Sadly, Grade "F" for Civ IV: Colonization

[Llotyhy]

The thing bothering me is not long-time players being beaten at the game, which is a totally new game like a lot of people said.

The thing bothering me is that they were playing on the lowest difficulties. On the lowest difficulty it should be incredibly easy to win when you're a col/civ veteran and do-able when you've never played a col/civ game before. That's what's so messed up about this.

 

[snoopy369]

To some extent it's because people play it as if it were Civ - which it's not ...

 

[TFVanguard]

To some extent it's because people play it as if it were Civ - which it's not ...

Actally, no. I don't see that. I see a lot of people SAYING that, but I don't see anyone actually playing it like Civ anywhere. I'm not building out a bunch of settlers, I'm not working on Wonders, I'm not doing the 'two rifleman can defend a city' approach. Most of Civ4's strategies aren't even POSSIBLE in Col2, so I don't even understand where you're coming from in this.

This is a simple statement, the REF, due to its insane amount of production, is bugged. If I have five maxed out cities, I should NEVER be looking at an REF of 500 units. Yet, that's what happened, and that's what's happening to everyone else.

And, as I said earlier, since I've looked at the files, the REF generation seems set to Deity level on ALL levels. To me, that's a major 'oops'.

 

[NikNak]

Good point... if you play the game on Revolutionary (toughest) setting. If you want a tough slog that is nearly impossible in order to win the game then that's a choice you should be able to make at the beginning. Pilgrim (easiest) level shouldn't be "brutal".

There are people out there who never played Col 1, or even Civ, before and they might have purchased this game on a whim, much like I did with the original Col and Civ II. Those people don't know how to play, and I personally think that the beginning difficulty level should be designed for new players so that unless they screw up completely, they should still win the game. Apparently that's not so. (I've been playing it on Explorer).

I agree. I think this is the main flaw with this scenario. On Pilgrim level, with tutorial suggestions on, a new player should not lose the game unless they were purposely ignoring the advice they were given. As it stands now, there is nothing in the tutorial advice to warn new players that generating Liberty Bells from the beginning will bring the wrath of God unto them in the endgame. This shouldn't happen. Not generating Liberty Bells until after turn 100 or 200 is meta-game thinking. It's a strategy that shouldn't enter your mind until you've played a few games and worked your way up to the middle difficulties.

The first time I played Civ was Civ II. I played as the Americans, didn't have a clue about what I was doing and made so many mistakes because I had no idea about many of that game's concepts. At one point I decided to destroy the Russians with my single tank unit! The thing is that I survived that game, and I was in contention for a Space victory before the Carthaginians beat me. It was fun and encouraged me to try better next time.

I think the big difference here is that when Civ II came out, the idea of a simple in-game tutorial mode was unheard of. Beyond the follow-along tutorial in the printed documentation, gamers were expected (and willingly did) muddle along until they could figure out the mechanics. Nowadays, that's not a feasible design strategy. You have to program in a hand-holding mode to get people into your game.

 

[snoopy369]

I would suggest you run some controlled tests before you make that statement. When we did in the Bugs thread, dr_allcom_3 identified that there IS a difference, and changing the value you're referring to does NOT clearly affect that difference. Roughly double the size REF in a Revolutionary game than in a Pioneer game.

 

[TFVanguard]

I would suggest you run some controlled tests before you make that statement. When we did in the Bugs thread, dr_allcom_3 identified that there IS a difference, and changing the value you're referring to does NOT clearly affect that difference. Roughly double the size REF in a Revolutionary game than in a Pioneer game.

I've done the tests on that. Keeping at Pilgrim level, and upping that number and NOTHING ELSE dramatically extends how long it takes for the King to produce more REF units. It's possible that there's ANOTHER number that's tied to REF production that actually is scaled, but I'm not sure what it is, and it's not obvious off-hand.

Edit: I think the reason he didn't see much change is that he LOWERED the percentage to 80 percent, which would make sense if we were talking production time involved. But, since we're talking 'liberty bell punishment' instead, the 80 percent actually would INCREASE the production by a little bit. That's why I went wide the other way.

 

[Reveilled]

The thing bothering me is not long-time players being beaten at the game, which is a totally new game like a lot of people said.

The thing bothering me is that they were playing on the lowest difficulties. On the lowest difficulty it should be incredibly easy to win when you're a col/civ veteran and do-able when you've never played a col/civ game before. That's what's so messed up about this.

Yeah, this worries me quite a bit, though I don't have the game yet. If you're playing on the easiest difficulties, and the only mistake you've really made is that you were generating liberty bells from turn one, and this makes the REF unbeatable, I'd say this is a problem.

It'd be a problem even if the tutorial and any ingame tips advised against early generation of Liberty Bells. But do they? If you make liberty bell generation a focus from the start, do you get a tutorial popup saying something to the effect of "Watch out! You're setting yourself up for a fall!", the way you did in Civ if you didn't build defenders.

Frankly, if experienced TBS players are losing on the lower difficulties, something is wrong. On lower difficulties, you should be able to screw up massively and still stumble your way to victory.

I could understand the "You're playing it wrong" attitude if the complaints were coming from people playing on Col's equivalent of Emperor and up, but if it's coming from Warlord or lower, you really ought to win as long as you were trying to win.

 

[The_Dwarf]

Dude, I write these kinds of games.. well, used to. I can spot a bad mechanic pretty easily. This is a bad mechanic, at least to the scale that it's being implemented. Since most of the game effectively REQUIRES you (and, indeed, openly encourages you) to make as many liberty bells as possible, it's counterproductive for the REF to be that punitive.

Meanwhile, the things that you would THINK make the King increase the REF, namely pissing him off in negocations, refusing taxes, etc, don't actually affect what he DOES with the REF. As far as I can actually tell at this point, there's no benefit to placating the king unless you still want to trade an item. (Not that you can placate him long anyway, he starts being an ass in just a couple of turns.)

Now, having actually gone through the files of the game, it also looks like the REF level wasn't adjusted for difficulty, with basically it being set at the Deity level for all levels. If this is the case, you still going to think that this was part of the design as intended, or an oversight on release? I'm betting the latter. It's a bug.

I think you are missing one thing here. Lets assume you are right and its indeed a bug that Kings Force is basically equally strong on all levels.
However that doesnt mean the feature itself is bad.
I still see this as a very good idea in general, you have to choose to either lack on liberty bells and live with its problems or go for it take the advantages but live with a very strong force from the King or find a middle. That offers a lot of interesting strategy choices.
So if its really a bug that its not properly adjusted with skill levels then it will eventually be fixed in the first patch coming - what would be much worse is if the feature in its entity was a bad one because than it would be a whole lot more difficult to fix.

 

[jimjet]

I dont know if I should post this here or as a new thread in the mods section. But anyways, I found an entry in the GlobalDefines.xml file (Assets\XML folder) that seems to slow down the REF production.

<Define>
          <DefineName>REVOLUTION_EUROPE_UNIT_THRESHOLD</DefineName>
          <iDefineIntVal>75</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

The bigger the value the slower the REF production. Maybe start with a value of 200 and test from there. Ill keep testing and see how it goes. I know maybe its not the best solution but its a place to start.

 

[TFVanguard]

I think you are missing one thing here. Lets assume you are right and its indeed a bug that Kings Force is basically equally strong on all levels.

Let me spell this out for you. There's nothing within the context of the game itself that says "For the love of God, don't produce liberty bells". In fact, since you need them for FFs and in-city production bonuses, you're getting told, explicitly, just the opposite.

The other problem is that you're not given too many other 'victory' options. Winning by time pretty much says 'you suck', and being the last European power standing didn't seem to make much difference. (I just tried that, which was very easy to do, but annoying to finish them off). You're expected to win your independence.. and NOT try to do it by meta-gaming.

So if its really a bug that its not properly adjusted with skill levels then it will eventually be fixed in the first patch coming - what would be much worse is if the feature in its entity was a bad one because than it would be a whole lot more difficult to fix.

Well, the beauty is that it's easily scripted and tweaked. '200' does seem to be the deity setting (or dang near it). I'm not sure really how it should scale out to Chieftan. (As I said, 500 seems overkill, but I'm an experienced player, would a newbie want a WoI against a slightly LESSER REF force? I'm not sure.)

 

[TFVanguard]

The bigger the value the slower the REF production. Maybe start with a value of 200 and test from there. Ill keep testing and see how it goes. I know maybe its not the best solution but its a place to start.

I wonder if that's the base amount of liberty bells that the difficulty multiplier then extends.. that would make a LOT of sense...

 

[Reveilled]

Well, the beauty is that it's easily scripted and tweaked. '200' does seem to be the deity setting (or dang near it). I'm not sure really how it should scale out to Chieftan. (As I said, 500 seems overkill, but I'm an experienced player, would a newbie want a WoI against a slightly LESSER REF force? I'm not sure.)

Considering that on the lowest difficulty in Civ you can almost get away with never building a single military unit, I would say yes, definitely.

 

[jimjet]

The iAIKingUnitThresholdPercent value (thats the '200' value you talk about right?) for what I could see (correct me if Im wrong) is for the AI only. I guess when you increase or decrease that value what you do is making the AI independence harder/easier.

 

[TFVanguard]

The iAIKingUnitThresholdPercent value (thats the '200' value you talk about right?) for what I could see (correct me if Im wrong) is for the AI only. I guess when you increase or decrease that value what you do is making the AI independence harder/easier.

I ran two tests by wildly upping the amount on Pilgrim, and it nearly gutted the king's REF production. I'll play a full game tonight with it set to 500 and see what happens. Seems to me that it would be something that they would WANT to scale with difficulty...

 

[Thorn]

I do remember from the original Colonization that it was very hard to beat the REF. You had move your troops into forests and really think about how to fight. In fact the only way I ever won Independence was if a foreign power helped me! That being said, however, 500 sounds like a crazy, high number unless it is balanced by something else (intervention, fighting style).

 

[Jeckel]

I agree. I think this is the main flaw with this scenario. On Pilgrim level, with tutorial suggestions on, a new player should not lose the game unless they were purposely ignoring the advice they were given. As it stands now, there is nothing in the tutorial advice to warn new players that generating Liberty Bells from the beginning will bring the wrath of God unto them in the endgame. This shouldn't happen. Not generating Liberty Bells until after turn 100 or 200 is meta-game thinking. It's a strategy that shouldn't enter your mind until you've played a few games and worked your way up to the middle difficulties.

I think the big difference here is that when Civ II came out, the idea of a simple in-game tutorial mode was unheard of. Beyond the follow-along tutorial in the printed documentation, gamers were expected (and willingly did) muddle along until they could figure out the mechanics. Nowadays, that's not a feasible design strategy. You have to program in a hand-holding mode to get people into your game.

That is the most spot on thing I read in all 5 pages of this thread.

****

I have to agree. I most certainly am not lacking in strategies on TBS games, and this one in peticular. I must say, that until I read Dale state it, I had assumed the size off my army and the number of liberty bells I made were minor factors in the increase of REF. I had assumed there were also other small factors taken into account, but that the most important factor would be the way you treated the King.

If you give him money when he demands, agree to increases in Tax Rate, and whatnot, then he shouldn't spam REF.

Increasing of REF should be based on the King's Attitude towards you and the threat level you pose to the King. Its never good coding practise to just check 1 or 2 states in a game as complex as this one. Its just lazy.

Come on Dale, it may be a "functional mechanic", but its the same thing they did to Ranged Bombardment in Civ4. A quick few lines of code when they could have taken a couple hours and done it right.

Perhaps you could pop into the SDK and post the important code block for how the Kings decide to increase their REF?

****

The schools are the same way. Why put a cool new mechanic into the game if you just going to make it useless. I could understand the money cost starting out cheap and getting higher as the general "education level" of the colonies increases. Heck, I can rationalize the time increase, but 35 turns to train a Free Colonist, when all I want to do is make him a Fisherman that doesn't even cost any gold? That is excessive.

At some point the time should level out and stop increasing. Maybe it did level out at 35, I don't know I just stopped using it at that point. By the end of the game when the schools became useless is the exact time that every other aspect of my colonies was becoming self sefficent from the Old World, but I was then forced to keep trading with the king just so I could get specialized Colonists.

That part definetly needs some work.

****

Also, there are still several bugs in general, random crashes, weird colored bars over some of my buttons, the Gold Amount Text Widget from the Main Interface isn't being hidden when I enter the City Screen some times, and a few other things I can't remember right now.


Bottom line, the game isn't totally balanced yet. If a monkey can't randomly tap on the keyboard and beat the game on the lowest difficulty.. then somthing is wrong.

Everyone should spend less time argueing about how to manage to win on the easy difficulty and spend more time coming up with the right numbers to plug in the XMLs.

Maybe if we get some of these small balance issues fixed they can be included in the first patch.

 

[Dale]

I do remember from the original Colonization that it was very hard to beat the REF. You had move your troops into forests and really think about how to fight. In fact the only way I ever won Independence was if a foreign power helped me! That being said, however, 500 sounds like a crazy, high number unless it is balanced by something else (intervention, fighting style).

Yes, it's balanced by not producing massive amounts of bells unchecked.

Like everything in a strategy game, a concept has a positive and a negative.

Positives of producing bells:
- culture borders expand
- higher production output
- politics points towards FF's

Negatives of producing bells:
- King spends on REF

To me, two of the positives are extremely powerful (production output and politics points). This SHOULD be offset by a powerful negative in scale.

He's just whining because he chased the extreme positive and received the extreme negative. Whereas if he had controlled the positive he would have received a controlled negative. Simple.

And that's what I've been trying to say all along. Try a different style and watch the outcome. My particular example on page 1 of this thread is the other extreme. Almost zero positive nets an almost zero negative. Personally I think it's in scale.

 

[Reveilled]

Yes, it's balanced by not producing massive amounts of bells unchecked.

Like everything in a strategy game, a concept has a positive and a negative.

Positives of producing bells:
- culture borders expand
- higher production output
- politics points towards FF's

Negatives of producing bells:
- King spends on REF

To me, two of the positives are extremely powerful (production output and politics points). This SHOULD be offset by a powerful negative in scale.

He's just whining because he chased the extreme positive and received the extreme negative. Whereas if he had controlled the positive he would have received a controlled negative. Simple.

And that's what I've been trying to say all along. Try a different style and watch the outcome. My particular example on page 1 of this thread is the other extreme. Almost zero positive nets an almost zero negative. Personally I think it's in scale.

However, is that extreme negative sufficient to produce a loss at the lowest level of difficulty? And does the game warn you that you're going to fall into that extreme difficulty?

Playing at the lower levels of difficulty in Civilization, if you didn't build defensive units, you'd get messages like "Sire, people are concerned for their safety in London! You should build an Archer to keep them safe", and even if you ignored them, you could probably get by okay on Chieftain difficulty.
If you produce too many Liberty Bells, do you get messages like "Sir, people are concerned that your Bell production is causing the REF to expand too quickly! You should hold back or you could find the game unwinnable!"

Because unless there are messages like that which make just how extreme the negative is clear for players, that seems a little misguided. Players shouldn't only realise that their strategy is untenable when it's too late to change it.

EDIT: I mean, do you honestly think it's right that you could be facing 500 troops, and being outnumbered 5:1 on the second lowest difficulty? The fact that it's called Pioneer doesn't mean that you can ignore the fact that it equates to the "Easy" difficulty.

 

[The_Dwarf]

Let me spell this out for you. There's nothing within the context of the game itself that says "For the love of God, don't produce liberty bells". In fact, since you need them for FFs and in-city production bonuses, you're getting told, explicitly, just the opposite.

The other problem is that you're not given too many other 'victory' options. Winning by time pretty much says 'you suck', and being the last European power standing didn't seem to make much difference. (I just tried that, which was very easy to do, but annoying to finish them off). You're expected to win your independence.. and NOT try to do it by meta-gaming.

Dale has said this on the first page, IT IS actaully in the manual. Of course I dont read the manual either when trying a new game however Im fine with getting stuck then because I missed something important even if its a little counterintuitive in the first place.
However I have absolutely no idea why you cant agree that the concept is a good idea in general since if there wasnt a huge penalty for liberty bells it would be as overpowered as in the original colonizaion and that is the least thing you want to have.

I agree with you that other win options arent really wins, for myself I consider all but an independece win as a loss.

 

[thelibra]

Good point... if you play the game on Revolutionary (toughest) setting. If you want a tough slog that is nearly impossible in order to win the game then that's a choice you should be able to make at the beginning. Pilgrim (easiest) level shouldn't be "brutal".

I can fully agree with that. Like I said, I can absolutely agree that the game needs some patching. Pilgrim should be easier than it is now.

Perhaps an adjustment on the multiplier for REF vs. Bells... Just throwing numbers out there, but maybe like on easiest, the REF to Bell mechanic operates on a 1/10 ratio, whereas on the hardest difficulty it's more like a 10/1 ratio. Or something... But yes, I could fully agree those numbers need a bit of tweaking.

What I don't agree with is that the mechanic itself is a broken one. Revolutionary sentiment really was a double-edged sword, and in history, the actions of the crown against America were largely due to that revolutionary sentiment. Britain largely held a "non-interference" policy right up until after the refusal of colonists to freely surrender supplies and labor to the crown without pay. This was the first real showing of pushback by the colonists, and resulted in the crown and parliament passing taxes on Americans to pay for the French and Indian War. This in turn fueled more anti-crown sentiment, which resulted in pushback by the crown, which resulted in demonstrations, which resulted in the Intolerable Acts, which resulted in more demonstrations, eventually leading to the Boston Tea Party, which resulted in Martial Law by the British in Boston.

(edit to add All of this happened within a scant 20-50 year stretch.

The British only focused on Boston because that's where they thought the rebel sentiment was, and they only sent a small force and some has-been general because they thought the rebel sentiment was just a small, isolated thing. This is why we won the Lexington-Concord march. The British THOUGHT they were going up against a small local uprising, they had no idea this had become a nation-wide movement. If they had known, they would have sent a much larger detachment and the rebellion would have been squashed before we knew it.

So I wholeheartedly disagree that the REF response vs. Bell production is a "Bad mechanic". I think it's rather true to history and real life. It could be tweaked better to reflect difficulty levels, but is not an inherently bad mechanic as TFV claims.