reinesance settler replacement: the colonist

so right now its pointless to settle new cities past turn 100, mainly due to the silly science penalty, making the city slow you down rather than help your empire.

what if settlers would upgrade mid game (as all military units do) to the colonist?

the colonist: unlocks at navigation

may found cities. newly found cities start with 2 additional citizens, 2 adittional tiles, a monument and a granary.
will have 3 movement points. conquistadors will settle cities like the colonist and not like a settler. will need to cost 3-5 times as much as a settler.

happyness and the gpt maintenance (and its high cost) should stop people from spamming it.

right now the game is so static, and boring lategame. imagine how dynamic the world will be with this unit!

the order policy granting 3 extra citizens per city could make this unit still viable in the modern era. a 1 extra citizen could probably be added to liberty finisher or exploration tree.

what do you think?

good idea, right now there is really no motivator to found more cities, specially if they are far away and even if there is a resource/lux you dont have.
we all know that in history it was different.
i would add to the colonist the abillity to build improvments outside of borders so you can found your colonies and right away enjoy the resource/lux

hmm, maybe add this bit:

after founding a city, the colonist turns into a worker.

that way you have a city with a few pop, granary/ monument and a worker straight away. oh and 2 extra tiles (shoshone style)

Yeah I like this too but Id require it to be unlocked by the Exploration tree.

And really they should allow you to assimilate workers into a new city up to a population of 3. Kindof creates the slave labour & resettlement programs that existed in the ancient world...

Well if you got a good GPT you can rushby the buildings like aquducts and libery.

Trade routes can give food and production to quickly make the city very usefull

I really like this idea, but I agree that it makes more sense to have them unlockable with exploration (and would make the tree more atractive).

The one issue is that in the real world, when colonization of the new world started, there were great open areas of land to settle (my apologies to the American native Americans and residents of part of Asia/Africa who might object to the term "open").

In many cases, by that period in the game, are there really many areas left to settle, other than either islands, or little spots on another continent that others have not seemed fit to settle?

We could have maps with undeveloped continents of land, but that is another issue.

Just a bit off topic, but highly related, I've always wished that there was an entire era between the Renaissance and Industrial.

I'd probably call it the Colonial Era or Imperial Era. Not sure what techs you'd slot in there, but I do know that I'd add a couple of units that I would really love to see in the game:

• Line Infantry (would be between Musketmen and Riflemen)
• Field Artillery (would be between Cannons and Artillery)

My desire for these two units stems from my enthusiasm for this era of warfare.

Focusing more on the Line Infantry, I think that this unit would help spread out the overabundance of Musketmen and Riflemen UUs more appropriately. I don't understand why the Carolean is a Riflemen replacement, for instance. They were used in the late 1600s but are unlocked by a technology that hits roughly around the late 1800s.

The Tercio would make a lot of sense if it remained a Musketmen replacement, but the Minutemen should be Line Infantry.

An alternate to the Field Artillery would be to move the Cannon up to the Colonial Era and put a Bombard between the Trebuchet and Cannon.

Bulldog Bats said:

The one issue is that in the real world, when colonization of the new world started, there were great open areas of land to settle (my apologies to the American native Americans and residents of part of Asia/Africa who might object to the term "open").

In many cases, by that period in the game, are there really many areas left to settle, other than either islands, or little spots on another continent that others have not seemed fit to settle?

We could have maps with undeveloped continents of land, but that is another issue.

Click to expand...

That's a problem I often came up with when thinking about colonization in Civ... Ideally you could recreate Americas colonization in every game or in some games, but I fail to see how this could be achieved ideally. Either you keep a land free, this can already happen in Civ but not on main continents (always a sub-continent or island), but in that case it feels odd, unrealistic and the resistance you encounter is not high enough (Indians were a big problem), either you fill it with civs, as now, but in this case there's nearly no reason to have inferior civs as they started exactly in the same time as you, and the game doesn't allow for too much variations from a continent to the other.

You could make so the game allows more technology variations from a continent to the other, like for example science diffusion that would make more cultures equal to more science, and more variations in cultures more able to create science.

And/or also make the great people and/or golden ages influencing greatly the science of a whole continent, as to make History referencial, as much as Europe has always ran after Greece or Rome which were references and levels to catch up.

Or, you could create scientific city-states that enhance greatly the science of the civs near/friends/allied, so that a continent with no/less scientific CSs would be pretty backwarded.

Note that if you allow such science disparity from a continent to the other, it may be good to allow also more alliance possibilities, for example. But, if you do so, it's only to counter the fact that the player could be backwarded himself... so you could as well make the science totally random for creating disparity, not invoking such systems I previously mentionned... then the true problem is : what happens when the player loses ?

Truth to be told, I believe that Civ is maybe already perfect in that regard. After all, you have means to play, to improve, to conquer, the same as the other continent guys, and if you want to conquer them, you will do efforts according to that goal. And they will do effort in defending. So, maybe you will recreate History, conquering, exterminating, assimilating, or maybe you will be repressed. It should be enough, isn't it ? Why shouldn't it be enough ? Tell me.

I like the general idea of this thread. There might be details to hone, but I do agree that a major hindrance to late-game city settling is the fact that you have to trod through all those buildings from ancient era, which takes ages in a new-founded city, so this idea really could help with that.

im glad people like it. i have never modded anything in civ5, but i might try modding this unit when i get back home (2-3 weeks from now).

i truly beleive civ5 could be a much more fun game if you had options other then <Tradition, archer spam, settle in the first 100 turns, rationalism>

a simple colonist unit could fix one of these 4 crucial (in my eyes) issues.

I've made something a bit like this as part of a larger mod I'm using. As a part of reworking the Exploration tree, I've made a policy (called Pioneer Expansion) that gives settlers +2 movement and adds +2 population to newly founded cities. It's not as elaborate as what you suggest, but I think the free buildings and free tiles (in particular) will not be as easy to code without using lua scripts, and at least what I did was a step in that direction and I do like this change.

Again, the issue is to have a body of land where the colonist can settle and grow a "new land". Otherwise, it becomes nothing more than a way to get a beach head on your opponent's land to start an invasion (maybe this is not so on the largest sized maps - I play on standard, and by that time, pretty much all large land areas are claimed.

Bulldog Bats said:

Again, the issue is to have a body of land where the colonist can settle and grow a "new land". Otherwise, it becomes nothing more than a way to get a beach head on your opponent's land to start an invasion (maybe this is not so on the largest sized maps - I play on standard, and by that time, pretty much all large land areas are claimed.

Click to expand...

I find there's a huge difference between playing "standard" and "large" maps. Even though the number of civs increase on large maps, it seems the land mass increases more. When I play standard maps (particularly continents), all lands get taken very quickly, and border issues arise almost immediately. On the other hand, when I play large maps (particularly pangea), AI civs will settle ~3 cities unless they are very expansionist (Zulu, Iroqouis, Russia, America) and then there will be huge swaths of open land that last well into Industrial era. So on the latter map settings, I definitely feel the concept of late-game expansion makes sense.

kaspergm said:

I find there's a huge difference between playing "standard" and "large" maps. Even though the number of civs increase on large maps, it seems the land mass increases more. When I play standard maps (particularly continents), all lands get taken very quickly, and border issues arise almost immediately. On the other hand, when I play large maps (particularly pangea), AI civs will settle ~3 cities unless they are very expansionist (Zulu, Iroqouis, Russia, America) and then there will be huge swaths of open land that last well into Industrial era. So on the latter map settings, I definitely feel the concept of late-game expansion makes sense.

Click to expand...

thats exactly what i mean. sometimes in those big epic games, you find a big island (or just a nice empty spot) great for 2-3 cities, but its allready late midevil or reinesance and so there is no point in settling... i think it is a bad and unfun game dynamic, and i also think it is pretty easy to fix.

on a similar note, what do you guys think about +! pop per new founded city in the liberty tree? i was thinking of it being in the finisher, as anything else might be overpowered. it will also encourage you to keep expanding, as liberty empires should.

I absolutely love the idea, but if it was added I would want an overhaul of the Exploration tree, and have the abilities for cities made by colonists to rebel or maybe be independent nations, but all science, gold, culture etc. that they produce, is also given to the founder. But I do love the idea

What you are suggesting is to move a benifint of having good gold production to normal hammer production which I think is bad.

One point of going for high gold per turn is to be able to get the needed buildings in the needed city at an instant.

If you wan't to be a serious coloniser you should try to be able to found the colony, not by production but by gold.

Its also very easy to get the pop of the city up with a trade ship, production can also be gotten by trade ships if you want to however gold is the fastest way.

Bulldog Bats said:

The one issue is that in the real world, when colonization of the new world started, there were great open areas of land to settle (my apologies to the American native Americans and residents of part of Asia/Africa who might object to the term "open").

Click to expand...

It was more open than people think. European diseases like smallpox, typhus, cholera, and measles wiped out over half of the native population. Even with their gunpowder weapons European colonists wouldn't have fared nearly as well in the Americas as they did if it weren't for the fact that the natives had no immunities to European disease. It's one reason why Africa didn't turn out the same as the Americas. Africans did have immunities so European colonists had to deal with full strength populations.

Not sure if that could be put into the game, or if we'd want it for that matter.

kaspergm said:

I've made something a bit like this as part of a larger mod I'm using. As a part of reworking the Exploration tree, I've made a policy (called Pioneer Expansion) that gives settlers +2 movement and adds +2 population to newly founded cities. It's not as elaborate as what you suggest, but I think the free buildings and free tiles (in particular) will not be as easy to code without using lua scripts, and at least what I did was a step in that direction and I do like this change.

Click to expand...

well, if you ever played an info era start you know that in those games your cities start with a bunch of buildings. as i said i am quite busy in the moment, but i do hope to play with this unit one day, perhaps modding it myself if i have the time (ive no experience in modding but i am a programming student so it might help a bit)

Such the reason for my apology...