Cheesy, but easy.

Okay, a small write up of a easy-win strategy. Not high in score, but very easy to do.

First of, be very aggressive towards the other powers, take their settlements and free pioneers, but raze the settlements (unless they are where you want to build anyhoo). Only build two cities, and prioritize food-production-money in that order, just make sure you have some production, one or two good forest plus a good ore site is enough, food is quite important though. Why two? Well, you can do it with OSC (One Settlement Challenge), but with two, you can sacrifice one when the WoI comes around (War of Independence). Gold is primarily taken from the natives and found in goody-sites. Besides, you can always turn any good farm into a cotton or tobacco farm, if you need the extra cash. This makes the Spanish the easiest nation to play, as the natives all fast with them.
If you are aggressive enough towards the other Europeans, they will be effectively cut off from the new world (with no new settlers), and so cannot take any founding father you might want or bother you in any other way, plus, they give a few early population, which is nice.
Grow your cities to max (depending on food), while purchasing cannons and needed specialists from the old world. Ignore frigates but do at least get one galleon, for those treasures from the natives.
Stockpile enough weapons and horses to arm every pop but two i both cities (in trade wagons), that, a pile of cannons and a handful of vets should be enough.

Then when it's all done, turn on the liberty bell production, and wait (while producing cannons).

One other exploitatious thing to do, is to have a criminal in your capitols city hall. One liberty bell is what you can produce without nearly any REF increase.

Cheesy, but easy. Not very fun though

Your army also counts as population, so with a big army you'd need more than two cities unless you got A LOT of food

fugazi said:

Your army also counts as population, so with a big army you'd need more than two cities unless you got A LOT of food

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Cannons.
But only pops working inside a city consume food.

Not really, what Andvare says makes perfect sense and is along the lines of what I've been pondering when it comes to exploiting the mechanics.
You would declare so early this way and the amount of bells needed for the small pop is such that the REF will still be very small also. This quite aside fromt he fact that cannons don't need rebel sentiment, am I correct so far Andvare?

Edit: It seems Simon Bolivar would be the best for this type of strategy since he gets a massive bonus against the REF.

Yup.
It also works because everything becomes more expensive, while you will be making less money per pop. This means that you'll have to switch to military production at some point anyhoo.
I can't see the benefit of having a large empire, other than score and fun (which, of course, is all important). You don't win more easily in my experience with a large empire.
It really feels like the broken Oblivion xp system, where you had to level slowly, and not specialize.
I also feel that Bolivar is, by far, the strongest leader. Natives fall over easy-peasy. Money ain't that important, only to buy cannons, which can be produced. Stronger military is end-all-be-all.

It seems it would be good idea to always get Peter Minuit for this. Then again, is that ever a bad idea? I can see multiplayer games getting out of hand with people all playing Adams to be the first to get him, how can he be the first guy you get on trade and also be the best (that's how it seems at least).

You mentioned sacrificing a town, but you didn't really emphasize the effect. With your cannons gaining +100% attack against settlements, they turn out to be the strongest land unit you can achieve. Thus sacrificing your eastmost town, then retaking it with a bunch of cannons and repeating the whole thing reduces the REF forces pretty fast. I still feel like cheating by tricking the AI like that, but with the current REF settings the whole game feels sort of cheated, so it's okay. =/

Simn said:

You mentioned sacrificing a town, but you didn't really emphasize the effect. With your cannons gaining +100% attack against settlements, they turn out to be the strongest land unit you can achieve. Thus sacrificing your eastmost town, then retaking it with a bunch of cannons and repeating the whole thing reduces the REF forces pretty fast. I still feel like cheating by tricking the AI like that, but with the current REF settings the whole game feels sort of cheated, so it's okay. =/

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That was the idea, yeah. With the REF's artillery being absolutely murder on any garrisoned troops.

Simn said:

You mentioned sacrificing a town, but you didn't really emphasize the effect. With your cannons gaining +100% attack against settlements, they turn out to be the strongest land unit you can achieve. Thus sacrificing your eastmost town, then retaking it with a bunch of cannons and repeating the whole thing reduces the REF forces pretty fast. I still feel like cheating by tricking the AI like that, but with the current REF settings the whole game feels sort of cheated, so it's okay. =/

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I didn't the true reason for the second town, thanks for explaining. It sounds like an incredibly effective tactic, and you're right that it feels like cheating. I'm going to try this next game and see how it goes.

Andvare said:

Yup.
It also works because everything becomes more expensive, while you will be making less money per pop. This means that you'll have to switch to military production at some point anyhoo.

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This is mostly false. The cost of new citizens, either by training specialists in Europe or growing your own through extra food, is constant. Production of guns, horses, ships and cannons is also constant.

Andvare said:

I can't see the benefit of having a large empire, other than score and fun (which, of course, is all important). You don't win more easily in my experience with a large empire.

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True dat. Cash, military, liberty bell, FF points, and new citizen production all scale linearly with the empire size. The problem is that the number of liberty bells required for independence scales, and therefore the size of the REF, scale at the same rate. Increasing the size of your empire doesn't make you any more powerful since the your opponent, the REF, gets bigger right along with you.

There are, however, a few fixed-cost elements in the game for which having a large empire helps: FF points for one, but also the ability to concentrate larger numbers of forces at a single point to combat the REF. However getting the important FF's is a breeze even with few cities if you've eliminated the European competition.

Note one important disadvantage of a large empire: as your trading volume with Europe increases, prices will fall/rise at a much faster rate since the thresholds for price changes to occur are fixed throughout the game. So if you're selling coats from 4 cities as opposed to 1, the price will drop much faster and you'll see a smaller profit.

I also feel that Bolivar is, by far, the strongest leader. Natives fall over easy-peasy. Money ain't that important, only to buy cannons, which can be produced. Stronger military is end-all-be-all.

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I'm starting to lean this way too. For a large empire based on trade the Dutch are a must, but as you've pointed out that's probably a weaker strategy than a focused, militaristic strategy. Bolivar's double rebel bonus is incredible.

They really need to make the REF not completely scaled to amount of bells. Isn't the king's starting force larger on the higher difficulties? It seems it at least grow much faster. There is one post on these forums that tested this..

Shouldn't you be able to take it to a whole new level by further exploiting the mechanics in the following way:

Build a big sprawling empire first with 5 or 6 cities, some of them still just not that pop-intensive (2 of those best be very food-intensive. Reason later). Then build a sprawling empire but focus on 2 cities inland. But don't! run bells! Then proceed as follows:

First buy zounds of cannons and get loads of food into loads of wagon-trains,
then mass 10 or so Colonists each in 2 big cities inland. (can be small ones beforehand just need some core buildings perhaps) and get those 2 cities ready for the WoI,
Then go ahead and disband 90% of your population (those tories have done their chores now they can go...)
Then bell those 2 cities (3 Statesmen + Printing-Press + Newspaper) to the hilt in a few turns and declare.
After declaring: Unload those Food-reserves in the cities inland and arm the new colonists to the teeth.

advantages of that:

1. You can afford even much more cannons and soldiers in respect to the ref. (big thing, now you play the 'pilgrims of the mayflower vs. Napoleons russian-expiditon-army' game on him Eat this King Louis!)

2. Better relations with the Indians and enough money to bring them into the WoI (very big thing! Teach those ReF how the poor AI feels. Oh and you get tons of Money from providing them with arms and horses beforehand for buying even more cannons. ) Those 50? refs are in for a rough ride...

3. (i don't know for sure if that works. What does the constitutional choice: "natives are citizens" do to new converts? Do missions still deliver converts / then free settlers after DoI?) Missions all over the place (Does each mission/missionary-unit count as a tory-settler? Then its much harder with missions all over the place naturally) spewing out converts ready to be armed later after a tad bit of training :s. (if it works thats a huge thing. Especially for French.)

4. Better lay of the land. You know it well and can better plan with it + get military infrastructure like roads in place. And more cities to sacrifice and to bind the ref in. Still just 2 cities to get huge sentiment in... (mediocre in importance i reckon)

5. More time to get your cannons / Soldiers / Dragoons experienced (of mediocre importance i reckon. In question just look for a tribe you don't supply with muskets + horses and 'train' on their braves. No need to kill walking XP off... Or better yet another european power if the bring on enough resistance. Mean but effective).

6. More time to get interesting founding fathers due to building politics-points (small thing but still...)


Just shouldn't work all that well in multiplayer i reckon.

Is my reasoning flawed on any point or should it work just as outlined?

Now that one feels like an exploit and completely unthematic to be honest (unlike what the OP Proposed which could be seen as a double cross by the viceroy of the new world. Appear to conqer the new world for your King. And then out of the blue declare yourselves Emperor of your own Empire. Cunning and mean perhaps. But imaginable and shrewd it seems.
And the King has not much to lose in such a circumstance. So he hasn't even much reason to sacrifice many soldiers beyond his first wave for those large patches of jungle guarded by quite a number of cannons. Failed small investments do happen on empire running. And are fastly compensated in a huge scale.).


And really linearily tieing Bells shouldn't be the main and only thing the REF depends on. Founding Fathers + combat bonus (+ production bonus?) all well and good.
But the King just can't! win with terrain disadvantage / colony defense disadvantage + odds staked 1:3 against him (i whould guess then numbers might turn out like that.) + native powers united against him. Just as Pilgrims can't win against Napoleons Army for invading Russia...


Further exploring the whole thing: Whould you have any additional negatives from getting those 2 inland-cities up to revolution level earlier than pre-declaration and then completely ceasing to produce further bells?
If that should be true it turns completely :hammer 2:.
Just go and get these cities ready + reap all the benefits early and then count what the odds are without any! changeing / expanding REF + you can exactely time and measure the number of Tories you need to disband to declare potentially allowing even more soldiers / Dragoons.
Poor King. Never knew what hit him...
And poor Tories in the colonies (including those pesky statesmen whipping up the 'masses'. Or have i missed something are they useful afterwards? Perhaps give them guns...). All kicked out after doing a hard work building an empire... For you and your hardcore revolutionaries of course.

Are Torry Revolutions still in? If yes that might pose a problem. Still not a huge one i belive.

misterslack said:

This is mostly false. The cost of new citizens, either by training specialists in Europe or growing your own through extra food, is constant. Production of guns, horses, ships and cannons is also constant.

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Production is constant, buying is definitely not (hell, in the first, I have Peter Minuit):

Blackmantle said:

Shouldn't you be able to take it to a whole new level by further exploiting the mechanics in the following way:

Build a big sprawling empire first with 5 or 6 cities, some of them still just not that pop-intensive (2 of those best be very food-intensive. Reason later). Then build a sprawling empire but focus on 2 cities inland. But don't! run bells! Then proceed as follows:

First buy zounds of cannons and get loads of food into loads of wagon-trains,
then mass 10 or so Colonists each in 2 big cities inland. (can be small ones beforehand just need some core buildings perhaps) and get those 2 cities ready for the WoI,
Then go ahead and disband 90% of your population (those tories have done their chores now they can go...)
Then bell those 2 cities (3 Statesmen + Printing-Press + Newspaper) to the hilt in a few turns and declare.
After declaring: Unload those Food-reserves in the cities inland and arm the new colonists to the teeth.

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More Cheese, yay! But in this case, you only need one main city, as you can't disband the others, so they effectively becomes the sacrificial goats.
Also, your post DoI production would be hurt.

advantages of that:

1. You can afford even much more cannons and soldiers in respect to the ref. (big thing, now you play the 'pilgrims of the mayflower vs. Napoleons russian-expiditon-army' game on him Eat this King Louis!)

2. Better relations with the Indians and enough money to bring them into the WoI (very big thing! Teach those ReF how the poor AI feels. Oh and you get tons of Money from providing them with arms and horses beforehand for buying even more cannons. ) Those 50? refs are in for a rough ride...

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I guess you can let the natives live , you just have to make sure to keep on their good side. This can be hard to do, if you're as aggressive as I advocated first against the other European settlers, and you have to plan city placement a bit better. But definitely doable.
I would say it depends on which natives are near. The Incas and Aztecs give out 300% more loot, so I like to kill those. Only the nearest natives are useful, the further away ones are never going near the Tories.

3. (i don't know for sure if that works. What does the constitutional choice: "natives are citizens" do to new converts? Do missions still deliver converts / then free settlers after DoI?) Missions all over the place (Does each mission/missionary-unit count as a tory-settler? Then its much harder with missions all over the place naturally) spewing out converts ready to be armed later after a tad bit of training :s. (if it works thats a huge thing. Especially for French.)

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AFAIK, missions does *not* count towards your tory pop, however converts do. Dunno if the missions deliver still, but I can't see why not, the missions are still active.
But do take the +2 pop in every city. 7 cities= 14 new pops, which can be turned into dragoons. Just stockpile those guns and horsies.

4. Better lay of the land. You know it well and can better plan with it + get military infrastructure like roads in place. And more cities to sacrifice and to bind the ref in. Still just 2 cities to get huge sentiment in... (mediocre in importance i reckon)

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More cities to bind the REF, true, but you can do the other stuff just as easily with just two cities. Still, the REF does put about four units in every city, so that's quite a bit (4*5=20 easily slaughtered units).

5. More time to get your cannons / Soldiers / Dragoons experienced (of mediocre importance i reckon. In question just look for a tribe you don't supply with muskets + horses and 'train' on their braves. No need to kill walking XP off... Or better yet another european power if the bring on enough resistance. Mean but effective).

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This was part of my original plan. I played the other Spaniard, the one with reduced XP reqs. And killed every native on the map. Got me some very upgraded soldiers, which promptly got slaughtered by the REF artillery because I was foolish enough to believe that with +100%defence, they would survive (10 artillery attacked, against highly promoted units, only one lost ).

6. More time to get interesting founding fathers due to building politics-points (small thing but still...)

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Meh, they are redundant. I got all the founding fathers I needed.

Just shouldn't work all that well in multiplayer i reckon.

Is my reasoning flawed on any point or should it work just as outlined?

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Well, the whole idea wouldn't work in MP. Only two cities? Cannon fodder at best.

Now that one feels like an exploit and completely unthematic to be honest (unlike what the OP Proposed which could be seen as a double cross by the viceroy of the new world. Appear to conqer the new world for your King. And then out of the blue declare yourselves Emperor of your own Empire. Cunning and mean perhaps. But imaginable and shrewd it seems.
And the King has not much to lose in such a circumstance. So he hasn't even much reason to sacrifice many soldiers beyond his first wave for those large patches of jungle guarded by quite a number of cannons. Failed small investments do happen on empire running. And are fastly compensated in a huge scale.).

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Don't feel that much more like an exploit than it already is

And really linearily tieing Bells shouldn't be the main and only thing the REF depends on. Founding Fathers + combat bonus (+ production bonus?) all well and good.
But the King just can't! win with terrain disadvantage / colony defense disadvantage + odds staked 1:3 against him (i whould guess then numbers might turn out like that.) + native powers united against him. Just as Pilgrims can't win against Napoleons Army for invading Russia...

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Yup.

Further exploring the whole thing: Whould you have any additional negatives from getting those 2 inland-cities up to revolution level earlier than pre-declaration and then completely ceasing to produce further bells?
If that should be true it turns completely :hammer 2:.
Just go and get these cities ready + reap all the benefits early and then count what the odds are without any! changeing / expanding REF + you can exactely time and measure the number of Tories you need to disband to declare potentially allowing even more soldiers / Dragoons.
Poor King. Never knew what hit him...
And poor Tories in the colonies (including those pesky statesmen whipping up the 'masses'. Or have i missed something are they useful afterwards? Perhaps give them guns...). All kicked out after doing a hard work building an empire... For you and your hardcore revolutionaries of course.

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The problem is to get the city up and running. A 20 pop city with all the bells and whistles is hard to do fast. And by the time I have it up, I'd like to DoI ASAP. But it can be done, just as you can get the rebel sentiment up, leave it there while you produce cannons but the bucketload.
Of course, if you settle with far less, just enough to produce cannons, it could work. you just wont have the infrastructure of a huge city, but who really cares?

Are Torry Revolutions still in? If yes that might pose a problem. Still not a huge one i belive.

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Dunno

Andvare said:

Production is constant, buying is definitely not (hell, in the first, I have Peter Minuit):

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Only cannons and veteran soldiers go up; all other specialists stay constant.

The part with a Pop 20 city takeing longer to getting up and running is just why i sugeested the use of 2 pop 10 cities inland as mains as opposed to 1 big (with 3 elder statesmen each for getting the sentiment whipped up and replacing them with others right when the time for independence is ripe. Or do they make any sense afterwards?) and getting them up and running just with the tons of gold from your surperior economy built beforehand in no time. They just need to produce tons of food for getting new soldiers for the war. (what else you need is allready there in the wagon-trains ready for the new "colonists" to take up.)
Or takeing your leasure if early whisteling and belling and then stopping has no drawback in the long run whatsoever... Then you whouldn't even need gold for rushbuying buildings. More cannons. Yay...

And what you say whould give an even biger incentive to spread your cities largely across the map + far inland and rather put 12 cities there instead of 6. More time, space and pitfalls spiked with rabid armed + mounted natives (especially those prosperous and numerous Inca, Tupi and Azetchs. Teach your king the rabidness of Monty. ) for the small REF to fall in.
No need to rob those natives of their possesions if they can be arms in your fight just as well with you getting rich in arming them and not needing convincing that the king is someone you won't want to be dominated by. (So at best "farming" the braves of a far-away tribe that spawn / get built from time to time for XP and makeing peace + whipping them up against the king later. No burning and looting.)

Badly adapted, translated and warped quote from anti napoleon-sentiment from back then stemming from my hometown:
"In the whole new world not a single thing for eating...and on hook just hunger and beating (by natives of course)."

Thats why it still works for the other nations not just the spaniards. (As i said in my example in this case best the native-part works best with the french. English whould favor a strong buildup via immigration yielding a better economy yielding more cannons. Dutch more cannons from better trade.). You just go all out empire-wide native hugging. + From arming them (especially those prosperous ones you mentioned) you get quite a sizable ammount of gold for even more cannons.

And in the end you boot all the immigrants from france and declare all man are equal and natives are our brothers (well if 'we' were allowed to participate. )...
Now those Europeans whould never have guessed their viceroy doing such a sneaky thing. Whould they? Otherwise they might get dangerous ideas of revolt. The other way...

Or better: Your nation comes as close to a "the natives take over and win" situation as you can get if you do such a thing. Yay.

Well FFS might be overkill but early they offer more milage usually than forfeiting them alltogether. Especially Peter Minuit or Bartholomeo (who sure whould be fond of parts! of that strategy. If not anything... Oh, and he whould be proven right in that instance according to his pedia-entry and whould be very helpful to the whole thing...)
And late FFS do add some neat benefits. (which are more viable to get with a small ref in a longdrawn empire-buildup just build politics-points on mass in Sawmills all over the place.)
Especially free-promotion ones if you have plenty of troops they effect.

Unlike your scenario which emphasizes equal to ecellent odds of experienced troops up to the job at hand + advantage of combat-conditions, mine does emphasize strength not so much in experienced ones but in pure impossible numbers and conditions against a hopelessly outnumbered REF never even having the faint of a chance in a hostile place they don't know, far away from home.


One has to say: Flawed game mechanics make for some fun scenarioes...


So overall: Why using 50 experienced troops up to the job when 500 green ones (including the natives) up to the job will do just the same with less hassle and there is virtually no drawback save time to get the whole thing up?
Thats what the King reasons anyways.
Now, 2 can play that game...


Basically its just overkill, perhaps to illustrate that the system is just as broken as it should not! be, by the measures implemented to get FFs early and a high sentiment.
Those 2 things are not that hot that they overshadow anything else (and they weren't in col 1 were i just some weeks ago played that same game on viceroy and it worked all fine and well. The king didn't even bother to raise the taxes much there for a long time... Only that the terrain didn't work so much in my favor there and the natives couldn't play such a huge part there.). Unlike what some testers might have thought / are still thinking.



On that note: Do prices for cannons in europe still increase with each cannon you buy? Makeing massbuy of artilery unfeasible.

misterslack said:

Only cannons and veteran soldiers go up; all other specialists stay constant.

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Yes, I really should be more precise. The screenshots does show that (a statesman is cheaper in the first one, as I have Peter Minuit there).

Great cheese, Blackmantle. 10 sacrificial goats... emm I mean glorious small town filled with dupes, emm, no, wait, hard working patriotic rebels, yes that's it.
One thing though, is that you'd have to have towns of 2 pops each, to ensure that the Tories don't just raze the cities, plus some 200 horsies and guns for the two emerging soon-to-be dragoons.
I'm not impressed with how the natives join in the fun against your king, but I have been a bit trigger happy, so it might just be because I have killed them off before hand.

Okay. A French writeup:
Make a "normal" economic game. Befriend and mission every native (perhaps except for the odd ones on small islands, you you don't want the hassle). Of course, always be very aggressive towards the other Europeans, the provide no benefits, and you can steal ealy colonists from them. You have nothing to lose from attacking them really.
Stockpile weapons and horses. The more the better. You can make a bit of money selling to the natives.
When you have enough cannons ("enough" may wary, 30-odd should do it, one could say you can never have enough ), build as many 2 pop cities as you have weapons and horses for (200 of each per city). Disband every pop until all but one city is a 2 pop city, with the last being a cannon city, producing cannons non-stop.
Krank up the liberty bell production.
When Revolution comes, take the 2 pop per city constitution choice, turn them into dragoons, and win.
Pros:
Brainless easy
Decent score
Utilizing the French speciality
Getting money from trading with the natives
Cons:
No plunder from rich natives.
No Bolivar
Very Cheesy


You can stockpile food (in wagons), and keep every city to one pop, then turn the stockpiled food into pops. I'd call this cheating though, as the required liberty bell production is very low, but hey, it's not the worldbuilder...

The Spanish way:
Make few cities, 2 at minimum, and not that many more than that.
Kill everything. Use the plunder to buy cannons in Europe (and some specialists you might need).
Make your cities into cannon producing cities, cranking out those cannons but the bucket load.
When you have enough cannons, turn up the liberty bell production.
Rebel.
Evacuate the one city the Tories are attacking, retake it when it is lost, rinse-repeat until victory.
Pros:
Utilizing the Spanish speciality
Getting money from plunder
Very easy
Bolivar
Not as cheesy as the French one
Cons:
Poor score
No help from the natives
Fewer dragoons, so more city fighting.
Probably harder than the French one
Still very cheesy

Now, all nations can do both, but England is probably close to the French, and the Dutch is probably closer to the Spanish (funny, considering those nations history).

The stockpiling food cheat.. emm, trick, yup, trick, works even better here. Imagine, two cities of only size 1. One statesman. 30+ cannons and several dragoons versus the Kings starting army? Not even worth the try.

Don't forget that Frontenac's units get an automatic 20% settlement attack so he would be pretty good for a 2 city strategy as well I assume.

if you want to cheese just build 20+cannons in a 1 pop city, and give the rest of the cities to the european enemies.
Make sure you're capitol is that 1 pop city. But to be honest that is why ref scaleing linearly with bells is a bad idea.
Another reason it is a bad idea is that in MP the player not going for independence will be so big because of the bonuses from founding fathers that there is no other player that can compete with them.
the player not going for independence will be aproximately 3-4 times bigger then the player going for independence.
The ref of the player not going for independence will be in the sizes of 500-700 ground units and another 100 warships.