Use Colonization Model for Civ 4

[polypheus]

Instead of using trying to tweak the Civ3 model for Civ4, I strongly suggested using the far superior Colonization model instead. Many of you are familiar with Colonization and know what I'm talking about.

Colonization model already has many features which many people have been asking for in Civ4! For example:

1) Quantified resources rather than this unwiedy one resource = infinite supply crap of Civ3
2) Physical Trade routes to distribute quantifiable resources/goods including food!
3) Finished goods (converting raw materials to luxuries or tools)
4) Need to combine exact quantities of goods and labor to build stuff
5) Superior Population/Labor Model than Civ3
6) Specialized Factories (Armory, Shipyard, etc)
I'm sure I'm forgetting some others as well...

A Civ4, based on Colonization model would be great!

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

Welcome to CFC forums, may your stay be pleasant and eventfull....
I'm not aware of the Col. model but browsing this forums I realised that points 1&2 are a hot topic and there are many complaints about how the current system deals with that....so definitely yes...

 

[Phoenix]

I would agree with Garbarsardar.jr in saying that points one and two should DEFINETLY be included. Also the rest would be nice.

And welcome to CFC!

 

[Captain Carnage]

Good luck supplying 20 + cities with enough defence!

 

[The Last Conformist]

1) Good.
2) Too much hassle. And less realistic.
3) Too much micromanagement.
4) I'm not sure what is meant?
5) Prefer Civ's.
6) And this would work more exactly how? If it's a call for improvements as prereqs for units, I'm all for it.

 

[Bluetooth]

Last year Atari transferred the rights to develop several Sid Meier Classics to Firaxis. One of the classics they can develop is Sid Meier’s Colonization, so hopefully we will get a Colonization II in the next few years. I must say I would prefer that scenario instead of mixing the two games. Think about it, two great games instead of one.

 

[Commander Bello]

Last year Atari transferred the rights to develop several Sid Meier Classics to Firaxis. One of the classics they can develop is Sid Meier’s Colonization, so hopefully we will get a Colonization II in the next few years. I must say I would prefer that scenario instead of mixing the two games. Think about it, two great games instead of one.

I fear, it would become just to average games instead of one good one.

Anyway, I strongly second the idea of adopting the Colonizaton concept to Civ4. For the ones, who never played Col, you needed 50 horses to make a soldier unit becoming a mounted one (basically dragoons). You either had to trade for the horses or to have horsebreeding facilities (with an reproduction rate of 10% per turn, if I remember correctly). So you bought an initial stock of horses and started your own breeding.
When a mounted unit suffered losses, the first lost their horses, so still were able to fight (with lesser stats).
To form a military unit, you had to provide them with guns. Guns you could gain by sinking enemy ships, by buying them or by producing them.
The quality of your improvements was dependant from the citizens you've put into it. So a church with 1 priest was less effective than one with 3 priests (3 was the max). Sometimes, a certain citizen became a master in his profession, enabling him to train others.
And so on.

It was lot of fun, and much more logical than the current system, which requires as much micromanagement, but with less understandable results.

 

[polypheus]

Many people seem unfamiliar with Colonization so I thought I might try to explain it.

Colonization is an old game which came out just after Civ 1. It looks and feels like Civ but there are some significant differences.

It used a discrete population model. A population point is represented by "one" colonist although that "one" person of course represents many many actual persons. You could assign that person to various tasks inside the colony/city (grain farming, fishing, cash crop farming, mining, carpenting, tool-making, etc) or outside (scouts, soldier, pioneer, etc)

Units could be trained and equipped to become specialist units. For instance, 50 muskets/50 horses and a trained colonist becomes a veteran dragoon.

All resources and finished goods are quantified and labor productivity is also quantified.

For example, you will assign a person to mine ore and each turn the colony will collect a certain amount of ore. You could then assign a blacksmith to convert ore into tools. A colonist with tools becomes a "pioneer" who can build roads, change terrain, etc. Tools could also be converted into muskets, etc etc. This also works for cash crops. A sugar planter will obtain a certain number of sugar per turn. A distiller would then convert the sugar into rum.

Now for manufacturing things or building buildings, you would have to assign people as carpenters and each turn the carpenters would convert lumber to part of the ship. A frigate might require 320 "hammers" (amount of labor) and one carpenter might produce 10 hammers/turn. You could of course assign more carpenters to make the object be built more quickly.

Many objects require specialized buildings. For example, to build ships, you have to build "shipyards". Many objects also might require the combination of multiple resources/goods to build it. For frigate, you need 320 lumber->320 "hammers", 100 tools.

All of these resources and goods including food, are transportable on land wagons or ships for trade or distribution. These wagons and ships of course could be stolen as well.

As you can see, it is a much more detailed model of both people and resources. And the detailed modelling of resources and finished goods and physical transportation also lends itself into a much more detailed economic model and system. Also people and equipment are decoupled. In colonization terms, there is no "swordsman" unit. You would convert iron ore into swords. Then you would equipt a "person" with "swords" and he is now swordsmen. Also you can see that cities are much more specialized and unique and interconnected.

I'm not suggesting that Civ4 use this exact model or this level of detail. Certain aspects could be abstracted or slightly simplified. But if Civ4 used the Colonization model as the starting point, it will implement many of the features that we have been asking for.

 

[socralynnek]

Yeah, that sounds good, I always liked Colonization!

If at least ressources are quantified (maybe not a local storage but like gold a nationwide storage) and some buildings/units cost a number of them, then I am very happy.

But I also liked the specialist model in Colonization but since Colonization was a rather not changing world and the Civ World is changing fast from Ancient to Modern, maybe that wouldn't be that helpful.

 

[Commander Bello]

Thanks for refreshing our memory, Polypheus!
As I remember, after you've got used to it, it became very quick and easy to do all these things and they added much of fun - at least for me.
Regarding the military units, the Colonization model indeed would not fit to Civ4 with it's expected many different unit types. As far as I remember at Colonization there only were soldiers and dragoons, and both could be veterans or skilled. So, providing them with the needed weapons was just easy since all the needed were muskets and horses.
But, as you've pointed out, the economic model was just great. Complex enough to be fun and logical, and easy enough to be handled even late at night

@Socralynnek: I think a combination of nationwide and local stores for goods and ressources could be a handeable solution. For instance, there could be storing buildings at each settlement (small warehouse, medium, large, giant...) and "virtual" storage (up to a certain degree) on nation level.
So, if you would loose a certain town to your enemies, it would hurt your stock since you would loose the local one, but it wouldn't crash your economy since there still would be stock on the nation level.
Maybe, even the weapons problem could be solved by some kind of generic weapons. So, in ancient and medieval times, a sword in the storage would resemble swords, pikes, maybe even bows for unit supply. Muskets would be everything which makes use of gunpowder. So, they would be arquebuses at the beginning, automatically become muskets, rifles, and later automatic weapons. Wagons and trains could be ...well, wagons and trains at the beginning and after steam engine and combustion become cars, lorries, trucks, tanks and so on.
With each new level of equipment, it would become more cost-intensive in regards to ressource consumption and man-power to build those items.

Ahh.. there would be just so many opportunities to make things work in a more logical way!
(And, of course, the different levels and ratios should be modifyable by the editor!)
[Dream mode on].....

 

[polypheus]

One thing too about the "Colonization" model is that population growth and "city sprawl" was much better contained and balanced. Of course, even the Civ model could be tweaked to do this but the "Colonization" model did this very well due to its inherent game mechanics.

In Colonization, growth in cities tended to be very slow in the beginning because until "bonuses" came into effect, the food overflow model made the growth of new citizens a slow process. In fact, most of the population growth initially was fueled from immigration (which presumably would not exist in Civ 4, at least initially).

Because each population unit was dedicated to a task, if you wanted to increase food production, then you'd be doing nothing but farming. But then nothing else would get done so you most likely would not do this. It is also the case that due to slow population growth in the beginning (because food surplus was very small) as well as economies of scale, it usually did NOT pay off to keep sprawling new cities.

Let's say you have four population units. In most cases, the first population unit needed to farm. Thus if you created four different cities, then you'd have four farmers and you'd be doing nothing else but waiting A LONG TIME for those four cities to increase in population. But if you decided to have only two cities of two citizens each, then one could be the farmer and the other be the lumberjack. Of course, with this arrangement, you won't build anything because you still need to convert the lumber into "hammers". So you'd have to have the lumberjack accumulate lumber resource and then switch him to carpenter to build any buildings and such.

Alternatively, you could assign the four citizens so that one is farming, one is lumberjacking, and one is carpenter. Thus you are building a city improvement right away. Then the fourth citizen can be used as a pioneer to build roads or a scout, etc.

In most cases, this last approach is the most effective. Thus by the game mechanics of the Colonization model, sprawl is reduced considerably. This is also much more historic and realistic in terms of modeling population growth and spread of cities.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

In some ways, I think that the Colonization model might have worked LARGELY because of the scale of the game. As a global, all-of-history scale game, however, I'm not sure that all elements of the Colonization model could be adopted to Civ4!
Thats NOT to say, though, that certain elements of that game couldn't help to improve this one! For instance:

I'm beginning to think its time to abandon the whole 'population point' system from civ, as its simply too crude a tool for measuring the population and, more importantly, the costs to population of units, plagues, bombardment and the like!
Instead, I think a better approach might be to simply have the REAL population of a city. The former pop. point numbers can, instead, refer to the city size-which effects how many people the city can comfortably hold! When an enemy approaches a city, all he will see is the city size number, not the population-which can only be ascertained through spying or through alliances!
Such a system would require the reworking of the population growth model, especially tying it to other factors beyond mere food!
This population system would allow for a less crude method of determining the population costs of units, bombardment and plague, as well as allowing for an improved method of measuring both mood and 'labour specialisation' effects.
Beyond this, I also am a strong supporter of physical trade routes-though more a la CtP II than Colonization-so as to allow sea power to be more effective for disrupting trade!
I also strongly support both a quantification of resources AND a better, less random, model for determine when a resource appears or disappears.
Lastly, I have long been an advocate of certain 'factories' being specialised for the building of specific unit types. At the very least, I have wanted the power to make certain units (if not ALL units) dependant on specific city improvements. They got close to this in C3:C, but fell just short of the mark
! I don't support point (4), but I am a strong advocate of an abstract 'finished goods' system!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.