Recently I played Colonial: Europe’s Empires Overseas (2011), a game I’ve played multiple times over the years – and I wanted to write some thoughts on how the game could be improved.
I won’t go through all the rules or how to play, there’s many videos and rules online covering this.
In the game players pre-program their cards in a row of 5, executing each card one by one resolving one action per card. These cards effect game state in several ways, all to aid the player to race to be the first to get 10 prestige.
Over the years, my friends and I have dabbled around with several ideas on how to make the game a bit more streamlined, with additional decision space.
These are some thoughts on possible improvements
Make the rebel card more powerful
The Rebel card adds unrest to a territory, or can spark a rebellion or remove a mission. However, in my multiple plays of the game I’ve often felt the rebel is quite weak. Firstly, you need multiple players to add rebels to make playing rebellion worthwhile, secondly multiple players might need to execute a rebellion.
I’ve thought, what if you could pay coins equal to add more unrest into an area, or what if you could add rebels AND spark a rebellion in the area in the same turn where the consequence is you go down on the diplomacy track and no other player that round can move your goods via the Merchant card.
I like the idea you are fermenting insurrection; I just wish it was more powerful.
Make the ambassador actually worth playing
The Ambassador card is perhaps the weakest card in the game, as it really doesn’t do anything other than move any player up one space on the diplomacy track and remove unrest.
What if the Ambassador allowed you to move goods to market from locations where you have discs (presence) but you are limited by your logistics track.
What if the Ambassador allowed you to trade goods from the market, limited by the economy track only.
What if the Ambassador used missions in an interesting way.
The navy track should connect to game state
The navy track only allows you to build more naval units; but it doesn’t affect anything during game play.
What if the navy track could be linked to the idea of “gunboat diplomacy” in some way?
What if the navy track could connect with your seafaring or logistics in some way?
Pirates – an overhead we don’t need?
During the game, players may need to do a pirate check if players are moving goods from the booming city whilst it has an unrest token there. Its fiddly and hard to remember. Having said that, pirates are painful because they can sink merchant ships.
What if it was a bit clearer about pirates, or what if players attracted pirates which they put into their merchant fleet and they must deal with pirates either by paying them off, or fighting them with their navy, or they use dice to see how many goods they can move through
There is almost no reason to say no to letting a rival shipping your goods via the Merchant card
During the game a player may play the Merchant card. This ships goods to market. You can ask rivals, and if they say yes they will get paid immediately; and the shipper gets multiple goods to the market.
However, there is no reason to say no. Early on you want the money, so obviously you are going to say yes. And later on you are just giving rivals money, effectively king-making them, so you should say no; although players rarely do – because, money!
So, what if there WAS a reason to say no?
Perhaps its a diplomatic reason?
You could tie Merchant to the diplomacy track, that is to say, you can only ship goods of rivals if they are at the same level (or higher) in diplomacy.
Another idea is you can only ship a certain amount of rival’s goods by looking at your current Logistics level.
Whilst the above two are limiters, they don’t a reason to say no to a rival. If there was, that would be an interesting decision.
Strangely, whilst there is no reason to say no to Merchant, there is more incentive to say no to the Trader action; as you can play it yourself and its easier to do because its linked directly to your economy + native power strength.
Do we even need dice to explore?
This question has come up before in my plays. Yes its fun to roll dice to see success or fails, but you can fail – and badly and you’ve wasted your action.
Players have asked – do we even need dice. Could the sea faring limit your exploration in locations based upon the integer. For example, 0 is Africa, 1 is Middle east and India, 2 is India, Indonesia, China 3 is Australia, Americas.
Players could use treasury to explore.
Euro-ify the end-game scoring
The current end game trigger is immediate win when a player hits 10 prestige. But what if you could make it about a score, and that is what is why you to win, and the 10 prestige is simply a trigger for end game.
Options could be that everything at end game state is scored, how many merchants you have, your navy units, your economy, your 10 prestige, the tech levels, whether you have the booming city in your territory, how many flags you have made, where you are in the diplomacy track, etc.
I do like this idea, but it needs a consistent way to measure the value of items in the game.
Summary and other thoughts
Colonial is a game that has me on two sides, yes; many people do not like the hit the weakest player (Munchkin style), and yes – if players consistently help the winner by always saying yes to trades and merchants, it can make the game too easy.
What I like about Colonial is the ability to plan your moves, and with enough experience, know what rivals are going to do and the sequence they are likely to do it. This part of the game, the meta play, is really fascinating to me. I like planning on a rival will play Explore so I can Viceroy and piggy back on their exploration. Couple this with on-table discussion and add the pressure of the end game trigger, the game just hits another level.
There are things I don’t like sure, but I do think Colonial is worth playing – but it needs the right number of players (5 or 6) and is worth playing at least once.
