I was sure that 300 turns was going to be kinda rediculous. As England, I was just getting used to my colony when the spanish declared independance. I like to just take my time and build, but so far my colonies are in the stone age when I guess I'm supposed to be winning. I have no infrastructure, no advanced buildings, no navy, no schoolhouse, around 10% rebel sentiment, 15% taxes, 200 guns, 100 horses and 70 turns til game end. I thought I was having fun too, but I guess I really have to rethink my strategy. It's over before it starts. There's never even been a war in this new world! I was annoyed by a privateer once, but he left.

Aside from the fact that I'm getting my butt kicked without even realizing it, I really feel the turn limit is unpleasant and artificial. I haven't seen anything yet and the game is over. I would have preferred a natural progression of the game rather than a ticking time bomb.

i feel the same way. i'm sure someone will mod it up soon.

maybe try on marathon or epic? the thing i hate about that is that buildings take soooooooooooooooooo long!!!

You need to be a LOT more expansive in this game than compared to Civ4.

For instance, I've played probably 25 games (testing) and if I haven't explored the majority of the map, have 5-7 colonies, have a couple of galleons, and a mission or 2 by turn 100 then I'm going slow. :D

Dale,

What difficulty and speed are you playing on?

Dale?

are you a firaxis programmer or beta tester or just some civilazation braniac - only saying because you got a lot of answers and they make sense and dammit, your smart....

:goodjob:

The pace is different from Civ4. The whole game is more intense, and I guess everything revolves around doing as much as you can every turn. Sitting back and skipping 10 turns till one of your settlements grows (like you could in Civ4) doesn't seem to be an option in Colonization.

It might get a bit of time to get used to, but I think it's not necessarily a bad feature. And also, there's Epic and Marathon modes, if you want the game to be more relaxed and drawn-out, and give you more time to think and plan your strategy.

I feel like I'm taking a final exam that gives me 30 minutes, when I know I'm gonna need an hour. I'm stressed out over independance before even sighting the shore.

Here is my complaint. In Col1, I declared independance because the king was becoming insufferable. In Col2, my only concern is the turn count. I think there was a turn limit in Col1 but it was never an issue. There I was at turn 230 paying 15% taxes, which seemed very reasonable to me. I would have lost any war I would have been in but there was one war between the French and an indian tribe (ironically), but not much can happen in 300 turns really. I think we all knew that when we heard the number 300 some weeks ago.

It's the kings arrogance that should drive the pacing, not a number. What I would most like is to build a large country with multiple fully developed, self sustaining cities, and then an invasion force big enough to crush it nonetheless. I'm going to try these settings again and really focus more on crosses I guess.

I think scouting extensively, getting gifts and treasure from Speak-to-the-chief as well as ruins and using the money to rushbuy immigrants/specialists is the way to go.

Dale,

What difficulty and speed are you playing on?

Normal speed, and at least conquistador difficulty. :)

Dale?

are you a firaxis programmer or beta tester or just some civilazation braniac - only saying because you got a lot of answers and they make sense and dammit, your smart....

:goodjob:

A bit of both. :) I created Road to War for Beyond the Sword and was a tester for Col.

Your slowness seems related to the amount of colonists you have. In your next game, try finding a colony with a lot of high-food tiles. Work all of these, let the produce a church (and docks if needed) and get some priests up and running. The huge amounts of food combined with the cross production should lead to lots of colonists being born and appearing on the docks. Also, converts would do great here with their +1 bonus in the field.

City specialization seems to be very very important - and I've only played two games as of yet :) none finished, as with my first game I consistently crash the turn after I saved *sighs*.

On some false starts it's taken me about 68 turns just to find a decent landing spot for my ship, so 300 turns is way too short for me. I need a couple thousand turns if Im expected to actually win at the game. Will have to see if that can be modded in as theres no way I'll ever win in 300 turns and really I have very little interest to try to "hurry" myself along in a turn based game.

It's the kings arrogance that should drive the pacing, not a number. What I would most like is to build a large country with multiple fully developed, self sustaining cities, and then an invasion force big enough to crush it nonetheless. I'm going to try these settings again and really focus more on crosses I guess.

I agree completely!

I feel like I'm taking a final exam that gives me 30 minutes, when I know I'm gonna need an hour. I'm stressed out over independance before even sighting the shore.

Here is my complaint. In Col1, I declared independance because the king was becoming insufferable. In Col2, my only concern is the turn count. I think there was a turn limit in Col1 but it was never an issue. There I was at turn 230 paying 15% taxes, which seemed very reasonable to me. I would have lost any war I would have been in but there was one war between the French and an indian tribe (ironically), but not much can happen in 300 turns really. I think we all knew that when we heard the number 300 some weeks ago.

It's the kings arrogance that should drive the pacing, not a number. What I would most like is to build a large country with multiple fully developed, self sustaining cities, and then an invasion force big enough to crush it nonetheless. I'm going to try these settings again and really focus more on crosses I guess.

Try this:

Play John Adams, primarily for the immigration boost (works perfectly for this strategy).

1. Your starting colonists, find two spots close on the coast (even 1 tile separating is fine here, two perfect). If one is clear and the other spot overlaps indians, then place the overlapping one first as the first land grab is a freebee. :)
2. Immediately assign the worker in the colony to process the centre tile's raw good. So if the colony centre has cotton, set the worker on cloth. Ore, then put him on tools.
3. Explore for about 10 turns with your boat, then return, pick up the goods and go to Europe.
4. Sell all goods, buy one expert scout and load him, and pick up another colonist. If there's a pioneer, don't grab him yet (you should have two on the docks by now).
5. Establish colony three and don't worry about just grabbing the land off the indians. 99% of the time you get the initial freebee, then a second free grab before they get so pissed they DoW you. But never free grab more than the initial freebee and this one. Guarenteed DoW by the Indians. Once again, the worker goes onto processing the centre tiles raw good.
6. Manually talk to the chief and explore ruins surrounding your colony. If you find another Euro then talk to the chiefs around him too. Then auto explore him.
7. Meanwhile, explore the other direction for a few turns, return, load up with the three cities goods and bring back two more colonists. Leave pioneers behind. If a seasoned scout is on the docks, he takes priority. Two seasoned scouts exploring are great, three perfect. First two promotions have gotta be exploring 1 & 2. Anything else, and pack up the game and return it cuz you too stupid to be playing this. :)
8. Establish colonies like this till you have 6, all with one pop processing the centre tile's raw good. I aim for 4 coastal and 2 inland (do the inland last). MAKE SURE TWO COLONIES ARE SETTLED ON HILLS, WITH A COUPLE HILLS EACH! These will become your tools cities.
9. Your inital cities have probably built their docks and warehouse by now. Third build priority is two wagon trains. Set all but the city closest to Europe to export their raw material and processed good, and the other city to import it all. Set the two wagon trains to auto trade routes (the box with the four lines button). Click and forget. :) Later on, add a third wagon train, and then later a fourth as the cities grow, but that's after turn 100.
10. Now just let your explorers explore, pioneers build roads between every city and the closest indians, and your ship trade everything. When you have 3000 gold, buy a galleon. Any treasures up till now just sell to the King.
11. Use galleon to move trade and treasures, buy a second one when you can.
12. Get missionaries to 3-4 indian settlements before turn 100. The natives from these settlements will become your farmers, fishermen, ore miners and other "outside job" workers. You can literally run a colony with all natives in the fat box (well it's not a cross anymore :p) and have your colonists working inside the colony. :)

So now it should be pretty much turn 100 (hopefully earlier). You have 6 fledgling colonies, roads everywhere, some other improvements, 3-4 missionaries, a couple of trade ships and most of the map uncovered. Well done. :)

Fairly quickly, build a church in every colony and place an expert firebrand in them. Buy them if you have to. They help with the colonist flow from the docks. Don't bother with the time to build cathedrals, unless you really have firebrands to spare. Three firebrands in a cathedral is worth the investment, otherwise I don't see the point.

Now, literally stop expanding and build up your cities. Don't bother buying the ticket of colonists waiting at the docks, only buy specialists from the menu. And then, only buy firebrands, blacksmiths, expert statesmen, gunsmiths and soldiers. You may want the odd other specialist to fill a spot, but it's not worth it. :)

Concentrate each colony on their centre tile raw good chain. This is where settling on different terrain types is key. As a diversity of goods keep prices stable. So aim for one colony on grass, one on plains, one on marsh (you MUST have fish to compensate), one on tundra if you can and two on hills for tools. Your main city should not expand past the centre tile for goods processing, as you'll use this city to make guns. Get a magazine and three gunsmiths in it. The two tools cities, making 20 tools a turn will be able to feed the main city. I even go so far to buy tools from europe so I don't interupt this flow. :lol: Also ensure you have a ranch and two master ranchers (buy or Indian train them) in the main city.

By turn 200 you should have some ripping colonies going. Two galleons are perfect, as you get them into sync where one is selling in Europe the same turn the other is loading at your main city. This brings consistent cash flow. A lot of your outside colonists (farmers, planters, lumberjacks, etc) should have been replaced by Indians. Have those freed up colonists processing, preaching and building.

Once you hit turn 200, go into overdrive for independance. Every tool that arrives at your main city becomes guns. Put all your cities onto building FF points. I prefer politics as those politician FF's really help out now. :) Your colonies must have a warehouse and expansion, a lumber mill and fort well before this time too. Every colonist that hits the shore picks up guns (and horses if available). Move them to a city and settle in the city. Make them make food, so more free colonists are born, to pick up guns and settle in colonies. With two expert statesmen, it should take ~50 turns to hit 100% rebel sentiment. You don't need to hit that in the cities, just enough so the rebel counter hits 50 and you can declare revolution. As soon as you declare, every colonist who picked up guns and horses before leaves the colonies and defends their city. Any canons you have are useful to move quickly to defend the city that the King targets. Get those SoL's ready!

Now, here are the tricks!

1. Buy enough expert statesmen before turn 200 so there is two per colony. DO NOT SETTLE THEM IN THE COLONY TILL YOU GO INDEPENDANCE OVERDRIVE! Settle them at turn 200 instantly into the town hall. Your goal is to have zero sentiment when you start this phase. Why? Because when your rebel sentiment is rising, the King is adding troops. If sentiment is zero, the King will not add troops. So you want a short fast zip from zero to as high as needed sentiment. :) That keeps the invasion force low.

2. As soon as you hit independance overdrive, start rejecting the Kings tax increases. Oh, and ALWAYS reject requests for money before hand. The only thing you kiss the pinky for is tax increases..... until turn 200. You'll probably be running between 45-50% depending how profitable your colonies are.

3. When you hit independance overdrive, every cent you earns buys colonists. But here's the trick. Don't buy off the docks. Waste of money. Let religion naturally bring colonists to the docks. You'll be paying upwards of 4000 gold per colonist. Buy specialists. The cheapest one is 800 gold, and shoots just as straight as one bought on the docks for 4000. So you'll probably end up with a lot of ore miners in this phase. :D

4. Don't go to the King, let him come to you. Load up the cities he's targetting with troops, and as soon as they get adjacent destroy them. Don't meet the King in the field, unless you have a definite superiority. Sorte out of cities instead.

5. Having your SoL's take out MoW's means less troops hit the shore, PLUS, if you destroy them all then whatever troops are still in Europe stay there and the King surrenders. SoL's can make an early King surrender. :)

6. Between turn 200 and declaring independance, make sure you have nearly every colonist in a colony. The big rebel counter takes into account colonists in and outside of colonies. So having a large army is useless as your rebel counter will stay low. Only colonists in cities count toward rebel sentiment. That's why you pick up guns and hourses, then settle them in another colony. So they convert to rebels. :)

On some false starts it's taken me about 68 turns just to find a decent landing spot for my ship, so 300 turns is way too short for me. I need a couple thousand turns if Im expected to actually win at the game.


I agree completely!

If that is what you find fun then knock yourself out, but just know your then not really playing colonization but some mix of civilization and colonization.

Colonization favors you hitting the ground running not spending 68 turns sailing around to find the "perfect spot".

This definitely isn't like Civ where you can have turns where you're not doing much of anything, especially early on. Every turn and decision you make here is critical.

Colonization favors you hitting the ground running not spending 68 turns sailing around to find the "perfect spot".

Exactly. I'm not sure what the mentality is here. You can build 2 cities right off the back if you choose. Just build one! Who cares if it's suboptimal?

I think I know what the issue is: Settler-think. Civ IV (and earlier) players are hardwired to start off in a spot that can help produce a settler for expansion relatively quickly. This is no longer the case as you can build cities with any colonist. Heck, you only need one strong food-producing square (fish or corn) to support a city of three or four colonists, which is all you need in a resource colony.

Now, literally stop expanding and build up your cities. Don't bother buying the ticket of colonists waiting at the docks, only buy specialists from the menu. And then, only buy firebrands, blacksmiths, expert statesmen, gunsmiths and soldiers. You may want the odd other specialist to fill a spot, but it's not worth it. :)

Concentrate each colony on their centre tile raw good chain. This is where settling on different terrain types is key. As a diversity of goods keep prices stable. So aim for one colony on grass, one on plains, one on marsh (you MUST have fish to compensate), one on tundra if you can and two on hills for tools. Your main city should not expand past the centre tile for goods processing, as you'll use this city to make guns. Get a magazine and three gunsmiths in it. The two tools cities, making 20 tools a turn will be able to feed the main city. I even go so far to buy tools from europe so I don't interupt this flow. :lol: Also ensure you have a ranch and two master ranchers (buy or Indian train them) in the main city.


This advice sounds very like the way I used to play the original game :)

Couple of questions though (I live in UK - game not here till friday), so these are more comparing the original to the new:

'Don't bother buying the ticket of colonists waiting at the docks'
The colonists waiting at the docks used to be completely random, frequency of them appearing based on crosses generated, seems same so far - but am sure they used to be free. Specialists you had to pay loads for so that hasn't changed, but you have to pay for normal colonists as well now?

How effective are privateers? I strategy I used to use, while not optimal was fun was to buy a privateer ASAP.

1) Find the spanish settlements with it, and park the privateer nearby.

2) Ignore any ships outbound to Europe. Attack any caravel inbound, hope that it carries guns and horses as it's the spanish they frequently did.

3) At this stage I may not have been able to build a warehouse so storage space is limited. Also I may be many turns sailing from my nearest colony, so find nearest native american city (best is Incan or Aztec coastal capital, they have loads of gold), and sell/gift the guns and horses to them. Extra points if the spanish have just declared war on said tribe, and are on same land mass :)

4) Use gold from sale of spanish guns to native american 'Freedom Fighters' to buy another privateer or maybe a galleon.

I think you did need to meet the natives on land first, before you could trade, so privateer + scout was good.

Don't bother buying the ticket of colonists waiting at the docks'
The colonists waiting at the docks used to be completely random, frequency of them appearing based on crosses generated, seems same so far - but am sure they used to be free. Specialists you had to pay loads for so that hasn't changed, but you have to pay for normal colonists as well now?


You can 'hurry' colonists by paying for them to come to the dock earlier (i.e. arrive before you've generated enough crosses). How much you pay is based (I believe) on the number of crosses remaining. You have a choice of three to choose from, and they cost the same regardless of their ability (so hurrying a Petty Criminal costs the same as hurrying an Elder Statesman).

While I can see Dale's argument about not paying for them, I do think there's a place for it especially when there's a highly desirable unit (Elder Statesman, Jesuit Missionary, Expert X for something your colony is needing), since I don't think you get to choose which of the three waiting pilgrims pop next (and the next one takes longer to pop). I could be wrong, though; maybe you do get to choose?

The colonists waiting at the docks used to be completely random, frequency of them appearing based on crosses generated, seems same so far - but am sure they used to be free. Specialists you had to pay loads for so that hasn't changed, but you have to pay for normal colonists as well now?


Don't have any experience using privateers, but as for the normal colonists at the docks its treated exactly the same as the old game except for one change.
How it works: You have a certain amount of crosses you need to get a colonist for free. This number goes up every time you get a colonist so it gets progressively harder to get a free colonists. Like the old game you can pay to make up for the lack of crosses. So if you want one of the three colonists considering immigrating you can pay to make sure you get that colonist (instead of the 1/3 chance) and get him immediately instead of waiting.

The change: In the old game there was a cap of I believe $200 to "buy" or hurry an immigrant waiting around the docks. Now that cap is gone. The more crosses needed the more money - So toward the end of the game if you want a colonist he could cost over $1000 easy if you dont have that many crosses generated.

While I can see Dale's argument about not paying for them, I do think there's a place for it especially when there's a highly desirable unit (Elder Statesman, Jesuit Missionary, Expert X for something your colony is needing), since I don't think you get to choose which of the three waiting pilgrims pop next (and the next one takes longer to pop). I could be wrong, though; maybe you do get to choose?

Nope, you dont get to choose. Just like the old game its purely a 1/3 chance unless you pay.

Also I agree with your sentiment, there is definitely a time and a place for hurrying units , especially in the situation were you mentioned, the choice is prisoner, indentured servant, elder statesman. Well worth a little money to ensure the statesman is comes sooner than later.

If that is what you find fun then knock yourself out, but just know your then not really playing colonization but some mix of civilization and colonization.

Colonization favors you hitting the ground running not spending 68 turns sailing around to find the "perfect spot".

No, it's not fun doing that, however I feel I need to at least look around a bit before just dumping myself on the shore where I might get squeezed out by the AI, I like to at least have a little breathing room and since the fog of blackness is so thick and only opens up by a couple squares around my initial drop point, I may not even know that there is one or more of the AI players cities sitting right next to me unless I send the groundparty off on a nature hike, which just adds more to the initial turns before settling on a place.

Part of the problem is scale/time.

On the normal size western hemisphere I can go what 2 spaces, and thats 1 year?

I can't even sail to Florida without 5 or 6 years passing by.

That some how here seem's arbitrary.

Nope, you dont get to choose. Just like the old game its purely a 1/3 chance unless you pay.

Also I agree with your sentiment, there is definitely a time and a place for hurrying units , especially in the situation were you mentioned, the choice is prisoner, indentured servant, elder statesman. Well worth a little money to ensure the statesman is comes sooner than later.

Thanks Tmoney02, ChrTh

I had forgotten that you could 'hurry' the ordinary colonists, to get a needed one quicker.

Going to be looking for Soldiers, scouts and pioneers early game I think. Can you still build a colony with a pioneer, load up the 100 tools he arrives with from the warehouse onto a ship and sell them to the natives for 1000+ gold?

Nope, you dont get to choose. Just like the old game its purely a 1/3 chance unless you pay.

Also I agree with your sentiment, there is definitely a time and a place for hurrying units , especially in the situation were you mentioned, the choice is prisoner, indentured servant, elder statesman. Well worth a little money to ensure the statesman is comes sooner than later.

True, there is a time and place for it but you need to judge your crosses carefully. You would obviously want to pay the smallest amount, so want the crosses to be almost fun. Stuff up by one turn and you have to wait the whole cycle again. :p

When you're stocking up for independance though, I don't see the point of paying for tickets. If you have 4000 gold, do you buy that one colonist and give him guns or 5 ore miners at 800 each and give them guns? :)

Ok, I just spent all day playing another game. This time I did much better, and I had ALOT of fun, but I lost because I made a mistake. My initial landing was a great place production and food wise for my stables and gun factory. The problem was that this was the place where the king attacked and I couldn't get my colonists in to pick up the weapons and horses! My advice is to put your defense industry inland if you can, and also you might not want to rely on only one place for that.

Gah! and now my vacation is over. :cry:

What made Col so much fun was dveloping the new world. To me the Revolution was often little more than an annoying after thought.

When setting up, doesn't the change in game speed change the turns? I'm playing on marathon, am I still stuck with the 300 turn limit?

it is supposed to be 900 turns on maraton.

What made Col so much fun was dveloping the new world. To me the Revolution was often little more than an annoying after thought.

Same feelings here. 300 turns seems way too short. In the original Col, I played dozens of games, but most of the time I would quit when there was nothing more to do than fight for independance.
Considering how simplistic combat mechanisms are in Sid's games, I don't expect fighting the REF to be a lot of fun. So I guess I'll play Col2 pretty much the same way I used to play Col, enjoying exploration and settlement phase, fiddling with the economics mechanisms, and quitting when there's little prospect left other than fighting repeatitive 1-on-1 battles with limited tactical options.

it is supposed to be 900 turns on maraton.

Yeah, but everything else is slower, too.
You can change the .xml though in order to play more turns.
I'm trying out a marathon game at the moment with normal game options, means costs, training-time, ressource-requirements and more are like on normal, but you can play more turns.

Well worth a little money to ensure the statesman is comes sooner than later.

Bad example :)

With new rules it is better to ensure the statesman is comes later sooner than :lol::lol::lol:

Counter-intuitive but... But remember - you are not playing with Old Country, you are playing only with computer... Collect statesmen, set them harvest wood, and in turn 200 at once turn them into statesmen. Surprise to all :) New janre - stealth strategy :)

I wonder why turn based strategy games of late are almost always way too fast... in Civ4 I immediately thought the normal speed was way too fast and after that I always played the slowest speed (and still felt rushed). In Col2 it seems to be the same. 300 turns is simply not enough...

And it's not only in Civ. Anyone played Medieval Total War 2? About 2 days after the release the forums were full with fixes to change the game into going 2 or 4 times slower. In Galactic Civilizations 2 it was even worse. After playing a few days I changed the research times into 8(!) times slower and still felt I was rushing through the tech tree.

Why always this haste? What's wrong with taking your time building your empire? Isn't that the whole charm of a turn-based strategy game? For me it is. :)

Bad example :)

With new rules it is better to ensure the statesman is comes later sooner than :lol::lol::lol:

Counter-intuitive but... But remember - you are not playing with Old Country, you are playing only with computer... Collect statesmen, set them harvest wood, and in turn 200 at once turn them into statesmen. Surprise to all :) New janre - stealth strategy :)

Fair enough I will amend my statement to say seasoned scout instead of elder statesman.

I will leave my thoughts on the new rules for bells for another time and when i have played more.

I wonder why turn based strategy games of late are almost always way too fast... in Civ4 I immediately thought the normal speed was way too fast and after that I always played the slowest speed (and still felt rushed). In Col2 it seems to be the same. 300 turns is simply not enough...

And it's not only in Civ. Anyone played Medieval Total War 2? About 2 days after the release the forums were full with fixes to change the game into going 2 or 4 times slower. In Galactic Civilizations 2 it was even worse. After playing a few days I changed the research times into 8(!) times slower and still felt I was rushing through the tech tree.

Why always this haste? What's wrong with taking your time building your empire? Isn't that the whole charm of a turn-based strategy game? For me it is. :)


I completely agree,
I personally think civ 4's tech tree is waay to quick to go through, you barely get your cities up and running

I think colonization suffers from the turn problem, there were a lot more turns in the original colonization.

In this one you barely get your colony running before you have to fight, what's the fun in that?

also how come you dont have events like in the original where the wars in europe effect your relationships in the new world.

in the games i have played i have never really been on offensive, i have either been attacked by natives or the king and that's it. going to war is simply not feasible as you have to conserve your manpower.

You think marathon is too fast in CIV? I can rarely finish a game on normal because of boredom with it.. heh

can't you play a custom game and simply uncheck time as a victory option? then you dont have to worry about any artificial time limits

Bunch of OCD whiners in here, want to build everything there is to build.