Dale needs to take a step back from the keyboard and take a deep breath. The game is broken in its current state and no amount of furious denial is going to change that.
I'm not going to present myself as the "uber Civ expert", because there are far better players out there than I am. I will say that I've owned all 4 Civs and every expansion for them. I purchased the original Colonization when it came out about 15 years ago. I know my way around the Civ universe pretty damn well.
After playing on the easiest difficultly level, I've never had a Sid Meier (his name is on the box, folks) game go from "A" to "F" in such a short time as I did with this game. In every single Civ-type game, the noob difficulty level is a cakewalk. It's supposed to be, because these designs are complex and the concepts presented take a while to learn. It's going to be hard for the average new player to understand the concept of growing tobacco and transporting those goods to a different city to have cigars rolled, never mind work around a game mechanic that's not even discussed in the manual. So it's designed to be almost impossible to lose for a reason. It's part of the brilliance of Sid Meier's designs. Going back to Pirates! and F-19 (both of which I purchased when they came out), Sid Meier designs have been about accessibility.
So I was playing last night and was building my pitiful little colony, got to 50% and declared independence. I saw the size of the REF, but I thought perhaps it was a mistake or that the troops would be untrained, or so forth. Needless to say, it was a shock when over 150 highly-promoted REF troops showed up on my shores. There was no way my pitiful little band would compete with that highly trained force...it was "game over". At that moment, the game went from a "B" or even an "A-" to a "F". Yes, it's possible to work around this by building no liberty bells, but you should not under any circumstances have to work around a game mechanic if you choose the easiest difficulty level. If you do, the game is flawed...period. So now, if I attempt to play this again, I have to guess as when to start building my liberty bells. That's not a good design. Not a good design at all. You shouldn't have to guess - and guess correctly - on critical issues to win at the easiest difficulty level.
You get colonists from your homeland. Well, my first colonist was a Elder Statesman. Are you telling me that it's a good game mechanic that I can't use my FIRST colonist for his primary purpose for many, many turns? If nothing else, that shows the absurdity of the design....
Also, the victory conditions bother me a bit. You have to wipe out the REF to a man? That's entirely unheard of...it's not like we wiped Cornwallis out to a man in Yorktown. He arrived with 10,000 or so men and surrendered with 7,000. It's so historically inaccurate that it detracts from the game. There must have been a better way of coming up with victory conditions - Civ 4 is brilliant with the varied victory conditions it offers. So seeing one path to victory - and one so historically inaccurate it defies belief - is a severe letdown.
The good thing is that it's easily fixable - Firaxis should be working on a patch for this immediately, because they're going to lose a shitload of customers if people can't win on the easiest difficulty level. The bad thing is that because so blatantly flawed slipped into the shipped release, I'm worried that there are other flaws that aren't fixable in this one.
I'm not going to present myself as the "uber Civ expert", because there are far better players out there than I am. I will say that I've owned all 4 Civs and every expansion for them. I purchased the original Colonization when it came out about 15 years ago. I know my way around the Civ universe pretty damn well.
After playing on the easiest difficultly level, I've never had a Sid Meier (his name is on the box, folks) game go from "A" to "F" in such a short time as I did with this game. In every single Civ-type game, the noob difficulty level is a cakewalk. It's supposed to be, because these designs are complex and the concepts presented take a while to learn. It's going to be hard for the average new player to understand the concept of growing tobacco and transporting those goods to a different city to have cigars rolled, never mind work around a game mechanic that's not even discussed in the manual. So it's designed to be almost impossible to lose for a reason. It's part of the brilliance of Sid Meier's designs. Going back to Pirates! and F-19 (both of which I purchased when they came out), Sid Meier designs have been about accessibility.
So I was playing last night and was building my pitiful little colony, got to 50% and declared independence. I saw the size of the REF, but I thought perhaps it was a mistake or that the troops would be untrained, or so forth. Needless to say, it was a shock when over 150 highly-promoted REF troops showed up on my shores. There was no way my pitiful little band would compete with that highly trained force...it was "game over". At that moment, the game went from a "B" or even an "A-" to a "F". Yes, it's possible to work around this by building no liberty bells, but you should not under any circumstances have to work around a game mechanic if you choose the easiest difficulty level. If you do, the game is flawed...period. So now, if I attempt to play this again, I have to guess as when to start building my liberty bells. That's not a good design. Not a good design at all. You shouldn't have to guess - and guess correctly - on critical issues to win at the easiest difficulty level.
You get colonists from your homeland. Well, my first colonist was a Elder Statesman. Are you telling me that it's a good game mechanic that I can't use my FIRST colonist for his primary purpose for many, many turns? If nothing else, that shows the absurdity of the design....
Also, the victory conditions bother me a bit. You have to wipe out the REF to a man? That's entirely unheard of...it's not like we wiped Cornwallis out to a man in Yorktown. He arrived with 10,000 or so men and surrendered with 7,000. It's so historically inaccurate that it detracts from the game. There must have been a better way of coming up with victory conditions - Civ 4 is brilliant with the varied victory conditions it offers. So seeing one path to victory - and one so historically inaccurate it defies belief - is a severe letdown.
The good thing is that it's easily fixable - Firaxis should be working on a patch for this immediately, because they're going to lose a shitload of customers if people can't win on the easiest difficulty level. The bad thing is that because so blatantly flawed slipped into the shipped release, I'm worried that there are other flaws that aren't fixable in this one.
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) But I mean although there 'may' be some sarcasim in the first post... is that a reason for page after page of continuing after one person.. getting further off topic? 
