Son of a . .. .. .. .. .! You might be right! I'll have to check this.
Can you buy buildings? Where?
This is not a game...
- Thread starter Falk
- Start date
Son of a . .. .. .. .. .! You might be right! I'll have to check this.
Can you buy buildings? Where?
I agree with you completely. I played a few times and it was worth the $30 I paid for the game but the game has no where near the replay value I was expecting.
I'd actually be happy if someone could mod the game so that the other european nations were smarter (maybe beefed up the indians too) and removed the whole REF completely. Sort of like Civ4 but with the Col mechanics of trading and resource management.
Falk: So your argument is this is a bad game because it's possible for somebody to completely miss the point and turn it into a meaningless exercise of how you can win the game by exploiting every little loophole?
And how he "easily" won the game.. Geez. How much time did that guy spent researching forums, trying out a dozen failed other Colonization experiments, tweaking his strategy before he reached this "easy" victory? I guess that wasn't so "easy" was it?
And if the game was so bad, why did this guy waste several hours of his life doing all this? Just to prove a point?
Maybe, just maybe in a twisted way it's because this guys was actually having fun doing it?
Of course that guy was the first to go blastout on a forum how boring this game was after he willingly spent twelve hours going out of his way to prove how boring what he was doing was...
People are weird.
And how he "easily" won the game.. Geez. How much time did that guy spent researching forums, trying out a dozen failed other Colonization experiments, tweaking his strategy before he reached this "easy" victory? I guess that wasn't so "easy" was it?
And if the game was so bad, why did this guy waste several hours of his life doing all this? Just to prove a point?
Maybe, just maybe in a twisted way it's because this guys was actually having fun doing it?
Of course that guy was the first to go blastout on a forum how boring this game was after he willingly spent twelve hours going out of his way to prove how boring what he was doing was...
People are weird.
People are unwilling to concede that they had fun with it in the beginning. It's like this with a lot of games, they pour hours and hours into a game then all the sudden the game "sucks." Well gee yeah, it sucks now that you've figured every little thing out (civilization is the exception to this of course
)Ya it's so freakin hard to please people nowadays. Buy a game for 30$ and if it's not the best game known to man it fails. Geez.
Well just spend your thirty bucks on some movies then. You'll get, what, three movies. Weeee. Better not buy some popcorn with that either.
And people feel "ripped off" here?
Well just spend your thirty bucks on some movies then. You'll get, what, three movies. Weeee. Better not buy some popcorn with that either.
And people feel "ripped off" here?
Sadly I agree with the OP. The philosophy & mechanics of the original Col1 has been completely lost making this game a mere Civ4 mod and not a very good one.
People are hopeful for patches and mods to fix it, but Im left wondering if the makers of this game have enough understanding of the original to actually realise whats has been missed.
the fact that their are a number of buildings in the game which serve no purpose at all, makes it appear that things have been ported with no thought to the role these things fullfil in the game. Hello drydock!!
The other competing AIs are less challenging than the original Col1, if you sail around with a soldier early you can take out every other AI colony without a fight.
ok so because of the civ 4 engine there had to be compromises - but then why keep a 1 square limit around the colony?? in fact what purpose do cultural boundaries serve at all? most the land that get annexed under my cultural boundaries is worthless to me unless I place yet another closely packed town - I can see why the maps are small - what need for a big map when you wont use 90% of it.
If you actually want to plan on winning the game and not just playing a colonization sim then you wont be utilizing statesmen, FF, or education - this is completely counter intuitive to a game about colonization. I wont make excuses or allowances for a sequal which has less gameplay than the original. I can understand their are alot of guys on here trying to see the glass as half full... but this game needs more than a patch it needs a change in philosophy - direction - and some serious thought to rescue it, because whilst Im playing it - Im thinking about how much more fun Id be having playing Civ4 BTS or Col1. Sorry you can think me a
if you like.
People are hopeful for patches and mods to fix it, but Im left wondering if the makers of this game have enough understanding of the original to actually realise whats has been missed.
the fact that their are a number of buildings in the game which serve no purpose at all, makes it appear that things have been ported with no thought to the role these things fullfil in the game. Hello drydock!!
The other competing AIs are less challenging than the original Col1, if you sail around with a soldier early you can take out every other AI colony without a fight.
ok so because of the civ 4 engine there had to be compromises - but then why keep a 1 square limit around the colony?? in fact what purpose do cultural boundaries serve at all? most the land that get annexed under my cultural boundaries is worthless to me unless I place yet another closely packed town - I can see why the maps are small - what need for a big map when you wont use 90% of it.
If you actually want to plan on winning the game and not just playing a colonization sim then you wont be utilizing statesmen, FF, or education - this is completely counter intuitive to a game about colonization. I wont make excuses or allowances for a sequal which has less gameplay than the original. I can understand their are alot of guys on here trying to see the glass as half full... but this game needs more than a patch it needs a change in philosophy - direction - and some serious thought to rescue it, because whilst Im playing it - Im thinking about how much more fun Id be having playing Civ4 BTS or Col1. Sorry you can think me a
if you like.
Ringtailed
Anthropomorphic Lemur
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2006
- Messages
- 247
But that's not completely missing the point and it's not a loophole: it's a bad design decision. In C4C the entire point is declaring independence ASAP; the game rewards nothing else. Picking the shortest possible route to get there actually is the point! And therein lies the entire problem. The game should be configured to reward gameplay styles other than beelining the WoI.
I agree that if it were not possible to cheese your way through Colonization would be a better and more robust game.
It's just over the top to say "it's not a game" because you can possibly cheese your way through.
The most annoying feature to me is that they player is actually punished for building a successful colony. TO me, there should be a reward for successful strategies and economy building. The most broken feature to me is the liberty bell curve. There should be a hard coded amount of liberty bells regardless of population. That would prevent the early win exploit mentioned above and reward players who take the time to build several large cities.
Civ 4 produces a huge number of different different economies, tech paths, unit choices, leader choices and so on even if your goal is to try and find an optimal path to victory and even if you are trying to exploit everything you can, and the game is still challenging at hard difficulties. Because it is fundamentally a good strategy game.
Compare that to Col2. It produces broken optimal strats because its REF mechanics are fundamentally broken and exploitable.
Compare that to Col2. It produces broken optimal strats because its REF mechanics are fundamentally broken and exploitable.
Vladesch
Warlord
This would be simply fixed by making the kings army dependant on difficulty level only. If you want a high score, declare earlier. Also if you declare too late you get beaten by other nations potentially.
Punishing you for generating bells is just stupid IMO.
Second point id like to make, is that I don't really like the concept of the game of having to beat the king. Id sooner be playing against the other europeans. OK I know that would be throwing history away and a completely different game, but it would make it more interesting for me anyway.
Ive gone back to civ4 for now.
Punishing you for generating bells is just stupid IMO.
Second point id like to make, is that I don't really like the concept of the game of having to beat the king. Id sooner be playing against the other europeans. OK I know that would be throwing history away and a completely different game, but it would make it more interesting for me anyway.
Ive gone back to civ4 for now.
Rockstone
Chieftain
Playing in the above method is no fun, I agree with you there. But why would you want to? Col2 is not just about winning... sure there is a victory condition and there is some fun in achieving it.
But where is your sence of history? I for one like to create a little empire and "improve" it. A few colonies of my own, a few ones stolen from the local neighbour, a little improvement and a little growth. And all of this for the purpose of a victory and my "empire builiding" wishes (there is a little dictator in me - so what!).
You found a (German) shortcut. Its no fun... so dont do it!
Its like a cheatcode. They ruin games (I haven't played Age of Empires (nr. 1 - yes, I am that old) since I fould that little laser-guy.) Cheatcodes ruin games.
My suggestion to you. Forget the above method and you may just end up with a nice game (I'm hard on my way to forgetting I read your post). Sure the game can be improved (I like band aid mod) and I am waiting for that. But I'm not going let it ruin my games... Until ETW comes along anyway. Or Firaxis comes up with Civ V.
ps. I've deleted part of the quote just to size it down a bit.
Falk
Prince
Well, your use of quotes in "improve" is more telling than you may think. My whole point is that creating a little empire doesnt improve anything, but does the very opposite. I do agree with you and Axxon in the sense that if you ignore the whole objective of Col2 it does turn out to be a game and it does provide some fun.
But ideally, Col2 would do that for both sandboxers who dont care for the objective and players who'd like to win. Like Civ4:BtS does. What CmdrGoob said:
Civilization does reward civilization, Colonization does not reward colonization. This is my argument, not the simple fact that it's possible to win the easy way using exploits.
Tavenier
King
I like the unfinished product. And it's clever. You will have thousands of betatesters for free, hell, you even get paid by them (30 euros). Because then you can alter some things by popular demand. Maybe they were not sure to program the REF like this or some other way. Now they know a lot of players dislike it and want to see it improved or altered. They can work on that now. I see it as a sort of evolution. Done by thousands of players who love the game it will become.
mostly_harmless
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2003
- Messages
- 26
I'd agree with the OP. It might be possible to argue that making a large colonial empire is still beneficial as you won't have much of a score if you get independence with only one city. But that misses out the fact that there are usually other European powers in the game.
In my last game I was half way through a war of independence with my spiffy 9 colony empire with its intrictate trade network when suddenly Simon Bolivar beat me to independence (this is Explorer difficulty). Simon Bolivar had spent most of the game in a never ending war with the Arawak, which involved him getting half his colonies burnt down. Yet with his remaining 3 piddling colonies he managed to hold off the REF I assume because he also hadn't produced many liberty bells either. So Bolivar won the game not in spite of playing rubbish but actually because of it. Not good.
Unless this is fixed I don't see much point in playing the game, or at least not in playing it with any opponents enabled.
In my last game I was half way through a war of independence with my spiffy 9 colony empire with its intrictate trade network when suddenly Simon Bolivar beat me to independence (this is Explorer difficulty). Simon Bolivar had spent most of the game in a never ending war with the Arawak, which involved him getting half his colonies burnt down. Yet with his remaining 3 piddling colonies he managed to hold off the REF I assume because he also hadn't produced many liberty bells either. So Bolivar won the game not in spite of playing rubbish but actually because of it. Not good.
Unless this is fixed I don't see much point in playing the game, or at least not in playing it with any opponents enabled.
Soneji
Prince and Great Steward
Loved CivIV, hate this and Railroads.
It is quite simple, without being able to properly haggle in trade most of the other game aspects are broken, and quite simply too hard to build infrastructure without being able to take advantage of the locals.
Not impressed with this game in the slightest, its just another spin off from civ not a different and new game as was the original col. No music, crap looking units, things like fountain of youth gone etc.
3/10
It is quite simple, without being able to properly haggle in trade most of the other game aspects are broken, and quite simply too hard to build infrastructure without being able to take advantage of the locals.
Not impressed with this game in the slightest, its just another spin off from civ not a different and new game as was the original col. No music, crap looking units, things like fountain of youth gone etc.
3/10
Sir Ralph
Dragon slayer
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2002
- Messages
- 89
I wholeheartly agree with the OP and many others. This game is unfinished, unbanlanced, unrewarding and, another un-word, unfun. It also feels untested, the fifth un-word. I hope nobody of the betatesters takes offense, but "playing a game early" and "betatesting" are different things and with the glaring shortcomings this game has either the testers were just "yes-sayers" or Firaxis completely ceased to listen with Sorens demise. My money is on the second, unfortunately.
Soneji
Prince and Great Steward
OMG THIS SUXORS!
Let down by Firaxis, just one last time!
Let down by Firaxis, just one last time!
GodBen
Chieftain
I'm not going to say that this isn't a game, but I do agree that it is fundamentally broken. The original Col was near perfection, and this game was supposed to be a remake. However, every change they made to the original in terms of gameplay is deeply flawed.
What makes Civ (and the original Col) so great is the sense that you're not just shaping the world, but you are reacting to the events in that world. This game doesn't do that. Even Spore does this better than Col2, and that game is incredibly shallow in terms of gameplay. I build my colony, the AI builds their colonies, the Natives hang around in their camps. The only time I was ever declared war on was in my first game, which was really just a five minute test to see what the game was like before going to sleep.
In Civ, the world can be at peace one minute, then ten turns later all the major empires are at war. Decisions you make profoundly change the game, and they can come back to bite you in the ass 100 turns later. Col1 had this as well (although to a lesser extent). Col2 doesn't have this at all.
There is two things that need to be done to fix this game, everything else is just superfluous to me.
1) Better AI! The Europeans in particular are terrible. I've never seen any of them declare war on anybody, and the few wars that they have been involved in (Native wars and the WoI) they have been completely incompetent.
2) A fixed REF per difficulty level. The REF should be something you have to overcome by colonial expansion. You shouldn't be able to overcome the REF with one size 10 colony. Having a fixed REF will give you an incentive to expand and grow your empire as the only way you will be able to beat it will be to have lots of people and lots of guns. The higher the difficulty, the larger population you will need. The REF will still grow every once in a while, but only by a small amount, and very infrequently.
I agree with those who say that in Col1 you didn't think about how the REF grew because it happened so naturally. The entire game felt natural, you hardly thought about the mechanics at all. This game just doesn't have that, and I really do hope they can fix that in a patch, because if they do, the game will go from being average to being absolutely great.
What makes Civ (and the original Col) so great is the sense that you're not just shaping the world, but you are reacting to the events in that world. This game doesn't do that. Even Spore does this better than Col2, and that game is incredibly shallow in terms of gameplay. I build my colony, the AI builds their colonies, the Natives hang around in their camps. The only time I was ever declared war on was in my first game, which was really just a five minute test to see what the game was like before going to sleep.
In Civ, the world can be at peace one minute, then ten turns later all the major empires are at war. Decisions you make profoundly change the game, and they can come back to bite you in the ass 100 turns later. Col1 had this as well (although to a lesser extent). Col2 doesn't have this at all.
There is two things that need to be done to fix this game, everything else is just superfluous to me.
1) Better AI! The Europeans in particular are terrible. I've never seen any of them declare war on anybody, and the few wars that they have been involved in (Native wars and the WoI) they have been completely incompetent.
2) A fixed REF per difficulty level. The REF should be something you have to overcome by colonial expansion. You shouldn't be able to overcome the REF with one size 10 colony. Having a fixed REF will give you an incentive to expand and grow your empire as the only way you will be able to beat it will be to have lots of people and lots of guns. The higher the difficulty, the larger population you will need. The REF will still grow every once in a while, but only by a small amount, and very infrequently.
I agree with those who say that in Col1 you didn't think about how the REF grew because it happened so naturally. The entire game felt natural, you hardly thought about the mechanics at all. This game just doesn't have that, and I really do hope they can fix that in a patch, because if they do, the game will go from being average to being absolutely great.
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