Huge mistake, theres no cost of maintenance the army..

Fabiano79

Prince
Joined
Sep 30, 2008
Messages
337
First of all, Im a big fan of colonization.

But playing online has become impossible, since most of the trade part of the game is just unnecessary..

I dont know if more plp feel this way, but if you just focus on food and weapons, you can declare independence really fast.

Since theres no cost of maintenance the army, you can raise a huge number of troops just making food and weapons...theres no need to worry about cigars, rum...theres no need of money to win..

I hope some MOD or upgate solve this...

plz, if someone can prove me wrong plz do.

Sry the bad english
 
Canons and maybe warships should have mainetance cost, but i dont think normal soldiers should have. too easy anyway to convert them colonists then back to soldiers
 
You need money to improve your land, to train specialists, and to buy specialists.
Soldiers still count towards your rebel sentiment, so there is a natural limit on how many you can get, and still go DoI.
 
Let me try explain a litle more...I dont need any kind of especialist, since I dont need money.

What I do when playing online is estabilshed 4-5 setlements, and start making a lot of food and tools - after a litle while weapons.

When the setlements have like 12 pop, Ill have lots of weapons, some of then in wagons.

Then I start making liberty bells.

Finally I beggin the revolution and convert most of the pop in soldiers...by now Ill have some cannons too (Just selling the raw materials the cities produce automatic will buy several cannons or I just make then).

In one hour or a litle bit more I win the game in the fisrt 4 difficulties this way. With another hour I win in any difficult.

For me theres a huge mistake in not having any cost to the troops or the cities..
 
I agree. Beyond the easy-win scenario described above, it is unrealistic anyway. Not only does your standing army not cost any gold, it also does not cost you any food, right? Wasn't one of the key details of the RW Revolutionary War that not only did the army nearly starve during the winter but that the Continental Congress had difficulty paying them -- and so some desertions were the result.

I can live with the fact that the standing army doesn't require food because I already know that that is unlikely to be an easy fix (where does the food come from? if garrisoned in a settlement, it is straightforward; but what if the army is somewhere out in the wilderness? can food be drawn from a wagon train, from natives, etc). But it should be a simple enough matter to build in some kind of maintenance cost for soldiers (and cannon/ships), since CIV has this also (modified by Founding Fathers presumably).

Given that this is a game of extreme micro-management of one's economy, it is odd that there are no maintenance/food costs for the army/navy.
 
Well, if you add maintenance, you'd have to add taxes (Civ4 has both), given you don't have a constant stream of income. It's not a mistake: it's a design decision. The original game didn't have nor need a maintenance system. I don't know how it'd work with it, but taxes would more or less balance the maintenance, which means you're back to square one.

Gold aside, perhaps food maintenance for deployed troops would be a better option. Let's say each soldier consumes one food per turn, so you'd have stocked wagon trains tagging along with the army.

It's not a bad idea, but it'd be hell to code I presume, and it wouldn't be 'fixing' anything, but rather add an entirely new feature altogether. The lack of maintenance might be an issue in multiplayer, but a lot of games lose a lot of their depth online (e.g. zergling rush kekeke!).
 
Makeing the REF scale to the number of Weapons (at least bought ones from Europe.) to a small degree and especially cannons (with way less impact of bells) whould by far be the better road to accomplish what you described.

Standing army can be circumvented, REF-Size cannot. At least if score-victory is not an Option.

The nice thing is that this should work for multi- as well as singleplayer...

So no need to implement new complicated to code things when fixing broken things in a rushed game works just as well or even better while adressing alot of other problems.
 
Well, the problem is an MP player could completely ignore the King and dedicate himself to destroy the other colonial powers (players). He won't care if his REF is over 1000 people, since independence is not in his plans. And if his exclusive objective is to obliterate the other players, they will have a hard time winning through independence themselves. How could they handle their REFs when there's a bully with 200-300 troops constantly harrassing (and perhaps even conquering) their settlements?
 
Very simple fix for any real competative tournament-environement (like ladder) no score victory and european victory on by default (and with fixed assets). Problem largely solved. (still possible tactics but it gains you exactely nothing. It just prevents others from winning. Sooner or later you will find players who don't play that kind of game. And those players will be better in overall scores.)

So simply make it a rule that obliterating other players really brings you nothing beyond the feeling of kicking them into the dirt. (and in a ladder-environment you can't play all competitors at once. So you will lose out against someone who does not.)
Thats what i whold do if i whould be designing the framework for competative multiplayer.

And please don't tell me thats not possible to do for an organizer.

That said even smaller-scale military harassment whould play quite a part. But that could and should be part of a multiplayer-game/strategy imo. It should just not be feasible to always quash everyone else with ease. Thats just not what the col-concept is about.


Nonregulated multiplayer is impossible to balance anyways because the game is very modable / offers many options by default so not much work should be put into that anyways imo. So i fear putting even more effort into that part whould make the game suffer even more.

Fix the game first please (imo. ;)).


Also huge maps (not huge mapsize in col but really huge maps) whould help with that if you have someone going for a fast victory. No? (especially if players starting positions are really apart.) You cant rush 3 other players of roughly your level of skill at once and hope to succeed.

That said i for one don't play multiplayer (and won't play competative one very likely.) and think some of the problems of the rushed game stem from it beeing geared (to much?) towards multiplayer.
 
I don't think gold maint is necessary for soldiers because it's a level of micro that's not really needed.

But it does seem odd that every colonist inside a colony requires food but you can have any number outside and they don't require food. They must be living off the lands. :p
 
Since theres no cost of maintenance the army, you can raise a huge number of troops just making food and weapons...theres no need to worry about cigars, rum...theres no need of money to win..

how are you massing troops with no money? you're getting what 1 gold/food and 4gold/weapon? would take a lot of food and weapons to buy soldiers. i'm sure it's gotta be faster getting an industry and making 4 - 10 times as much per item not to mention you'd be producing more often.
 
"how are you massing troops with no money? you're getting what 1 gold/food and 4gold/weapon? would take a lot of food and weapons to buy soldiers. i'm sure it's gotta be faster getting an industry and making 4 - 10 times as much per item not to mention you'd be producing more often."

Just try..put all your colonist to produce food, or better, go to the indians and learn to be expert fisherman and farmer...and then food, food and food. Buy a hardy pioneer to make farms..and thats it..

You will get +20 or +30 food per turn, 1 citzen every 5-10 turns...cause you dont need to feed any kind of especialist...leave the new citizens out of the setlement if this is better to your food production.

Meanwhile, put someone making weapons...soon enough you will have 5 wagons full of arms...then liberty bells and finally revolution.

Try it, and then let me know.

For me, this has ruined the game. Playing single you still have fun making the trade routes and all the micromanagement...but in multiplayer, where you are in a race to win, theres no fun.
 
You think that's bad; try playing against someone who ignores wearhouses to boot, and spams wagons. No upkeep on wagons either, so they use 1 wagon to "wearhouse" twice as much food as a colony. All they have to do is micro forever (while you read a magazine). That plus no upkeep for troops, and MP opponent can swarm you with almost zero specialists/experts (except maybe Blacksmiths) and full Food settlements.
 
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