Be Excellent To Each Other

Plenty of love for Civ on these boards, so I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned.

Oooh, sounds fun! I liked Colonization very much ( and still do ).

I'm surprised they only kept four playable countries. Those Portuguese are going to be ticked off again. I wonder if they'll include slavery this time - I remember the absence of that causing a bit of a kerfuffle previously.

Colonization was absolutely ace. I never enjoyed Civilization though, for some reason.

And now I have the music stuck in my head. Cheers, Grim...

Every thread/comment fields I've seen have mentioned these things. I even brought it up on another board. But no, I don't think the Portuguese will be included -- the official press release:



http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39212 ... -Announced

Colonization was for a long time my favourite game ever. In number of game hours put in playing it on my Amiga, it may still have this title. For some reason when I was playing, I really felt there, really felt like I was a nursing a fledgling colony alone in a new world. I loved that game very dearly, still have a go now and again on my PC.

Alpha Centauri almost matched it for the heady highs. I loved the plot and characterisation, and the sense of personality and struggle with Alpah Centauri - I hope they do a remake of that after Colonization.

Thank you for this news, though. It has made me very happy.

This will be fantastic if it retains the spirit of Col using the Civ engine. And hopefully is released at a sensible price, as it's basically a scenario pack.

I've never play colonization. I can't see how it works, given its tiny time period, how can it have any game progression? You're not going to develop much technology, it's just going to be a tank rush RTS without the RT...

How am I wrong? Because clearly, I AM wrong.

I could post this in any number of threads, but are there any other decent TBS games out there? I love Civ and I loved the X-Com games... is there no demand for such things any more?

There is no technology advancement. It's exploration, colony management, trade, and war.

Silent Storm, Jagged Alliance 1&2.

Although you get "Founding Fathers" for creating a certain amount of "Liberty Bells" Some of them sort of equate to technology progression, allowing you to build new buildings. Most of them don't though.

I'm starting up a game of col right now. Death to the French!

So how is that not just "pump out weapons, head for enemy"?

Aren't there going to be very few building types?

I should just play it shouldn't I?

Not really - you need a fairly complicated economy to actually be able to build a decent amount of weapons to begin with, and to be able to produce enough people to use those weapons.

Yes, you should

Simply put, you can't 'build' units. You get people sent over from the mainland, depending on how popular you are or how much cash you can generate through trade.

I should write a review of the game, then poor people like Dudley who haven't played it will know how it's awesomo.

Are tehy any good?

Silent Storm: Gold Edition is only Play for 12 quid 50.

I just wish they still made X-Com games in that style. I loved them...

Yeah, all three are great. The last few levels of SS are a bit silly, but otherwise it's ace.

Basically, you can't tank rush because producing soldiers takes a massive investment in time and resources, or money, and using either strains your economy. At the start of the game you're dependent on your european nation and what you can import, and the prices there are obscene (and for artillery, rise every time you buy. Guns, meanwhile, quickly become prohibitively expensive every time I play - the more you need them, the less you can afford them).

Example - veteran soldiers in europe cost £2000 per unit. To give them horses (make them cavalry) can cost another few hundred. Then you have to transport them to the new world, which can take a while. Then you send them off to wherever. They will match other veteran cavalry and have a slight advantage over soldiers, and be screwed against cannon. If they lose once, they lose their horses (and if they lost to Indians, the Indians steal their horses, so can attack in force on the next turn), and if they lose again, they lose their guns (Indians steal these too). If they lose again, they're captured (or killed by Indians). So for all that investment, you've still got only a 50% chance on average of their lasting for a single battle, and if you're fighting Indians, all you've done is given them horses and guns to use against you, and if you're fighting europeans, they've now got a free colonist to do with as they wish.

And that's just one unit. Later, to produce your own decent soldiers, you need several colony buildings, lots of wood and ore, skiled colonists (or it'll take forever), a spare colonist, and enough food to support all of them. It's not a case of clicking "produce soldier" and wait - you need to think about all the resources (if you just buy them outright, you need to get the money from somewhere, and the only reliable source is production and trade) and logistics.

For the same money, you can buy two or three skilled colonists, who produce double of a specific resource than normals, or buy several hundred tonnes of a cheap good and flog it to natives or other nations for twice the price. Or you can buy tobacco, take it home, make cigars and sell them for three times the tobacco price. Or you can rush buy an important building, or pay a rival nation to declare war on someone, or buy a missionary and use them to convince the Aztecs to wage war on the French for you. Or buy a privateer, which will let you harass enemy shipping and steal their cargo.

It's ages before you can afford to produce your own military units in remotely threatening numbers, and by the time your colonies are that advanced, the enemy colonies are, too, and attacking a colony is always more expensive than defending it.

Attacking colonies almost always involves heavy casualties - it gets exponentially harder as the enemy colonies develop, so by the time you can pump out military units, the enemy defences will be able to just sit back and let your armies charge into their cannon fire.

It's very much a game about becoming self-sufficient, and the effectiveness of your trade and most efficient use of your colonists' skills and resources will always win out. There are no real unit advances, just new colony buildings, and it's these that make the difference, because they let you produce skilled colonists, maximise profits and harvets more resources.

It's a brilliant game. It's very much like civ, but at the same time, totally different.

SS purchased! If it's shit, I will murder you!

ah great news.A mac version in the cards? always really liked col.. you could play as the dutch republic , and the balance of power was far more stable than civ I&II, which made it far more strategic

I always played as the Dutch. The lower market volatility was literally worth its weight in gold.

I always used to slaughter the aztecs and incas as soon as possible as they would disgorge tonnes of gold on destruction. Early in the game it was great, as the low taxes didn't cut too deeply when cashing them in.

Kiss my pinky ring.

I liked playing as the Dutch, but their stable markets could work against them, too - A couple of times while playin as another nation, I've cashed in to the tune of tens of thousands when a normally expensive good crashed in price - you can stock up and flog it for a fortune to the indians, or, if you've got Jan De Witt (and you should - keeping tabs on your neighbours as well as trading with them was enormously useful - they'll try to rip you off often, but some things they will pay through the nose for, and they'll usually give you tuppence to offload your surplus, unlike the indians, who get uppity if you give them something they don't want), to the europeans.

Generally I try to get along with most natives - they can your farming for you, and you can effectively use them as mercenaries if they like you a lot - hence, I often play as the French, who can get away with much more when it comes to the natives. Even the really crappy tribes can wreak havoc on the Spaniards and English if you sell them some horses and guns, and there's nothing to stop you letting the Spaniards wipe out that obstructive village, then settling there before they can. The Aztec and Incan cities do reap loads of gold if you raze them, but if you butter them up and pay attention to their needs, you can make ten times as much by trading with them instead, and they'll effectively farm the land for you (the Incas in particular will often give away silver like cream cakes, and they'll have a more stable supply than your own miners would), saving you the need to build up a colony.

Oooh, I want to play it again now. Too much work to do, though. Hmph.

I wonder if they'll make the semi-nomadic tribes move around. That'd be quite interesting, and possibly make them more or less of a pest, depending on where they settle.

The dutch were massively imbalanced as they had everything going for them. The British had extra crosses....yay?

Also, have any of you guys played Anno? I've been addicted to that a few times. It's like Colonization but not as "civvy". It's just a streamlined economy game but with a bit of war, as opposed to Cols economy with lots of war.

And for those of you who haven't played it: SHAME ON YOU. It's basically a resource/economy management game. I don't think I've seen any other game handle things in that way. You just had "men", and with those men you could create a new colony anywhere. But colonys need food to survive, so you'd farm the lands nearby. In order to build stuff you'd need wood, so you're place a carpenter on the woody squares. You'd need to sell things to get money, so you'd grow cotton, for example.

What's that? The nasty French are attacking? QUICK! GIVE EVERYONE A GUN! Instant army! (but also instant economic drain). True, they aren't as strong as real soliders, but they can still fight. Actually, saying that, most of the time you'd have your soliders working the fields as well, because every man helped.

Horses: Another brilliant addition. Have a Master Tobaccanist? Need him to get to somewhere else, quick sharpish? Put him on a horse! Tada, the Master Tobbacanist is now a "Master-Tobaccanist-on-a-horse" and now moves twice as fast! When he's done with it, you just leave the horse in the colony, where they can breed into MORE horses or someone else can ride around on them. Excellent stuff.


http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1404
Check out that. It might let you know how it plays. The Amiga version was slightly prettier, if you're wondering.



edit: Fellow Colonization fans, I suggest you give the demo for Anno 1701 a try. Good fun. If it's too demanding for your computer (mine just about manages it), give one of the older, more complex prequels a try.

it's not to be chauvinistic or anything, but i never understood what's the grudge Sid Meyer has against the portuguese. I could understand it in Pirates since the Portuguese weren't in the Caribbean, but in a country about colonization, its silly.

there is an open source game called UFO: Alien Invasion. I've downloaded it but i haven't tried it yet,

It is rather addictive, and worth playing, with some excellent guns (I am a huge fan of the pistol). Horrible interface, unfinished campaign, numerous small niggles and a dev team that is a little too sneery (they won't include an in-mission save function because "WE HAVE DECIDED, MORTALS. QUESTION US NOT", for example), but it's promising, and has some neat ideas and settings. Fighting in a subway station, for instance, was novel.

Silent Storm is a pretty good WW2 TBS, with splendidly deformable scenery, and an excellent "sensing" system, whereby you can hear and be heard. This allows you to do excellent things like let rip with your Bren gun through the wall at where you heard footsteps coming from (suspected enemies being marked on the screen by a little marker). Downside is that on the bigger levels, the turn taking takes sodding ages. When it gets to that point do really bring a book to read at the same time, as the gaps between your goes are that long.

Does SS have multiplayer?

Just downloaded the UFO game mentioned above - will report back soon.

Silent Storm has arrived, but I have not yet played it. Maybe I can have it running at the same time as I play CoD4 etc on Live, and I can take my turn whenever we're in the lobby; letting the computer have its go when I'm shooting people in a modern warfare stylee.

He said it was mainly because they would've been too similar to the spanish.

Although the obvious thing would be to give them some sort of exploration . movement bonus - they did loads of discovering, so that seems fairly realistic.

That's what I thought! I asid as much on RPS and got blasted - but that's what it says in the colonization manual. I've got a copy at the old flat somewhere, I'll dig it out and go "see? SEE?" at some point.

that's rubbish. Even if the countries and people are too much alike, the colonization process was entirely different, also because of spain dominance in America, and Portugal in Africa and asia. The developers are ignorant

I don't think they meant culturally - I think they meant in terms of 'what advantage could we give them'?

It seems reasonable on the face of it. Already in the game are military advantage, diplomatic advantage, economic advantage and religious (manpower) advantage. Those are pretty much the four pillars of the game (and the English power is arguably pretty weak as it is). What else could you give the Portuguese that would be distinctive but not cripple/immortalise them?

Well, just from the top of my head the portuguese had very different naval units. Smaller but faster with better maneuverability . Besides that, since portugal was (and still is) a country with a small population, settlers were encouraged to mate and raise families with the natives. On the other hand, the country was also the main power when it came to slave trading, and trading altogether during some time. On the contrary, it didn't have the military power of spain.

So Portugal:
-2 military advantage
+1 diplomatic advantage
+2 economic advantage
-1 religious advantage (the country gave a bit more of religious freedom than spain, which can mean a disadvantage for the time)

But how does that translate into the game? It's not like alpha centauri, where the nation strength were basically modifiers to growth rates. The dutch had stable markets in Europe (and a better starting ship), the English had more immigration, the Spanish got an attack bonus against natives and the French got a reduced native alarm rate. You'd basically have to make them a mixture of the Dutch and French. It could work, yeah, but it'd make playing as the Dutch or French pointless.

In real life, too.

I'm perhaps being overzealous about this. But I do think it was a reasonable decision from a design standpoint. Each nation in col was characterised by its strength. Each had the edge in a unique, vital area, and each would generally play to that strength. Adding a fifth power - whatever power - would have required another advantage be added, and I can't think of any that would be sufficiently different to the others to make them different enough to play as.

yes, but why were these 4 powers chosen initially? Portugal was a much bigger power than Holland, and during the 16th century, also a bigger power than everyone else. I guess its the price to pay to be irrelevant nowadays.

Hmm. Could it be because of the influence of the Fuggers and the Hanseatic League? But then, that affected Europe more than America, I suppose. Weren't there more Dutch founding fathers than Portugues? I know Jacob Fugger was in there. It may have just been more convenient ... but then, it wouldn't really matter if they included statesmen and traders from other nations. Hm. I'm not so clued up about the era, I must confess.

Holland means more to America than Portugal does, most definitely.

Many early colonists in America were Dutch. One of the earliest American Presidents, Martin Van Buren, was 2nd-generation Dutch and spoke it was a first language. America's oldest boogeyman was the headless horseman, Ichabod Crane - a Dutchman. Another famous ghostly icon being The Flying Dutchman - as used recently in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Elsewhere there was the high-profile Boer wars, the effects and events of which were keenly observed by an America still reeling after its civil war, in a period of restoration. Many, many Americans were in Holland during World War II, during Operation Market Garden.

Portugual? It's like, Spain's smaller, gay brother or something, dude.

if it wasn't for Portugal you would all be speaking French (and therefore be gay), have less curry restaurants and there would be no 5 o'clock tea.

How come?

go figure yourself. I'm sleepy

maybe I'll explain tomorrow

He may be referring to the Peninsula campaign that finally overthrew Napoleon. However, that ignores the fact that in all other areas of warfare it was a stalemate. Napoleon couldn't get at us over the channel, we couldn't land in France. If he's referring to something else, I've missed it unfortunately.

Market Garden has nothing to do with it. America wasn't in Holland long. However, New York used to be New Amsterdam and was dutch. Many of the first generation of New Yorkers, and a dominant proportion for a long time to come, were Dutch. I think the Dutch make more sense than Portugal, though I feel it would have been better if Portugal had been recognised, despite simularities.

Some informed reader from here. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1887

Yes, but also some wrong reader. If Sid Meier said that was the reason, then that was the reason, whether flawed or not.

Some informed reader from here. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1887[/quote]

not that informed. and if he's relying on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_empire, where does it say that the empire was entirely based on trade outposts?

"Brazil" is one heck of a trade outpost.

Seeing as only the four featured nations and Portugal played a real part in the New World, it does seem funny to leave them out. In the first game it could have been technical considerations, but that can hardly be a factor now.

There are loads of of bonuses that could be given to Portugal - Movement bonuses, production bonuses to goods or raw materials, liberty bell bonuses, improvements to relations with other nations and the king, bonuses when fighting other nations, cheaper recruitment of experts and so on.