After playing a 4 hour long game where I produced thousands of liters of rum and enough clothes to dress all the population of europe, I thought : why I am doing this ?? Why I am doing al this micro to harvest sugar, processing that into rum, shipping it over the big lake and then sell it with a ridicilous 40% tax on it ?? Just so I can buy another distiller to produce more rum which will get even taxed more over time ? Slowly an idea started and I want to know your opinion, if it could work and what I could be overlooking.

The idea is to focus in the game only on the end goal and the means to reach that and thereby completely ingoring the commercial aspect. The end goal is independence and for that we need :


Food, feeding the population.
Bells, for getting that indepence feeling.
Crosses, to convince the others to join in.
Tools, improving the land, necessary for guns.
Guns, artillery, ships and horses for defeating the REF.


Thats it, nothing else needed. No sugar, tobacco, rum etc.

Advantage :

Only 3 type's of raw material to worry about : food, wood, ore.
Less goods -> less transport necessary. With your first caravel you will make it a long way because you only have to get the occasional colonist from the docks.
King's upping the tax rate ? Fine, just throw another cotton party because your economy does not depent on cotton at all. In this case you need bells and crosses, and there isnt a tax on that.
No diminishing returns, in a commercial economy you invest alot and over time you get less return because of the tax increase. Therefore you have to keep increasing your production to get the same amount of money. (And not to mention price drops because of over production)
No more waiting untill that rum factory is finally finished in your 1 :hammers: commercial city. In this strategy almost every town will have a carpenter and can focus on buildings like schools and arsenals.
Less food used by commercial people = more food to grow your colony.


Downside is that you still need a bit of money to buy eg a blacksmith or a preacher as they are not available from the native's. (or wait and get lucky at the docks). But scouting is a good alternative income source for this. And once you get the first specialist, set up a schoolhouse and teach the rest yourself.

Any thoughts / ideas about this ?

I think you need to have atleast one cash crop to speed things along.

Otherwise you should make a b-line to every village, ruin, and burial ground to be sure you get every bit of free money on the map. I usually do this no matter the strat, and at around turn 100 I'll afford a Galleon and then transport back 20k or so in treasure, not including the smaller gold gifts that didn't require transport.

Point is you do still need a source of income, or at the very least you need to add a specialist lumber city, then transport all that lumber to your other cities to produce buildings. Ore too.

So I guess, really, the list should be food, oar, wood: as main centers for those three could drive an economy like you're talking.

Adding in a "buy low sell high" strat for some extra cash (like giving natives horses, and guns) could help things along too.

Why I am doing al this micro to harvest sugar, processing that into rum, shipping it over the big lake and then sell it with a ridicilous 40% tax on it ??

This is easily solved, just sell your load of rums to the natives, they don't impose tax. Their price should be constant over game-time.

Well, for example tools and horses cost 2 gold. You sell Cloth for 10. So, 100% non-commercial economy is not efficient, at the start it's better to trade. However, you don't need tons of Cloth either, 100% commercial economy isn't good either. I think the point is to find the right balance.

Then again, silver doesn't require any processing buildings so you may consider focusing on silver as a first step in non-commercial economy.

I think you're on the right path Chaos. Some people may want to insist that since there are so many goodies to trade Colonization is an economic game. And it's really not. All you need are guns, people to hold the guns and horses to ride, or if the old strategy (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=268596) doesn't work anymore, lumberjacks and carpenters, ore miners and blacksmiths to produce Cannon.

Cash crops are always the fastest way to build the infrastructure which produce Calvalry and Cannon--people and tools--but after that infrastructure is in place they become worthless.

The victory condition of Colonizaiton is purely a miltary one and the economic side of the game is relatively unitegrated into that. The higher your difficulty and the quicker your game speed, the more neccesary speeding this infrastructure along becomes, and thus cash crops. But they remain nothing more than a catalyst and eventually a distraction from the real game, getting Calvalry and Cannon.

Any thoughts / ideas about this ?

there are some flaws

first of all the price
im not totally sure how it works but it seems that selling too much of a single type reduce its price, so if you really wanna make great money you have to sell various types

but the most important thing is the second production of cities...
since every of them has some goods like tobacco or cotton its more reward at start to put a single non specialized colonist to work it instead of just ignore and waste it

im not sure of having a full chain of production for those
surely not worth spending tons of gold buying all specialists and training them and building top production factory, IMO

last but not least it depends on the terrain too, if you have a very cool cotton tile, its a waste not to use it

Well, for example tools and horses cost 2 gold. You sell Cloth for 10. So, 100% non-commercial economy is not efficient, at the start it's better to trade. However, you don't need tons of Cloth either, 100% commercial economy isn't good either. I think the point is to find the right balance.

Then again, silver doesn't require any processing buildings so you may consider focusing on silver as a first step in non-commercial economy.

This is true and very important. It means you get five times as many tools by selling your goods and then buying the tools instead of producing them at a blacksmith.

Ok, I tried it out and its plays definitely different than a commercial economy.

In the beginning you can expand quite fast because emphasize on food, and start up an early guns and tools colony. However later in the game problems start to arise. Like the fact that you need 500 :gold: to train an elder statemen, something that I really overlooked. So you have to keep a positive bank account and think ahead in the future for which things you absolutely need money, like training the higher tier professions. Also building a road costs 20 :gold: , not much but if you dont have it its annoying.

This is true and very important. It means you get five times as many tools by selling your goods and then buying the tools instead of producing them at a blacksmith

True, but I feel the only good worth it is silver. You can sell it for a high price and you dont have to invest anything in it besides maybe the expert miner. But its true that the price will drop if you overflood the market. One game I sold so much that the price had dropped to 5 :gold: !

I was doing the same thing as this today. I started making cigars because I had tons of tobacco and the price was high. With only one (of 5) cities building cigars...the rest focused on building ships and buildings. Capital was pushing out enough food to build troops for me, so I went ahead a put together an army. With army, you really don't need to many crosses...since the other euros will anger the natives and you can simply go to war with france, spain whoever at the same time since your army will more than likely be larger. Plus, I already had a fleet of frigates and ship of the lines...so they didn't too much back to the "motherland". Right now, I am sending no ships back home and focusing on materials for buildings and paying the king whatever...i don't think he will for money if you dont have any? Working out well so far.

I largely agree with your assessment. Came to the same conclusion myself last night. That being said, however, I can still see the need for a cash crop, or two. Depending on the map, difficulty level and various other circumstances, cash can be tight.

Sounds like the game mechanics are working exactly the way they are supposed to.
You're supposed to get pissed at the king for jacking your taxes.

Being independent is the whole point, isnt it? I came to the same conclusion when I realized that I produce all I need by myself. IMO the game starts out at a point where you focus on commerce and growth, selling goods both refined and raw is the most effective way. Eventually there is nothing that europe can offer that you cannot produce yourself, at this point the game shifts focus.

When you have all the experts, just educate when you need more. The money you get easilly from the indians. My strategy is to sell horses and arms to the indian tribes far away from me, preferrably those close to enemy colonies. Of course other goods are good aswell but tend to generate less cash.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm not playing just to win. I'm playing to have fun, and half the fun is finding good places to gather and create a viable trade empire. Sure, I could just get guns and win, but that's not so fun to me. It's the journey, not the destination. :o)

With this strategy I hope you all picked Peter Stuyvesant. ;)

Edit: Really though, it doesn't sound very effective to me. How are you getting all the carpenters and lumberjacks etc you need? Sure you could get lucky and have all of them appear on the docks and the build schoolhouses and train more but that would probably take incredibly much more time than just getting a few cash crops going and buying all the specialists you need.
I usually transition to this though, sell less in europe as my colonies become more self-sufficient since I have the population and production to build/train anything I want.
Of course with diminishing returns in col2 on education I don't know if you can rely entirely on that for your non-basic specialist needs.

How are you getting all the carpenters and lumberjacks etc you need?

In the beginning Im relying mostly on converts to work as lumberjacks and buy the occasional carpenter. Once I got my education colony running Im training the carpenters and lumberjacks myself. And remember that you are generating also alot of crosses much earlier than with a commercial economy.
Little trick : Generate crosses and if you really want a particular colonist from the docks out of the three, just rush buy it 1 turn before the cross bar is full. I had a weaver, indentured servant and a fisherman on the docks and could rush the fisherman for 70 :gold: .

Of course with diminishing returns in col2 on education I don't know if you can rely entirely on that for your non-basic specialist needs.

Yes, you have to be a bit picky as whom to educate. My basic rule is that if a profession can be trained by the native's, I will never do it myself and save the education points for preachers and statesmen etc.

With this strategy I hope you all picked Peter Stuyvesant.
25 % :hammers: extra is nice, but the french can be good too with the bonus for getting native converts and shorter training time.

I also use the trick of rushbuying citizens the turn before they're about to arrive automatically so that I can choose.
If you're buying some specialists then you are doing a hybrid sort of strategy which I expect should work fine. I was talking about not generating money at all beside what's needed for pioneers and such.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm not playing just to win. I'm playing to have fun, and half the fun is finding good places to gather and create a viable trade empire. Sure, I could just get guns and win, but that's not so fun to me. It's the journey, not the destination. :o)

Same feelings here. :)
However, the idea of completely bypassing the economics is tempting.

No, usually I just buy the first needed specialists and train the rest myself. Most of the early money goes to the bank to buy a galleon (if im not already building it) so I can ship treasures back and have some savings for the later expensive education.

Off course I also play for fun, but I didnt have much fun with setting and microing all those trade routes when things get complicated later in the game. In this case most of my colonies are self dependent and I have less need for wagon trains.

well if you plan wisely ur colonies its not like you need so many wagons

Sorry, I dont agree its because of planning. The trade route system just doesnt work like I want it to work (eg no working max option) and it is very clumsy to setup orders or to change a route. And doing all the loading and unloading manually is also not a very fun way for me to play the game. Maybe they should have looked at games like Port Royale to see an example of a trade route system that works.

i loved the trade routes of anno 1701

still in the games i played till now i just did like 4 5 wagons max of which just 1 free i moved occasioanlly to move stuff, rest was automatized on the way

and i about never edited or changed a trade rout going

if i need more wood instead of adding a new traderoute i just added a woodcutter, or improved the terrain or trained a specialist, the few routes i use are planned from the start i usually dont even move tools to the towns

still the system could be improved but its not so ugly

Its definitely playable and works fine, although it mightn't be the most efficient strategy. My first game was with Bolivar on explorer difficulty at normal speed was an easy enough win.

Some quick pointers: Training does become retarded very quickly and requires for sight particularly for elder statesmen. There are only so many specialists you can train. Occasionally your also going to be pushed for gold, and were trading with the natives is not going to be enough. I usually get one of the free specialists to produce some goods for a turn or two if i'm really stuck.

I went with firebrand preachers and cathedrals from the start to get as many cross settlers as possible, this will also become retarded very quickly.

Build one university in one city only before training any unit specialists, further schools are crap since the negative modifiers apply through-put.

Missionaries and training among the natives is a god send.

Food is much more important, although as a resource it is much more inefficient than getting tradeable goods.

The major disadvantage i saw was that it was impossible, for me at least, to get all the specialists i wanted with certain settlements not running at max efficiency, plenty of converted natives and the like. That being said beating the REF was easy with massive stockpiles of weapons and horses in my armies of wagon trains. The funny thing is that this seems like a normal strategy, one of the normal ways of laying the game and not an expliot. Also its great fun sticking it to the King everytime.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/9820/civgamest1.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civgamest1.jpg)http://img91.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

Food is much more important, although as a resource it is much more inefficient than getting tradeable goods.

I found an efficient way for faster increase, just let your wagon trains collect the excess food of all the colonies and drop it off in your food city. This way you will give an enormous boost to population growth. Better have one colony with massive growth than 10 colonies which all have a growth of +1 food.

Yeah, i had wised up to wagoning all my food to one city and thus getting faster population growth. Still on a per unit basis food isn't as good as some trade able resource. Even if i can get growth every few turns.

If you compare food to for example rum, than indeed rum prevails. But this is in the early game. Later in the game your rum will be taxed more and more, giving you less and less money.
The food yield doesnt diminish and you can even increase it more with one of the founding fathers. And dont forget the fact that if you declared independence you cant trade with Europe anymore unless you chose for Monarchy.

I have tried to make several specialty colonies, seeing if that helps. My projected plan.

The Bread Basket

- Find a good place full of flat land and food friendly terrain and plop it down. Have pioneer make farms on every single square and get an all farmer populace going.

- Once you get 8 farmers and all farms, without anyone else inside, it should produce so much surplus it'll be popping out colonists left and right.

- Building queue for any FF points you need, since it won't have to build anything more.

The Supplier

- Find a spot with mountains, hills, and maybe a nice forest or two and plop down there. Build mines and lodges, and send in lumberjacks and ore/silver miners.

- Setup a trade route to truck out all the ore and lumber.

- You may have to send them food as well, but once the population is stable you could most likely setup a trade route to truck in the min. food needed to avoid starvation.

- Building queue can be again FF points since you won't need to build anything.

The Factory

- Plop down another colony close to both The Supplier and The Bread Basket, and send in carpenters and blacksmiths. You may want some food-friendly squares and famers/fishermen for this, since the bulk of the population will be indoors.

- Using all the lumber/ore from the Supplier build up production facilities for hammers and tools and guns.

- You may want to start with the hammer-producing first, since that will ultimately bring down the turn cost to make the rest.

- If the Factory is on the coast, make sure to include a Shipyard to create ships as needed. Privateers are always welcome for attacking other ships and stealing their cargo.

Harvard

- Look for a spot to sustain food and lumber, nothing else is really needed.

- Truck in one of each specialist you want more of. Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Gunsmiths, Lumberjacks, and Ore Miners are usually at the time. Firebrand Preachers work too and Veteran Soldiers if you have the time.

- Build a university, and outside the specialists truck in the free colonists and keep the university full. Once someone graduates send them to the colony that needs them most. Truck in free colonists from the Bread Basket as needed.

I'm sure you can apply this to specific good chains. But ultimately the goal is to streamline production of tools, weapons, and cannons. You may need to find a carpenter or two to truck around to each one to build . .. .. .. . as needed in a timely fashion.

I tried this approach too, and it definetly works. Only problem is I like to build alot of colonies and then it becomes a pain to transport everything around. Now I usually build only one or 2 food colonies , a Harvard colony (usually my initial one) and the rest are all self sustaining. So every colony produces its own lumber,tools and guns as much as possible.
In the event of a REF invasion I have to worry less about my suply chain being cutt of.

In my last game i effectively only had 3 settlements for the entire game with each almost running independently of each other. Each village was producing enough or just about enough resources for my specialists with wagons moving around any surplus, all were maxed out with upgraded buildings by the time the REF arrived.

My early game focus was solely on food, followed by crosses which on becoming ineffective were quickly booted to my universities, lumber/carpenters, ore/blacksmith, gunsmiths, newspapers/elder statesmen. Training horses seemed a bit to expensive food wise so i only did that half heartedly in the late game.

Horses are usually bred in one of my food colonies and once stocked to the max with horses Im trading or giving them away to the native's. Combined with roads to their village's this gives you a nice "cavalry ally".

Before i began stockpiling my weapons on wagon trains I just dumped all my unwanted weapons on the natives and bought their loyalty with the money they gave me for them. Not that arming the natives is much use against the REF.

Not in small numbers, but if all the tribe's rally behind your cause I found that they can become a nice ally. Every little bit helps in defeating the REF.

These are some really great ideas. Thanks to all of you for posting them. I had already figured out the part about moving all excess food to a single colony to mass-produce free colonists, but some of these other tips will really be useful.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was roads -- I find that two pioneers, hopefully one of them a Hardy Pioneer, working together can connect colonies with roads in a very short time. Amazing how fast wagon trains can move over long distances when you have roads. I also discovered that horses are pretty cheap in the early game, so I like to stock up on them and make sure all the colonies have a supply before I start building stables.

Once you have a few hundred gold, you can also buy finished goods (rum, cloth, cigars) from certain tribes and resell them in Europe. The tribes sell them cheaper than what Europe pays, but just to make sure of your profit you should use a calculator. You can make a few hundred extra on a full shipment by adding this to your own production, but of course once the taxes start to kick in, it's a losing proposition, so do it early.

Indians help you? They don't help me even when they're armed and have declared war against my king. Hmm.

I think so far the most important aspect in a non commercial game is to save your money and really think on what to spent it.

It happened too often on me that I was training a colonist into a statesmen and I didnt have the gold. The game forces you to choose a profession, with no option to wait a turn before graduation. You then end up with a lousy fisherman instead of your desired statesman and have wasted valuable education points.

Last game I tried was on the coast, five water squares and three land squares, one of which was fish (+4 food). A nearby settlement trained fishermen. Any free colonist or below I sent there to train. After getting a dock and drydock up, they were making SO MUCH food I was getting a new colonist every 5 - 6 turns.

For those coastal towns, the dock facilities do more than let you build ships. With a shipyard you get +3 food per water square. I'm not sure if that doubles from a specialist but it's still a lot of food.

It happened too often on me that I was training a colonist into a statesmen and I didnt have the gold. The game forces you to choose a profession, with no option to wait a turn before graduation. You then end up with a lousy fisherman instead of your desired statesman and have wasted valuable education points.

I think I have a trick for that. Select the "check settlement" option and switch the colonist in the school to another slot. When you get the cash later on, move it back and I think it keeps his previous tally, I believe I did that once, but I could have a bad memory.

Last game I tried was on the coast, five water squares and three land squares, one of which was fish (+4 food). A nearby settlement trained fishermen. Any free colonist or below I sent there to train. After getting a dock and drydock up, they were making SO MUCH food I was getting a new colonist every 5 - 6 turns.

For those coastal towns, the dock facilities do more than let you build ships. With a shipyard you get +3 food per water square. I'm not sure if that doubles from a specialist but it's still a lot of food.

Umm, no. Upgrading a dock to a Dry dock does not give you an additional food! And Shipyard does not give you +3 addition. In fact, it doesn't even give you +3.

You need to pay attention. Each one replaces the other. If it really stacked, it would be overpowered and no one would ever settle in-land.

Buying colonists is generally more efficient than making crosses late in the game.
Buying cannons is efficient unless your planning on making a lot of them.
Buying tools is WAY more efficient than making them, especially early in the game.
Horses need to be bought. Breeding them is woefully inefficient.

The point is that money helps you achieve many of the goals that need to be achieved, and in most cases it is actually more efficient to make a good, sell it, and buy what you need... rather than just making every single thing you need.

Specialization is key. If you specialize in a single product, you can produce it very quickly and make a lot of money. Then you just buy the things you need instead of wasting your colonists and resources producing them at a less efficient rate.

MD, you're probably right about crosses being less effective in the late game, perhaps even the middle game. I hope that will be tweaked soon.

But crosses don't become totally useless. Once you declare Independence, if you choose Theocracy (I think I'm naming the right one) to change crosses to hammers, take a look at your hammers and you'll probably find that it's more beneficial to put colonists on churches for hammers. That's if you declare independence and still have, say, cannons that need building.

I wonder if they intended for this to make the preacher produce more hammers than carpenters?

Sure MasterDinadan, the point that its playable at all was what surprised me. I don't care if its the most efficient way of doing it.

Heck, if you are only going to go for efficency why not play like Turinturambar (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=293126&page=2), winning the game at 98 turns on the hardest difficulty without ever producing a processed good.

Buying colonists is generally more efficient than making crosses late in the game.
Buying cannons is efficient unless your planning on making a lot of them.
Buying tools is WAY more efficient than making them, especially early in the game.
Horses need to be bought. Breeding them is woefully inefficient.




Maybe, I didnt do the math yet on buying something for gold or producing it yourself. But there is something else around the corner, if you can produce it yourself you are not dependant anymore. Why can this be important ? Little example :

One (commercial) game I didnt produce a shipyard to build my own ships, I just bought them (one coastal colony, rest inland). Foolishly I didnt buy a frigate or privateer for defence, and off course here comes this enemy privateer blocking my trade route's and sinking my ships. So, I was almost completely dependant on trade with the motherland, but being cutt off I didnt have the money neither capacity to produce a single ship.

And again, a commercial economy may look nice and rewarding in the beginning but the only thing you will get from it in the long term is a diminishing return. You invest more and more only to get less and less.

This is easily solved, just sell your load of rums to the natives, they don't impose tax. Their price should be constant over game-time.

One problem I've encountered while selling goods to natives is that they just run out of money! Europe has endless cash!

One problem I've encountered while selling goods to natives is that they just run out of money! Europe has endless cash!

Yes, I would like to have a trade goods for goods option. Like trading 10 guns for 50 cotton. After all, the native's didnt care at all about money or currency, they just not had it.