Now the game is pretty good ...

DonaldAtHome

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 7, 2005
Messages
77
I changed some of the values on Marathon so the game would last 900 turns with each turn equal to 4 months. Building times are the same as in the standard game, so building a church takes 5 turns which is 20 months instead of 5 years. Crossing the Atlantic takes 3 turns which is 12 months instead of 3 years. If you consider a voyage to include loading, unloading, refit and repair, recruiting, etceteras, one year per voyage is not unreasonable.

I have time to spread colonies around and every colony will have a church, school, and news paper before the revolution starts. I have time for a colonial war ("French and Indian War" for example), and even some skirmishing with the natives.

With 900 turns, you are not so hurried to do everything at once. I have had time to trade with the Indians and even sell guns and horses to the tribes nearest to the French (I am playing English).

By cutting the maximum tax increase down to 1%, the King is less of a problem, but pressure is growing and my tax rate is up to 26% by 1620. I have not had to embargo (Boston tea party) any goods yet, but the people are beginning to grumble.

I have purchased and built 4 ships of the line, which seems wrong somehow. They should be provided by England and side against me when the revolution starts, but I can always scrap them at that time for realizm.

There are only two problems I face:

1) With all these turns available to develop my colonies, I have a robust economy and a lot of money, too much actually. To correct this I have been purchasing Firebrand Preachers and Elder Statesmen at 2000 each. That keeps my money on hand below 1000. Every colony has one or two FbP's and I am accumulating ESm's in each Colony in anticipation of revolution.

2) You tend to run out of buildings you really want. No sense building a distillery if you don't have sugar, for example. It would be nice if there were some minor buildings you could build that gave some kind of minor bonus (candle maker, paper maker, baker, etc.) otherwise you just end up generating points. The colony map which shows buildings could have small buildings sprinkled here and there (candle shop, etc) that you can't assign people to. But this is at worst a minor issue.

And finally, I am generating a significant military force of militia, dragoons, and artillery. I am also stockpiling guns. When the revolution comes it will last many turns and be a huge fight. I am really looking forward to it.

In my opinion, THIS is how you fix the game. :goodjob:

(Official Disclaimer: Trade is still annoying. It is hard to make goods go where you want them. I even ended up with valuable tools that I needed on the fronteer being taken to Europe for sale by a merchantman that was serving my trade routs. Getting goods where you want them, and not where you don't is still very hard. However, I am really REALLY enjoying the game now.)
 
How's your liberty bell production and the REF? In a 'fixed' situation, you should be able to start producing bells relatively early without ending up with a monstruous REF by 1700.
 
Only Jamestown expanded and that was by accident. I replaced a Free Colonist with an Expert Fisherman and did not notice the FreeC went into politics and started generating bells. Then Jamestown expanded and I realized what had happened. I moved him. No other colonies have expanded yet. I will put the Elder Statesmen in place all at once and Let-the-Good-Times-Roll.

REF is smaller than my current forces in every catagory. I expect that will change fast when all those politicians go to work. Gonna be fun!!
 
I've been playing with Ellestars REF mod on epic time scale and I tend to run out of things to build rather early and I also cant seem to find a place for all my people. But I usually spend the first 50 turns or so cranking out food and training farmers/fisherman in the native villages while I have 1 elder statesman cranking out LB early to get a jump on FFs. I tend to go for the one that shortens the trip to europe, the one that doubles the chance for treasure (really nice when you have 4 season'd scouts auto exploring) Peter Minuet of course, and the ones that reduce tools for buildings 50% and increase cargo ship movement. I usually have all of those before the AI has their first one.
I don't concentrate too much on crosses, I have enough cash coming in I can just buy any specialist I really need, just one city with a cathedral and 3 preachermans. For early money I trade guns/horses with natives then use that $$ to buy a galleon to transport all the treasure.
 
Other posters told me how to do it.

1) Edit Assets\XML\GameInfo\CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml and in the first group, which is marathon, change the 300's to 100's

2) Edit GlobalDefines file and change max tax increase from 5 to 1 or you will get to 100% way too early. You can also change start date.

.... and let me add, that 900 turns is too long. REF ended up being 150+ Inf, 80 Cav, ?? Art (lots), and 60 warships. Building and expansion was too much. I just changed settings for marathon to:

Start in 1600 (Jamestown was actually settled in 1607)
4 months per turn, 600 turns, so the game ends in 1800 (about the time tricorn hats went out of style)

That's all for now. Wife is loading the kids into the car. We are going to visit Jamestown/Yorktown and may have lunch in Williamsburg.
 
A lot of towns were settled between 1492 and 1600, but I guess your modded starting date is okay for an English-centric game.

Also, don't change all values to 100s in CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml. I don't think you should change iFatherPercent. If your game is twice as long (600 turns) and the aforementioned variable is set to 100, you'll possibly run out of Founding Fathers sometime around mid-game. My advice: keep it at 200. I guess the rest is fine at 100, since stuff would work as in the original Colonization.
 
Yes, starting the game in 1600 is Anglo-centric, but it really makes the game right. I think everyone should try it this way at least once. It really changes the game and gives you a more historic feel. France and Holland would probably work as well.

For Spain you need to start earlier, about 1550, which gives you 150 turns before the other Europeans really start to show up, but you need to make the natives a lot more hosile. I don't know how to do that. Spain should have 50 years to set up initial colonies and fight the natives, which is why all of South America (except Portugal/Brazil), all of Central America, and the western third of North America (south of Canada) spoke Spanish.
 
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