Any advantage to creating a colony?

[WTBCzero]

So I was playing a Terra map on Prince, as Joan. I manage to set up a colony on the new world (a bit late, mind, since i over expanded at the start a bit, so economy was in bad shape for a while).

Now not only is there not a single barbarian city in the New World, but I soon as i set up my colony, the colony (Roosevelt) trading away most of my techs to other civs. So i now have no tech advantage whatsoever.


Now, if colonies act like this, is it really worth bothering with them? All you're really doing by settling a colony is creating a opponent who happens to be on good terms with you.

 

[madscientist]

To be honest I rarely set up colonies and if I do it is very early where the economic strain is big.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They save on maintenance costs, but still give you resource access+safe territory, of course it might be a better idea to build Forbidden Palace/Verssailes in the New World (or Relocate your Palace to the New World and keep F.P. in the Old)
(since with 3.13 colony costs are limited by distance costs)

 

[InvisibleStalke]

They are vassals and you can direct their research to help trade. I tend to set them up:

1) Immediately before discovering a key tech - so they don't get that tech to trade away. Or in a situation where the tech race is close and I don't have a significant advantage to lose.

2) In Conquest wins they are really useful - you can create a colony out of conquered territory to get rid of the costs involved before your opponent has vassalized. The colony doesn't help you per se - but it stops your economy from crashing when you are expanding rapidly. The colony also gets free defenders which means you can move your troops forward onto new conquests.

3) They can be used to populate marginal islands/mini continents that aren't close. They don't give a significant help to your economy but it is a way of blocking off land from a rival that might be a lot more useful to them. If you discover Astronomy first, settling some small colonies can deny a lot of land to the AI (only deny them good land of course - you want them to settle the really horrible locations). You can trade resources with your colony so you can get the benefit of the resources without the costs of settling a marginal continent a long way from home.

4) They can be useful after wars of punishment, where you take land on another continent to punish an AI, but you don't really want to spend a lot of effort building up infrastructure etc since it is a distraction from your peaceful victory condition. You may not have vassalized the AI and don't want to return their cities, but nor do you want to pay maintenance for them.

 

[r_rolo1]

^^
5) They are vassals and give you extra ( and diplo - .... )

6) As vassals they are forced to vote for you in AP and UN diplo win votes. With the 3.13 change to the diplo win ( the option dissapears if you have enough votes to win by yourself ), that can be a smooth way of getting back to the cheesy AP win of to backdoor diplo dom win ( of course it requires heavy control of the votes... )

 

[Tonifranz]

I use colonies for happiness. I usually play huge Hemisphere maps with lots of Islands. With my main country in one of the big islands, I plop down two settlers with as many islands that can possibly fit two cities as I can, and as a result, I can get anywhere from 4 to 7 happiness or even more as a result. And I even declared war on leaders just so I can get those islands and create a colony.

It is best to do this when you have rifles or such so that your new colonies have tough defenders.

On my current game, I created Wang Kon, Rammeses, Sitting Bull from isolated islands, and I created Montezuma and Zara Yacob from Hannibal's two islands for a total of five happiness.