my top ten wish list

[dalgo]

I’ve had Colonization 2 for exactly one month now and while I have enjoyed the game immensely there are changes I would like to see to make the game even better. This is my top 10 wish list based on play at four different difficulty levels totalling 187 hours game time (waddya mean get a life? This is my life).

1. Fix the REF: OK, everyone says that. What I would like to see is a larger starting REF (especially at the higher difficulty levels) coupled with a slower increase through the game. This would help prevent some of the worst exploits. And the size of the REF should not be tied just to Liberty Bells; it should also increase over time even if you do not produce any bells. I would especially like to see the REF size more dependent on the difficulty level so a new player on the easiest level does not face an impossible end game.

2. Improve the Foreign Nations AI. At present they often have only a single soldier defending their largest colony late in the game. Make them as tough to conquer as the Indians.

3. Give the King more say in the game then just raising the tax rate. For instance, in the original game he would start a war against one of the other nations and supply you with a free soldier to help fight it. Veteran soldiers are more valuable now so that might make fighting an unexpected war worth the trouble. Tie this in with the improved AI (above) so that they attacked you more aggressively than they do now to make you take the war seriously. There would have to be a means of preventing you from immediately making peace however or it would be too easy to exploit.

4. Improve Indian trading; especially allow a ship to sell a single hold of goods rather than having to sell the whole shipload at once. Also lower the initial tribal gold reserves but increase them at a faster rate through the game. At present there is too much cash available from villages at the start of the game. Why set up your own colonies to trade 50 furs for $200 when you can make 10 times that by gun running.

5. Increase map sizes and allow the 4 starting positions to be more spread out. In a recent game the French established Quebec 3 tiles from my capital and the English settled Jamestown 4 tiles on the other side (on a Huge map!). OK they were soon my towns but still … The Western Hemisphere scenario truly is a huge map and you are exploring for much of the game. Surely the custom game maps can do the same.

6. There are a couple of annoying message that I would like to be able to turn off. The Warehouse overflow message is valuable early in the game but just a nuisance during the WoI. Also there is no need to ask me if I want to declare war every time I move a unit onto the same tile as an Indian brave. If I want to go to war I can do it on the Foreign Advisor screen.

7. Automatic trade routes work OK now, although I’m sure I could make them more efficient of I could design the actual route myself. But they totally fall apart during the WoI. What is needed is a ‘war time’ switch so that when you turn it on all automated wagons must end their journey in a colony each turn, avoiding any enemy troops to do so. If they can’t reach their destination colony that turn then they don’t start. The object is to keep the trade routes running regardless of the battles raging around them.

8. Training. With native villages now able to train multiple times and all specialists available for sale in Europe, training in colonies is not critical to gameplay. But it is part of the game so make it more user-friendly by putting a cap on the maximum time needed to train a student.

9. An important feature of the War of Independence in the original game was intervention by a foreign power. If you churned out enough liberty bells they would turn up in a Man-o-War and deliver you some free troops – and then let you keep the Man-o-War! I can’t think why this feature was dropped and would like to see it reinstated. If you are struggling in the war then the additional troops would be a boon, or perhaps the Man-o-War might enable you to switch to a naval strategy.

10. And the score – the original game had an excellent scoring system that should be used here. Col2 is basically a trading game; so include your final bank balance in the score. That would encourage you to try and beat the blockade after independence. It is also a colony management game so your total population should count as well as your culture boundaries. The Rebel Sentiment is an important part of the game so the value when you declare independence should be a factor. You could perhaps be rewarded for keeping good relations with the locals. The number of Founding Fathers you have in Congress should still count of course but no way should the tax rate be included. To counteract all that have a large victory year bonus that reduces during the game to reward you for early independence. Then multiply the result by a difficulty level factor and show all the values on a final screen as the game ends.


This is just my own personal list. It is based on the ‘vanilla’ version; some issues may have already been addressed in Dale and Snoopy’s mod, which I haven’t played yet.

What changes do other players want to see made to the game in an official patch?

 

[Imagawa99]

Add the missing tiles.. savanna, prairie and swamp and move limited tobacco growth back to marsh and sugar to savanna and swamp, give mountains their 150% defense bonus back
Add limited ore production to swamp and bring back surface minerals

Bring back the missing forest types for the respective tiles(broadleaf, conifer, arboreal, mixed, rainforest, tropical(jungle?), scrub(light?) etc) and rebalance fur production for the different types - bring back prime timber

Greatly increase mapsize

Beef up the native ai. Bring back "we are the Cherokee, a peaceful tribe of 23 villages" - something that would make you think twice b4 trying to steamroller them
Natives shouldnt be a speed bump, they should be a civilization with the desire to survive - if you attack them they should go to war properly not skulk in the undergrowth, if you treat them fairly they should be loyal and friendly, if you treat them as allies then lets see them support your fight for indipendance, even to the point of going to war on your european power, nomatter how pathetic that fight migth be.
Remove boarder expansion, the 9 squares ok maybe but no more natives handing their settlements over to you and then saying thankyou afterwards. In fact the entire boarder expansion mechanic could be reworked to be invisable after the 9 squares, but the more you press against native lands the more upset they get... which leads me on to native alarm bring back the angry exclamation marks

Bring back the indian adviser !!!!

Native converts should stay that way and rebalance the european docks/crosses mechanic. Its quite easy to massively boost your population with converts that become colonists so needing to generate more and more crosses has failed as a population limiter and it just feels wrong, same goes for the education limit, im usually making enough gold that i can buy whatever i want off the docks anyway (too much treasure) and end up almost completely ignoring education because of its stupid mechanic. Also perhaps the natives dont want to be converted? mass mission spamming and blatent attemps to enslave the natives thru the word of god should probably cause a negative reaction, missions with your allies is one thing but atm you can just mission every settlement without even trading with them and just milk them for converts

Fix the natives gold/trade mechanics, give them enough gold regeneration to trade with you for the entire game but also make them more picky about what they will buy off you "we do not want your worthless coats, we will not trade with you further until you bring us something of value" - and give them something to sell!!! maybe if they had something i wanted to buy they wouldnt go bust all the time - 16 ore isnt worth anything to me, surly they can do better than that
Natives (at least some) should have the ability to breed horses at an advanced rate, so once they have them they will rarely run out and can always replenish their supply, also give all native settlements a limited desire for tobacco if they dont have a source (grassland square), somehow that just seemed right to me

Greatly lower initial meeting gold gifts from native settlements, its too easy to just go round milking them, keep the city dwellers rich but the tipi dwellers poor, and bring back the very occasional big score (seven citys of cibola)

Fix the other european powers ai, they are pathetic, they dont even defend themselfs at the start and they are little better as the game progresses, i can remember in the original col the european ai would actually go to war with you and streams of dragoons would arrive, they would actually take colonys off you - lets see that come back
If you sign open boarders with another power they often send privateers that sail up and down outside your colonys, and even move thru your colony square...hmmm i wonder who that privateer belongs to? also fix the placement of your fishermen when ships pass outside, its seriously annoying to have to go in an rearrange them every turn because a ship went past

"spanish fort opens fire on privateer!" give forts and fortresses the ability to bombard ships again

Bring back fountain of youth also bring back the possibility that trespasing on that native burial site might cause them to war dec you - make it a proper gamble when you take a goody hut like that, this also might make the FF that gives you double gold chance actually useful
I think the FF mechanics need a little work tbh, let all powers get all FFs reguardless of if another power has taken them or not

The REF being connected to liberty bells is a bit of a game breaker for me, it warps your entire game plan around avoiding having to fight a stupidly large force, i havent got any good ideas as to how this could be changed tbh but it really does need changing, it changes the games focus from being a game about colonising the new world and interacting with the natives to a game about making lots of guns and a few useless colonys and then doing the quick liberty drive and winning

and if they impelent even half of this ill publicly proclaim Firaxis the greatest company ever and worship Sid as the second coming

 

[DonaldAtHome]

Excellent stuff except for number 7. The Talaban does not sit still and watch Allied supply convoys roll past because it's "America's turn". Once WoI starts, automated trade should either stop so you can move escort units with the wagons, or you should be able to assign escorts to the wagons to move with them while they perform automated trade.

Number 9 is especially good, but I would like to add Loyalists to that. The lower your rebel sentiment, the higher the chance of Loyalist units standing up.

Trading with the Indians: Eliminate the need for wagon trains and allow you to "Link" any town within three tiles directly to the indian village. Trade with them is probably small in volumn and should be a simple mechanic on the settlement management screen.

Initial contact with Indians: Gifts from them should be goods like fur, tobacco, silver, food, and a little gold (10 to 20 range) but only from certain tribes (Inca/Aztec).

 

[Daniel Shays]

My top wish is that you do not prepare for the inevitable war of independence from the day you land in the new world.
Imho the game should be about setting up a profitable and sizeable colonial empire with the possibility but not a certainty of getting at odds with the king and fighting for independence. "Your" king should not automatically be the worst enemy from turn 1 but a promoter of colonization for the greater wealth and power of his realm (which does not exclude the possibility that he may become your worst enemy later on). There should be options, victory conditions and scope for the game to be predominantly one of building and trading or to include quite a lot of warfare whichever the individual gamer prefers.

The crown could formulate objectives ie. colonizing missions and give support if you pursue these.
The crown should also have it's own diplomatic agenda and ask you to play along (clash of interests on the game map should be pimary, with a minor random chance of war or peace due to European matters)
There should be a possibility of settling disagreement with the crown but also a possibility to move towards rebellion and independence.
Up to the point of rebellion culture should perhaps be English, French etc rather than Liberty Bells.

 

[wurrble182]

..basically bring back everything that was left behind from colonization 1 ... it was ALL good.....

contintental warriors or w/e they were called especially!!

surely all they need to do for the REF is base it on difficulty/time/random events/pleasing the king/ and heck why not a civ style "raging hordes" kind of option for REF size - tame, standard , or raging hordes for all you hardcore mentalists who really want a challenge

surely thatd please everybody? best idea ive heard all day

*with an appropriate final score adjustment of course

 

[Imagawa99]

yeah well... you can add to my list native demands, natives intercepting waggon trains and demanding goods, natives stealing stuff from your colonys and moaning that you are "over using" the land near their villages

i also think the FFs need alot of work tbh.. i mean 1 free caravel? in a game where you can buy a galleon on turn 15 cause you sold guns to the natives.really whats the point in that? stuff like +50% tobacco production is next to useless aswell tbh, the FFs really need looking at

 

[UWHabs]

..basically bring back everything that was left behind from colonization 1 ... it was ALL good.....

contintental warriors or w/e they were called especially!!

surely all they need to do for the REF is base it on difficulty/time/random events/pleasing the king/ and heck why not a civ style "raging hordes" kind of option for REF size - tame, standard , or raging hordes for all you hardcore mentalists who really want a challenge

surely thatd please everybody? best idea ive heard all day

*with an appropriate final score adjustment of course

It'd be interesting to set landing options for the REF. My current game the REF was like 120+ soldiers and 24 MOW. They only land about 16 units a turn. Granted, it's 16 units every turn without a break (my first game they only had like 7 MOW, so I had a few times where nobody landed for a turn or 2), but imagine if they came with 24*4 units on the first turn. Even if they landed 50 units day 1, no way would I have been able to fight them off.

 

[Imagawa99]

bring back the possibility that trespasing on that native burial site might cause them to war dec you - make it a proper gamble when you take a goody hut like that

In my current game this has actually happened i have never seen it before either but i got the pop-up about native burial ground and when i took it monty war decced me!!

I think what happened is i had a treasure train going to my port and its walked over this site, but now i think of this perhaps thats one of the skills of a seasoned scout, just like a seasoned scout never seems to get killed from a goodie hut the way a colonist scout will - perhaps a seasoned scout will never have a negative outcome from a burial grounds challenge and thats why i have never seen it b4

 

[dalgo]

In my current game this has actually happened i have never seen it before either but i got the pop-up about native burial ground and when i took it monty war decced me!!

It happened to me too. In my case I was walking a treasure back home and it went past a burial ground so I thought ' I wonder what would happen if ...' - and I was at war with the Arawaks. Since then I have only used seasoned scouts and it hasn't happened again.

 

[Knaken]

The REF being connected to liberty bells is a bit of a game breaker for me, it warps your entire game plan around avoiding having to fight a stupidly large force, i havent got any good ideas as to how this could be changed tbh but it really does need changing, it changes the games focus from being a game about colonising the new world and interacting with the natives to a game about making lots of guns and a few useless colonys and then doing the quick liberty drive and winning

I think the liberty bells should only have only positive influence on your game like in colonization.

The REF size should be influenced by the amount of tax you pay to your king (included by treasures sold to the kings galleons for 50%). That would actually encourage you to trade more with natives and fellow european powers or hold the odd harbour party to keep the taxes low.

 

[DonaldAtHome]

I sent a Free Colonist to an Indian village to learn tobacco growing. On the way he did something to make the natives angry and they killed him. No war, but they took his scalp. (There should be an animation where your colonist dies and the Indian waves his scalp around.) Someone in another thread asked about wandering animals, like Civ-Games. Animals would be wrong (IMO), but occasional Indian Raids, or small war parties would be interresting.

Any time you turn down the King's demands it ought to make the REF larger. Any time you give into his demands it ought to make REF smaller. The King ought to have more options too. "I forbid you to build a colony there" instead of telling you not to go inland or there is not enough food in that spot.
"It is the royal wish that you build a Frigate to combat piracy."
"You are ordered to destroy the *country* settlement of *town name*"
"Establish a mission in the *tribe* village of *town name*"

That kind of stuff.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I think they should reintroduce the different trading preferences the various Indian tribes had in the original game. The Incas were always interested in tools, and they and the Aztecs often sold you silver at a very cheap price, whereas the Sioux, the Tupis and the Apache never had any silver and never were interested in tools (and they didn't have as much money as the more sophisticated tribes). To compensate for that, the Apache and the Sioux bought horses for a long time and were also particularly interested in muskets at all times.

Also, do away with the idiocy where horses sit around forever without breeding. In the original game, a stable encouraged faster growth but wasn't essential for horses to procreate. And the horses did not compete for food with the human settlers, which makes sense, since human beings as a rule don't eat grass, and horses don't eat fish. With the present silly system, you might as well have the horses smoke the cigars you produce... Also, another feature from Col I I'd like to see return is that after a while you could make a decent income selling horses to the mother country, though the price for horses tended to fluctuate.

The trading activities of the other colonizing powers influenced prizes. For example, if they were at war (and they were much better at war in Civ I), the prices for horses and mnuskets went up. Why on Earth did they do away with that feature?

The Fountain of Youth, with, say, three emigrants instead of eight.

Pirate settlements, as in that mod.

The colonization score panel from Civ I.

More victory types.

Longer gameplay, so you don't have to prepare for the War of Independence from the first turn.

Larger maps, with a better chance to produce more than one type of goods.

Some of the music from Civ I would be nice.

Let the Indians refuse to train criminals, as in Civ I. Having to train them yourself was more challenging.

 

[Bad Brett]

. And the horses did not compete for food with the human settlers, which makes sense, since human beings as a rule don't eat grass, and horses don't eat fish.

What do you mean? In the origininal game, I think half of the surplus food went to horse breeding. So if you had +2 food every turn, you would get +1 horses.

 

[dalgo]

I sent a Free Colonist to an Indian village to learn tobacco growing. On the way he did something to make the natives angry and they killed him. No war, but they took his scalp.

Almost certainly the result of him crossing a burial ground while on an automatic 'go to'. I've had this happen several times to treasure and colonists so now if I'm sending someone on a long trip I check the route they are going to take carefully. As far as I know the message is specific to the burial ground and not related to the local tribe.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

What do you mean? In the origininal game, I think half of the surplus food went to horse breeding. So if you had +2 food every turn, you would get +1 horses.

I believe your recollection is wrong. In the original game, there is no indication - none - that the horses consume food that would otherwise be consumed by humans or go towards creating a new colonist. And I speak as one who has recently played the original game quite a lot.

 

[dalgo]

I believe your recollection is wrong. In the original game, there is no indication - none - that the horses consume food that would otherwise be consumed by humans or go towards creating a new colonist. And I speak as one who has recently played the original game quite a lot.

In most cases I would bow to your superior knowledge of the game (no sarcasm intended) but in this case I tend to side with Bad Brett. I don't think it was a large amount of food but some at least went towards making new horses.

 

[Imagawa99]

I think he means that horses wouldnt steal food from the mouths of the colonists as they do in col2
If you had enough spare food the horses would grow, if you had half what you needed they would only grow at half rate or no food and no growth at all
I do find it slightly irritating that a master rancher can put your colonly into starvation if your not careful

 

[Bad Brett]

I think he means that horses wouldnt steal food from the mouths of the colonists as they do in col2

But that's not what I said. I said that if you have +2 food every turn, you'll get +1 horses and +1 food in the warehouse. You need one food for every horse, even with a stable. The horses don't eat food in stock though and they will never consume all of the surplus food.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

In most cases I would bow to your superior knowledge of the game (no sarcasm intended) but in this case I tend to side with Bad Brett. I don't think it was a large amount of food but some at least went towards making new horses.

Oh, I see. Obviously, I never noticed that. Presumably it was because only a minor amount of food was involved. But it's a far cry from Col II, where one might even imagine that the horses eat the human population. The game developers should address that.

 

[DonaldAtHome]

Horses, if left to themselves, will spend the whole day grazing. Grass is an inefficient food. If you want to use the horses for work or riding, they need better food. If you have ever owned a horse you know they eat a lot, hence the term "eats like a horse". It takes hay and grain to feed a horse, which takes farm land out of "human food production". If you are raising large numbers of horses to equip armies or export as a trade good, you are going to need A LOT of horse food. I think they got this right in Col2.