians who had been incited by the french to destroy the portuguese settlements using diplomacy, and the Portuguese king John VI, who have been flet to Brazil and kept his reign throughout the only Portuguese colony in the American continent. The main advantage is the colony would have the same privileges as a mother country had; in other words, it would have freedom to trade to other countries, instead of trading only with the mother country, without the necessity of becoming independent first, like it had happened to other former colonies in America, like the English or the Spanish colonial possessions. Of course, they will need to make a brand-new diplomacy (the only bad thing I consider in the original colonization was that feature).

Absolutely agreed with having a commodity-based economy. Currently, I am considering whether it will be possible to mod Civ4 to include commodities through my UET2 framework. Right now, it looks a bit difficult to do so though...

Trade-Peror, I read your article and I totally agree with your ideas, except for unit's production, based upon shields. In colonization, not only you produce goods for commerce, but to produce weapons and create your army itself (in that case, the colonization had given us such a pale idea, by converting tools into muskets and then giving them to colonists specialized or not, to produce an army). In civilization it would more extreme, you produce lumber to produce a ship, to make a bow, arrows, axes (if wou combine with stone, silex or metals) and you give to your people unit (if it has a considerable experience, it might become a warrior, or a woodcutter, if it has cut some amount of lumber... it would happen automatically for the first unit specialized you make, and if you want other more, you will need to educated other people units, and it depends to each profession). Other thing would be interesting should the provisional units... you will need certain units of foods to make the people explore the wilderness, and each kind of food would have a certain nutrional value (but some cultures, I don't know if it is historically correct, are so into with some kinds of foods that would be a bigger nutritional value (for instance, for the Japanese civilization, rice would be the same nutritonal value as wheat, meanwhile to other civlization the wheat has more nutrional value than rice). Nutritional value would affect the health of your units, as well it would produce more movement (in History, the more food the troops had, the farther they will go and therefore more resistant to combat they would be). I think each square would have to produce multiple commodities, and the people units would produce them (max 3 per commodity production). Well, I think this idea should be add to your article, but I agree with you that such idea would be less probable to be implemented right now in Civ 4. But I think it would be great!

I agree to the idea of introducing commodities to Civ4. Especially, military units should cost population AND consume some weapons, made from such commodities.
This would reflect economic principles and would make large wars very difficult.

And instead of having a city build a unit to defend it there could be a militia option which might take a small cut out of the city's overall productivity (since the citizens spend a little time training in arms rather than working) but means that if anyone attacks the city it has a defender of the basic type. If you see an attack coming you can recruit the militia to be a unit and fortify it but only once an enemy is in sight of your city, or else it's drafting and you get unhappiness.
This happened in colonisation too: get Paul Revere and you just left a few guns in your colony and a stock of horses to breed and the indians could be bashed with your regular troops.

Dear Commander Bello and Brighteye

Those ideas that come from you are terrific! In relation to the fact you, Brighteye, have said about Paul Revere, I had another idea: it's fact that civ III has put to an end of the of a congress like colonization's continental congress. Personally, I think those great minds that gave great contributions to the human thinking should be chosen if the game let you know that you have great people created (a great merchantman, a great prophet, a great military, a great diplomat or even a great engineer or a great artist)! For example, instead of great merchantman, you should choose Adam Smith (whose thinking is crucial to our days, for every civilization) or another national great people like Barão de Mauá or Nelson Rockfeller! I think each universal great people names, those ones who are common to all civs to reflect the impact they had to human thinking, should have specific atributes and you can choose them only once per game, while the national great people ones you can choose whenever you like, having only the atributes that civ IV has given to them! I think this idea should be moddable or introduced via expansion! So what do you think, everybody?

I've to admit that I didn't like the implementation of the great people at Colonization that much. They seem to be overpowered even at Civ4, in regards to other options to achieve a certain goal.

Yet, one could imagine some kind of "Olympus" of great minds, to which all those people you've been speaking of are added. After a certain number of people have been added to this "Olympus", the nation which contributed the most would gain a scientific win, for instance. Of course, for each kind of great persons, a certain percentage would have to be reached, before the final calculation would be run.
This idea just came to my mind, it has not been checked, so forgive me if it would be complete rubbish.

But the problem is this: if we put all of the great leaders in a "olypium" like "colonization" Continental Congress , I think many people could complain about it: for instance, Aristotle in a Persian "Olypium", or Adam Smith even in the Ancient Ages! Colonization, in that way, was a little unrealistic in that point: for instance, anyone who ever played colonization knows that in some games Adam Smith would be chosen as a first choice in the Congress even in the 1500's (and this was totally unrealistic, because we was not even born in this period, if you compare the game timeline with the continental congressman biography timeline you can realize this)! But I agree with your idea, Commander Bello, that the Great People are overpowered! In terms of gameplay, I think those minds like that should be avaliable to be chosen if you have a specific tech, or a combination of techs!