I give up

[DonaldAtHome]

I had three people in city hall of every colony. I had exactly one colonist outside a colony. I had all colonies in negative food production so population would not grow. I refused all tax increases and demands for money. I scrapped all trade ships. DoI stalled at 36% while REF grew from 50 units to 150, then stalled again at 41% while REF grew to 265 Infantry, 67 Dragoon, and 75 Artillery.

Do cannons and wagons count as tories?

A nice game of chess would be better than this dog.

 

[Ethan211]

If you like, attach a save game to your post and we'll try to see if you made any obvious mistakes.
Did you have any printing presses / newspapers built, or any of the founding fathers that give a boost to bell production and were you using Elder Statesmen in your city halls?
Rebel sentiment can be tough to increase, I lost my first game because I badly underestimated how long it would take.

 

[Imagawa99]

I dont know if difficulty matters but i get the impression you need 3 elder statesmen + printing press and news paper to turn a reasonable sized colony, i have noticed that a colony of 15 with only 2 elders in turns very very slowly indeed. Depending on what FFs you got, 3 elders will turn a colony sized 15 in 10 to 15 turns (approx)

Im guessing that your rebellion is stalling because you are either arming soldiers or buying off the docks in Europe, so in your next game build your econamy as you would normaly but when the time comes for you to start building up troops, dont start making soldiers, send your colonists off inland and look for a nice spot with lots of food and make a colony and make sure it has 3 elderstatesmen in it ready to turn it rebel when you want it to, and get as many expert farmers in there as you can. This colony doesnt have to produce anything its just there to rebelise your soldiers. When its full make another etc etc and when you finaly go independant just empty those farmer colonys out and give them all guns

Personally i think a colonist born in the new world should be rebel by defaut and dont even get me started on native converts

 

[Ethan211]

Personally i think a colonist born in the new world should be rebel by default/QUOTE]
This is a good point.
I think rebel sentiment should be calculated for each colonist, and soldiers should be influenced by the city they're stationed in or closest to. They can't be taken right out of the mix because then you could turn everyone into a soldier the turn you want to declare independance, but having them 100% tory whenever they're in uniform is not a great mechanic either.

 

[Dale]

For PatchMod, I plan on converting the whole colony rebel sentiment to unit based. So your statesmen will convert units to rebels (instead of the whole colony). Once the unit is a rebel they can leave the colony and will still count as a rebel for national sentiment.

I personally think this would be the perfect model for counting rebel sentiment, and would solve all these problems of stalled sentiment, not being able to hit 50%, etc etc etc.

 

[Captain Pugwash]

Yes, this is still an issue. I am now playing difficulty level 3 (Explorer). I have suffered before with stalled rebel sentiment so I thought I was well aware of how to avoid it. But still in my current game I have struggled to get it to 50%.

For me, the mechanics of rebel sentiment need a rethink and a patch.

 

[dalgo]

Obviously it depends on your method of play. I prefer to crank out liberty bells from the start and have no trouble getting to 50%, but I wait until it is 75% (around turn 200) before declaring. The best thing about that tactic is you get a decent size REF to play with.

 

[Babibo]

@ Dale

I have to disagree on the unit-based rebel sentiment. I think it would add micromanagement to a game that really doesn't need more. However, I guess a discussion about this is happening somewhere else so I won't argue.

The problem of stalled rebel sentiment has its solution : either your population is too big (so next game, try to plan to have small colonies from the start - 4 or 5 size 8-10 settlements are enough) or you don't have enough Elder Statesmen - Printing Press - NewsPaper. Remember that units outside the settlement count, but cannons and wagon trains don't.

EDIT : and install Dale's mod before quitting this game. It makes the game much more interesting. I'd say it's almost playable with it (sorry to the developpers who spent their time on it, but frankly, the game is too easy as it is now)

 

[Babibo]

BTW, I made some calculations :
Going from a rebel sentiment of 0, and starting producing whatever number of liberty bells you can produce you'll reach 66% of the maximum rebel sentiment you can reach after 10 turns, 80% after 15 turns, 88% after 20 turns (if the number of liberty bells produces doesn't vary, which is not the case, but anyway, it's just a model)

An example : if after 10 turns, your rebel sentiment is 25%, you'll never reach 50% unless you delete some colonists.

 

[Dale]

Actually between then and now, I've just though of a new method which might work well, without adding micromanagement.

Citizens in colonies work as they do now.
Units outside colonies are able to be converted on an individual basis by being fortified in a city. That way they can stay "outside" the colony, but still receive the bell influence from the city.

 

[DonaldAtHome]

I had only one soldier, everyone else was a colonist. Even the pioneers were given jobs inside the towns. I stockpiled guns to call up the army after DoI. I did import people from Europe, statesmen mostly. I had three people in every town hall, but not all were statesmen. I had Printing Press and Newspaper in most towns. I had a university in Jamestown where I was converting petty criminals to statesmen (politicians). It just seemed "right" somehow.

Personally, I think you should be able to DoI any time you want. If you DoI at 40%, half the remainder (.5 x 60% = 30%) are loyalist and the other half don't care. In this case 30% of your population supports the King. Half of that should stand up as troops (10% Infantry, 5% dragoon) and the other half (15%) just vanish (they don't fight, but you can't use them either). Also, 30% of colonists outside the colonies should do the same (soldiers, dragoons, cannon, pioneers, people in transit) and so should your ships. And one of your top three largest towns converts completely to Tory (all it's population counts toward the 30% Tory conversion), which would concentrate the loyalist troops in one spot.

Example:
DoI at 40% Rebel = 30% Tory and 30% Neutral.
Population = 200, so 30% Tory = 60 population.
A town of 15 goes Tory.
Half the Tory (.5 x 60 = 30) population just vanishes from Rebel towns.
Of the remaining 30 Tory population, 15 are in the town.
The other 15 stand up as 10 infantry and 5 dragoon.
Half of them (7 infantry / 3 dragoon) appear in the Tory town.
The other half (8 infantry / 2 dragoon) are scattered around.

Now imagine doing that with rebel sentiment at 20%. REF would be small but Loyalist forces are large. We could have a new topic: What is the lowest rebel sentiment you ever had a successful DoI with?

 

[Ethan211]

Wow, another really interesting idea, about having to fight some of your own people. I just did a little reading and I guess this did happen to some degree during the real revolution, though it sounds like most loyalists just tried to keep their heads down, while some fled and a few fought with the British.
As far as how rebel sentiment goes, I don't think having it be unit-based would necessarilly add micromanagement, it would just work better than it does now if you chose to ignore it but also be something you could tweak to your advantage if you wanted to.

 

[Bad Brett]

Wow, another really interesting idea, about having to fight some of your own people.

...And guess what? This was (of course) a feature in the original Colonization . If you didn't have 100% rebel sentiment in all your colonies, you'd eventually get a message saying "Tori uprising near <Insert Town name>". Then a Tori soldier would show up outside the colony and attack it. This often happened in smaller, undefended inland cities, which seems to make sense.

 

[DonaldAtHome]

...And guess what? This was (of course) a feature in the original Colonization ...

Man, you guys are killing me. I thought they did a mostly good job with this game, except for a couple of major FUBARs. The more I read, the more realize just how bad this game really is.

Is there a good tutorial someplace that explains EXACTLY how rebel sentiment works? If sentiment is 10% in a settlement, does every colonist born there start with 10% RS? Indians convert and start with 0%. Europeans start at 0%. I am trying to play the game logically, and there was NO rebel sentiment until after the French and Indian War. G.Washington wanted to be a British officer but they snubbed him. I wait until my colonies are developed and then start building sentiment. If where a colonist starts the game affects their starting sentiment, that could be my major problem.

 

[scottfreitas]

Man, you guys are killing me. I thought they did a mostly good job with this game, except for a couple of major FUBARs. The more I read, the more realize just how bad this game really is.

Is there a good tutorial someplace that explains EXACTLY how rebel sentiment works? If sentiment is 10% in a settlement, does every colonist born there start with 10% RS? Indians convert and start with 0%. Europeans start at 0%. I am trying to play the game logically, and there was NO rebel sentiment until after the French and Indian War. G.Washington wanted to be a British officer but they snubbed him. I wait until my colonies are developed and then start building sentiment. If where a colonist starts the game affects their starting sentiment, that could be my major problem.

This game isn't so bad that it can't be fixed, though. Serious. Good folks like Dale, Snoop, etc are using the tools Firaxis gave us to make the game as good as Col1, a little at a time. Before it's all over I expect we'll all be playing versions which are BETTER than the original, in almost every way.

The one thing that will never be replaced is the old "alarm" system used in Col1, to register Indian anger in real-time. THAT was a thing of beauty. Best AI-warning system I've ever seen in any game, period. God I miss it...

Remember? A far-away village from all your cities would be "blank". Then you'd start seeing green exclamation points super-imposed atop nearby villages. The exclamation points would change shades as Dragoons moved nearby, growing lighter, and even expanding into multiple exclamation points if enough dragoons were present. Over time, the exclamation points would change to blues, then yellows, then finally reds... andoh boy, oh MAN, were you ever in deep trouble when those exclamation points went red. Someone was gonna die, basically. Either your units, or the Natives. UNLESS... and sometimes this actually happened!!... a pissed-off native would arrive outside your city, scold you with a text message (I loved the plump Cherokee chick with her palms planted petulantly over her hips), and then the exclamation point would reset back to green and everything was okay in your world again.

For now.

So long as you didn't piss her off again...

 

[dalgo]

This game isn't so bad that it can't be fixed, though. Serious. Good folks like Dale, Snoop, etc are using the tools Firaxis gave us to make the game as good as Col1, a little at a time. Before it's all over I expect we'll all be playing versions which are BETTER than the original, in almost every way.:

I remember when Civ3 first came out there were major issues with that game, especially the way corruption worked. Over the years multiple patches/expansions improved the game balance to the point where it was a far superior game and I enjoy playing it so much I still haven't got around to buying Civ4. It would have cost a lot of money to make those fixes but Civ3 was Firaxis flagship game and it was always going to be improved as much as possible.

However I have a niggling worry that Firaxis might see Col2 as a bit of a side show while they prepare for their next big Civ game. There might not be the same commitment to fix every last problem here as there would be for the mainstream game. I hope I'm wrong in this.

 

[Ethan211]

Man, you guys are killing me. I thought they did a mostly good job with this game, except for a couple of major FUBARs. The more I read, the more realize just how bad this game really is.

While it's not great, I wouldn't say Col2 is bad, it's just that it pales in comparison to the unbelievableness of the first one; I mean, for me, Colonization forms one part of the holy trinity of Games From When I Was a Kid, the other two being Doom and X-Com.

Now if only Doomsday were more stable...

 

[player1 fanatic]

As general guidance you need LB production equal to twice size of your population in order to eventually gain 50% sentiment. If it's lower you'll never attain 50% rebel sentiment.

To find out your population, go to military screen and count all units with profession (those without profession are cannon/ships/trains and thus, not population).

To calculate total LB production, go to F1 screen and just add LB values from all cities there.

 

[JoeBlade]

@OP: You've probably made the same mistake I have in the game referred to in this thread
What I did wrong there was that most of my colonists were located in a handful of fairly large cities during my LB-generation phase.
That's bad, because large cities have a lower maximum RS and once you reach that maximum you cannot increase it anymore, in turn 'capping' that city's contribution to global RS.

There are only two solutions I know of once you encounter this issue:
1. reduce total population (since it's a divider in the calculation of global RS)
2. build more cities and generate additional RS there. You should continue to generate LBs in your initial cities as well though, otherwise global RS will decay.

Ideally you'll want to keep your cities limited to 15 citizens at the very most during the LB phase and keep total population in check as well. Either that or generate LBs from the very beginning of the game, although that option theoretically leaves the king more turns to add to his REF. I'm unsure whether the latter option would necessarily result in a larger REF though, as I have no idea how the amount of units added to the REF, or the precise turns when they're added are determined.
Anyhow, I've opted for the former option in my recent games and increasing global RS to 50%+ is an absolute breeze now, while the REF is more than manageable.

 

[DonaldAtHome]

You hit it on the nose JoeBlade. I had too many cities and they were too big. Another topic someplace suggested that you limit yourself to 5 cities and start LB production before they get too big.

I limited myself to 5 cities and averaged their size.
1) Port city (only one port because King's Navy makes them untennable)
2) Heavy Industry city (36 guns per turn and cannon)
3) College city (lots of food, lots of master craftsmen)
4) Horse city (lots of food to make lots of horses)
5) Major trade good city (Fur in this case, and lots of it)

Every city created some kind of trade good for export. College town turned most of that into finished goods (lots of master craftsmen) which all went to the port city for shipment to Europe.

Let every town expand once to start rebel sentiment, store large amounts of horses and guns in wagons, then suddenly go into massive LB production. In about 5 turns RS hit 51% and I was able to DoI. REF was too small and victory was easy.

It stinks. I won by gaming-the-game not by playing-the-game. It all comes down to REF. You can work around pretty much everything else, but you have to game-the-game to avoid an overwhelming REF. Too bad.

By the way, there are too many Dragoons in the game. Cavalry played a minor roll in the Americas. Patriots should be allowed no more than one per town. REF should be allowed no more than one per five infantry. Somehow the REF has become Ghengis Kahn and his mounted hordes. Artillery is ok.