Useless colonies!

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Zorkk
Colonies SHOULD have borders. Think about it, real life, or game, doesn't matter. You've gone out there, and established some sort of control over an area, and sent some of your people there to work in it. As far as i'm concerned that would be MY land, and I want to keep it. Having it so the AI can just move a settler in, plop down a city, and get rid of your colony is terrible.

Zorkk

Wrong, if the ai can plop a city down close enough to assimilate your colony immediately you have established NO control over the area.

You sound like people who attack a size 20 city on a hill with 1 modern armor and think the combat system is broken because it doesn't beat the pikeman defending it.

Just because a particular unit or feature is not useful in all circumstances or is not useful on its own without any integration with other tactics does not make it useless.

[player1]

There is NO WAY of estabilishing control over area (this is no civ2, no zoc)

Exept:
-going to war,
-or using insane strategies like having 8-12 units closing your borders.

That's the reason why things are not going as some people think they should.

That's the reason why I think colonies should have radius of 1.

The way mechanic is now, colonies are rarely usefull.
And I think firaxis didn't put interesting feature to be RARELY usefull.

[LaRusso]

i am not sure that you necessarily need 8 warriors to shield it off. 1 square radius MIGHT work.....i am wondering if firaxians will implement it....

[player1]

Plus, it's not fun to:
-be forced to make useless cities (at least for 200 turns, until High tech)
-be forced to go in war every 2 minutes, to protect your colony

The only use of colonies, now, is getting early some luxury resouse.
Plus, it should't be to far from you cities (2 or 3 tiles).
Anything farther woulf be absorbed by enemy settlers.

[LaRusso]

alternatively, you can make 8 additional colonies around it that will fend off absorption for a while

[Strollen]

I have used colonies before. My last game my only saltpeter was 1 hex outside my border on a mountain, put on a colony connect it to road network viola, I can build cannons, and cavalry. Later when my culture expand it disappeared. Very useful in this situation but pretty useless in general.

I do agree that you shouldn't be able to make a colony disappear by building a city next to it, so maybe instead of a 1 hex border just a rule that you can't build cities next to colonies.

[Zig]

Originally posted by JHood
I wish you could choose to raze a city that you acquire by culture. Now that would be funny.

That would be great!

City on an arctic island: "We love your civilization! May we join it?"

Me: "No you may not. But now that you have asked, I think I will make your city mysteriously burst into flames."

[GePap]

Hey, they wanted to join because of our superior television, not our enlightened governing

[Kolyana]

Placing a city inside your opponents territory is an act of war. Assimilating your opponents outposts and colonies by placing a city next to them should be the same.

To me they are a stunning idea that doesn't ... quite ... work ... right.

Nowadays if I want a resource I try and figure out where to place the city, not how to get a colony there. This kinda defeats the whole objective of them, doesn't it?

[fred]

Colonies work fine.

It is not the colony's fault that the computer likes to expand their empire while you are unwilling to support a villiage.

The reason why there is no border? Let me see a border is based upon culture. Does an oil rig in the middle of the Atlantic generate any culture? Minimal if any.

Now to look at this more indepth, you are commiting a worker (population of 1) to a colony. To a city you commit a settler (pop 2). Now we look at the oil rig are there colonists on the oil rig farming, building houses, churches, temples, libraries, universities so that the oil rig workers can send their children.... ops i forgot the oil rig is full of workers and just workers. There are no families.

And what is stopping say "the russians" from taking over the oil rig? International curtisy and the military might of the former controllers of the oil rig. So if you want to keep you non culture producing colony defend it.

And as you can see a colony is not a colony as in the sense of "the founding colonies of america". Its a little tiny workshop/ trading post. They do not generate borders past the wall the surrounds them.

A colony should not generate any borders, it would totally unbalance the game. I would just build colonies around another civ and block them off from the rest of the map. Since they have no corruption, no settler req. only workers which are cheap.

If you know how to use colonies effectively use them, if not too bad for you. Its imporant to learn strategies. If you want a game that molds exactly to your play make your own game. Its not the game/designers fault that you are unable to use one of the many features of the game effectively. Colonies offer great uses, if used right. Try and adapt to your game instead of complaining.


And just to prove it can be used correctly, the computer built atleast 6 colonies around resources near me, that they needed. They were out of the reach of my borders and provided much needed resources to the computer player, since i had the resources already, and felt no agression to the player i let them exist. But the computer player could provide neccesary resources (iron, saltpeter) to the civ which was half way across the map, situated right in the middle of my land. And the amount of colonies all over the map was fairly large in the mid medival age. Of course a lot disappear with borders and expanding. But they are required in the early game more then later game. And they are used effectively to gain those resources you dont have early in the game so that you can start producing the neccesary military units. They are and will be highly effective when expanding early in the game, if used correctly.

[Akaoz]

You can only build colonies on resources. You can’t build 8 to surround another like LaRusso suggested, and you can’t wall in an enemy.

-Alech

[LaRusso]

i had colonies very late in the game. a coalition of freedom loving countries annihilated english superpower and razed their cities to the ground (too high culture, and we kept just the last ones). well there was oil aplenty in some tundra down there and settlers were not around or slow to produce, so chinese, japanese and me made some oil rigging colonies

[gaikokujin]

Fred:

LOGIC in an argument would also be nice. So, you claim that the critics of colonies don't know how to use them, but you give no examples of your own brilliant use of colonies.

Instead, we're treated to the _AIs'_ use of colonies. Ironically, had you played as the AI does (at least on Regent or above), you would have rushed a settler or two right over there to absorb the AI colonies. You simply _chose_ not to do this, but the AI rarely gives us the choice.

It is telling that the AI rarely uses colonies - I've never seen one in any of the games I've played, and I've played enough now to discover that colonies are of marginal use. They have all the earmarks of a game concept that didn't quite work out.

A 1 - or even zero - radius border would be a quick fix.

[player1]

Originally posted by fred
A colony should not generate any borders, it would totally unbalance the game. I would just build colonies around another civ and block them off from the rest of the map. Since they have no corruption, no settler req. only workers which are cheap.

Colonies should be buildable only on resouses.


But having forts with boder of 1 is a nice idea.
Of couse conquering the fort sould give a benefit to new rules.
And they should be more expensive to balance thing out.
Also if enemy city has very high culture your fort-borders should srink.

[smellymummy]

i agree that colonies should produce a border, however a radius of 1 is too big IMO, better off having a border size of 0. That way the AI can't settle in the immediate tile beside your colony.

The colonies should still be consumable by other towns, although the more military units you would have stationed there the harder it would be. It would be fairer IMO, after all when a high culture city is beside a spice colony, I would expect it to eventually go to it's nearest nicest looking neighboor.

One game I played (standard earth map), in the late game after razing the african cities, I sent colonies, each heavily defended (fortress, mechs, tanks and artilery). Of course the AI soon came in and built towns near my colonies, but not overlapping them. One of the AI's town did eat up 2 of my colonies, yet in another case where I had 2 colonies near the AI's town, the AI's town turned over to me, even though my cultural borders where far away.

The town turned, I had no culture borders touching it, only 2 colonies bordering it with plenty of units. Maybe there is something to colonies that we're missing? If you ask me, FIRAXIS seriously needs to clarify things up.

[Kolyana]

And what is stopping say "the russians" from taking over the oil rig? International curtisy and the military might of the former controllers of the oil rig. So if you want to keep you non culture producing colony defend it.

This is flawed. No one puts a detachment of marines on an oil rig, do they? Why? Because if the Russians moved in and took one, there would be an international incident .. it would be a declaration of wear.

WOW. Just like if you park a city inside your neighbors territory in CivIII.

Building an outpost uses one pop. It should count as soverign territory ... if only for that one square.

You got there first, you put your people there. The comp's sphere of control should not absorb you and disband your village.

Colonies are flawed. If the comp had a few resources with a colony on each, I'd park a city right next to them and swallow the lot.

[Capt Dizle]

I seldom post with the express intent to criticize or make fun of someone.

But....anyone who defends the current implementation of these so called colonies are plainly stupid. Thats not so awful really, it takes all kinds, and Firaxis has to get its share of the idiot market so I am not terribly upset that some of them are posting here.

I seldom intentionally insult someone but this Cybershy person has posted the lamest tripe I have seen on these boards in months. I stick my tongue out at you imbecile.

As one half lucid poster above pointed out, these are not colonies, just resource gathing facilities.

I get the feeling that this was a Sid idea given to a moron to implement.

Any number of us could come up with a half dozen better implementations of the idea in ten minutes.

Colonies, as is, do not work for me in the concept that was originally put forth by Firaxis some months ago. They have a place in the game, but not exactly as implemented currently, at least in my opinion.

If I have a 'colony' it should NOT be assimilated into another civ's city without first; the other civ's city either having a significant amount of culture that draws the colony into it's control(there are people in a colony, no?) or the other civ declares war and sends a unit into the colony either destroying it or capturing it for their own use.

Maybe giving colonies a border of 1 would work.

On a side note: I liked the feature in CTP that allowed you to build fortresses that counted as an improvement that your civ had control of; there were borders surrounding it. It was very good for filling in all of the 'dead zones' in you empire that you felt didn't justify having a city being built there, but you wanted to prevent the AI from building cities there with out wasting umpteen units littering the map.

Originally posted by barefootbadass


Wrong, if the ai can plop a city down close enough to assimilate your colony immediately you have established NO control over the area.

If I had 1,000 Mech Infantry units fortified on that colony, would you say then, that I had CONTROL of that square?

If I distributed the same 1,000 units on each tile that surrounded my colony, another civ could still build a city next to one of my stack of units and within 5 turns of building a temple, they'd have assimilated my colony that was surrounded by my units!

This is not right, in my opinion. A colony has people in it, of my nationality, if I garrison units there, it should remain my colony regardless of another civ's encroachment.

[darthx86]

Suggestion: If a colony is built next to a coast, then as long as you have a city with a harbor on the same body of water, no need for a road. This could also be applied to airports as well, maybe by using a second worker to add a harbor or airport to the colony.

On the real estate issue with colonies, I have had no problem yet, since mine were in the middle of nowhere. I suggest allowing the colony (and fort) to "own" the individual square they reside on. If an AI builds around you, the colony is still active unless they pillage the road out (see the aforementioned harbor and airport suggestions for alternative options). In essence, your colony would experience the "West Berlin" effect.

[Midway]

Totally agree with all of this.

Colonies SUCK!!!!

Forts & Colonies should have at least its' square zone of control. I agree that it could be taken by cuture. Maybe this idea of forts having a full square surrounding it as a zone of control, but if you leave this square and the AI comes in then he should get that then, unless your terrority already controls that thru cultural growth.

[Kolyana]

A colony should only control the square it's in. If you find three resources in a row that you want to claim, then you should have to put a colony on each.

This is a claim to territory just like some of the modern installations in the North Pole, or Oil Rigs, or the old mining settlements.

No troops should be required, they would be optional. Likewise with a fortress. In fact, I half think that a fortress should also count as a claim to that square ... they take so long to build that they wouldn't be a practicle way to claim large swarthes of land, but they would keep your borders intact.

[CB2034]

if they were to give colonies one square of cultural control then all the ai would do is plop a city next to it and use culture to assimilate it... and as far as forts having one square of control... i cant even think why they would implement this.
an empty fort is useless and if it has troops in it and they are next to an enemy city then you can choose whether to move or go to war... the fort thing is not broken by any means... the colonies imho are not broken either.
also,, didnt many colonies eventually become cities anyway. i remember 13 colonies that became a great nation. if u want cities then build cities.
the only time i have used colonies for an extended period of time is on islands... they work extrememly well on small islands.

[Kolyana]

Not one square ... 0 squares ... influence and zone of control only over it's own square, jes?

[Grumbold]

Some early screenshots implied that colonies would exert ownership over their own tile. I can only assume that complications with the way this fitted in to the culture/expansion/conversion model meant it had to go.

[player1]

If colonies would have a one tile border,
I think it would be ok to have colonies assimilated by strong neighbour.

In my expirience it happens very slowly, even against one size radius cities with a little units.

So you would use colony for a long time until somebody assimilates it.
Even longer if you have some units in it.

Also by one tile border you would buy some time to place some city there in a future (if needed).


Anyway, today there aren't many colonies as before. Right?

[Grumbold]

I just think of places like Gibraltar and realise there is no easy way of doing it. Giving a colony a high revolt chance that can be suppressed by military presence seems the best way. If the enemy want a protected colony, they have to go to war over it.

[knott]

My sugestion is that colonies should not be absored untill the city next to it start to create culture. It would be realistic and good for the game balance.

[Blaupanzer]

Let's see. You are the leader of a great power contending for control of land and people with other powers. You see a resource you want, plop a worker on it, and expect the rest of the world to respect your claim? You'll have to use military might to keep them away. (Dead settlers build no cities.) As quickly as you can, get a settler of your own out there. After all, the colony is of no use without a road back to your civ. What? Don't want a city in such a "useless spot?" Then forget about the resource. That's what Civ III is all about: strategic choices. Do I fight to keep other civs away, build a city, or ignore the resource once the other powers show up? The colony concept is NOT broken, it's another arrow in your strategic quiver, a temporary way to get a resource while your empire gears up to take the space permanently. The little city you build in the jungle to get those diamonds is the equivalent of the "colonies" the Europeans built in the Americas. The Civ III colony is just a small workforce working a site.

[player1]

Then why is not that an act of WAR?

SO you should be the agressor because you need to DEFEND your colony.

With 1 tile Borders. AI won't settle on the SAME space, becouse it WOULD be AN ACT OF WAR.
Plus, colonies would last A LITTLE longer, until enemy culture pops out.
(or you finally want to make city there)



The way it is now, colonies are great, but rearly usefull concept.

It is like making vacum cleaner wich can clean only persian carpets, and nothing more.

If you ask me, colonies as now, are UNFINISHED concept.
They could be GREAT, but now, they are less then average.