noob questions...

[Grille]

Hehe, I installed col again and after fumbling with sound settings for a while could finally start to waste the weekend...YAY!

I had not played for approximately 7 years, thus I degenarated to noob status ("criminal").

What a crapload of nasty graphic. Could not prevent me from getting addicted again immediatelly.


Here's some questions:

1. IIRC (not at home right now) version number stated is 2.26 (it's a German version). Is there any patches? I ask because from time to time the game just likes to freeze...(used win98 as OS btw) and there's a galleon flaw.

2. Is there some "settings" file I could alter in some way with an editor? Like background music always off, end turn wait always on and similar? Or do I have to do it manually every time after starting the game [keyboard shortcuts like "B" won't work for some reason here]

3. How can I figure out what to get from the city center square?

4. "Land claims": (E.g. not playing as England) if I plop a city on territory that is called "Newengland", do the English get mad at me? What defines their status of madness anyways (# of units resp. military strenght or settling space?)? How can I contact them for negotiations?

5. Is there a rule which defines the increment of units in the expedition corps? If I trade a lot (hence pay taxes like mad), does the king use that money for additional military? Also, are tax increasements dependent on the stuff I sell?

6. In the few games I played on the weekend, I always missed out that liberty guy who turns down all embargoes. Does hiring that guy mean that all is alike game start, but new tax refusements would lead to new embargoes?
Also, are taxes returned to 0% then?
If I hire that guy (Jefferson??) who increases liberty bells in relation to tax percentage, is only the current percentage regarded constantly, or does this benefit actually get better if I make some "tea"-party later?
Then there's some 'free-galleon" guy, but I never got a galleon for free...

7. Can I fret the others by giving guns and horses to the Indians, so they build better units? Or do they build better units anyways at some point?

8. Do the expedition corps units walk into the inner land under some circumstances? I ask because they were only sitting around coastal cities all the time and not trying to walk to inland cities...

9. Do others try to bluff me occasionally when demanding tribute or does refusing always mean war?

10. Can all kinds of bonus resources vanish eventually (happened only to silver and ore to me)? Can they (re-)appear?

11. What's the point of refusing that *sort* of peace agreement with Indians (other than being at *war* with them)?

12. Since I haven't tried it, is it lucrative to trade with other nations (when I've build that prerequisite guy), or do they just tend to buy small amounts of stuff for few gold (do they accept actual European prices)? Can European market prices drop/increase in the process?

13. What's the point of building a 'religious mission'? Seems like I just change a missionary man to an Indian (if I can get one converted at all).

14. How long (turns) does it take to educate a citizen from criminal->servant->citizen->"sophisticated" citizen(school)->soph. cit.(colege)->soph. cit.(uni)?

15. What's with loyals/rebels in a city? Ok, I understand the Wdon'tLTKD production effeciency thingie. But how long does it take to go from e.g. 10% to 20% at a given number of bell production and given number of citizens?

Finally, feel free to post some links to some strategy guide or such if there's one.

Cheers &

 

[Captain Carnage]

Hello.
unfortunately i can only answer a few questions, but i am sure someone else can answer the rest.

5. The more money you make, the more often the king will upgrade his army.

6. Thomas Jefferson increases liberty bell production by %50. Thomas Paine increases liberty bell production by the current tax rate. I dont think it will keep going up, but I could be wrong. I have never paid that much attention. There is no founding father who gives you a free galleon, but there is one who gives you a free frigate, he is John Paul Jones.

9. They bluff sometimes, just like in Civ

10. I THINK animals (for fur trapping) can disappear, but I am certainly not sure on that! However, I am pretty sure that prime forest cant disappear.

12. I don't think they will give you money, they will give you some items for the items that you give them. E.G you offer to trade 100 horses, they might give you.....10 silver or 100 ore, or something like that.

14. I am not exactly sure how long it will take, but I think that education is quicker if you produce alot of liberty bells.

15. I'm not sure about all of that question, but it seems that the smaller the colony is, the quicker membership will rise (as long as you have at least one colonist producing liberty bells) because you only need to pursade a few citizens to join up.


Here are a few links to some strategy guides.
- http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/colonization_a.txt

- http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/colonization.txt

- http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/colonization_b.txt

-

 

[Grille]

Thanks a lot, BadCops.
The links are great indeed.
The server there does block direct linking, though, but that doesn't matter since I just digged them up 'manually'.

Helped me to solve some of my problems. Game lockup just seems to occur from time to time.

Regarding #6:
I meant HERNAN CORTES! The 'free galleon' must be a translation glitch; my (German language) version says that you get a free galleon (besides the village benefit), the wording just goes like the J.P. Jones description (free frigate works well, btw). Obviously, a free galleon service is meant.
D'oh!! Even with Cortes, I always purchased my own galleon before shipping a treasury - feared the fat king would use MY money for making another marriage yet, LOL.

The liberty bell FF I meant was T. Paine. If I don't spot that info about him in the FAQ, I'll have an eye on that guy. I want to know if the bell increment is constant (eventually even for later found colonies) or varies with actual taxation rate.

 

[dalgo]

To answer a few of your questions:

1. There is a 3.0 patch that fixes a dozen or so bugs and adds some new features including a map editor.

3. The city center square provides food and raw materials and can be cleared/plowed like any city square.

4. You can usually negotiate with other colonial powers by just meeting one of their units, otherwise you can send a scout to visit one of their colonies. Inter-country relationships are not very sophisticated, you can break a treaty to attack a colony and then make peace again after you have taken it with no long term effect.

6. Jakob Fugger is the guy that lets you resume trading in embargoed goods, however your current tax rate is unchanged. The timing of his entry to congress is important if you are running a zero tax game. Usually I wait until I have 6 or 7 goods embargoed before putting him in congress then make sure I have built Custom Houses before the list fills up again.

Hernan Cortez is a great guy. He lets you transport all your treasure from any coastal city free of charge (less your current tax rate of course). What this means is that you can 'walk' your treasure to the coast alongside the scout who discovered it who establishes a colony just to cash in the treasure. He then abandons the colony the same turn and goes back to his scouting.

7. Yes you can sell guns and horses to the indians to make life difficult for the other powers. Just make sure it's not a tribe you are likely to have to fight yourself.

8. They do like travel inland sometimes but seem to prefer standing round my coastal cities, which annoys me. If there is a convenient bottleneck I can fence off I stand a few spare dragoons there to keep them out of my territory.

10. I'm pretty sure only mines can be depleted, not resources like fur or tobacco. I haven't seen any reappear but you can sometimes uncover one when clearing a forest.

11. Two advantages of a religious mission; less indian unrest and you can get converts who are slightly better at farming than a normal colonist. Over time you can get multiple converts from one mission. When Bartolome de Las Casas enters congress all converts become free colonists. I often use criminals as missionaries just to get rid of them, with Jean de Brebeuf in congress they become experts.

 

[Grille]

Thanks.
regarding #3: My wording was very poor... I wanted to know what I would get before building a city... I know that the CC is like a working tile (w/o actually being worked by a colonist). I was just wondering why I would not get lumber from the CC if I plopped a city on such a bonus tile - but I've learned now from gamefaq that this is "normal", the bonus lumber just vanishes when you build a city on it ().

regarding #6: Build/disband city just for treasury shipping is a great idea!

 

[korossyl]

Does anyone know what the secret colonist, the Teacher does?

 

[Captain Carnage]

You put an expert in a college or university and he teaches free colonists the trade that he is skilled in.

For example if he is an expert fisherman then he will teach another colonist how to be an expert fisherman.

But the student has to be doing a job in the colony, he can't just be a soldier standing outside the stockade.

This is what I do : Put a teacher in the college and just put two or three free colonists in the lumber mill (carpenters shop) and they will produce the necessary hammers to get normal jobs done, and they will also get educated at the same time. But I am sure that there are other ways to do it, too.

 

[korossyl]

Yeah, I know "teachers." But I'm wondering about the colonist who is actually called a "teacher," they one who was included in the game but was taken out in the final release. You drag a colonist to the university and press "S," while in cheat mode. He becomes an actual "Teacher," a specialist.

 

[Grille]

Hmm, I think the ideas of the "teaching" concept might have changed just before game release (like ideas about an expanded colony radius and whatever the "capitol" was good for - if not even for that named expanding thingie).
I guess they thought that you'd need a specialist (the teacher) for school...uni, too. But that one would have been a no-brainer, if my speculation is right.

 

[korossyl]

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. The thing is, it's possible to get them, so I'm wondering if they still have any effect? Like making the oher people teach faster, or maybe having colonists become specialists faster on their own?

 

[Grille]

Here's a post where someone played around with the teacher. No advantages in any way mentioned.

 

[Grille]

I was never aware of the following flaw: The FF that releases embargoes will only affect actual embargoes. Any new *stuff* party after that will remain forever (unless you pay the tax penalty, of course).
Dunno if I could delay him forever (if he's more or less the last one to get) by pressing esc all the time. Hmm.
Also I'd be interested if trade routes would affect production: if I transport lumber away automatically, will that be loaded into the waggon before the city has transformed some of it into hammers or after that? Hmm.

 

[Captain Carnage]

I was never aware of the following flaw: The FF that releases embargoes will only affect actual embargoes. Any new *stuff* party after that will remain forever (unless you pay the tax penalty, of course).
Dunno if I could delay him forever (if he's more or less the last one to get) by pressing esc all the time. Hmm.

yeah, not much point if you only have a few boycotts at the time, because they get lifted and then that FF is wasted. Thats where the Customs House comes in handy. (for me)

Also I'd be interested if trade routes would affect production: if I transport lumber away automatically, will that be loaded into the waggon before the city has transformed some of it into hammers or after that? Hmm.

Thats a hard one to figure out, I don't think it mentions it in the manual.
If you are wanting to actually trade the lumber to get money then once again I advise you to use the custom house (if you havent already) or just trade with other europeans.

Maybe you can experiment with it, it makes logical sense that the lumber will be processed into hammers first, and then the remainder goes into the wagons, but I don't know for sure.

 

[Grille]

Yeah, I will have a look at the lumber (respectively other stuff) and production out of these raw materials. IIRC, as I started col in the last century , I almost always built "autarkic" colonies only, each having their own sources of ore and lumber. Naturally, I ended up with only a few colonies (around 10 in a game I guess) - which wasn't bad, of course. Now I use specialized colonies and have MUCH more colonies in total. Some produce just ore or tools etc, so I must transfer a lot of stuff (annoying here: number of waggons can't be greater than number of cols).
I've figured that my bell production (and crosses and goods) is much higher when specializing. For one, my autarkic colonies would not have the food support for statesman and factory workers on a large scale. Furthermore, all things add up and having more colonies leads to more bells etc, of course.
For getting into the game again, I've chosen the easiest level (America map, Holland). Basically it's a no-brainer, but I have a ton of fun with it. I want to end this game with a very high number of colonies (military is absolutely no prob). I'm freaking rich - I cannot remember any game ever on any level with over 100k gold (atm around 130k in 1675 or so).
And yes, I use the Custom Houses, selling stuff is not the problem. The thing was just that I made a tool party after I had already every FF. So I cannot buy tools in Europe anymore. I was buying ore miners (only 600 - mostly cheaper than recruiting) like mad, giving them tools (or eventually just buying some tools additionally to fill the freight rooms) to speed up things for newly found colonies. Now the miners ship in w/o tools. Oh well, new colonists with tools would be just the cherry on the cake since I'm doing fine anyways.

Btw, if we play a simulation game that is almost 10 years old, why not FINALLY make a sequel? It's actually *somewhat* dependent on graphics, but since that old engine doesn't prevent people from playing col, there's surely a market for col2!!
Or are there copyright probs?

 

[Achinz]

Originally posted by Grille
Btw, if we play a simulation game that is almost 10 years old, why not FINALLY make a sequel? It's actually *somewhat* dependent on graphics, but since that old engine doesn't prevent people from playing col, there's surely a market for col2!!
Or are there copyright probs?

The opensource Colonization 2 project:
http://www.civgaming.net/col2/
might be what you're looking for although it's still in the early development stage despite being around a while.

 

[Grille]

Thanks for the link, Achinz.


About my trade route question: it seems like factories, lumber mills etc will first use the raw materials and then (if there's some left) these get loaded into a waggon/ship.
I could not keep track on Paine's bell production, but the tax rate seems to be a bit buggy anyways.

My attempt to cover almost the whole map with colonies was doomed.
I came across a problem which *forced* me to end my game by declaring independence: There's some sort of unit limit. I did not count my units, though (ships count here??). I got a message at some point that I have to get rid of units before creating new ones. I could live with that, but the limit seems to include ALL (military) units on the map. This is annoying when you declare independence: when a dragoon gets downgraded to soldier, it might not be possible to supply him with horses again; at least when (parts of) the expedition corps have landed and stay around somewhere. What is more, any attempt to make a dragoon out of the soldier will actually turn him into a colonist while the 50 muskets vanish by magic. Sometimes the soldier himself just turns into nothing when trying to upgrade. So it might be better to not build too many arties, otherwise it would be difficult to attack the expediton forces.
Funny thing: at some point, I ran out of (default) colony names and the game decided to jump back to the start of the default name list, so 'New Amsterdam' and such appeared again. Due to my unit problem, I did harly defend these young colonies. But the king's forces totally ignored them! (My experience is that weakly defended colonies are preferred targets).

Another flaw: I wasn't allowed to build a colony that had no lumber in its radius (and no hills btw). There was a prompt that warned me about that and I guess there *should* have been an interactive choice to ignore this warning (like when you build an inland colony). The pop-up was buggy I think. After some lines of text, some weird lines followed that were probably supposed to be a highlighted menue choice, but no matter what I tried, the pop-up would only disappear w/o getting a colony after pressing 'b'. I don't know if I exceeded some limit here again since I could build costal colonies after that. So am I not allowed to build lumber-free colonies at all?
(as stated, I've got a German DOS-version of Col, says something like 'version 2.26 - built in Sep 94' on the starting screen)