Liberating cities as colony?

[johnny5000]

I thought it was supposed to be possible to liberate some cities and it creates a new civilization as your vassal, to save on maint costs.

I can't figure out how to do this.
Yesterday I received a city as a condition of a peace treaty, even though i didn't really want it- it was way out in BFE.

So I wanted to liberate it and keep it as a vassal, but I couldn't figure out how.

I ended up just giving it to another civ.

How do I do this?

[Badtz Maru]

Originally Posted by johnny5000

I thought it was supposed to be possible to liberate some cities and it creates a new civilization as your vassal, to save on maint costs.

I can't figure out how to do this.
Yesterday I received a city as a condition of a peace treaty, even though i didn't really want it- it was way out in BFE.

So I wanted to liberate it and keep it as a vassal, but I couldn't figure out how.

I ended up just giving it to another civ.

How do I do this?

Go to the screen that lists your cities, there is a little icon in the bottom right you click.

[johnny5000]

Originally Posted by Badtz Maru

Go to the screen that lists your cities, there is a little icon in the bottom right you click.

Thanks, I'll try it.
Are there any required techs to do it?

[TheMeInTeam]

There are no tech requirements (other than sailing probably, since you're going to need that to get cities on another continent in *most* cases anyway).

It's also VERY rare that liberating cities is a good idea. As in, almost never. If you don't know the game mechanics inside and out and intend to abuse them (or a high level AI's bonuses), it's very likely the returns on keeping the cities are better.

[johnny5000]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

There are no tech requirements (other than sailing probably, since you're going to need that to get cities on another continent in *most* cases anyway).

It's also VERY rare that liberating cities is a good idea. As in, almost never. If you don't know the game mechanics inside and out and intend to abuse them (or a high level AI's bonuses), it's very likely the returns on keeping the cities are better.

It was actually on the same huge continent. I was the Romans at war with Persia. I thought I had him down to just his capital and one other city, but I needed some time to regroup so I offered a peace treaty, and he threw in a captured barb city way out in the middle of nowhere (I didn't even know he had it.) I couldn't easily get to it, it was in a bad location, no great resources around it, etc. Basically I took it so he'd have one fewer city for me to have to capture later. However, that one city was a pretty big money sink, I had no units there, and not really any way to get units there (Babylonia was in the way, and I'm not really friendly with them.)

So I gave the city to Victoria, just to get rid of it, and now she likes me lots. Maybe I was better off doing that than keeping it or liberating it as a colony. I dunno. I needed to free up some cash since I had a huge praet army waiting for phase 2 of the Persian invasion, and getting rid of that city helped.

10 turns later I declared war on Persia again, and wiped him out.

[binhthuy71]

Better than liberating them is to go with State Property. If, for some reason, you're a long way from that then build courthouses and concentrate on those improvements that will provide the best economic returns until you get to Communism and SP.
While there are arguments to be made for vassals there are, for most players, almost none for liberating them as a colony. If you have a tech lead then prepare to have that traded away by your colony just as fast as they can.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

There are no tech requirements (other than sailing probably, since you're going to need that to get cities on another continent in *most* cases anyway).

It's also VERY rare that liberating cities is a good idea. As in, almost never. If you don't know the game mechanics inside and out and intend to abuse them (or a high level AI's bonuses), it's very likely the returns on keeping the cities are better.

I liberated a rather large overseas colony to my benefit on a Terra map. I had already built the Forbidden Palace on my home continent and was beaten to Versailles. I had been running State Property to make maintenance manageable, but I wanted to change out of that because I had the chance to do two good corporations (Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi). My score did initially drop by about about 4%, but my maintenance costs dropped so I could raise my research above what it was with SP and I was soon able to regain my tech lead and got a lot of benefit from those corporations. My colony was a good vassal, when I declared war on someone who had a smaller colony on the other continent, he drove my opponent off of the new world continent and ended up being #3 in score.

[Grey Fox]

You need at least 2 cities on another landmass (both on the same) to create a colony.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by Badtz Maru

I liberated a rather large overseas colony to my benefit on a Terra map. I had already built the Forbidden Palace on my home continent and was beaten to Versailles. I had been running State Property to make maintenance manageable, but I wanted to change out of that because I had the chance to do two good corporations (Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi). My score did initially drop by about about 4%, but my maintenance costs dropped so I could raise my research above what it was with SP and I was soon able to regain my tech lead and got a lot of benefit from those corporations. My colony was a good vassal, when I declared war on someone who had a smaller colony on the other continent, he drove my opponent off of the new world continent and ended up being #3 in score.

If you had FP on the home continent, what was to stop you from going FM, moving the palace to the new world, and running corps anyway? Especially if you'd have wound up with more land in the new world anyway, such could have been a viable option also.

Palace is cheaper than FP anyway.

[kaltorak]

I'd love that there would be more benefits on liberating them.
I usually don't play my games 100% focused on winning, but also on creating a fun game. I mean for example, when accepting vassals, I don't think if it's going to be beneficial or not only, but also if I feel like having vassals.

So, founding colonies woul be something I would find very cool, but I rarely do it since I don't see it worth it. You have to create at least a ship, several settlers, sail to another continent and found the cities. And then you liberate them and have a very very bad civ as your vassal, who doesn't really help you that much. Or you can develope the cities so the vassal is better, but then your cost and time invested is even higher.

I do colonies sometimes, but I do it for fun

[LegionSteve]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

There are no tech requirements (other than sailing probably, since you're going to need that to get cities on another continent in *most* cases anyway).

It's also VERY rare that liberating cities is a good idea. As in, almost never. If you don't know the game mechanics inside and out and intend to abuse them (or a high level AI's bonuses), it's very likely the returns on keeping the cities are better.

I thought you need feudalism to have any kind of vassal, including liberated ones?

[binhthuy71]

Originally Posted by LegionSteve

I thought you need feudalism to have any kind of vassal, including liberated ones?

Colonies don't first need to be vassals so feudalism is not required. Colonies can be formed from a collection of reasonably contiguous cities that you've either settled or captured.

[Grey Fox]

There is some benefits. First is the shortterm benefit of getting rid of the colony maintenance, which can be pretty steep if you have many cities on another continent.
Secondly you get +1 happy for every vassal you have. And Colonies are vassals which give no unhappiness in any of your cities which conquered vassals can be.
Then it can be useful to have a trading partner. After all this colony has it's own palace, it's own GPP pool, it's own civics. Two civs can often research faster than one. (You can tell them what to research) and they will start at friendly so they will always trade.
Helps if you have prepared improvements and infrastructure though or if the AI is Deity. :P
And it lowers the amount of micromanagement you have to do :P