How I won on revolutionary..

[The_Dwarf]

Nice

As far as the REF system is concerned I still dont think its fundamentally flawed. That the size of your empire influences the size of the REF is good because that allows for many different game approaches and you dont have to build zillions of cities.
That said there need to be other factors also that influence the REFs size. Let the REF growing by time additionally to the Liberty bells system should help avoiding ultra small empires.
Building cannons need to influence the REFs size also, otherwise you can build just 100 and have a good laugh.
The Wagon Train things is quite flawed, this should be limited to 1 Wagon allowed by city - that is if you have five cities you cant build more than 5 Wagons.

 

[Blackmantle]

Yea, that pretty much summs it up in a much shorter way than my awfully long post.

Disagree with the Wagon-Trains because actually of em all that has by far the smallest impact. (Food takes quite some time to get and each Train makes for only 1 pop.)
And because it whould be hard to grasp, complicating the game further, especially for beginners. Which imo by now is the biggest issue. Also it seems like the most code-intensive part i whould guess.
So from a point of view minding work+effect that is actually the last thing to mind imo. Perhaps it even works out with just the other things done. All men are free is by design and has a way larger impact on that strategy usually. As whould missions have. And armed natives.


Building many small cities (as opposed to some big ones) has been part of the game till Col 1 (much more enforced there. For players who haven't played col 1: Getting cities to huge without sentiment made the whole colony very unproductive. That at least is gone) so its actally by design and they did chose not much to overhaul that part. Which is fine by me and fits the setting.
And if you look at many features you will see that this is just the way the design works across the board (no maintenance for number or distance of cities, 1-pop-settlements actually offer 2 tiles of yields and are by far easier to get rebellious), few things boosting a single settlement vs. much effecting the whole colony (a factory in one colony effects all others producing raw-materials for it as well.).
That sounds fine for a mod but whould perhaps change the main game to much.

(and ultra-small empires counter to the impression given in the OP undeliberately (i guess) are allready weaker than a colony of many small settlements with perhaps 1 or 2 hubs for big-time-production. Currently augumented by the sheer fact that there is no threat from AI and natives if you play a normal game and don't go out of your way to be threatened.)

 

[Ignol]

I will also point out that keeping control of your cities is utterly pointless, save to keep the artillery from gaining their +50% settlement attack/defend bonus. I have at one point lost all of my cities through crappy planning, but did not lose. As long as you have a citizen or soldier, you can't lose.

Also, once your cities are taken, the REF just sit inside them, occasionally popping out long enough for you to pick them off slowly.

 

[Zhahz]

I already considered what the OP did as a way to win easily but for me - it would be no fun and it's counter to how the game can be played. Can it be done? Yes. Why would you do it? No clue. Does it mean anything in the game is broken. I don't think so.

But I do think the way REF buildup is stupid. You can make thousands of guns, build cannons, buy all of both you can get from europe, import soldiers, ask for both from the King - and none of that alarms him or raises REF count? Refusing cash demands or tax increases has no affect on REF? But raising bells - a nebulous game mechanic concept the king would have no clue about or only be able to measure from thousands of miles away via months old rumors causes REF to increase. Ok...

I'm all for game mechanics but this is pushing it.

So I agree the REF buildup is less than optimally implimented but I don't think winning via boring and unnatural gameplay/exploiting is the way to prove it.

-smaller cities are better- so you will make huge cities just to be sure it's not exploit?

Large pops are doable - you just need more guns/etc and to mobilize more colonists and deal with the larger REF you'll mostly likely get due to it taking longer to build to 50% sentiment. Going for 100% with large pops would be...unpleasant.

-capturing the ai cities very easy- so you wont attack them even if you are a warmonger type?

I don't see Col2 as a wargame and I think it's silly to war against the europeans (although they're beyond annoying most of the time and the fact that you can never wipe them out entirely is also annoying). At the same time it's pretty sad how attrocious they are at defending against anything - they seem to lose any fight that's started from natives and get vaporized by their REFs.

But, do you as a player heavily defend your colonies early? Do you even have guns at every settlement? I bet you don't unless you plan to whup up on natives who *might* counterattack. It would kind of suck if you had to waste precious early resources on heavy defense, IMO - I'd rather be building and leading towards independence than worrying about pointless early wars.

It's also dumb that the AIs push bells early when that's obviously suicidal.

-rebel sentiment should be raised as fast as possible- well, you set the challenge rating here not when you pick a difficulty in the beginning, but if you planning to win you you have to know the mechanism-you have to be fast..

Agreed but it's hardly a secret - it's part of a winning strategy. It's a part of the game the same as settling a decent spot with your first colony is a part of the game.

 

[Blackmantle]

To start with If playing a game for winning (at the highest! difficulty levels) is boring, its bad game design. (take civ4 as an example were its just the opposite)
If (at those levels) you actively have to play way subpar counter to knowledge (which is easily and fastly aplied without huge micromanagement) to have a fun game something is! wrong.

Now if you do so and get whacked real bad (on the lowest difficulty levels) in addition to that it gets frustrating (as said: especially for new players).

So you can't / shouldn't play to the game rules but the oposite is also all! bad? Sorry, that just doesn't work out for a company publishing commercial games.
The evil players destroy their own game experience / their fun because they don't play our perfectly good game as we intended! them to do. Yea...

I guess in that case the devs should take a big dose of your sig. Its about having fun. Not about the player having to find a way hardly to have any chance for fun. Or to simulate history as accurately as possible (Our friends from Portugal (edit:+ Brazil of course sorry for not mentioning you as well right away.)) might object to that claim anyways. )


But that said we sure can agree its still big fun nontheless for some / a majority of us. And the core of the game / concept is a solid one. (And im sure we can agree that some people like and expect polished games on release. And rightly so.)

And what goes a long way in redeeming the whole thing for me is that they have given the community (they did help to establish and foster by designing decent games and the tools to modify them) the tools to fix it fast. (Thats why i do give them credit for allowing the community to fix it. Because they have made that easy. And always supported those modders with excellent tools+encouraging rules. Unlike say EA... ... Spore... Yea creativity... But don't dare to get a peek at our SDK... So much for moddability. And im not even a modder.)


Now i agree that col is not a warmonger-game.
Thats precisely why i dislike the REF/WoI part (and did in Col 1) and at least in a state like the game is now have no qualms to make that part of the game as small as possible (precisely because i don't want to be forced into an hour-long slug-fest). So it helps me have more fun personally (even though i won't use it in my very first game to that extent. But after that, you can bet i do.).
Now that sure dosn't work for anyone. Overall far to much thought has been put into the whole REF + FF deal imo neglecting other things.
But! the game is also at least partly geared towards multiplayer so thats not completely out of the picture. And can't be. Competative games need to offer an acceptable balance were even by using the mechanics to the hilt it still doesn't break the game / fun for them and their contestants.

But: The reason why you don't arm and defend your settlements at all is precisely down to the inactive AI and all-huggy natives. (and again: you don't need to do anything by yourselves. Just pay the natives to do it. No waste of precious workforce and no need to defend your settlements still. The result is just the same...)
Try that in multiplayer and try to make your point so forcefully again.
So while i share your overall point there is a better way to it then just black or white, isn't it? (Col 1 has accomplished that with you not beeing forced into constant warfare at least until the WoI without rewarding you or the AI for downright neglecting it.)

 

[Andvare]

@ Andvare to continue here on our previous discussion / case-study:
The settlements strewn all over the map whouldn't even need to be Pop 2 because if you pick: 'all men are free' you get 2 pop even in your 'sacrificial goats-settlements' of which you can settle 1 just when the ref comes near so they don't raze them. So even much less time needed to get this sentiments up to 50%, another point . Inland you just need the food as mentioned not even those 2 free guys each.

I tried it, and you can pretty much guarantee where the REF lands every time (eastern-most city, dunno if it has to be sea based or not), so you can plan the sacrificial goat well ahead of time.
The 2 pop per city can just be turned into a horrible exploit as I've tried to show in that other thread.
So no 2-pop cities, only 1 pop. Just makes the exploit that bigger.

 

[Ellestar]

The Wagon Train things is quite flawed, this should be limited to 1 Wagon allowed by city - that is if you have five cities you cant build more than 5 Wagons.

You can't rely on auto trade routes if you have just one wagon per city. Micromanagement will become even bigger nightmare. I spend most of my time managing wagons as it is

 

[Gliese 581]

A couple of thoughts about warfare..

It has no place in colonization? History would suggest otherwise. Now if one mean to say that it's not as fun as managing your economy in this series then I agree. But that's certainly subjective and I think that war should be a natural part of the game design. It's a game of competition after all of which war is the ultimate constituent. Why are all these kings sending troops to the New World? Their motives are not to further the philosophical virtues of man by having their subjects blabber about inalienable rights and such, they do it to aquire resources, wealth and power. To that end there were frequent and numerous warring between the new world european powers just like back in europe, to say nothing of the often incompatible lifestyles of the natives and the immigrants moving there from across the atlantic ocean.

I don't suggest to say that the game should be turned into a war first economy second kind of simulation or that you should need huge standing armies early on. After all many of the europeans where in dire straits early on and would not have survied without the help of the local natives.
Just like in CIV there should be some breathing room before the AI declares war on you. So what's to stop you from attacking the AI early knowing this? Give the AI some defenses that they don't use against you for a set amount of time just like in CIV, depending on difficulty and such. I don't see why you need to deviate from a winning formula there. At least something needs to be done imo to stop players running rampant all over the AI seeing as it has such a crippling effect.
Even if the AI could successfully rebel and fight off a REF, attacking them early essentially puts them out of contention for the rest of the game, has anyone experienced a comeback? Not me..
I really liked how you would be forced into war as well as forced into peace in the old colonization. It lent the competition with other AI colonies some excitement and gave you another cause to the despise the king. Of course, you had a way to avoid getting dragged into these conflicts by having Ben Franklin join the continental congress there so I don't have the answer to this.

Like I said before, refering to the REF mainly but also to other things, I'm sure some people can play and enjoy this game fully all the while knowing that they can defeat the king with 100% certainty regardless of level if they use the right exploits, but I'm not one of them.
Even if I put in a self-made rule of for example never deleting a unit, I still know all about getting a cannon heavy army, that I should avoid liberty bells until the very end and then go about aquiring them in a specific way, that settlement defenses like stockades etc are of limited use, that I can refuse demands and so forth. Where is the line between not exploiting weak game design and simply playing the game badly in order to overlook the flaws?
I don't like to use bugs or cheats to beat a game, but to exploit badly implemented game mechanics, yes. Not doing so would mean I'm not playing the game optimally and then I might as well not bother. I'm not the type to enjoy simulation games with no specific aims like The Sims etc, my mmorpg experiences has been geared toward pvp, I never got into endless grind for a new house or item or whatever, that's just no fun for me so.. to me these flawed mechanics in col2 need to be fixed.

 

[The_Dwarf]

You can't rely on auto trade routes if you have just one wagon per city. Micromanagement will become even bigger nightmare. I spend most of my time managing wagons as it is

Hmm I actually agree, one Wagon per town seems a bit too harsh - however there should be some limit.

 

[magwea]

Congratulations on winning a revolutionary Col game in under 250 turns. Consider how terribly most people are doing -on even the easiest settings- on this game speaks for your stategy game skills. Perhaps, that's the nature of finding game exploits.

Some quick observations:
1. The REF exploit that you've pioneered -by deleting most of your settlers to ensure max rebel sentiment- could most easily be fixed by tying liberty bell production and overall population generated from the entire game to the size of the Ref force. Thus, deleting settlers for LB pump is no longer as exploitative. Boliver would still remain a powerful leader, but not much more so than some of the others.
2. Doubling the production cost and import cost of cannons: would ensure that these units cannot be spammed as the combat unit of choice.
3. Perhaps the most difficult to implement; ensuring that enemy AI is suitably more aggressive in defence and attack so as to make it more difficult to capture their settlements and defend your own. At the moment the AI is untested, anyone know if they can even win by revolution before the 300 turns?
4. No longer allow the gifting of unnecessary settlements to the AI players.
5. The hardcore gamers require hardcore difficulty levels so why not make with the cheating computer to even out human game exploits like how all other games do it.

I can see why some would believe the game is broken, but honestly, exploitative strategies exist in most games. Nor do i believe that the game REF exploit would require a complete game redesign: simply a minor patch. Most complainers are comparing the game unfavourably to Civ4 and the other Civ games which had a greater difficulty lvl and more turns: Col is nothing like these games in any way. In fact, i love the way the game length and King's taxation forces you to change strategy through-out -even allowing for crazy no trade with Europe games- an easy revolutionary victory at the end being the satisfaction of a game well played. Great game Gliese 581, nevertheless, perhaps you should have been one of the lucky beta testers.

 

[Delm]

I can see why some would believe the game is broken, but honestly, exploitative strategies exist in most games.

The game is broken somewhat since everything you do well, will just punish you... not reward you like it should. These are not just exploits, they ruin the game...
"No lets not expand further, when we declare independence later the king will just send a much larger force at us"...

The REF increase should be somewhat linear (regardless of what you are doing!)... but ofc be effected by things such as liberty bells. Now that would fix this exploit and many others....

Same thing with churches and schools, either set a max cost because the ever expanding increase in cost (for buying soldiers from europe, to teaching people skills n so on is silly and makes no sense!). Sure there is a supply and demand chain and everything but it's silly... why is hurrying a worthless criminal worth 14 000 gc while I can get a lumberjack for 600 gc instead?
Normally games favor special tactics, such as specialist cities (even col2 do that) but the game kinda forces you to do a lil bit of everything since your schools will be useless after awhile, and so will your churches.

 

[Gliese 581]

I also believe in a linear increase of the REF. I think it could be managed in other ways, but as long as it's hooked on some number and not independent of your strategy there is always some room for exploiting it.
With at least a partly linear increase x units per y turns determined by difficulty level you will always be pressed to grow as strong and rich as fast as possible which seems like the task that should be rewarded.
I didn't really pioneer this strategy, many people thought about different versions of it once the REF mechanics and weak AI defense was made public knowledge on the forums, I'm just the first (to my knowledge) to post a walkthrough on exploiting it all on revolutionary difficulty.
I ultimately hope Firaxis can fix these issues but modders are usually the fastest solution for these kind of things while we wait for a patch.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

I also believe in a linear increase of the REF. I think it could be managed in other ways, but as long as it's hooked on some number and not independent of your strategy there is always some room for exploiting it.
With at least a partly linear increase x units per y turns determined by difficulty level you will always be pressed to grow as strong and rich as fast as possible which seems like the task that should be rewarded.
I didn't really pioneer this strategy, many people thought about different versions of it once the REF mechanics and weak AI defense was made public knowledge on the forums, I'm just the first (to my knowledge) to post a walkthrough on exploiting it all on revolutionary difficulty.
I ultimately hope Firaxis can fix these issues but modders are usually the fastest solution for these kind of things while we wait for a patch.

excellent points and post

 

[Andvare]

I also believe in a linear increase of the REF. I think it could be managed in other ways, but as long as it's hooked on some number and not independent of your strategy there is always some room for exploiting it.
With at least a partly linear increase x units per y turns determined by difficulty level you will always be pressed to grow as strong and rich as fast as possible which seems like the task that should be rewarded.
I didn't really pioneer this strategy, many people thought about different versions of it once the REF mechanics and weak AI defense was made public knowledge on the forums, I'm just the first (to my knowledge) to post a walkthrough on exploiting it all on revolutionary difficulty.
I ultimately hope Firaxis can fix these issues but modders are usually the fastest solution for these kind of things while we wait for a patch.

Yeah, we had, together with Blackmantle, a nice discussion about the exploits possibilities in this game. Also the thread about genocide provided some good ideas.
I'll also be doing a OCC on Revolutionary once I'm done with my immunochemistry test tomorrow, just to show how far this exploit can be taken.

 

[player1 fanatic]

One of the reasons why this worked is due to REF being directly tied to liberty bell generation.

The bigger the empire, the higher REF (since more bells are needed).

Smaller empire, smaller REF.

Game mechanics pretty much punish expansion.
No wonder why killing natives is good, while conquering and keeping colonies of other europian powers is not so much.

 

[r_rolo1]

I wonder why they didn't tied the size of the REF mainly to the % of revolutionaries and not to the bell stockpile..... it wouldn't cut most of the exploits by it self ( atleast it would need a tweak in the REF size per colony size too ), but it would not punish bigger colonies like the current solution does... and probably would make a lot more sense

 

[player1 fanatic]

I wonder too.
I guess idea was to reduce "bigger is better" effect from Civ4, but in this case it backfired.

Maybe some combination of those two could work best. Like most of REF to depend from rebel sentiment, but liberty bell generation to have some (smaller) effect so that small empires don't get gimped too much.

 

[Turinturambar]

Using a variation of the exploit I managed to win on revolutianary in 98 turns with the OCC setting on a large map. The other settings were defaults.

Basically you don't need a colony. Use your first two guys hitting indian villages, then found your colony. It should meet three requirements:

1. Inland, so amphibious attacks are not possible.

2. Near a decent forest, cause you want some wood.

3. With decent food so you don't have to worry about feeding your statesmen later.

Initially I used the treasure gold from my two settlers to setup an initial musket trade with the indians and started producing political points to get Peter Minuit.
The dutch were nearby, so I killed them with my soldier for a free pioneer and uncontested villages. I was lucky with the recruits and got a statesman and a seasoned scout cheaply from the docks. The statesman worked on bells to get Peter and afterwards improved the land around my colony. The scout explored the map and I continued trading guns and horses to the natives. Peter arrived pretty quickly and I could buy a galleon and started producing a wagon train and a printing press in my colony.

The treasures and trading netted me enough money for 5 veteran dragoons and 2 normal ones, 2 additional elder statesmen and a newspaper. I deleted the colonists which I didn't need and put the statesmen to work. The dragoons killed a few natives for experience and the elder statesmen quickly got me over the 50% marker. I declared independence and waited for the king to send his 15 regulars 8 dragoons and 5 artillery. With Bolivar's bonus and the experience from the dragoons the fights were pretty onesided, although I did lose 2 Dragoons

So I won a game on the hardest difficulty setting without ever producing a processed good, without producing a single cross and without using more than one unit type.

 

[r_rolo1]

^^And that is the barebone definiton of exploit in this game Very well played, but the game shouldn't be like this

 

[Gliese 581]

Excellent post Turinturambar! You've pushed it further than I ever considered.

Our argument grows stronger..