Sadly, Grade "F" for Civ IV: Colonization

Ah, I see. I haven't experienced it yet, but I will pay attention next time. That doesn't even seem logical; with more practice at teaching, shouldn't you teach faster?

But a logical fix would be to have you pick what profession you want FIRST, and each profession has a different length of time based on what tier it is, and we can get rid of the money cost with this.

Nah as it is is cool as is because you might reshuffle your guys to perform some tasks and then you put people back in the school and can still use the books you've built up. It is easier for you to keep track of as you are deciding when they are ready to be taught. Otherwise you might pop a free colonist back in that you had chosen a profession you don't need anymore. Now its easy to understand at a glance.
 
Not to mention that using a native villiage is a lot faster. I can get a colonist from Europe - run them over to Ye Old Native School and get an expert and get them to a colony in amuch shorter time; plus im not stuck with a colonist that is essentially idle in my colony (i havent noticed if they draw food).

Rat
The natives only teach first-tier jobs, the ones involved in getting the raw materials. To manufacture products with them, you need European knowledge.
 
Well, I'm playing the game for the first time right now :p .....

And my first and humble question is:

Why does a game that relies so much in economics has only a military path to win? It is even not historical .... not mentioning that it looks to resume to the good ol'strat of keeping low profile for most of the game, stockpiling guns and putting your scholars disguised and lumberjacks or something like that and then to push the liberty bells prod and arming your citizens....

Well, I'm probably wrong, since this is my first game , but it strikes me as a stupid choice of winning condition for the game as it is. It's almost like if in good ol' Caesar III your only way of winning the level was to smash the imperial forces that came when you were in the red.....
 
The natives only teach first-tier jobs, the ones involved in getting the raw materials. To manufacture products with them, you need European knowledge.

Yes, but those raw material jobs are usually the jobs that are needed in volume. If a colony needs a manufacturing specialist, it is usually cheaper and faster to "Buy" them as you seldom need more than 3. If you d,o it would take far too long given the "schooling" time. It just doesnt seem like that great an investment.

Rat
 
I don't understand everybody's problem with the education system, because I have had no problems. When you put a Free Colonist or a Native Convert in the school (only ones I've tried so far), it takes, mm, about 16-20 turns (if I remember correctly) for them to finish their education. When the 20 turns is up, you choose which profession they will take BASED ON THE OTHER EXPERTS IN THAT COLONY ONLY. So if there is an Expert Fisherman, a Lumberjack, and a Carpenter, you can only choose from those 3. The more basic experts are free, while the good ones cost money.

You must have the gold when they graduate too - if you can't afford a specialization (say, elder statesmen costs 500) you won't get the option to graduate as that specialization. It's critical to have gold around when your people are about to graduate to ensure they "get the degree" you want.

School houses are SLOW - but if you upgrade it's not so bad and you're getting specialists cheaper. So 500 vs 2000 for an elder statesmen isn't all that bad - you can crank out a good number of them on the cheap long before you need them. I think the lesser "blanks" (indentured, converts, etc) are slower to "learn" than free cols too, which makes sense in terms of game mechanics. The time to educate does increase with every graduate, which might not sit well with some but fits most other game systems (like increasing costs of buying/hurrying european colonists) and encourages upgrading your building.

The education mechanic seems fine to me.
 
I think the lesser "blanks" (indentured, converts, etc) are slower to "learn" than free cols too, which makes sense in terms of game mechanics.

If this is the case to get around this send them to a native settlement to get trained. I don't think they take longer the more you use them. They do take longer for indentured servants and longest for petty criminals. Then clear specialty and send back to your schoolhouse.
 
IIt seems the only real usefulnes sis a sort of "resource denial" strategy to keep an AI from say using that lush cottonfield; you' can't use it but neither can they!

America is a large and resource laiden land - and in colonial times only a fraction of the land or resources were in use - but that didn't stop everybody from claiming every piece of land that was found.
 
Not to mention that using a native villiage is a lot faster. I can get a colonist from Europe - run them over to Ye Old Native School and get an expert and get them to a colony in amuch shorter time; plus im not stuck with a colonist that is essentially idle in my colony (i havent noticed if they draw food).

I believe they do draw food. I usually build my education in a food rich city where I've preplanned to edumacate specialists.

Natives can't train your people to be elder statesmen, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, etc. Something like an elder statesman you might want to develop early/mid but not necessarily use for bells (unless you're suicidal) - and they're 2000g from europe vs 500g via education - so cranking out those, for ex, isn't so bad if they take a while. And you can upgrade the school house to speed it up.

I don't really see a problem with the education thing - I don't think it should be a super easy way to specialists. Between it, native teaching, and europe I think the balance is pretty good.

I also think it's a good balance thing - you can get a cheap specialist but it takes a while. Do you make that investment at a loss of potential productivity, use the colonist elsewhere to be productive, buy/rush from europe - decisions - are what make strategy games good. If schools were super powerful there would be no decision.
 
If you don't produce bells early, how are you ever going to get any of the early founding fathers?
 
Grrrr. Tired to give this boring game another shot.

So I decided to ignore the manual and not build Bells for a while. Problem then is that I couldn't get above 31% after for some weird reason. I basically tried to crank that full, but no go. So I didn't even get a chance to declare independance before the game-time was already over! GAhhh.

Doesn't matter though, I was rediculously outnumbered anyhow.

Since this was on begginer level, and I'm normally a deity player for civ, I think I'm just going to quit for the meanwhile and take a big long break from the series. Sort of like the 12 month breaks I've taken in the past.
 
If you don't produce bells early, how are you ever going to get any of the early founding fathers?

Build politics points in your cities.

It's actually more efficient:
Statesmen in town hall: 3 politics points
colonist carpenter building politics points: 9 politics points (3 per hammer)
elder statesmen in town hall: 6 politics points
expert carpenter building politics points: 18 politics points
expert carpenter building politics points in lumber mill: 36 politics points
 
What I'm picking up on myself are ways to really kick-start things.

Here's an analogy. If in CIV you could start with 2 settlers, how much would that accelerate your empire? Not x2 but darn close.

The first game I played Colonization I found it was really dragging in the beginning. I started to think about CIV and how to min/max this new game.

The next game I scouted FAST, got tons of money, sold treasures at half price. Netted maybe 3-4k. Used it to rush a bunch of cheap veteran soldiers plus a few specialists I knew would come in very handy later. As many guys as I could get. I immediately conquered two nearby indian cities, wiping out Logan and giving myself a ton of expansion room. Then all the soldiers got put to work as citizens.

Definite difference from my first game.

So anyway I figure half of the people complaining about Colonization aren't really utilizing the speed up techniques. Yeah, if you spend a hundred game years with only one city and make your citizens the hard way, I can see how it would really boggle your chances to win.

Picking up on some other tricks here too, like paying cash for tools. Great idea, as that's a big problem early on.
 
got it today, not very impressed tbh

also the intro is crap compaired to the original
 
got it today, not very impressed tbh

also the intro is crap compaired to the original
The original barely had any introduction.

Just that ship sprite moving across a map, from Europe to the New World.
 
Build politics points in your cities.

It's actually more efficient:
Statesmen in town hall: 3 politics points
colonist carpenter building politics points: 9 politics points (3 per hammer)
elder statesmen in town hall: 6 politics points
expert carpenter building politics points: 18 politics points
expert carpenter building politics points in lumber mill: 36 politics points

This difference between POLITICAL POINTS and LIBERTY BELLS is extraordinary if true, and COMPLETELY opposite to what the manual says!

The manual says that Founding Fathers require LIBERTY BELLS (Rebel Sentiment) to be drawn to your side. Is this wrong??
 
You forgot Printing Press and Newspaper buildings. :D

If what Dale says is true, I think these are not effective? There seems to be an implication that political points are not related to rebel sentiment, and allow you to pick up Founding Fathers without inflaming rebel sentiment and thus spiking the REF?
 
Surely this is an easy problem to fix. In my current game 11 Dragoons have just been added to the REF. That number must be the result of a calculation somewhere in the code (surely not just 'pick a random number between 1 and 100'). Wouldn't it be possible to add to that calculation 'divided by 5 for Pilgrim level, divided by 3 for Pioneer level, divided by 2 for Explorer level'?

That would give new players some sort of chance even if they didn't follow the optimal strategy.
 
I've finally gotten the game! :D

Dale: I tried building political points but it didn't give me the same amount as producing bells.
I got 20 political points from 3 bells and only 12 points from building political points (not to mention the latter requires lumber for some laughable reason) so there seems to me you get more points from producing bells (I think it's been rounded down/up somehow, my test was on epic).
 
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