Renewable resources: The death of colonies?

Grumbold · July 29, 2001, 09:03

Up till now I have normally found myself defending the role of colonies against those who argue that blanket coverage of the landmass with cities is a better approach. My chief arguements have been that to connect to an inconveniently placed resource can help you expand all your city borders faster or give you quick access to the iron or bronze you need to survive. In deserts, mountains and tundra they have no need of food.

Now Sid has announced that new sources of discovered resources can be spontaneously found by population utilising city tiles. This implies that no matter how badly placed a resource may be, it is in your best interest to end up with a city capable of working that tile and the surrounding ones because that is the best way to get more of the same. Unless colonies and units have this ability to prospect (without endless micromanagement tedium) then 100% tile city coverage is even more necessary.

I'm amazed that a bunch of farmers would know how to locate oil, coal or uranium in the first place. "See, Hank, I was out digging holes for my new fence when I struck a gusher". "When my eldest son Joey turned green and his hair fell out, we knew his rock collection was really special!" *Sigh* I thought that we had to send highly trained people around the world to do these surveys and that they felt no need to remain constrained to city limits. Spotting oil in Antarctica is going to be an interesting challenge.

Miatezhnyi · July 29, 2001, 13:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
Up till now I have normally found myself defending the role of colonies against those who argue that blanket coverage of the landmass with cities is a better approach. My chief arguements have been that to connect to an inconveniently placed resource can help you expand all your city borders faster or give you quick access to the iron or bronze you need to survive. In deserts, mountains and tundra they have no need of food.

I still think colonies would be useful in the ways that you mention, I doubt enough resources will just pop up in the cities to supply the whole empire. Cololies could also be useful for denying a resource to a competitor.

Quote:

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I'm amazed that a bunch of farmers would know how to locate oil, coal or uranium in the first place. "See, Hank, I was out digging holes for my new fence when I struck a gusher".

Or like the Beverly Hillbillies
"Come 'n listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed
And then one day, he was shootin' at some food
And up through the ground come a bubblin' crude
Oil, that is, black gold, Texas tea"

TechWins · July 29, 2001, 17:45

Quote:

I doubt enough resources will just pop up in the cities to supply the whole empire. Cololies could also be useful for denying a resource to a competitor.

I don't know if you have seen most of the screenshots so far but resources appear to be way too plentiful. If resources weren't plentiful and were spread out very well then colonies could be important. From what we know that doesn't hold true (resources being non-plenitful). Which in turn leads me to believe that colonies aren't that important. Oh yeah, they might be slightly useful but I don't think they are going to be a neccesity. I think building that temple to get the resources would prove to be a lot more valuable in the long run. Building a colony right away (very beginning of game) might prove to be somewhat useful then. If you decide to build the temple early on instead of the colony I think it would pay more dividends in the long run. A colony will hamper a cities growth by taking away 1pop point, will decrease production, food intake, and trade for awhile from lack of a population. All in all this is only speculation but it's still my opinion on colonies.

LaRusso · July 30, 2001, 04:01

well, this seems to depend on several variables:
- abundance of resources (easilly tweaked)
- probability of discovery (again, tweaked easily)

it just may be that you have a clearly visible deposit of something and that once in 100 yrs your farmers stumble upon something else (certainly not silk)

what would be the alternative? to have everything flashing on the map the minute you discover fission? i remember imperialism 2 system where one had to send engineers to do some drilling here and there. it was fun in the beginning but was getting really boring really fast. the less micromanagement there is, the better....at least this is how it seems to me.

this said, grumbold has a really valid point. random discoveries have to be really rare in comparison with those that would happen with engineer (worker) lurking around....this would give a bit of an incentive to engage in a bit (but not too much, and it should not be crucial) geological research (you'd send them around if you are, say, really pressed for oil or uranium...otherwise you can relax and wait).

Grumbold · July 30, 2001, 05:38

I'm all for a micromanagement-free approach, i.e. a slider that lets you invest 0-1000? gold/turn prospecting in all friendly territory and the same (at double cost) for neutral territory. What I object to is the idea that new sources will only be discovered on land being utilised for agriculture or industry. That is just ridiculous.

LaRusso · July 30, 2001, 06:09

true. some level of abstraction has to be used.

One More Turn! · July 30, 2001, 11:10

Where I think colonies might be useful, and I am still not sure I understand exactly how you can connect to them across water, is gathering resources that you don't have access to within the primary boundaries of your civ. For example, you have a civ that has no tropical land types, and you need a tropical resource or luxury. You could set up a colony to get it, and maybe eventually replace it with a city, or maybe not.

As I am way too lazy to look through the forums for this information, maybe someone here can answer this question:

When you have a colony that is on a different land mass from your civ, is it automatically connected to your civ if it is adjacent to an ocean square and you have a port in one of your cities? Or do you have to physically connect the colony to a city via road, and then between ports?

Grumbold · July 30, 2001, 11:22

The latter definitely works. I'm not sure if an out-of-city port will ve constructable by an engineer for those really barren spots where you don't want a city anywhere nearby.

Urban Ranger · July 31, 2001, 01:30

Since it seems it's highly plausible that both the abundance of resources and the chance of accidental discoveries can be customised, you can configure a game so colonies are very important. It is nice that there are more than one way to do things in Civ 3 so a player is not forced to use some prescribed algorithm.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 01:51

like i realized today, the most important thing about colonies, is that before you can utilize a special resource you must first build a road to it...so early on i think that colonies will be viable, though later i do not know how valuable they will be

Urban Ranger · July 31, 2001, 05:26

I just realised what you can do with colonies. You can use them to deny access to special resources by competing countries. That makes colonies focal points in a border conflict.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 05:32

urban ranger

your idea raises a few questions

do enemy borders envelope colonies like friendly borders do? if not then is building a colony in enemy territory an act of war?

though it seems that parking a military unit on that special resource would be a better way of handling the situation

Grumbold · July 31, 2001, 05:38

If you anticipate trouble you would surely be better advised to have a city because it can construct and repair armies and have walls for additional defence? If it is inconvenient for the city to be right on top of the square you can build a fort on it.

Quote:

the most important thing about colonies, is that before you can utilize a special resource you must first build a road to it...so early on i think that colonies will be viable, though later i do not know how valuable they will be

You need to connect all your resources and cities with roads/ports to benefit. That is true whether the end-point is a colony or a city so I don't understand the advantage.

Colonies are definitely going to be a possible choice and probably good for grabbing an early culture boost, but it seems more and more they will be a minor footnote that becomes irrelevant pretty fast. You may start with a colony there but want to replace it with a city later to get the discovery potential to replenish diminishing resources.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 05:55

so if you build your city on top of a special resource then you have access to that resource?

but my points about roads and colonies are this...culture will take a while to extend your borders (it looked like it took between 9-12 turns possibly more for cultural borders to extend out from a newly founded city to three squares away) but then even after your cultural borders have enveloped a special resource you will still have to build a worker to build a road to that resource...so it seems like a worker who is going get turned into a colonist will provide your civ access to resources and luxeries much sooner than either building a 2 pop settler founding a new city and then building a worker to connect roads between the two cities...and it seems like it would be much much quicker than building a worker, then building a road, then building a temple and a library and waiting for your borders to expand

so early game i think that most good players will use colonies but mid to late game i can't see a need for colonies, especially if one resource can provide for your entire civ

Grumbold · July 31, 2001, 06:23

I see your point. IMO you will have to have workers to quickly connect your cities with roads (something that might have waited in Civ2) to benefit from any resource. So the worker who disbands themselves to form a new colony will be an extra one. Certainly in Civ 2 my workers were constantly occupied from the start of the game to the point where no more expansion or terraforming was practicable and the loss of one which had to be replaced was a noticable setback. One thing I have found strange with the Alpha screenshots has been how little sign of workers hard at work developing the terrain there has been.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 06:34

grumbold

basically you need special resources and most likely luxeries ASAP, but the only good thing is that you won't need to build many colonies to satisfy your empire's demand for iron, bronze, silk, and the other vital early game resources/luxeries...i could see a player rushing in a colony or too to secure bronze, iron, horses, and silk...so that is four early colonies, and although that is a hit to your workforce i think that workers in civ3 will be cheaper than settlers were in civ2, and regaining four lost population won't be too much of a problem, especially if you have swordmen, horsemen, archers, chariots, etc before your enemy does...

in civ3 i could see a round or two of early expansion, then a rush to build colonies to secure special resources, then either further expansion or you take to the offensive

i do think that 2 pop settlers will slow down early game ICS some, and that the need for special resources will basically force an ICS player to build colonies, and even perfectionists could probably use colonies to secure special resources faster than they could use culture to engulf those sites within their borders

Grumbold · July 31, 2001, 06:39

We agree

Useful for that first expansion phase then basically useless with the current information.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 06:53

yeap grumbold we do agree

according to the firaxis resource guide when you discover a certain new tech then suddenly you see the special resources on the map

so as far as we know the special resources are:

bronze (an alloy but oh well): bronze working
iron: iron working
horses: horseback riding
oil: refining?
rubber: ?
coal: steam engine?
uranium: fission
gold?: ?

so after each one of these discoveries there could be a rush to secure resources by building colonies, but most likely once your empire is well established this probably won't be the case because your civ's borders already cover most of the map...and some resources you just might have to trade for

so colonies seem like they will become obsolete fairly quickly, but they do seem like they will serve at least some purpose in the game

Grumbold · July 31, 2001, 06:57

Yep. I'd expect there to be more chance of a brisk war to capture a key city or two than a renewed burst of colonial activity

kolpo · July 31, 2001, 07:07

I can think of a raison to build colonies in the mid/late game: unhappyness by distance from capitol. I don't know or civ3 will have this but if it has that then will that encourage to build colonies on far away islands.

korn469 · July 31, 2001, 07:10

the only way i could see colonies being useful beside the early game is if they made it more valuable to trade your resources, or if they brought extra trade income in when you connected them to a city, or something along those lines...because if there are only 8 resources and 8 luxeries in the game and you need only one to provide for all of your civ then that is 16 colonies at most...but some of the resources won't come into play later, when a quick war, or the current placement of your cities, or a worker discovering a special resource will already put resources within your borders so the only time i can think of borders really being a limiting factor is in the first 100 turns

my question is what is the general consensus about colonies at firaxis? this we will never know...

Urban Ranger · August 2, 2001, 10:40

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
urban ranger

your idea raises a few questions

do enemy borders envelope colonies like friendly borders do? if not then is building a colony in enemy territory an act of war?

though it seems that parking a military unit on that special resource would be a better way of handling the situation

I'm not sure if you can build inside enemy borders, but outside, why not?

The advantage of a colony over military units is of course you get to use those resources yourself eventually.

You probably need the military units to defend the colonies, but they'd be in place regardless.

Inverse Icarus · August 2, 2001, 15:39

QUESTION: if you are the first civ to discover Fusion, and you see the French land is Laiden with Uranium, do you have to give the French Fusion before trading for Uranium with them?

thats stupid in my opinion.

"i'll give you 2 gold for that useless glowing rock over there"

SerapisIV · August 2, 2001, 16:33

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
QUESTION: if you are the first civ to discover Fusion, and you see the French land is Laiden with Uranium, do you have to give the French Fusion before trading for Uranium with them?

thats stupid in my opinion.

"i'll give you 2 gold for that useless glowing rock over there"

Very good question, one I'd like to know as well, Firaxis says you can't see a resource until the tech has been discovered, but is that, everyone sees it now, or just your civ? Hopefully just your civ.

Miatezhnyi · August 3, 2001, 00:22

I would hope that the resource becomes visible to all civs. Suppose you discovered technologies that allow you to see and utilize oil, but 80% of the oil is located in territory occupied by a pathetically underdeveloped civ which you have good relations with. If they can't see it you really couldn't trade for it. Seeing the resources does not mean they could utilize it for production, simply trade it (perhaps for that knowledge).