This is a flawed remake

[sw99]

I'll start by saying that I've sunk around 20 hours into this in the last 3 days, I've had a lot of fun and it's reminded me how much I enjoyed playing this when it originally came out. However, each new game I've started has me noticing more and more things that are either completely left out of this remake, or just shoddily done. They are so numerous that they far outweigh the new elements that have been brought in.

First, a list of things that are missing from the remake of a 15 year old game:

1. Cannons firing at enemy ships outside the city if you have a fort/fortress. With the sheer amount of troops the WOI throws at you, and how much more numerous/better their ships are than your own this would be a great help. I can only assume they didn't want to spend the extra few hours coding it in since civ4 doesn't really have it.

2. Foreign powers intervening on your behalf if you can generate enough liberty bells after declaring independance. This was a great mechanic for flavor reasons in the original, added an element of tension/suspense and would be welcome if the REF troop amounts don't get scaled down.

3. Troops turning into continental troops when you declare independance, again for flavour reasons. Why leave it out?

4. Flavor text/Events such as "you have discovered the pacific ocean" "fountain of youth" or the cities of gold. I'm very puzzled about this one, since events were just added to civ 4

5. Wars in europe = War with "New xxxx" Again, for historical flavor and also to mix up the gameplay a bit. The next point may explain why this is gone though..

6. Competent AI military/Aggresion. Ok, I've not checked aggressive AI yet as i'm still learning the intricacies but I've been declared on once by an ai (spain, whilst he was losing colonies to natives, he brought no troops against me) and a reasonable amount by the natives (i treat them well until near the end of the game). In the original game I remember having to keep a comparable military to the ai or they could and would bring a couple of galleons full! I don't remember ever seeing 2 ai's in the same game lose all their cities to natives , i've seen that twice in the remake so far. Early days though, I need to play more and move up in difficulty to see the full picture (still playing on the default level, i forget the name, 3rd difficulty from the left anyway)

7. Bigger maps. Why is a "Huge" map in Civ4 COL only about as big as a small/medium map in Civ4? I understand that there are only 4 main players but at least give us accurate names for the map sizes, I never would've even tried huge if the other maps weren't so small. The huge new world scenario map is bigger than the generator will do, so the engine is definately capable. Give us bigger maps! All the exploring is done after 30 years if you're focused.



So all those things, missing and not seemingly that hard to code in and I can't even think of any reasons why they'd be ommitted other than "effort".

I've seperated my list of possible bugs/easily fixable design flaws. They are as follows:

Logically, before you declare independance, when you're about 30% rebel perhaps, you're going to start building up the army... well, i've been doing so anyway. I had 3 statesmen in all my cities and newspapers too, but over the next 50 turns my overall rebel sentiment never went up, despite all my cities having 50% rebel sentiment or near. Why? Because the 20-30 extra troops i've recruited are counting as tories!! Wonderful, not only am I outnumbered 4 to 1, but i'm actually not going to make it to declare independence before time runs out... bug or design choice, it's counter intuitive and just plain annoying.

Units with less than full movement can't do anything in cities. Very annoying, with the small lag you get between each action (yay 3d) just having to press space to end his turn for another turn is annoying. More annoying is that at first you eagerly go straight into the city to give him a job... then you realise you CAN'T. So the extra chore is to squint at the tiny white/yellow/red bulb on the equally tiny unit icon. It's just bad playability/usability.

The interface has grown on me a bit, feels somewhat oldeworldy, but why do all the unit buttons/city production buttons have to be so tiny? I can't make anything out with having to sweep my cursor over and wait for the popup text. This is bad UI design 101!!

Flawed map scripts. Go ahead and roll a few starts, then look at worldbuilder. Count how many sugar resource tiles there are, then count the marsh tiles that produce sugar. Now count tobacco... the other resources are somewhat balanced in distribution but 90% of my games have only 1 sugar resource tile and very little sugar bearing terrain. Contrast that to tobacco and it's just silly.

The Carribbean map script is very good at making a close copy of the real thing, but I was expecting more of a variable archipelago, if i want the carribbean there's a scenario map..

The included scenario of the real new world doesn't have accurate start locations for the indians, this seems like such a simple bugfix/obvious preference that along with all the other flavor ommissions it just makes me assume noone making this game cared.

Likewise with the terrain graphics. The different terrain types aren't as easily distinguished as the originals and the overall feel/lighting? seems to put me in mind of an overcast day. Could it be brighter near the equator? Make the waters around the carribbean more tropical too, sea isn't grey everywhere. I don't remember seeing much desert/cacti either..

The mechanics of bells/ref, kings attitude/demands and education costs are being debated ad nauseum so i'll spare those though they're more evidence of flavor being lost imo.



So there's a lot they can fix if they want to, but right now i'm thinking the original hasn't been beaten. The inability of the ai new worlders to pose a military threat alone is enough for that, and sadly its probably the least likely to get the programmers attention it deserves, short of just giving them free units (i'd actually be ok with that... i think)

Rant over...

 

[Gliese 581]

A good post I agree with most of your points. I haven't started more than a couple of games but it seems that it's been rushed and should have been in development for another couple of months. We should probably blame 2k/Atari. :/

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think the Huge map being smaller than a Civ4 map is for two reasons:

1) This is a way more intricate than Civ4.
2) There's quite a bit more stuff in this game than Civ4. Some of that is not really apparent when playing, but when you lift the hood and look at the engine, you realize that there's a number of changes that can and will noticeably increase processing time vs. a comparable Civ4 map.

As for the rest of your post, I either agree or haven't had enough time playing to accept or reject those points.

I haven't really had a problem with the size of interface options, but I did get annoyed with the Sail to Europe button looking enough like the regular Go To button that I clicked it by accident on more than one occasion.

 

[misterslack]

1. Cannons firing at enemy ships outside the city if you have a fort/fortress.

I think this was removed for balance reasons. It's also not congruent with civ4 combat, as it's essentially a free attack with no chance of your cannon being damaged. It was cool in when you took out multiple REF Man-of-Wars with it in col1 =)

2. Foreign powers intervening on your behalf

Agreed, this was a really cool feature of col1 that I miss. It was thrilling to see see a fleet of 5 French Man-of-Wars landing and reinforcing your cities with troops.

3. Troops turning into continental troops when you declare independance, again for flavour reasons. Why leave it out?

It would be redundant with the promotion system in civ4. Also, the rebel troops already get a massive bonus based on your liberty bell percentage.

4. Flavor text/Events such as "you have discovered the pacific ocean" "fountain of youth" or the cities of gold.

Pacific ocean, eh, big deal. Fountain of youth, however, was a completely overpowered random event. For those of you that haven't played the original, you could randomly find the fountain of youth in native ruins and burial grounds. Finding it would cause 10-12 immigrants to immediately be ready for pickup in Europe.

6. Competent AI military/Aggresion.

Yes, the enemy AI is completely passive in this game. You can go through half the game with zero military units and still be safe. This needs fixing.

Everything else you mentioned sounds spot on. Still, I think the core game is very good and the new features outweigh the old features that were removed. It will be a great game after a patch, after all it's still colonization at heart.

 

[sw99]

I think this was removed for balance reasons. It's also not congruent with civ4 combat, as it's essentially a free attack with no chance of your cannon being damaged. It was cool in when you took out multiple REF Man-of-Wars with it in col1 =)

I'm no programmer, but couldn't they just have programmed the ship to roll a probability on whether they'll avoid staying in range of the cannon, or better still, use civ4 mechanics and just make it so they can't sink the ships, just damage them. They could even add another point of strength to the ships on top of that, but it would give your navy a bit more use picking off weakened stragglers

It would be redundant with the promotion system in civ4. Also, the rebel troops already get a massive bonus based on your liberty bell percentage.

Just because the promotion system is in civ4 doesn't mean there's no point having a seperate swordsman and maceman unit right? The functionality is replaced by something that could've been done in the same way as the original col and retain the extra thrill of getting a new type of troop.

Pacific ocean, eh, big deal. Fountain of youth, however, was a completely overpowered random event. For those of you that haven't played the original, you could randomly find the fountain of youth in native ruins and burial grounds. Finding it would cause 10-12 immigrants to immediately be ready for pickup in Europe.

So nerf the bonus, just 3 would be fine, have it double your cross production for 30 turns or something. Don't just kill the idea. It's supposed to be a more historical game than CIV but it has less events... something civ struggles with to keep them generic/applicable to any civ.



EDIT: Just been reading the thread on the somethingawful forum and found/remembered some other niggles:

The small size of the map makes it so you have to use your first soldier if you want any chance of grabbing ai treasure trains, all but eliminating that part of the original unless you want to extend it to full colony war (sadly feasible right now, ai's often only have one or 2 troops for a VERY long time).
Simply put, everything is explored too quickly.

The huge new world scenario map leads to a crowded brazil, everything else is too far from europe. North america is 9+ turns away from the sail to europe zone, early game thats suicide! Compared to the original this leads to a reduction in choice. Even if you just conquer brazil for yourself, you're just massively handicapping the already lacking ai. No fun.

 

[Dale]

Wonderful, not only am I outnumbered 4 to 1, but i'm actually not going to make it to declare independence before time runs out... bug or design choice, it's counter intuitive and just plain annoying.

Just like to point out, that with all the rebel bonuses you get after the DoI, you can competantly defeat a REF 4 times your size.

 

[Gomer_Pyle]

I would like to point out that most people wanted a complete remake of the first game with extra bonuses. Not a look alike that changed the cool parts of col1 with its bonuses.

I am only sad that they have removed the military way col1 had. With dragoons becoming regulars after being beaten and cannon having 2 lives. This alone has ruined the game for me I am sorry to say. I know you are gonna say "This is not col1" but I do not think most people wanted anything else either. I for one wanted a col1 with new graphics but same gameplay.

 

[Llotyhy]

The problem with this game is not its flaws in my opinion...

I have complete trust all these things will be fixed in a patch or added in a mod. The problem is that its not a finished product. Especially for a Firaxis game, it's almost as if no one tested it... it's terrible.

For example, the point you make about AI passiveness is very valid. Sure, this will be fixed, but how on earth did that go through testing? It's the worst AI I've ever seen in any col/civ game...

I just hope things like these will be fixed really soon, or I'll put this title in a dark box somewhere in a dark corner where no one will look at it again.

 

[morchuflex]

...Long list of very valid points...

Hello.

Man, am I pleased to read this!

I've had the same feelings since installing the game 48h ago (while still having fun, don't get me wrong!).

I agree with almost everything, especially your gripe about small maps. This is particularly shameful since the game engine seems quite capable of handling much more (I am impressed by how quickly the game starts and loads compared to Civ4).

Equally irritating is the fact you can't assign jobs to a unit that has just moved. I suppose this is designed to prevent exploits? But what an annoyance!

I would also add a long list of grievances myself, but the thread is already likely to explode...

 

[much2much]

2. Foreign powers intervening on your behalf if you can generate enough liberty bells after declaring independance. This was a great mechanic for flavor reasons in the original, added an element of tension/suspense and would be welcome if the REF troop amounts don't get scaled down.

This was a design decision that could go either way but I can see why its left out. It makes you have to really create a powerful economy not just hold off for a little while. Its far more final the way it is now. This could easily feel like a back door that could be games to exploitation.

3. Troops turning into continental troops when you declare independance, again for flavour reasons. Why leave it out?

I found this annoying tbh. I am used to keying into what a unit is at a glance. It becomes like another game then.

4. Flavor text/Events such as "you have discovered the pacific ocean" "fountain of youth" or the cities of gold. I'm very puzzled about this one, since events were just added to civ 4

These make it a more epic variable experience whereas this has a tighter focus. Trade and the huge randomness of finding treasure make up for this and keep it very focused on resource allocation and decision making.

5. Wars in europe = War with "New xxxx" Again, for historical flavor and also to mix up the gameplay a bit. The next point may explain why this is gone though..

Too random and makes you feel like a puppet. The tight focus of Europe interacting only in limited but powerful ways is really good in this game I think.

6. Competent AI military/Aggresion. Ok, I've not checked aggressive AI yet as i'm still learning the intricacies but I've been declared on once by an ai (spain, whilst he was losing colonies to natives, he brought no troops against me) and a reasonable amount by the natives (i treat them well until near the end of the game). In the original game I remember having to keep a comparable military to the ai or they could and would bring a couple of galleons full! I don't remember ever seeing 2 ai's in the same game lose all their cities to natives , i've seen that twice in the remake so far. Early days though, I need to play more and move up in difficulty to see the full picture (still playing on the default level, i forget the name, 3rd difficulty from the left anyway)

Yeah I think by trying to make the AI focus on being a bit less warmongering than Civ4 they have gone a bit too far. Also the resource model makes this a lot more of a struggle to program I imagine.

7. Bigger maps. Why is a "Huge" map in Civ4 COL only about as big as a small/medium map in Civ4? I understand that there are only 4 main players but at least give us accurate names for the map sizes, I never would've even tried huge if the other maps weren't so small. The huge new world scenario map is bigger than the generator will do, so the engine is definately capable. Give us bigger maps! All the exploring is done after 30 years if you're focused.

This is one of the best parts of this game. Tightening a city to 9 squares combined with this makes the game heaps more enjoyable. Less travelling which makes normal Civ4 feel heaps more turn based. Hard to explain the other advantages but easier to intercept enemy troops and camp in cover.

Logically, before you declare independance, when you're about 30% rebel perhaps, you're going to start building up the army... well, i've been doing so anyway. I had 3 statesmen in all my cities and newspapers too, but over the next 50 turns my overall rebel sentiment never went up, despite all my cities having 50% rebel sentiment or near. Why? Because the 20-30 extra troops i've recruited are counting as tories!! Wonderful, not only am I outnumbered 4 to 1, but i'm actually not going to make it to declare independence before time runs out... bug or design choice, it's counter intuitive and just plain annoying.

You're right this is stupid. People outside settlements shouldn't be counted at all. Might not be ideal but easiest fix for them to implement.

Flawed map scripts. Go ahead and roll a few starts, then look at worldbuilder. Count how many sugar resource tiles there are, then count the marsh tiles that produce sugar. Now count tobacco... the other resources are somewhat balanced in distribution but 90% of my games have only 1 sugar resource tile and very little sugar bearing terrain. Contrast that to tobacco and it's just silly.

Yeah good point. On this same topic fur the resource most often occurs on crappy tiles. It is almost always better to actually go for a vanilla dense forest tile than a tundra tile with the fur resource. Realistic but kind of makes the fur resource pointless.

The included scenario of the real new world doesn't have accurate start locations for the indians, this seems like such a simple bugfix/obvious preference that along with all the other flavor ommissions it just makes me assume noone making this game cared.

This realism option I wouldn't like personally. I like the random scatterings.

 

[Andvare]

Absolutely, it's flawed, a lot.

They took away the bling, why? To make the game even more generic? Emm, okay?

I find that if the maps were much bigger, which I would like as well, the ship speed should probably be adjusted, seriously, several years to cross the Caribbean?
Sure the smaller maps are more fun to play, but why the hell not make it up to the player which size of map he wants?

This game fits squarely in the "meh" pile. Ah well, I just hope it wont sour Firaxis from making the game they should have focussed on remaking, namely SMAC.

 

[smoke9999]

100% on this post.

the game could be great with the old col1 feeling and mechanics.

like this its just . .. .. .. ., sorry to say but i played more Colonization for Windows yesterday than this bad remake.

 

[morchuflex]

like this its just . .. .. .. ., sorry to say but i played more Colonization for Windows yesterday than this bad remake.

I wouldn't go that far.
Col2 is a good game, it has potential for improving and modding, and I would never play the original again, even for money: bugs, ugly, illegible graphics, no diplomacy, laughable combat system, exploits and unbalanced gameplay, you name it..., these were problems, and hard to address.
Still, Col2 could and should have been much better right out of the box.

 

[Saurus]

Pacific ocean, eh, big deal. Fountain of youth, however, was a completely overpowered random event. For those of you that haven't played the original, you could randomly find the fountain of youth in native ruins and burial grounds. Finding it would cause 10-12 immigrants to immediately be ready for pickup in Europe.

Unless I remeber incorrectly, there was a nasty bug (or feature?) assosiated with the discovery of a "Fountain of youth".
Yes - your dock was filled with immigrants - it was just that for each immigrant you picked, each spot in the immigrantion-queue was not filled with a random unit as usual, but by a petty criminal. ALWAYS a petty criminal. So after the first random units was picked, you had only petty criminals to choose from.

So after the event, you had a few new nice units if you were lucky to have decent units in the queue from the start - and a horde of criminals.
What was even worse, since every new criminal was still considered a immigrated colonist, the price for get new colonists through crosses skyrocked. (But at that point there were only petty criminals in the immigrant-queue to choose from anyway)

If this happened too early, you could find yourself in a situation were you had a lot of criminals in the fields - but no laborers at all, and with no rescue in sight.

During mid-game, when your schoolhouses were up and running so that the criminals could be educated into something better, this event was still awesome though.

 

[Gliese 581]

Unless I remeber incorrectly, there was a nasty bug (or feature?) assosiated with the discovery of a "Fountain of youth".
Yes - your dock was filled with immigrants - it was just that for each immigrant you picked, each spot in the immigrantion-queue was not filled with a random unit as usual, but by a petty criminal. ALWAYS a petty criminal. So after the first random units was picked, you had only petty criminals to choose from.

So after the event, you had a few new nice units if you were lucky to have decent units in the queue from the start - and a horde of criminals.
What was even worse, since every new criminal was still considered a immigrated colonist, the price for get new colonists through crosses skyrocked. (But at that point there were only petty criminals in the immigrant-queue to choose from anyway)

If this happened too early, you could find yourself in a situation were you had a lot of criminals in the fields - but no laborers at all, and with no rescue in sight.

During mid-game, when your schoolhouses were up and running so that the criminals could be educated into something better, this event was still awesome though.

I don't remember any of this. Also I remember that if you had William Brewster you not only got 10-12 free people but you got to pick every one of them.

About map size: I'm actually happy with the standard setting. I like the world to be at least semi-filled before the WOI and filling it all before then is a huge task still. In the original it was laughable, you would fill maybe 5% tops. That might be realistic but it left me yearning to accomplish more, which wasn't really feasible (at least to my kiddie skill back then )

 

[Netich]

I share the same opinion. I keep playing becouse i can see the great game that lay underground all the design flaws, but i think im near of leaving it and wait for the patch (if there is any).

The pauses in the game are CPU's fault, i think (ive tried with low resolution, low graphics, and nice graphic card). But what are these calculations when all you do is asign a native to a job?? The game even refresh the screen (the units dissapear for a moment). This must be a bad coding/optimization.

The other major flaw is the resource planning. The desing of the import/export idea is very bad. If you have 10 cities, exporting and importing, the list of combinations is huge, and you have find the ones you want to asign. This is a nightmare!!

 

[Ambreville]

I totally agree with Post #1.

I hate the small icons and the lack visible written clues. You're left with the need to mouse over everything to understand what these obscure icons are. In some cases, there is no mouse-over info or written cue, so you're left guessing. Although not a huge problem, this is an annoying, counter-intuitive, and basically unrefined interface.

 

[Gliese 581]

I share the same opinion. I keep playing becouse i can see the great game that lay underground all the design flaws, but i think im near of leaving it and wait for the patch (if there is any).

The pauses in the game are CPU's fault, i think (ive tried with low resolution, low graphics, and nice graphic card). But what are these calculations when all you do is asign a native to a job?? The game even refresh the screen (the units dissapear for a moment). This must be a bad coding/optimization.

The other major flaw is the resource planning. The desing of the import/export idea is very bad. If you have 10 cities, exporting and importing, the list of combinations is huge, and you have find the ones you want to asign. This is a nightmare!!

Game slowing down: Probably due to memory leaks due to bad coding like in CIV before it was patched (took a long time there though, a fan patch was out much quicker).

Trade routes: There definitely needs to be some sorting, as it is they're not even sorted by name of export city.

 

[Ambreville]

The other major flaw is the resource planning. The desing of the import/export idea is very bad. If you have 10 cities, exporting and importing, the list of combinations is huge, and you have find the ones you want to asign. This is a nightmare!!

This is one of my pet peeves in this game. I totally agree with you here.

I suggested in another thread a revamp of the basic resource trading system. For example, what if the player only assigned the minimum resource desired in each city (the maximum being its current storage capacity). The automated wagon trains (and coastal shipping) should then take care of the internal trading WITHIN the player's colonies, and would attempt to distribute more evenly among the colonies the various goods available (such as arms and tools for example), which would limit the incessant spam of resource wasted messages. So if you set up a town with "zero" desirable cotton, the automation would then attempt to take all available cotton from that town and relocate it somewhere else that has both need and storage room for it (like a colony that wants to process cotton into cloth for example). This would be far less cumbersome than the current system.

---------------

Edit -- you'd need a "full" toggle box next to the "desirable quantity" if you want a colony that will attempt to garner a particular resource up to its "full" storage capacity, whatever it may be as it builds larger storage facilities. This would help prevent having to manually reset "minimums" to equal maximum storage each time a larger warehouse is built.

--------------

The next thing to do is then to set up manually foreign exports exclusively from your port cities, especially for what you want to send back to Europe (or other foreign colonies and native tribes). The automation would pick the best market for the exports at the time of departure, and ships would then set course accordingly.

This leads to a big hole in the game -- such as why I would not be able to trade with a foreign monarchy! I should be able to do this, which should incur anger from my own monarch. But hey, at least I would have some market available for my goods should my own monarch become to damn greedy!

The diplomacy available in the game is too weak as well. I should be able to negotiate with foreign monarchs and create situations such as RW France supporting the American revolution. Why is this missing? Why, why, why? A lot of the attitudes of the monarchies toward their colonies were shaped by problems in Europe. None of this really transpires here, which is a shame. What a bummer.

 

[Lord Shadow]

The map sizes don't worry me too much. In Civ4, a modern transport took around TWENTY turns to get from one continent to another, in a huge map. In Colonization, your units can't afford to be moving all that time, and besides your empire needn't be as huge as in Civ4. Sometimes smaller is better, but still I predict map sizes will be tweaked/added in mods and perhaps even official patches.

You're right this is stupid. People outside settlements shouldn't be counted at all. Might not be ideal but easiest fix for them to implement.

It'd be worse than the current system. It's extremely easy to exploit: just evacuate your towns, leaving only statemen behind, and get rebel sentiment to 100% in 3 turns. Nonsense.