Here's a strat:

1) No liberty bells. Ever.
2) Build all the cities you want.
2a) Small ones can build political points.
3) Build a large standing army.
4) Pick off native tribes for XP, and build ships.
4a) Harass other colonies with privateers.
5) Make a ton of money. Use it to expand settlements, and veteran armies.
5a) Did I say large army? I mean, HUGE army.
6) When the other colonies declare, declare on them too.
6a) Bribe natives into war with them, too. (Is this possible?)
6ai) Arm the natives.
6b) Follow behind the monarch's troops, finish off wounded troops and settlements.
7) Win time/score victory.


Anyone tried something like this yet? Is it possible? Desirable? I would try it immediately but I need sleep.

Not sure what you mean by time/score victory. Your king wins if the clock runs out, in my experience.

Of course making a ton of money and building a huge army is great.

But how does having no Liberty bells achieve this? :confused:
As soon as rebel sentiment rises to x%, all colonists get a bonus to production of x/2%. This is excellent!

Given you only need to beat the King's land forces to win, why fight everyone else?

Hmm, I don't see that as a strats . They are restrictions (like OCC in civ4).

I suppose you could turn off Independence victory condition and play time/score victory. Should be easily achieved considering the fact that natives and other European colonies are cheese.

Of course making a ton of money and building a huge army is great.

But how does having no Liberty bells achieve this? :confused:
As soon as rebel sentiment rises to x%, all colonists get a bonus to production of x/2%. This is excellent!

Given you only need to beat the King's land forces to win, why fight everyone else?No liberty bells means no wasting food on statesmen, and no wasting college grads on them. The reason to fight the other wars is because they are likely to be easier than fighting the king.

And I got the impression from the Civilopedia that if you had the highest score at the end of the game, you win even without independance. So long as no other colonies successfully break away. Maybe that's wrong.

You don't need to wait until the other Europeans declare independance before attacking them, they have such weak defences that a couple of Dragoons can easily take every city that they own. It is very easy to be the only European power with cities in the New World.

The manual says you can win with a time/score victory. But so far when I have tried that, the game tends to tell me that the King won.

That's because the time victory condition is for the EMPIRE, not you. The king automatically wins if time runs out and you haven't won your war of independence.

The manual is pretty bad at explaining things.

Here's a question that needs clearing up: there are three victory conditions listed in the game: Europe, Time, and Independence. The default is Europe and Independence, with Time unchecked.

Would checking Time and disallowing Europe allow you to win a Time victory?

My highest scores have occurred while losing. They need to fix the scoring, it pisses me off so much when the do-nothing AI's consistently beat me in scores even when I win my war of independence and they don't.

Not sure what you guys mean, I have 2 victories and they were both 'time.' I just double-checked and they are in my HOF.

What I don't get is what is the EUROPE victory, what the heck is that?

There is a Time, Europe and a Independance victory for options, what the heck is Europe?

My thoughts originally that if you destroy all the other European nations you would win a Europe victory however the stupid game reseeds the Eurpoeans so it's not possible.

Europe victory for your King when you don't win independence by the time limit. He gets the Europe victory, which could have had a more descriptive name. This is in the manual. Time victory is only available in custom games, afaik

No liberty bells means no wasting food on statesmen, and no wasting college grads on them.

But also lack of rebel sentiment production bonus.

I may not have followed this strategy as rigorously as I could, but the basic idea works. Hold off on your liberty bells, and build your army, then push for victory. I was playing as Simon Bolivar, and declared revolution in 1688...here was the breakdown of forces, right after selecting "All Men are Free" and drafting those guys into my army:

Rebel Forces
312 Horses
425 Muskets

6 Soldiers (1 Vet)
19 Dragoons (4 Vet)
12 Cannons
2 Warships (Privateer and Frigate, stayed in Pacific during the war)

REF
24 Regulars
16 Regular Dragoons
13 Artillery
8 Warships


The war wasn't that hard at all; I lost 5 units, maybe 6.