Do you use colonies?

[sennomulo]

I haven't found much use for colonies to obtain resources. If I see one that I want, I'll just spend the extra pop point and build a city which in the long run will be much more useful and the resource becomes much less likely to fall into enemy hands with time.

Has anybody found a good strategic use for them that I'm not seeing, or are they pretty much useless? I see the AIs building them a lot...

 

[Pounder]

If you are playing 31 civs and you can't build anymore cities because the game has reached the 512 city limit, then it is a consideration.. Otherwise never.

 

[Tomoyo]

Well, if you're playing an xCC...

 

[Bluemofia]

Rarely, but I do use them.

 

[general_kill]

i use them in rhye's mod pack because there are alot of city restrictions which prevents me building cities in mountainous areas and deserts.

 

[mikehunt]

very rarely. usually only if I have a huge number of extra workers and a unit to garison it with or if it is near enemy territory and I need to grab it immediately
normally I'll build a city near a resource instead so that I don't lose a worker

 

[mikehunt]

If you are playing 31 civs and you can't build anymore cities because the game has reached the 512 city limit, then it is a consideration.. Otherwise never.

sorry to go off topic, but I've never played with that many civs or cities, what does the game do at tha point? an error message or something?

 

[HAND]

very rarely ... they just seem like a waste of a good worker in most cases..

 

[BasketCase]

Hardly ever used colonies. The instant the square falls inside another civ's border, the colony is gone and can't be re-established.

In order for a resource to be useful, you have to be able to hold onto it. In a game where the AI's snap up every single square of territory they can get--that means you need a city.

 

[fe3333au]

I use them in mountainous regions or if it will take sometime before the cultural boundaries expand enough to encompass the resource

 

[DBear]

The only times I use them is when there's a resource in the middle of a mountain range where colonists can't go. OR, if it's just outside a city and I don't want to wait for culture expansion.

 

[Steve Thompson]

I use them more often than most people. This is because of my early tendency to be friendly and defensive, and thus to build many workers and settlers instead of military units. I use settlers to built cities as fast as I can (to beat the AI) in optimal places where I know they are going to grow and be extremely important in the future, while my excess workers grab resources in out-of-the-way places after building necessary infrastructure. If it's overseas, however, I build a city since I'll need a harbor. In some cases, I use colonies to grab resources from the AI that I already have (haha!) and station soldiers, when I have enough, in such a way that the AI cannot build a city nearby. Yes, I'm a jerk! Of course, I usually don't play with Barbarians on Restless or Raging, so you may or may not be able to get away with that.

 

[tao]

Another reason for building a colony, is that this instantly builds a road on the tile. If e.g. you just have a slave worker and want to build a road in jungle, you need 18 turns. If you really need the resource/luxury, build the colony.

 

[tR1cKy]

3 good reasons:
1) the tile with the resource is unreachable by settlers (e.g. in the middle of mountains)
2) i need the resource ASAP and can't wait for expanding cultural borders to incorporate it.
3) a quick connection between tiles - as tao said, a colony build a road instantly.

If i'm in ancient age, of course i think twice before sacrificing a worker that way, but if it's a slave i usually don't mind about losing it.

 

[Pounder]

sorry to go off topic, but I've never played with that many civs or cities, what does the game do at tha point? an error message or something?

When you go to settle, you get a message "Too Many Cities". Then you have a settler that you can use to join a city or wait until you capture a city or get a culture flip, abandon the captured city (after you have looted it) and use your settler on the same turn.

 

[thescaryworker]

Almost never, its kinda a waste of time and recources. You don't even get the worker back when you finally make a city there.

 

[Cheeze]

Never. I play on 5 billion maps, so there's never enough mountains to prevent me from building a city.

 

[Goles]

I only build them if I need the resource so badly thet I cant even wait a singel turn, and that doesnt happen very often.
It did in my last game though. I was going for spaceship-victory, and wanted all parts to complete at the same turn to avoid attack from the AI. Then, my one source of uranium disappears. I was able to get a replacement by building a colony between 2 of my neighbours who were happily beating eachother to death at the time. It only saved me one turn compared to using a settler, but at the moment every turn counted (two other spaceships on the way).
But as I said, this REALY doesnt happen very often. Better to build a city.

 

[Scuffer]

Like Goles, only if it can not wait a single extra turn - like hooking up some iron as soon fool declares war on me. It's happened to me once.

 

[Roxlimn]

Occasionally, the value of a luxury commodity may exceed the worth of the Worker set to build to it, especially if you're Agricultural and can recoup the lost Worker relatively quickly, and can use the extra luxury to afford more population in your cities. This is especially true in the AA when cathedrals and the like are not yet unavailable, and you must depend on luxury resources to keep large cities in line.

In general, building the colony only takes precedence from building a city when you have other more important production and/or commerce sites to place those settlers into.