More Detailed Colonies

[iOnlySignIn]

Here are some new features regarding colonies that I thought of. They are guided by one principle: To represent the effects of European colonies in original RFC and/or DoC in RFCE, without putting them explicitly on the map.

(1) Colonies should be able to be traded in treaties. Each of them could count as either a small city, or a number of Gold equivalent to their production cost.

(2) They should count towards Domination victory. I think they should count towards Land Area, but not population, because the Resources they provide already allows for better population growth in the mainland.

I think each should count for 1% of Land Area in Domination calculations. This drastically undervalue their area in terms of real life geography, but will help tip the balance in Domination Victories. Currently, Domination encourages you to ignore Colonies altogether, which I think is both unrealistic and monotonous. This will also make it harder for the Ottomans (AI or Human) to win Domination, because of the extra competition of western European colonies.

(3) They should have individual maintenance costs, instead of making Colonialism a High Maintenance Civic. Civic costs depend on the size of your mainland, which has really nothing to do with Colonial costs.

The maintenance cost of each colony should go up linearly so that the total maintenance cost of all colonies will go up quadratically. This way a small number of Colonies will have almost no costs at all but going for a global colonial empire a la England will demand a considerable price, especially for the Human player who tend to spam Colonies.

For example, having 1 Colony will cost 10 Gold per turn Maintenance.
Having 2 will cost 10 + 20 = 30
Having 6 will cost 210
Having 10 will cost 550
And so on.

(4) I have also conceived a set of semi-random Events related to Colonies, such as Native uprising. But those are even more long term.

 

[DC123456789]

Sounds nice, especially the maintenance costs idea. You're right, it's way too easy to just spam colonies. But didn't they run into problems with trying to trade projects (which is what colonies are right now)?

 

[srpt]

titles in SoI are projects and they change owners

 

[dmitrytrue]

I would suggest to make colonies buildable only in coastal cities, and only in cities near Atlantic access resource. For example Spain (human player or AI) will be able to build 2-3 projects at a time, England - 2, not all available colonies at once, like it is happens now. It will be harder for one country to build all colonies and much more challenging. Now it is too easy.
In this case AI Netherland will have a chance to build some colonial projects too.

 

[dmitrytrue]

And also i have a question relating to colonies.
Why Ai doesnt build trading companies? (svn1058)

 

[DC123456789]

Bump.

AbsintheRed, iOnlySignIn has some pretty good ideas.

 

[konkoka]

Sounds nice, especially the maintenance costs idea. You're right, it's way too easy to just spam colonies.

I think the colony maintenance, and possibly hammer cost of the colonies should be connected to the number of colonies already built by a nation. More colonies should lead to higher building and maintenance cost IMO. This will solve the issue when one civ builds the absolute majority of the colonies. And this is also pretty realistic, since no nation can control half of the world, not even today.

I've played this mod pretty many times, and i think i've never seen more than 2-3 colonial powers (usually 1-2, with one controlling almost all colonies)

 

[AbsintheRed]

Bump.

AbsintheRed, iOnlySignIn has some pretty good ideas.

Yeah, I already talked about all of these with him, a couple days before he made the thread
A couple things regarding colonies should certainly be improved, but I'm working on something else now
You guys will be happy I think