When buying off the dock, the price is influenced by how many crosses you have, yeah. The price for purchasing experts is static.
Other way around, but, in general, right.
In the old game, I’d start to get ready around 40-50%, then revolt whenever I was prepared. I don’t know how the new one will compare.
One of the things I find very odd is that the pioneers don’t use tools, as far as I can tell. You need tools to create one, but then they just go on working forever.
I can only tell you about the old game (the new one hasn’t reached these shores yet 
):
Dusts off SDMB profile
The original Colonization was one of my favorite games way back when. Too bad the local stores don’t have it in stock yet.
I’ve seen a couple of previews, and it looks like they’ve stayed pretty true to the original.
I’m curious about how taxes work in this new version. I could have sworn a preview showed the king demanding a lump sum payment. That would be a lot better than the old way, where the king periodically raises your tax rate, but you could defy the king by dumping a bunch of one good into a harbor (So you’d have the “Quebec tools party” or the “Fort Orange tools party”); the tax increase would be averted, but the good would be boycotted and you couldn’t buy or sell it until you paid a hefty fee. I always ended up boycotting left and right to maintain a 0% tax rate; I would have paid lump sum tribute had the option been available, though. Can anyone shed light on the tax situation in the new version?
FYI you can pre-order Civ IV:Colonization from Gamers Gate as a download, no Steam, AND get Europa Universalis III free into the bargain.
Both things happen- the King shows up from time to time to demand money from you for various reasons; you can risk incurring his wrath (increasing the chance of a tax hike) by refusing to pay.
He also raises the tax rate, giving you the option to either kiss his Royal Pinky Ring, or have the (Colony) (Commodity) Party, as in the original game.
I haven’t been game enough to have Commodity Party yet, as the stuff the colonists want to throw into the sea tends to be really valuable stuff like Rum or Coats, especially when my colonies have fairly non-diverse economies and cutting off the Rum trade would bankrupt me more than a tax increase from 11 to 15%, for example.
The manual says you can never trade the good with Europe again, so I don’t know if you can just pay the back taxes and be done with it, or if that’s the end of trade in that item.
None of the Founding Fathers (which include some women) appear to have the ability to remove trade embargoes (unlike in the original), so at this stage I’m guessing that a Commodity Embargo is permanent this time around.
Eep. It can be a fun challenge to have your main income source cut off temporarily, but a permanent boycott would be pretty harsh (especially if you can’t circumvent boycotts with custom houses anymore). At least the game’s moddable.
Well, after a couple of “practice games” to get into the feel of it, I finally played a game right through to victory via beating the King of England. Hurrah! 
There are some slight differences this time around; for a start, when you declare independence you get to choose the way your constitution is shaped, and if you elect to be a Monarchy rather than hold Free Elections then you can continue to trade with Europe as though nothing had happened- proving you can sneak your trading ships past the Royal Navy, of course. 
My War for Independence dragged on for something like 130 turns- the Royal Expeditionary Force captured all but one of my settlements, and it was a long slog (including a lot of gun-running and rum bootlegging to and from Europe) to re-build my forces enough to stage a successful counter-offensive and ultimately win Independence…
I’d buy a copy on the way home tonight except that I know I won’t have time to play it this weekend or much of next week, so I’ll wait until next weekend to pick it up. I enjoyed the original Colonization a lot (and I only played it for the first time a few months ago so it’s not the nostalgia talking) but found it a little hard to get my head around how everything worked in the game due to the pretty bare bones interface and in game help/lack of a tutorial.
Fortunately the new version sounds like it has sorted these things out so hopefully I won’t have to spend so much time lurching around in the dark.
Well done. 
Based on the old version:
After an evening that turned into a night of playing last night, I can say with 100% certainty that I wish they still had the Custom House as a building. Having to juggle the trade routes to ship stuff back to Europe was so much easier when you could set your Custom House to auto-ship stuff for you. Of course, I still haven’t gotten my trade route stuff completely straight, so my gripe could be moot.
Okay, so I caved and bought a copy on the way home. I’m weak, sue me. Been playing it for about two hours and have been enjoying myself, although having never really been a master of the previous game this is really still me learning how to play effectively. It’s much quicker and easier to play than the original (as you’d expect) and I like the change they’ve made to the founding father recruitment process as well. Shame I won’t be able to sink a proper amount of time into this until next weekend.
Yes, you can move between settlement displays just as you would in Civ IV.
Yes, the Wagon Trains stop when they enter a settlement.
I haven’t found the Fountain of Youth but that doesn’t mean it’s not in the game somewhere.
You only have to defeat the King’s land forces to win; I didn’t even try and take on the Royal Navy.
The “Warehouse Expansion” building works in a similar way; once you get to 300 of an item it automatically sells the excess goods for half price. Not quite the same as the Customs House, but an improvement over “20 furs have been thrown away in Port Martini due to lack of storage”.
I haven’t hit it either, nor have I got a settler out of either a burial ground or ancient ruins. Only maps or money.
I don’t like the new Hardy Pioneer; it really takes away from the game’s balance.
I do like that you can train Petty Criminals; I also like that you can train more than once in the same village, at least until it disappears due to your culture.
Expert Farmers/Fishermen seem to be much more critical.
You train the Petty Criminals? I usually establish a Prison Colony on an outlying island and put them to work there.
I do like the way the Native Converts don’t “lose their faith” and desert you- they’re actually quite useful, and can be trained like other colonists to learn skills from the local Indians. You’re right about the pioneers not using tools anymore (beyond the initial amount needed to create them); it does unbalance things slightly.
Since the stores here still don’t have it, I decided to get it through Steam (which in and of itself seems fairly neat). I only got to play it for about an hour and a half, but I really like it so far. It really does feel a lot like the original. The few changes I’ve encountered so far are for the most part major improvements. Now all I need to do is get the hang of the founding fathers system and stop launching ships from Europe without any colonists aboard.
Thanks for that.
I say old boy - haven’t you read the Game Manual about the Fountain of Youth? 
I hope you’re not one of those youngsters who just dives straight into the game!
Sorry, I didn’t explain very well. On the old Colonisation, my Fortress had enough Artillery that I sometimes sank all the Royal Navy before they landed all the troops. The game just dragged on mindlessly after that - no Independence, but I couldn’t reach the troops (who were still in England).
I’ve read the game manual and I don’t recall any mention of the Fountain of Youth. What page is it on?
Ships work differently in Civ IV; they can’t directly attack your settlements, only bombard them and reduce the fortifications.
AIUI the REF has as many ships as it needs to transport soldiers to the New World; if you sink them more will show up. I didn’t bother dealing with the Royal Navy in my game; I was overrun so quickly that I didn’t have time to do much except get some of the more valuable colonists out of the threatened colonies and retreat to the Small, Far Away colony on the other side of the landmass from which to try and regroup.
From there, I launched a series of overland attacks to regain the lost colonies (and some of the new ones the REF founded!) and ultimately won, without getting into Naval battles with the Royal Navy in the process.
Sorry - I’m frustrated that my copy of the game still hasn’t arrived (it was due this morning, but didn’t show! :() and therefore my posts aren’t as clear as they should be.
I meant that if the Fountain of Youth was in the new game, the manual would mention it.
Since you’ve read the manual, it looks certain that the Fountain of Youth is not in the new game.
Again apologies for my explanation. :o
In the old game, if my Fortress sank all the bombarding ships, the game just meandered on, with no new ships to bring over the remaining troops (so no way for me to finish the game).
If that bug’s been fixed, I’m happy.
WOO-HOO!!
It’s just arrived…
In my second game, as the English, I got a boycott on tobacco just to see how boycotts work. There doesn’t seem to be any way to lift or circumvent them; no “back taxes”, no warehouse expansion runoff. I’ll have to see if I can sell it in Europe after/during my revolution. I also got a -1 modifier to my relations with the king from having defied him.
I hope they change/patch how certain costs ramp up so quickly. Rushing immigration becomes prohibitively expensive almost immediately, and you’re better off “purchasing” ore miners and clearing their specialty most of the time (much more so than in Col1). Training time in schools appears to ramp up as well. Speaking of which, has any figured out how to train veteran soldiers? My attempts to train graduating students as soldiers have been unsuccessful even with a healthy treasury, and so far combat has only yielded experience points.