Related Sections: PC Strategy Games
Take a shortcut to victory by exploiting the flaws in Colonization
A poster by the name of Gliese 581 at Civfanatics has posted an example of how he can exploit Colonization's "liberty bell" system to easily win the game in less than 100 turns. He basically dismisses all his colonists once he's built up a few defenses, and then makes a beeline for easy independence against a complacent king. Note that his system won't net you much of a score, so it's clear that developer Firaxis considers this "playing wrong". But as Gilese 581 puts it:This clearly shows how fundamentally flawed two portions of the game currently are…:
1) The ridiculously bad defense of AI colonies…
2) The [Royal Expeditionary Forces] can not be tied to [liberty bell] generation like it currently is. There needs to be a linear progression of [European] unit buildup… You need to...overtake the king's buildup progress, declare independence and fight of his army before the time runs out, or you are defeated by him or an AI colony.These are both excellent points. Although I really like Colonization, it's indicative of Firaxis' lax QA process since Civilization IV. Consider too the wretched espionage system in the Beyond the Sword expansion, the clumsy attempt to address it in a patch months later, the terrible AI in Civilization: Revolution, and how long it takes them to patch relatively simple but significant problems. I love the work Firaxis does. I just wish they would do it a little better.
(Thanks to wisefool for finding this!)
By Marmoset at 12:14 PM ON 09/30/08
You have to wonder how many people actually work at Fireaxis sometimes because they keep bringing out things that don't seem to have been tested and they appear to be supremely lacking in terms of a creative department with more than the idea 'lets make what sid did 10 years ago look pretty'.
By Angie Gallant at 3:22 PM ON 09/30/08
It's highly likely that QA reported the exploit and it was considered a shippable issue by a producer when it came down to "Do we ship or do we fix these 200+ bugs that we still have in the queue?"
By josemas at 12:47 PM ON 10/02/08
I wonder what the best solution to this is? Either mod or patch.
Personally I am wondering if the things that you do should have any influence over the REF at all. Because if you do, people will just figure out how to min/max the way to a managable invasion force, which breaks the realism of the strategy element to me. I want to do things that strategically make sense, not things that game the system.
So just have the REF grow as the years go by at a steady rate, in a way that rewards good decision making about the timing of the revolution, and scale it with difficulty level.
josemas:
I wonder what the best solution to this is? Either mod or patch. Personally I am wondering if the things that y...More »