One effect of the liberty bell production on the size of the REF is that it encourages players to not produce any until the end....till they ramp up enough in order to survive...thus, de facto, following what you describe above...people not wanting to revolt till 1776. I agree that the REF feature is the one that feels most klunky to me...it'd be interesting to see alternatives...periodic shows of force by the mother country, different units (tax men) or something coming for visits, Tory spies, or something.
Actually historically it went the other way around. The British put ever more strain on the colonies to finance the British Army and as a result the resentment in the colonies grew. Actual calls for independence didn't come till after the siege of Boston didn't grow in force until the battles at Long Island.
As for the game....yes those periodic things would be a good way to spice up the game. In fact the financial demands by the king are somewhat supposed to be just that only it falls woefully short.
So, are you implying then that communication should be open? I'm not sure how this would work given the mechanics of the game and the competition being other colonizers vying for the same land...although I can imagine France getting knocked out by Spain and then making a deal with Americans to support them...but stuff like that wouldn't happen every game. It'd give it more depth, though. Sometimes, I think that the problem with comparing this all to history is that history was just one specific game, whereas this allows for replayability in terms of unhistoric happenings.
Have you played the original game? Back then once you declared for independence the other European nations would usually offer to support you with troops once you managed to produce a certain number of liberty bells. This was usually an essential part of the WoI because those troops could be very useful.
This is very much like what happened in reality. The French and other nations were at first tentative to support the colonies but once they saw that the colonies might actually stand a chance, they moved to support them. In the game this could be implemented via the liberty bells like in the original or it could be achieved by actually beating back the REF at one city or something like this.
It would especially make sense because for example if you could get your hands on foreign Man-o-Wars you might actually stand a realistic chance against the royal navy which right now you don't most of the time. Of course this has to be balanced not to make the game too easy, but IMO it worked brilliantly in the orignal so why shouldn't it do the same here?
I'm wondering if this game was 30 bucks because they didn't want to add those sorts of depth. Some people are talking about "sloppy programming" and I keep thinking this isn't a 50-60 dollar game. I can understand why people are complaining, though, because this isn't a game for newbs...Civ IV slowly ramped up the learning curve so you started with less to have to know and accrued knowledge and complexity. This game starts with all kinds of features that a player initially has no grasp of...it's game that expects you to be a gamer.
Actually I totally disagree. First of all this game was 30 bucks because essentially it is nothing more than a standalone mod for Civ IV. Some of the mods that are included in BtS are nearly as big as Colonization and you got them together with the AddOn.
As for why people are complaining: They aren't complaining because the game is too hard or too different from other games. They are complaining because there are things in this game that simply make no sense (education for example) and because unlike any other Civ game or the original colonization there is pretty much exactly ONE WAY to win all others simply don't work. That is frustrating to any veteran because that way the game is simply way too one dimensional and has nearly no replay value, something that has always been the great thing about Civ and Colonization.
