Why punish a player for building a big colony?

[Mesix]

I have played three games so far.

In my first game I settled three fish and got expert fishermen to produce a lot of food. I was getting population so fast I didn't know what to do with them all. I formed additional colonies and gave them a lot of food too because having a big population seemed the way to go. In the end I could never declare WoI against the mother land because my population growth outpaced my bell production even with three elder statesmen in every colony and the town hall completely upgraded.

To me, the population mechanic on bell requirement is counterintuitive. If anything, there should be a steep bell requirement when a colony is small and the revolutionary spirit should increase (thus decreasing the required bells) as the population grows. Converted natives, reformed criminals, and natural born colonists should not require convincing that they need to be free from the motherland the way that colonists coming from Europe do.

In my second game I tried to remain as small as possible to allow me to actually reach the WoI. I also followed the advice given by many on this forum to not build up military until declaring independence to prevent the REF from getting too big. Unfortunately, one of the natives declared war on me and took my two top cities very easily because of this strategy.

In the third game I used the gimmicky strategy of building nothing but bells and ploitical points. I bought 100 guns and 100 horses to make 2 dragoons and also bought 6 cannons. This was enough to secure a very early (if cheap) win.

The game seems to be broken. There is no reward for having a successful colony. The best way to win seems to be to abuse the broken mechanics in the game.

 

[player1 fanatic]

There is no reward for having a successful colony.

Exactly.
What's the point of growing larger and improving economy (or conquering other colonies) if king REF will just scale to your population, due to needed bell generation.

 

[Mesix]

The really frustrating part is that if you build a very successful colony, it is actually impossible to even get a WoI unless you kill a lot of your own colonists. As I stated before, in my first game my population growth outpaced my bell production making the 50% threshold impossible to reach. If the developers work on a patch, they really need to address this issue. As a colony increases in size and success, it should become more self reliant and declaring indepencence should be easier...not harder.

 

[YunDog]

yes but the efficiency of your colony + how much rebel sentiment should also be related to using proffessional vs indians and servents

there should be encouragement for training improving and educating your people

so having smaller colonies of proffesionals should always do better than cities crowded with untrained riff raff. Thats how it was scaled in the original col1 when you had penalties for low bell production and too many citizens

I like having successful large and efficient towns - and getting the whole production chain up and running with wagon taking goods between towns - wheres the incentive to do this gone?

 

[Mesix]

I think that a hard coded number of bells would make more sense. It would prevent the cheesy early win exploits by requireing too many bells to build with one or two population and reward players who go out and expand their colony to actually form a nation.

 

[sbtop]

I think that a hard coded number of bells would make more sense. It would prevent the cheesy early win exploits by requireing too many bells to build with one or two population and reward players who go out and expand their colony to actually form a nation.

I also think that the REF should be hard coded to the difficulty level rather than tied in to bell production. If you knew that you had to beat a REF of say 100 men then you'd have to build a decent colony infrastructure to do so. This would also reward expansion rather than punishing it as at present.

Historically the Old World powers had plenty to worry about and the threat of the New World colonies revolting would probably not be the most pressing concern - making sure that the Homeland was safe from their European neighbours would be much more important. If they had really increased their standing army at home (the REF) by a factor of 10 then their neighbours would be expecting them to use them against them and increase their own forces accordingly. Once the REF left for the New World then those neighbours would be pretty tempted to invade the one who started the whole military build up.

 

[Tavenier]

One of the best remarks here (IMO) was to make colonists born in the new world have the same % of rebel sentiment by the time they were born. So no + or - on the city's rebel sentiment. Same goes for natives, probably.

 

[Commander Bello]

I also think that the REF should be hard coded to the difficulty level rather than tied in to bell production.

I have to respectfully disagree.

Sure, the REF mechanisms are broken.
Yet, any patch should take both into account: the difficulty level (very obvious) AND the map size (as being read from the CIV4WorldInfo.xml).

Reason:
The normal huge map is intolerably small. Modding it to bigger sizes (which doesn't harm the game speed) is an obvious desire for people who like to play on continent-size maps.
Yet, if the REF would still be based on the assumptions for the original map size, the REF would become to small, since at bigger continents it should be easy to build up a really huge colonial army.

 

[tour86rocker]

Mesix, I totally agree! I've had the same problem with runaway growth during the last 100 turns when I'm wanting to declare independence. Disbanding converts and new colonists is no fun! Every time I do it, I feel like I'm cheating or doing something wrong.

I like your idea about the REF but I wonder if that might make the game too repetitive or predictable. I propose a starting minimum REF that scales slowly. Perhaps the king should only be allowed to add one unit per one turn, or longer.

I very strongly agree with the idea that some new units should need no convincing for the cause of independence. Perhaps individual units should have an individual Rebel Sentiment rating (I'll use the abbreviation "RS").

This could potentially be a big change, but hear me out. Units from the docks could be random in their degree of support for independence. Perhaps it could depend on whether they're purchased or are truly driven out by religious persecution.

Veteran Soldiers would start as pure Loyalists (0% RS), Elder Statesmen as 100% RS. Units at Town Hall would bring other colonists up to the average of their levels of RS and somehow having more than one unit at town hall would work better or faster at raising RS.

During the Rev War, European troops would execute captured Elder Statesmen or revert them to Free Colonist status and if they captured a colony, they would station some kind of Anti-Statesman Unit in the Town Hall to DRIVE DOWN rebel sentiment for as long as they hold on to the colony.

 

[tour86rocker]

My reasoning for starting Veteran Soldiers at 0% RS would be that they are basically the King's Redcoat/Bluecoat/etc soldiers (or are they Hessians?) guarding the King's colonies, but under your command.

Additionally, colonists whose individual RS ratings were less than 50% would be unwilling to defend against or attack the King's men. Battles against the King could increase their RS as it increased their experience. They would, however, fight against Indians and Europeans earlier in the game.

 

[ChrTh]

Ignoring all the REF discussion (because it's happening in half the threads right now) ... why didn't you just not have all the Expert Fishermen working? They can do other jobs, you know, and that way your population wouldn't grow as fast.

 

[tour86rocker]

Well there's that, but I also had seven missions.

 

[Mesix]

I think that the REF mechanics are separate from the issue that annoys me most. I don't like how the required bells to declare independence scales to population. If I build a successful colony that increases population and builds a successful economy, I should still have the opportunity to take on the Old Wrold just as readily as they guy that builds one or two small settlements and does notheing but build bells.

My recommendation is that there be a requiremnt to produce a certain number of bells that scales by the difficulty level. The bigger the colony gets and the more cities that a player has producing bells, the faster they shold reach the hard coded bell thrhold required for DoI. By haing it hardcoded rather than a scale based on population, the early bell rush exploit would be eliminated. This would also reward a player who builds a thriving colony rather than punishing them for having a fast growing population. As the game plays out now, the more successful a colony is, the harder it becomes to declare independence. In the case of my game, it was impossible to build enough bells to keep up with my population boom.

The size and strength of the REF is a completely separate issue in my eyes. It too should scale by game difficulty, but I do think that a player who is building a lot of troops should eventually encounter a larger REF than one who is peacefully expanding.

 

[Randomrandy]

You can always remove some population from your big cities, this will improve the efficiency of bell production.

 

[Mesix]

Actually, through playing I have discovered that it doesn't matter where the population are. The scouts that are exploring the frontier far away from the cities contribute to the threshold required for DoI just as much as the colonists that are working inside the city. The only way to reduce the threshold is to actually kill your units (either deleting them with the skull button or declaring war and sending them to their doom).

 

[Habadacus]

I think that new Free Colonists that are born in your colony from food production should start out already inclined towards independence by a sensible amount, needing less bells to tip over past 50%. Maybe tie the amount of starting rebel sentiment to the current tax rate, so it would reflect the growing tension in the colonies.

It would fix this problem, and jibes with history. Why would someone who lived his whole life in Connecticut be loyal to the King of a country he's never seen, and who is bleeding him dry with taxes he sees no benefit from?

Conversely, a player who relied more on bringing people over from Europe would actually be at a disadvantage when trying to get them to take up arms against the King, which also seems to make sense.

It would be a way to award growth in by giving players a way to reach independence that doesn't directly increase the REF.

Problem solved. (edit: At least as far as population growth happening so fast it actually impossible to declare independence. I still think the game makes it seem like you should be generating bells, but then punishes you severely for doing so before the very last minute.)

 

[Becephalus]

I have to respectfully disagree.

Reason:
The normal huge map is intolerably small. Modding it to bigger sizes (which doesn't harm the game speed) is an obvious desire for people who like to play on continent-size maps.

You know what is funny, I play on tiny maps with all three other europeans and all 8 indian tribes and still regularly have colonies of 5-15 cities (which is about what the the game plays best at imo. Any more and you just get way way too busy micro wise. Especially with the trade routes the way they are. And this is without declaring war on the other europeans (although I will defend myself if attacked).

And I do think the tiny map are continent sized. Considering how the game mechanics work a ciy is much more the area of a large state than a city.

Just MO...

 

[Hammurbabble]

In the old Colonization, any colony with 50%+ rebel sentiment produced new free colonists who were rebels. They produced tories if less than 50%.

I've started playing with Time and Europe victories turned off, which gets rid of that pesky time limit, but effectively there's still a time limit based on the taxation rate. It's just not as tight. In the old Col, there was a FF who would wipe all your Tea Party boycotts, and another that let you build Customs Houses that would sell to Europe without transporting, at a 50% tax rate. So you had lots more room to tell the King to buzz off, and that kept the tax rate fairly low, so that you could play for longer and expand to a bigger size.

C4C loses some of the feel from the old game, which in my opinion was completely preventable.

 

[Kranden]

Doubtz Pozt

 

[Kranden]

I just beat a game on governor where I had about 9 cities. I swarmed a huge population then drafted them all as soldiers pew pew RAF was like 170 units. I even lost my capital but that didnt cost me but I did lose a huge stack of units. I took all my remaining troops and cannons to the Forested Hills next to my capital and turn after turn wore them down wave after wave. Was pretty epic but then about 40 more soldiers landed in my 5 southern colonies that were all undefended except for one 15 stack in one city.