Solution to colonies

Trifna · December 6, 2001, 17:48

Reality is ballanced, so let's just give a look at about how it was in reality...

What I think is that the use of territory should be kept by military unit (in important enough numbers). There's a territory that you'd like to use and the enemy didn't put any military to defend it? I betcha that if you put some military to occupy the territory, your opposant's civilians wont be able to do a lot against you. It's not like in a city, they're not defending their city, they aren't the same number of civilians, they're only at a place they're working at.

So the solution? The possibility of occupying territory by military. This would even permit to siege a city.

barefootbadass · December 6, 2001, 18:08

Umm, territory can be held by military. What are you talking about? Just don't let cultural borders get near your colonies.

Trifna · December 6, 2001, 18:23

Erm... I'm talking about a better system than what you just said. Because only cultur, with colonies, makes some non-sense. Does anyone think that all empires' colonies were next to their contry?... Colonies were used to be everywhere on the planet! They were held by many ways, and not as it is in Civ III (but of course Civ III is representing an aspect, but I think military is just a little downgraded compared to reality, espescially when it
's time to keep territory).

barefootbadass · December 6, 2001, 20:18

Well, I respectfully disagree. Culture in the game is an abstraction that gives something the military in an area to have to stand up against(troops aren't going to hold a colony by sitting on their lazy arses), and provides for the military concept of supply lines. If you are holding a large desert for the colonies and don't want to do it with unproductive, wasteful cities, you station troops around it an destroy any culture centers that try to infringe upon the fief.

Sarxis · December 6, 2001, 20:21

I do agree that Colonies are lacking. Just how to fix them, though, is currently beyond me.

Lorizael · December 6, 2001, 21:23

That's definetely a good idea! I've seen this and thought about this before. You could say something like a fortified military unit (maybe place a unit min on this) would create a border in the surrounding 8 tiles of the unit. Problem with this is, you could create a sort of unit line in order to acquire resources, and I don't see that as realistic.

barefootbadass · December 6, 2001, 22:07

Quote:

Originally posted by Lorizael
That's definetely a good idea! I've seen this and thought about this before. You could say something like a fortified military unit (maybe place a unit min on this) would create a border in the surrounding 8 tiles of the unit. Problem with this is, you could create a sort of unit line in order to acquire resources, and I don't see that as realistic.

It's not realistic, and it sounds sort of like the 'absolute' zoc of civ 2. What's unrealistic about the military literally preventing other nations from taking over or settling or moving throught the territory? Would you rather military and cultural influence both be completely abstracted?
This part of the game is perfectly fine as is with respect to colonies.

Trifna · December 6, 2001, 22:51

It's not really ZOC. It's not even stopping others from passing. It's simply that if you militarily control a region, you can stop other from exploiting this region, even if it's theorically his. Officially, maybe the frontiers didn,t changed, but factually you're sending your men for ressources. Like Canada that had some military (not a lot) and those military were what was stopping others from taking colonies, nothing else. Of course, it also had cities, but they were a little part of the defense. Military was quite a larg part of it.

Rasputin · December 6, 2001, 22:57

i think terminollogy is the problem here. Whislt the Game designers have used the term Colony, it reaaly isnt a colony as people think. When we think of real life a colony is like the original USA, but colonies in Civ 3 are just where the workers setup a working encmapment. not a base for citys etc...

So sto ptrying to make colonies have culture or ability to survive from enemy without a garrsion. They are simply your wandering workers sitting on a bunch of resources, they need units to defend them, just as they do whilst building roads and irrigating..

my .02c worth

Rasputin · December 6, 2001, 22:58

if you want to set up a colony as in the usa, use a settler !!!!

Bloodaxe · December 6, 2001, 23:12

I think this sort of situation is what fortresses were designed for. They are supposed to have a zoc which would prevent workers from other countries exploiting the surrounding area. Unfortunately they are currently broken and are not being fixed by the upcoming patch. Oh well, maybe the next one ...

N. Machiavelli · December 6, 2001, 23:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Rasputin
i think terminollogy is the problem here. Whislt the Game designers have used the term Colony, it reaaly isnt a colony as people think. When we think of real life a colony is like the original USA, but colonies in Civ 3 are just where the workers setup a working encmapment. not a base for citys etc...

Absolutely correct. Currently in Civ3, colonies aren't anything like they should be.
However...
They could become something worthwhile. Colonies should by no means be able to produce units, nor be able to defend themselves from attack without a garrison. But they should be able to do what the concept was meant to do: deliver resources from outside your empire to the rest.

Example... Once Navigation has been discovered, give the colony the trading equivilant to a harbor. Once Advanced flight has been developed, give them the equivilant to an airport. If you need the single oil patch on a 4X2 island that has nothing but Tundra on it, you really shouldn't need to transplant 10,000 people there to exploit it. A colony of a couple hundred would so just fine, it won't grow, and it's sole purpose is to mine the oil, put it into drums and load it onto the ship/airplane. Simple as that.

As for colonies being absorbed by enemy culture, they should....if there is no troop garrison in it. Enemies cannot use land that has your troops in it, so if a colony has your soldiers in it, it should stay yours.

Rasputin · December 6, 2001, 23:31

the problem being twith giving a free harbor is if the colony is located a few squares off the coast that represents hundreds of miles, to ofar to get a free port. perhaps a worker could be assigned to building a port on coast for use of exporting the goods found in colonies. agian you would need to garrison the prt to keep it.

GePap · December 6, 2001, 23:32

As many have said, give colonies borders, probaly just on the tile they exist. It took one worker to make that outpost, so its not just some shacks out in the middle of nowhere (if 1 settler creates a city of 10,000, I assume 1 settler equals 10,000. Now, 1 settler = 2 workers, so 1 worker still a few thousand. Thats bigger than plymouth), it is my people. Like all other settlements it should be capable of being taken over by culture, but it should not be immidiate, as it is now- that way a gamer is given the chance to try to take countermeasures, like making their own city, or whooping some but.

Bloodaxe · December 6, 2001, 23:40

Quote:

Originally posted by GePap
As many have said, give colonies borders, probaly just on the tile they exist.

If you look at the way the AI builds colonies it will always build a fortress on that tile first. If the fortress worked the way it should and had a zone of control then the colony (built on the same tile) would effectively have borders.

Rasputin · December 6, 2001, 23:47

so the big issuie here is fix fortresses !!!!!

barefootbadass · December 7, 2001, 00:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Rasputin
so the big issuie here is fix fortresses !!!!!

Actually, fortresses work, word from one of the Firaxis folks, and I have seen it work, just as they said it would.

Its a single chance to attack if a enemy unit moves from one square adjacent to the fortress to another square adjacent to the fortress, and you only see anything if it hits. This means you have to have it set up so the units are constricted to moving that way, either using a chokehold or making one with a second fortress.

Rasputin · December 7, 2001, 00:58

i have has a lien of fortress along my border with a signle space between all, it didnt prevent the AI from waltzing in witohut a single shot fired...

xane · December 7, 2001, 07:15

Obviously the "USA" was _never_ a colony, as it only became the "USA" once it was take from under British rule !

Nevertheless, "america" was not a colony either, but the original settlements made by Raleigh were. To all intensive purposes a "colony" is a pre-city, only a temporary establishment, with the intention of establishing a city there later.

Once people started building a city, or buying one

then it ceases to be a colony, I suppose you would call it a "dependency", and it would start taking the form of a small country rather than a single town, which is what the cultural border represents.

I think the Civ3 concept of a "colony" is sound, the intention is to get a way of taking resources quickly. You should never regard colonies as just a "resource centre", you should always look to replacing your colonies with cities, after all, that's actually what happened in history.