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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.
And it lowers the amount of micromanagement you have to do

 

[kivanc]

hello. i wanted to necrobump this thread. i was searching for sth else and then i just noticed this.

most of the time, colony option is underestimated. the most imp function is that, you can cover a large territory under your influence by this way.

1) how to build it:
not only a different landmass but also every island that you can build 2 cities can become a colony. so even a very small island is enough. just press F1 and liberate
after you build a colony, if you settle on another new island, you can build a second one.
the only limit is #of players that the world can have. it's somewhere in the code, yet i never changed it. i think it was ~18 for huge and less for smaller planets.

2) How to expand it:
it's also possible to liberate new cities to your colony, which means making them have more than 2. so let's assume
* u have a huge landmass, much free space to expand
* u don't want state property (which is very powerful)
* u don't want to have more cities
in this position, you can use colony option. building a new colony in the same continent of yours is not possible but gifting a city to your colony is possible

so you can fill in all the continent and gift it to the colony. as long as you can control the colony by means of politics, it is no problem. besides, if you have more than 1 colony, you can gift a few cities to colony civ1 and gift more few cities to colony civ2 and so on. so practically you can cover everywhere as you like.

if you have many units and you have regretted having so many of them, gift them to your colony instead of deleting (if you don't want a war neither).

3) How to trade with it:
you order it what to research. you get resources and techs from it without giving anything in return. but of course after a few trades, the colony will start ignoring you. but still if you get even 2 techs from colony, is it bad. if there are some techs you have left behind, you sometimes don't want to waste even 2-3 turns right, bec most of the time there is a tech that you want urgently. so ask your colony to research that tech. they can get some small techs.

4) when to build it if you want an effective trade partner:
colonies are like barbs. because they are very less civilized. they can't behave cleverly, not even close to an AI. the earlier you build the colony and the more cities it has, the more AI-like and AI-wise it becomes. so build it as early as you can.

5) inside the game parameters, it can have even more positive effects maybe, i don't know.

6) still, i would also like the colonies to have more effect on game.a little more boost could be fine.
For example a trait or civic might have been made correlated with it just like below:

IMP trait: gives 1free GG per each vassal (only vassal, not colony)
gives +1 great person (great merchant) birth rate at the capital per each vassal & colony

strange it would be

 

[Yxklyx]

If you only have 1 city on an island do you suffer an additional maintenance penalty or does this only occur when you have 2 or more cities on an island. It sounds like there's an additional maintenance cost for any island/landmass with at least _2_ cities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Colonial maintenance doesn't start getting bad until like 4+ cities if you use courthouses. Colonial maintenance is capped at 2x distance maintenance, so 0 in SP.

SP city spam can be incredible on terra if you can get it quickly. Workshop/watermill spam in the new cities causes them to develop to their potential very rapidly since all you need is granary/forge/factory/power and your city is running 100% on 2F 4H or 1F 5H tiles. Given the setup costs (including time to return investment) of corporations this will likely dominate them badly.

A good example is madscientists earth18 RPC using england and an empty new world.

 

[conception]

Colonies easily make sense for a master country when one needs to reduce maintenance. But that's about all they will do unless they were established using cities that have been fairly well developed already. Otherwise, a colony's economy will be so poor that it will rarely have any true effect on the game at all other than merely taking up space.

It's a real shame that colony creation doesn't work well at all when settling a "new world" because the cities will be so far behind in development. The game simply can't recreate the rise of a new world power to becoming the dominant power in the world, with some of the world's primate cities (NYC).

 

[kivanc]

Colonial maintenance doesn't start getting bad until like 4+ cities if you use courthouses. Colonial maintenance is capped at 2x distance maintenance, so 0 in SP.

SP city spam can be incredible on terra if you can get it quickly. Workshop/watermill spam in the new cities causes them to develop to their potential very rapidly since all you need is granary/forge/factory/power and your city is running 100% on 2F 4H or 1F 5H tiles. Given the setup costs (including time to return investment) of corporations this will likely dominate them badly.

I agree totally. That's why i included coloneis can be used if you don't want SP.
SP is very powerful inspite of its corporation nerf. I generally don't bother about corp and adopt SP in most games at least in some part of the game.

The main downside of colony option is that, after some point you cannot control the colony and it starts trade teching with AIs. so colonies are not that good if you already have a clean tech lead in the game.
When you build a colony it starts on the same tech level with you. So you get a few free tech from him in the beginning but then he starts refusing.
but at least about resources, if you demand a resource in the beginning of the colony-build up, i haven't ever seen him to cancel an existing deal about free supply of resources.
but still, building a colony on land of resources that you won't have is not reasonable as well.

colonies are mainly used for military purposes in late game and covering land faster especially in mid game+happiness. you cover territory so fast and you don't pay any mainteance.


shortly, in spite some advantages, i believe colony option requires a boost. also building many colonies should not be possible (2 at most for ex) as it makes the game a little exploited. player should have 2 at most but that 2 should bering better advantages.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Colonies also screw diplo to hell unless you are very good with the mechanics AND you get lucky with peaceweights.

 

[Otaku-sama]

Actually, I have a question. I played a game where I was Dutch and I had an overseas colony that was actually larger and more productive than my original cities. Also, I had an angry Charlemagne and Gilgamesh on that same continent who had zero colonies. Should I have moved my Palace to the new world and trade off my original cities to a colony so I can avoid Charley?