I just got flattened in my first game of Colonization on the easiest difficulty level :(.

The King's dragoons just marched right through my entire army, which leads me to ask the question, how do I make horses?

The civilopedia says horses come from the stable, but the stable needs 50 horses. So where do I get these 50 horses to start with?

Buy them from Europe?

eh.. I can buy horses from Europe? In my whole game, I only saw options to buy specialists... How do I buy resources?

eh.. I can buy horses from Europe? In my whole game, I only saw options to buy specialists... How do I buy resources?

Yes, you can buy everything from Europe. Click and drag.
Or, as I often do, buy two seasoned scouts, and after you have used them, use them to quickstart your ranches.

Either buy from Europe, OR build stable and breed them. You will need to sacrifice your precious food to breed the horses though.

In Col1, horses is extremely important. In Col2 however, I decided not to breed any horse in my last game because they are sooo cheap to buy and I don't need so much of them as I needed for muskets.

I find it more efficient to buy from Europe(2-3 gold per horse) as suppose to breed them. It simply doesn't worth the trouble.

You can also get horses from your scouts, if you settle them...

Goods you definitely want to buy in Europe :
- Tools : until very late in the game, you gain money by selling your ore and buying tools instead of actually producing them in a forge. (tools cost 2 to 3, while ore's price starts at 4).
- Muskets : these are expensive. However, it can be a good idea to buy some once your economy is in good shape so as to kill your neighbors...
- Merchandise (or whatever the english name) : to be sold to the indians
etc...

To breed horses now you have to place workers (citizen) in the stable. It is not like the original game that would allow horse breeding if you had a food surplus and horses in the colony.

I think that this goes to show you that Col2 needs a tutorial.

Anyway, if you haven't heard, dragoons work a little differently in this version of Col, in that they don't defend well. Just so you know.

The horses are quite cheap, only 2-5 gold per horse, the food is better spent feeding your "gold-producing" specialists rather than the cheap horses.

The horses are quite cheap, only 2-5 gold per horse, the food is better spent feeding your "gold-producing" specialists rather than the cheap horses.

Or you can build a massive food city like me and use the food to make horses because otherwise your population increases too rapidly?

Or you can build a massive food city like me and use the food to make horses because otherwise your population increases too rapidly?If it increases too rapidly, build more small cities that the REF will likely never see, and stuff them with Liberty-bell generating free colonists. After the DoI, take those whitecoats and turn them into your army.

There's a strategy that I can endorse! Purchase a 100 muskets for every colony, and maybe even 100 horses, and then you get 2 free troops per city at the Revolution's onset.