Whats with these 'colonies'

[Slax]

I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed. I would think of it as a "work camp" or something.

[Grumbold]

Yeah. The Caesar series called it an industry but work camp is a good choice. Perhaps the name should have been targetted to the type of resource so copper would get "build open cast mine" where horses would get "build ranch". They could have graphics to match so that it was wasy to see which resource they are producing (perhaps it already does.) Calling it a colony gives misleading connotations of them declaring independance and growing into huge cities in their own right.

[senowen]

Originally posted by Slax
I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed. I would think of it as a "work camp" or something.

I think you are absolutely right about that. After all, most European colonies were more agricultural than anything else. A "colony" in CivIII seems to have no agricultural value, as far as I can tell. Plus, colonies had their own borders.

[Fiera]

Harlan brought up this interesting point:

I'm sure there will be times when I will want to build colonies, but I'll probably try to minimize them as much as possible, since I see them as ultimately a dead-end, while building a city is the start of something big. I want to play for the long term, and not go for the short term "quick fix" unless I absolutely must.

I guess to each their own styles, but the question is: will players who avoid building colonies consistently beat those who do, in the same way that players who build tons of cities consistently beat those who build a "reasonable" number of cities - the ICS problem.

There's a lot of questions about colonies floating around this thread, and until/if we get answers to them, we won't really know how useful colonies are.

I think the only way tomake colonies useful fopr the long run, is that they have the chance to convert into cities (it seems Dan has stated something about this, but it's not clear enugh). Maybe there's this chance when they too far away from "home" and have been running for a long time, or maybe when they're depleted, etc.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Fiera
Harlan brought up this interesting point:



I think the only way tomake colonies useful fopr the long run, is that they have the chance to convert into cities (it seems Dan has stated something about this, but it's not clear enugh). Maybe there's this chance when they too far away from "home" and have been running for a long time, or maybe when they're depleted, etc.

*As far I know* (which doesn't mean this won't change, who knows) colonies do not ever "convert into cities". Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.

I know you all have a lot of questions about colonies and resources, and how they work, but right now a lot of that stuff is in flux and things aren't absolute, so I can't give you answers to a lot of your questions. My intention with posting earlier in this thread was to give you some general parameters to with which to mentally frame colonies so you have a general idea of what we're trying to do with them. I can't really delve much deeper into them right now because they just aren't "done" yet.


Dan

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.

Good! Why not keep it that way? No backdoors to ICS, please. Also, colonies that automatically turns into cities tends to mess up city-placement strategies, in much the same way that Civ-2 goody-hut "advanced tribes" did.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Slax
I think the name "colony" may be somewhat misleading as it seems to put forward a grander purpose than that which is actually performed.

Yes, I agree! Firaxis should change the name.

Originally posted by Grumbold
Perhaps the name should have been targetted to the type of resource so copper would get "build open cast mine" where horses would get "build ranch".

Context-sensitive resource-luxury work-camp names? Well, thats even better. Just not "colonies" - thats too misleading.

[Slax]

In my opinion, a "colony" would have some resource gathering function, a defensive bonus (same as fortification?), and give a bonus when converted (by the player, not automatically) to a city.

[Harlan]

Kudos to Dan for telling us what he's told us. I'm really glad to hear that things like colonies are still works in progress, and Firaxis isn't locking concepts in stone this far ahead. I noticed too that in just the last month or so, the description of armies has changed a bit, so hopefully a lot of things are getting tweaked and improving.

I also hope Firaxis looks at some of the concerns and questions posed on this thread as they continue to tweak. The biggest concern here is how colonies totally disappear. I think having them conver to cities is extreme and could lead to ICS, but having some legacy or value after they're overrun by city borders or made useless by a dried up resource would be key.

[LaRusso]

Why don't they simply give us away some betas to help them with tweaking?
That 'satanic video' really made me mad. Someone is actually playing CivIII at the moment...grrr....

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Slax
In my opinion, a "colony" would have some resource gathering function, a defensive bonus (same as fortification?), and give a bonus when converted (by the player, not automatically) to a city.

I had similar opinion about resource (food/shield) and having back population point if converted (not if conquered).

I simply accept that they are matter of balancing, not real game milestones, so I don't want to turn it into a "war of religion"

Concept of colonies (villages) sounds very promising, it only needs to be tuned right.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


*As far I know* (which doesn't mean this won't change, who knows) colonies do not ever "convert into cities". Cities can absorb colonies, but as the game currently stands, they don't spontaneously evolve into cities.


Dan

Absorb? Does this mean that a colony disappears and adds one to the closest city? Or does it turn into a worker again? Since the colony idea isn't 100 % yet, Dan, you guys should think about having the colony turn back into a worker so that ppl can decide what they want to do with it. Then it could be added to the city pop or moved to another area and it could build another colony. Sorry that's just a cool looking face.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
Absorb? Does this mean that a colony disappears...

No, only the colony-graphics disappears. The resource-tile it self is still working 100% as long as its still road-connected to your capitol city, and as long as it isnt depleted (= resource-graphics disappears). Infact, you can regard all road-connected swallowed up colonies inside your culture-borders, as "invisible colonies". So reclaiming that worker/pop-point back to the mother-city really is unjustified.

If I have understand it correctly a special resource in any secondary non-capitol city, can only produce output if...

• inside your culture-borders and road-connected to your capitol city.
• outside your culture-borders but pinned-down by a colony, and road-connected to your capitol city.

This means that as long as that special resource/colony is road-connected ONLY to your secondary city (and not to the capitol one) it will NOT produce any output. (at least this is how I have come to understand it).
Each and every city founded after that initial capitol city MUST - directly or indirectly - be road-connected to your capitol city. That is; if your ambition is that each special resource shall produce outputs to the common empire resource-market.

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
5) The reason the goods need to be somehow connected to your capitol city is because it's a trade network. You can actually have many different subnetworks, for example, and each of them might be connected to the capitol in one way or another, but a crafty adversary could, for example, occupy your sole harbor city that links one subnet to another, effectively cutting off an entire continent's trade from the capitol city's continent.

My underlining. As you can se; inter-city road-connection becomes much more important (also early on) in Civ-3, then it ever was in Civ-2.

[Harlan]

Ralf,
You continue to insist that a colony doesn't disappear, but it does. If a city border expands to encompass a new resource, and you have a road to it, then you get the use of that resource. But this is true if you had a colony on the resource previously or not.

If say, I build a colony and then a turn later the city boundary overtakes the colony, what have I done? I've just thrown away a worker. If you can't see that, then I'm going to crush you when it comes to playing multiplayer Civ3 .

The fact that I can continue to get resources from that tile is irrelevant, what I'm focusing on is that I just lost a population of 1 from one of my cities and have nothing to show for it, except however many turns the colony lasted before the city caught up to it.

Let's say the city grows and overtakes the colony, but then its attacked and loses some population, so the city borders shrink again. Will the colony reappear? I bet not. Because it is no longer there.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Harlan
If say, I build a colony and then a turn later the city boundary overtakes the colony, what have I done? I've just thrown away a worker.

Yes, but is this a likely scenario? A turn later? Or even 10 turns later?

The fact that I can continue to get resources from that tile is irrelevant, what I'm focusing on is that I just lost a population of 1 from one of my cities and have nothing to show for it, except how many turns the colony lasted before the city caught up to it.

Exactly! My underlining. Its not that you have to place only 1-2 culture-expansions away. You have a choice. Reserve your colonies for resources further away only. Also, there is most likely a border-limited size that perhaps stops around max 4 continued culture-expansions at most. Ever thought of that?

I guess, that Civ-3 resource mini-tutorial at Firaxis website is partly to blame. They showed us a constructed unrealistically fast step-by-step example how the idea works in princip. But suddenly everybody misinterprets that and thinks that expanding your culture-borders 3 times can be done just as easy as in that mini-tutorial. My godness! 3 whole culture-expansions, and still only a tiny 5 pop city. Why should I ever want to use the colonies???

Read below list one more time (from a prior reply), and you can see: Expanding your ever-growing array of cities with fast-expanding culture-borders isnt necessarily such an easy-going and quick process as you might think. I say: make use of those colony-founding workers - you cannot afford to wait too long.

• In order to expand your culture-borders, you must build shield-expensive cultural & spiritual city-improvements. Its not that any old city-improvement expands the culture-borders. You are also forced to build other, perhaps more highly prioritized city-improvements that DONT expand your culture-borders. In other words: spirit & culture (= border expansion) must wait.
• In order to support combat-units you must empasize trade-tiles (not shield-tiles) and special resources.
• In order to build city-improvements you must empasize shield-tiles (not trade-tiles). Counter-acting priorities.
• In order to build city-improvements and combat-units reasonably FAST, you must avoid sending pop-draining settlers all over the place.

Let's say the city grows and overtakes the colony, but then its attacked and loses some population, so the city borders shrink again. Will the colony reappear? I bet not. Because it is no longer there.

No, I dont think your city-population have that much influence on your culture-borders. It is instead your added cultural & spiritual city-improvements that determine your culture-border expansion-rate. So your culture-border will most definitely NOT shrink just because you have lost 1-2 city-pops.

[KrazyHorse]

why does everyone use the terms "culture border" and "city border" interchangeably? The city border is the standard 21-square area surrounding your city from which it can collect food, shields, and trade. The culture border is what determines the area which can be harvested for special resources.

[Ralf]

By the way:

You can expand your culture-borders one step, by building the temple. Yes - but why do you guys assume that the second, third & fourth expansion ALSO will require only one cultural city-improvement each? Maybe the requirements gets more and more demanding for each added culture-border expansion?

Maybe the third or fourth expansion requires several cultural & spiritual city-improvements and a certain minimum city-size in order to kick in. Ever thought of that?

Just dont assume that expanding your culture-borders will be such a fast and easy-going process. We really dont have access to the whole picture yet.

[KrazyHorse]

I really hope they keep track of the colonies after your culture border overtakes them. If Ido need to fall back, I want my original colony still there. Also, it would be nice if you could order your colony to pack up and leave, turning it into a worker again.

[Darkknight]

If colonies stay as they are I think I'll rarely use them especially if there's no ICS limit in the game. And for a previous question, I think the culture of a city depends on both the city itself and your entire empire so if you have a good culture rating you can expect your borders to go out 2-3 tiles even in a new city.

[dainbramaged13]

hold on a sec.

i also thought i read somewhere that culture could also be gained from other improvements, like ancient libraries, if they were very old. I realize this takes a while, but at what point do these other improvements start to have an effect, and do they affect the culture borders, or just the rating (indirectly affecting the borders)

-from me, the question machine

[korn469]

As far as we all know colonies can only collect a luxery or a special resource. They do not collect shields, food, or tade arrows.

Also as far as we know, a single resource tile can provide resources for every single city in your empire that is connected by a trade route to your capital.

So as far as we know, if you connect a tile that connects iron to your capital city early on in the game and engulf it in your cultural border then you will not have to worry about iron until that resource depletes. If resources deplete very slowly then most likely colonies will never be used.

The only thing a colony can do is open up a resource or luxery tile to your empire for exploitation. It has no other purpose as far as we know. If resources deplete at a slow rate then colonies will not be important at all...if resources deplete at a fast rate then the entire globe will be covered in roads and colonies.

So the most important aspect of colonies is how many resource tiles it takes to power your empire, how fast the resource depletion rate is (i'm assuming resource depletion is related to use of that resource), how much greater effort it will take to found a city, and how fast your cities cultural borders grow. This will determine the importance of colonies and how many colonies a player will use in a game. Until Firaxis (hehe Dan for now) releases more information to us about colonies then we won't know what role colonies will play in civ3. I think we have really probably infered about as much as we can about colonies.

One last thought, if resources do not deplete because of use, if they deplete in a random manner like special resource squares in SMAC then the resource model will be completely flawed and open to exploitation. This is a bad way to handle resource depletion and hopefully it will not be the way Civ3 handles resources.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Darkknight
If colonies stay as they are I think I'll rarely use them especially if there's no ICS limit in the game.

No ICS-limit? What the heck do you mean??? Read my 3 prior replies and then lay 2 and 2 together. Also; bear in mind that the only unit that can found new cities is the 2 pop-points draining settler. "No ICS-limit".

And for a previous question, I think the culture of a city depends on both the city itself and your entire empire so if you have a good culture rating you can expect your borders to go out 2-3 tiles even in a new city.

No, thats definitely wrong! Your jumping to conclusions here. If you have studied some screenshots, you would have realize that each city has in own independently growing culture-borders. I believe strongly that each newbie-city always start out with no borders at all, regardless if his neighbor cities have really big culture-borders in an empire with a pretty high culture-rate. You never get culture-borders for free - each city must earn its own borders. Maybe, if you have built some MAJOR culture-wonders, you perhaps over time get a add-on expansion on top of any already matured & established culture-borders - but thats about it.

I hope that Dan Magaha FIRAXIS give us some confirmation on above decribed problem. Indevidually and independently growing city culture-borders? The general culture-border expansion speed? Any max size-limit? I realize that many things are still in flux, but even a "as it currently stands" answer would be OK.

[TINUS]

Ralf,

I think that your theory about the trade networks and special resources is wrong.

Originally posted by Ralf

If I have understand it correctly a special resource in any secondary non-capitol city, can only produce output if...

• inside your culture-borders and road-connected to your capitol city.
• outside your culture-borders but pinned-down by a colony, and road-connected to your capitol city.

This means that as long as that special resource/colony is road-connected ONLY to your secondary city (and not to the capitol one) it will NOT produce any output. (at least this is how I have come to understand it).
Each and every city founded after that initial capitol city MUST - directly or indirectly - be road-connected to your capitol city. That is; if your ambition is that each special resource shall produce outputs to the common empire resource-market.

My underlining. As you can se; inter-city road-connection becomes much more important (also early on) in Civ-3, then it ever was in Civ-2.

This is what the official website says:

Moreover, these resources and luxuries can be shared between cities via your trade network. For example, if there is an iron tile anywhere within your borders, all of your cities that are connected to that tile via road will have access to iron. Furthermore, resources and luxuries outside of your borders can be made available by building a colony. Trade networks can also cross air and water via airports and harbors. Finally, resources and luxuries can be traded with other civs if the goods are connected to your capital via road, airport, or harbor.

From my point of view I see it like this:
Once a colony or a special resource is connected to a city by road, it will start producing the resource, but will be only for that city.
If this city is connected to another city (by road, harbor or airport), the other will also have acces to the special resource.

So if you would have two continents or islands and there are no harbors on both "trade networks", there would be no trade between them. So one of them could have iron and the other continent/island could have oil. When both continents have build a harbor, the trade networks will be connected to each other and all your cities will have acces to iron and oil.

The capitol is only important for international trade, so you can only trade goods which are in some way connected to the capital, and you can most likely only use the goods you recieve from other civilizations in the cities which are connected to the capital.

Okay, that's it.
I hope I didn't miss some vital information which would make the info on the official website obsolete (I find it unlikely, but I am new here).

One final argument:
Your point of view says that the resources don't "work" when they are not connected to the capital. With this in mind the only thing someone would have to do is to destroy all the roads around your capital (no harbor or airport in capital) and the whole empire would be crippled. You would have no resources at all.
I personally don't think that it would or should work this way.

Originally posted by Ralf


No, only the colony-graphics disappears. The resource-tile it self is still working 100% as long as its still road-connected to your capitol city, and as long as it isnt depleted (= resource-graphics disappears). Infact, you can regard all road-connected swallowed up colonies inside your culture-borders, as "invisible colonies". So reclaiming that worker/pop-point back to the mother-city really is unjustified.

WRONG!

If you wait until your border extends to the resource, a worker/colony is not needed to gather the resource, only a road connected to the city is needed.

Therefore the colony is not "invisible" when the borders extends to it, IT IS GONE! If it is not neccessary for it to be there when the borders extends to it, then why should it remain there? The answer is: It doesn't need to, so it doesn't (so far as we've been informed, but hopefully that will change)

So it is not unjustified to expect "something" back when your border extends to the colony if the colony is no longer neccessary for the resource to be available to that city.

For something to just disapear into nothingness doesn't make logical sense to me.

There are many possible ways to deal with this situation:

1. turn the colony back into a worker
2. add a population point to the city
3. allow the colony to be converted into some sort of city improvement
4. whatever else someone may deem fair and/or logical (ideas?)

I'm glad to hear that many things about gameplay are not already set in stone.

Some may consider this discussion on colonies trivial, but with the right kind of tweaking, the idea of colonies can add a significant twist to Civ players strategies.

It just needs to make sense and it needs to be implemented in a way that makes it an integral part of gameplay, rather than just an option for players to either use or not.

ie:
use colonies = you may win
don't use colonies = you are likely to lose

[Theben]

Guys, you keep forgetting...

that the new 2 pop settler doesn't build roads, mines, rails, ANYTHING! It just settles. Workers build everything AND can become colonies. So when you "discover" silk, do you could build a 2 pop, 50 shield, 3 coin settler (btw I'm just guessing on cost) and rush it out to the site- AND build a worker because to need a road to connect it to your main civ? OR do you build a 1 pop, 20 shield, 1 coin worker who builds it's own road and colony? Benefits come faster to your civ, whole civ grows faster as a result. Keep your Hanging Gardens, I'll just build a worker.

But I do think that a colony that is absorbed by borders should have its pop point go to the nearest city. And I agree that resource depletion should not be random, but based on total use of that resource. Otherwise colonies will lose a great deal of usefulness.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Darkknight
If colonies stay as they are I think I'll rarely use them especially if there's no ICS limit in the game.

So, you would build a city in some arctic tiles, where the only food you can get is from the see just to obtain a resource from there? I don't think so... But if you choose worse city locations then the AI it's up to you.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Theben
Guys, you keep forgetting...

that the new 2 pop settler doesn't build roads, mines, rails, ANYTHING! It just settles. Workers build everything AND can become colonies. So when you "discover" silk, do you could build a 2 pop, 50 shield, 3 coin settler (btw I'm just guessing on cost) and rush it out to the site- AND build a worker because to need a road to connect it to your main civ? OR do you build a 1 pop, 20 shield, 1 coin worker who builds it's own road and colony? Benefits come faster to your civ, whole civ grows faster as a result. Keep your Hanging Gardens, I'll just build a worker.

THEBEN IS SMARTER THAN ALL OF YOU

[Grumbold]

The way I think of the "colonies" as they work now, they are like the gold/diamond rushes in history. Something valuable is discovered and suddenly there are hundreds of people panning for gold or digging for gems in the middle of the wilderness. Then when the lode runs out the whole place turns into a ghost town as the people just disperse in all directions. They don't all turn up for work in the nearest city because they are the fortune hunter types, not the 9 to 5 work to feed the family types.

Your colony earns you the right to a boost in production for a limited period of time. Once civilisation catches up with the place if it is still profitable then big business takes over and turns it into a formalised industry run from the nearest city. If you think of your worker/colony as a unit of trained professionals who obey orders to dig for a time and then should obey orders to pack up and march to the next site of interest I believe you are missing the point.

[Darkknight]

I know settlers use 2 pop points. But if you can build As many cities as you want then I'd still build cities instead. Eventually you're going to be colonising there as well so why build a colony (1pop) then later a city (2pop) spending 3pop points when you can build a city and get all the benfits of that while spending just 2pop.
I'm not thick you know

[TINUS]

Having a city on the resource is not enough, you must connect it to the other city's by road/airport/harbor. The city will have the resource, but all the others won't until you connect it with the rest. Settlers are now only for making city's, the workers do the rest.

Now let's get a resource the city way:[list=1][*]you build a settler[*]you get to the resource and establish a city on top of it (otherwise you'll have to wait for culture and that takes even longer)[*]you build a worker (let's say it's early in the game and you don't have harbors or airports which also would take a while)[*]with this worker you connect the city with the rest[/list=1]

Now the colony way:[list=1][*]you build a worker[*]you build a road towards the resource[*]you establish a colony[/list=1]

This could say that making colonies is faster/better then making cities, but I think that depends on the game.

Important things are:

• The distance between the nearest road/city and the resource
• the available technology
• other civilizations in the neighborhood of the resource
• resource on same island/continent or not

So there is no clear answer, it's just another strategic decision for the player.