Experienced Civ4 player tries Col - woah, WTF?

[vimrich]

Got this game as part of the complete combo pack. I've played Civ games for years, though mostly I like Alpha Centauri (only one with a proper ending, see below). I knew this was not going to be the typical conquest thing either. Still...

My overall reaction after disaster was "wow WTF, I don't even get what I did wrong." This may have been the first time I've ever lost a Civ game against AI only and it was on easiest mode!! And it turns out from reading here, nothing I was doing could EVER have worked. Here's how it played out.

1. First, victory doc says Europe wins if you lose the revolution. For turns, it says the colony with the highest score wins when the turns are up. No mention of Europe winning by turns. I'd wiped out one colony and pinned down the other, so there was no chance there. It was my first time playing so I was taking it slow to experiment with buildings and stuff before the revolution. I knew I would run out of turns, but I wanted to enjoy it (I kept the other colony around to avoid any surprise "you win by domination" which has ruined many a Civ4 game) Anyway, on turn 300 the king wins - WTF?! 15 hours down the drain. Utterly deflating. I really wanted to revolt on that map! (BTW, I HATE the turns rule period - the whole point of turn-based strategy games is time to think and plan and be meticulous with no timers, take as long as you want!!)

2. Revolution - so I start to get ready to revolt, figuring this is going to be fun! So I do what you do when going to war - I set my cities to max out unit growth and turned each new colonist into a soldier or dragoon. I'd got my army up to about half the the REF when I noticed my Reb% wasn't moving up any more. My cities were all 50 to 70% Reb at that point! Another big WTF? After a few more turns of pursuing a pretty basic army building strategy, my reb% actually started dropping! I went from nearly 40% down to 34%. I thought there must be a bug. I looked all over the game for why this was happening, adding even more "statesmen" everywhere, no effect. Thanks to this forum, I now know why this happened, but still, WTF?! Since when is preparing for war the best way to ensure you can't ever have the war?!

3. REF forces - as you might now guess, I was maxing bells for a long time to try to fix Reb%. So the REF forces just kept getting bigger. Every time I got my army about close to half the REF, it grew again. I had originally planned to declare Revolt when my army was well above the REF (I'm a history buff, and knew that the colonial militia was easily wiped out in any real battle with regulars - typically needing 2 or 3 to 1 to have any real shot - my bad for knowing too much I guess). So I check the unit strength stats and realize the game is not based on history as far as regular vs. militia strength so I'll try for only 1 to 1. Twenty turns more and I could see even THAT was never going to happen. I was going to have to revolt with the REF at twice my size or more. I've won wars like that, but at this point I was thinking, if I have to use this level of military strategy on easiest setting WTF?!?!

To sum up: I had dominated the new world colonies, set up a vibrant economy, built up a small core of veterans from early conquest, and then it all unraveled.
- I spent 50 to 100 turns hopelessly trying to get ready for revolt only to see this make it worse
- my army was barely keeping pace with the ever growing size of the REF, maybe even getting smaller in relative strength!
- just as I figured, throw caution to the winds and revolt now, my Reb% starting mysteriously going DOWN, making it impossible even experiment with revolt with my paltry army as is!
- then the king wins with no warning, Surprise!

I didn't even get to see how the REF would appear and I can't even really go back to my save files because I'd have to go back 100 turns at least to have any shot at getting the Reb% back (over half my population is army at this point).

I've always had a beef with how the Civ games end (a little white text message is all they can come up with !?!) but this was the worst end game experience I've ever had. I was LOVING the game right up to the climax of revolt, only to watch as the whole game seemed to fall apart!

I'm going to start over. But still, they needed to be much clearer on the impact of outfitting troops or reset the way Reb% was impacted by it. Since when does equipping a rebel army cause a society to be LESS likely to revolt?

(Even now I feel like I sort of cheated by reading up here what happened, and I didn't get to enjoy figuring it out myself - I looked at the Revolt/REF thread because I thought I might have a bug when the Reb% started to drop).

Oh well, start again.

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

1: Time Victory and Europe Victory are incompatible.
2: Military units not in a city work against liberty bells.
3: Get a bunch of fair-sized cities with veteran soldiers working in them, or just normal people. Have lots of guns and some horses in all the cities. Set as many people to producing liberty bells as possible. As soon as you revolt, take your units out of your cities and fortify them for the +25% bonus.

 

[iggymnrr]

Wait until the fun begins. You can be severely outnumbered and win easily. REF lands in waves which can easily be destroyed. Hint: make sure to have a couple of medics. (IIRC their is a bug which may prevent the REF from getting all it's land forces overseas. I found it best to avoid naval conflict period, avoiding the bug.)

 

[vimrich]

Thanks I get all that now. The problem is the game Reb% stat didn't drop on a city by city basis because the one you see on the game excludes military units. All my new military units were immediately garrisoned or on scout/sleep outside the city so that the city food would keep it at high growth. So basically, in the final phase of the game, I more than doubled my population but kept Liberty Bells output the same because the Reb% per city never suggested there was a need to raise it. Only when I checked the Rev screen did I notice something was out of whack. Even then, there was no real way to figure out why that Reb% total was so far below what the worst of my cities Reb% was.

In every other civ game, the city where you create the unit "owns" the unit so to speak, so upkeep costs or any other impact on the city stats can be seen in that city's stats. Here, the impact of all these new troops outside the cities was totally invisible except on the Rev screen.

I still don't see how anyone playing naturally would figure that out based on what the game doc tells you. It's not like it's a odd strategy to create a massive population wave of soldiers going right into a war. Based on all the "why can't I revolt" threads in here, I think it's a flaw in the game design. The Reb% on each city should show you the impact of all units created in that city - then you would see Reb% stagnate as you added soldiers and could easily add bells to compensate.

 

[dalgo]

The main problem with the rebel % is that there are two values - and the game does not adequately explain the difference. The city rebel % only applies to the colonists working in that city while the overall rebel % accounts for every one of your colonists in the game including scouts, soldiers and pioneers outside your cities.

In most games there is some limiting factor to control the size of your standing army. It is usually food or gold but in the case of Colonization it is liberty bells. The larger army you have the more liberty bells you need to produce to support it (i.e. to reach the 50% independence value).

Many people who have played Civilization extensively have problems adapting to Colonization which is an entirely different game. In my case I started by using exactly the same tactics I had used successfully in the original Colonization and they worked fine. The key thing to remember, as in the original game, is that the REF is only going to arrive a few at a time so you do not need to match them, or even get anywhere close before declaring independence. For instance in my last game I won easily after declaring independence in the following position:

 

[andrewyes]

Does anyone know if the type of terrain gives a defense bonus? I know that in the old Colonization defending a mountain was a big defense bonus and the stupid computer would waste about twenty dragoons trying to capture one soldier on a hill. Or is all the terrain the same defense bonus?

Is it better to have the units defending in the city, I assume they get a defense bonus from the fort? Or do they get a bigger defense bonus defending outside?

 

[dalgo]

Does anyone know if the type of terrain gives a defense bonus? I know that in the old Colonization defending a mountain was a big defense bonus and the stupid computer would waste about twenty dragoons trying to capture one soldier on a hill. Or is all the terrain the same defense bonus?

Is it better to have the units defending in the city, I assume they get a defense bonus from the fort? Or do they get a bigger defense bonus defending outside?

Yes the terrain does give a defensive bonus to your soldiers, but not to your dragoons. You can check by 'mousing over' a tile and you will see it's bonus value. For instance a forested hill tile has +75% Defense Bonus. In addition your soldier also has a Fortify Bonus of up to +25%, depending how long he has been fortified (this bonus increases at 5% per turn).

The terrain also gives a defensive bonus to the Indians, but not to the REF.

If you fortify a soldier in a colony he will get the fortify bonus, plus any terrain bonus, plus a fortification bonus, plus a rebel % bonus, plus any promotions he has. However he will still die to an attacking artillery which gets a 125% settlement attack bonus. Better to kill these with your dragoons as soon as they land.

 

[andrewyes]

I think the problem with this new colonization is the difficulty of the European power. I have played, and lost, several times, on the easiest mode. Its always the same story, the other colonial powers are easy to dominate, the indians are easy to make friends with, but the king is too strong or I run out of time to beat him. In addition, the very things I need to build my colony, work against me: Liberty bells only make the King add more forces to his army, trade with europe simply increases the King's demands, etc.....Trade with my colonial counterparts is not easy because they(similar to the natives) offer a good price the first time you trade with them, then they don't seem to know how to earn more money to continue trading. Its a bit frustrating.

 

[beest]

Yes the terrain does give a defensive bonus to your soldiers, but not to your dragoons. You can check by 'mousing over' a tile and you will see it's bonus value. For instance a forested hill tile has +75% Defense Bonus. In addition your soldier also has a Fortify Bonus of up to +25%, depending how long he has been fortified (this bonus increases at 5% per turn).

The terrain also gives a defensive bonus to the Indians, but not to the REF.

If you fortify a soldier in a colony he will get the fortify bonus, plus any terrain bonus, plus a fortification bonus, plus a rebel % bonus, plus any promotions he has. However he will still die to an attacking artillery which gets a 125% settlement attack bonus. Better to kill these with your dragoons as soon as they land.

Does the defense bonus apply to "regulars"? In the civilopedia it says that regulars do not receive a defensive bonus....?

 

[dalgo]

Does the defense bonus apply to "regulars"? In the civilopedia it says that regulars do not receive a defensive bonus....?

Regulars can only be used by the REF, so their lack of a defensive bonus is to your advantage.