Beyond the sword's colony fee is killing my economy

[charity]

So I just started playing Beyond the Sword. I have only tryed out playing maritime maps (archipelego) on Prince difficulty. However, it doesn't take long before I become bankrupted due to the stupid colony mainenace fee! I haven't even been able to make it past the medieval era before this happens. Even when I played with a financial civ like the Dutch, my luck is the same. How do you avoid this? I really love the cool new civs in Beyond the Sword so it would be a shame if I have to go back to Warlords because of this.

 

[lymond]

Your issues with the economy are probably much more than mere colonies. If you post a save we can probably better identify these issues. I rarely use the colony feature myself anyway.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, if you disallow vassals , there is no colonial fee.

In games that you already have running, a good rule of thumb is that the colonial maintenance will start to get too expensive after 3 cities in a certain landmass that has no Palace. You can ( besides the regular actions to reduce maintenance, as building courthouses and develop a proper economy ):

- Move the palace to a more useful location in this regard

- make the Forbidden palace or Versailles in the landmass you are suffering heavy colonial maintenance. Colonial maintenance can't be bigger than the double of the regular distance maintenance in the same city, so if you reduce the last you will indirectly reduce the first.

- Adopt State property. Same reason as above. No distance maintenance = no colonial maintenance

- Last and least, liberate a colony. That is definitely the worse of the options, since it adds a extra AI to the game and decreases the resources directly in your hands

 

[charity]

Thanks for the suggestions rolo, but this problem starts happening way too quickly in the game for me to even execute one of your proposals. And It would be fruitless to build a palace on another landmass, since I have several cities spread over many little islands.

 

[charity]

Oh, and what do you mean by dissalowing vassals? How do you do this?

 

[r_rolo1]

In the game options before you start the game ( Single player-> Custom game ). Just roll a little down and ...

Spoiler :

 

[rah]

Just out of curiosity, why was a spoiler tag necessary for that?

 

[Pisskop]

^'tis big and I do not want to look at it...

 

[Beerchugger]

This is great advice. On my terra games I may start to disable vassals, its very difficult to colonize the new world when each city costs 12 gold or more at the start.

 

[plasmacannon]

Darn colonies!
Next, they'll throw a our tea into a harbor and demand their independence! What are they good for?


I don't use vassals either, unless I want a situation like 'always war', that has fewer empires at war with me, but then it is usuayy too easy to just tech up and win.

 

[r_rolo1]

Just out of curiosity, why was a spoiler tag necessary for that?

I always spoiler my posted game images, since that I know that in some comps the images I post will make the window too large for the screen ( 15' laptop screens @ 1280*800 will do that , for a example ). As scroling sideways for reading text because of a large pic is something I find midly annoying, I try to avoid doing that to others

 

[strijder20]

I always thought colonial maintenance only started to kick in when you had multiple cities on the same continent/island. In that case, just building your cities on different continents might help.
And what's your maintenance cost without colonial maintenance, by the way?

 

[lymond]

Just out of curiosity, why was a spoiler tag necessary for that?

It's fairly common to spoiler images around here. Often images can throw off the page due to their size. Also, it's a courtesy if posting a lot of images.

 

[r_rolo1]

I always thought colonial maintenance only started to kick in when you had multiple cities on the same continent/island.

Technically colonial maintenance is always present in all cities that are in a distinct landmass from your Palace, but it it only starts to get significant when you have 3 cities in that landmass that does not contain the palace ... and it really starts going out of hand for 4+ .

 

[Pisskop]

What are the exact reqs to found one anyhow? Do they need to be "touching at thye time of founding" or able to work every tile between them (5 tile away cities)... or simpily within a certain proximity... I experimented while in worldbuilder but got bored...

 

[GGracchus]

There has to be 3 cities on the landmass without a palace to form a colony.

 

[elmurcis]

Try playing Earth map as China, expend to some 10 cities in Asia... and than.. conquer Japan and change Palace to that island - you will see what is colony maintence that can crash even 500/turn economy

 

[King Kalmah]

Try playing Earth map as China, expend to some 10 cities in Asia... and than.. conquer Japan and change Palace to that island - you will see what is colony maintence that can crash even 500/turn economy

That was the best RFC game I have ever played as Japan.I did the opposite and conquered China and extended as far west as Russia and as far south as the Philippines and India.It was awesome,but it was a nightmare to move the capitol from Japan to Mainland China esp Mongolia would rise up and rebel every 40 years,,,,

But it was fun I highly recommend either China or Japan for RFC...go for Europe!