(no subject)

[omorka]

So I've been playing rather a lot of the various Civ IV games lately, since bassfingers got the Steam versions of them for me as a birthday present.

One of them - Civ IV: Colonization - isn't really an expansion of Civ IV; it's a resource-management game (much more resource-management-heavy than regular Civ IV) that largely uses the Civ engine. And I suck at it. I've played four or five games through on the easiest level, and not only have I not won once, I've never successfully started a revolution.

See, I keep ending the game with a reasonably-sized territory, a huge treasury, strong relationships with my Native neighbors, good relationships with my fellow colonies, a decent relationship with the monarch, a handful of soldiers, and lots of fat & happy citizens who aren't particularly interested in revolting. While this is generally how I play turn-based resource-management strategy games, it is not a winning strategy when the game requires that my citizens rise up against oppression and tyranny in order for me to successfully complete the game.

Clearly, I'm Doing It Wrong.

Comments

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Starve the citizens! Use your money to get as many soldiers and as much war machinery as you can while letting the citizens get a little hungry.

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

While I have spent a great deal of time playing Civ III and Civ IV, I've never played Colonization. Is it possible to negotiate with the monarch in bad faith? Make unreasonable demands and suchlike? And if so, does it deteriorate your relationship?

Apparently the game requires that you deliberately reduce the public well-being in order to manipulate them into bloody revolt. It looks to me as though your main strategic error is that you're attempting to do this while using the methods of a classical liberal rather than ... um, let's just say "some other political philosophy better suited to the deliberate creation and manipulation of an angry powder-keg citizenry".