Where To Start ?

[naminator]

I only bought this game yesterday. Played for a bit last night. Excellent and am enjoying it immensley. I made a few big blunders last night so i want to start again. Thing is when you first start game and approach landfal, everywhere on the map there are indian villages. I never know wheres a good place to start ! Can i settle close to them or does that create conflict (I`d rather keep on good terms with them as i like the idea of training specialists with them). I just wish there was a bit more space on the maps for one to settle easier. Any tips would be appreciated

 

[jenks]

first tip, save the game in 1492 before heading near the land. then go explore for a hundred turns to pick where you would put your first 2-3 colonies .... load up .... head straght there! (you can normally even beat european rivals if they get a pretty choice location

second and in answer to whether to settle next door to indians, depends on what your strategy is going to be.

If one of my 2-3 'prime locations' i picked out when scouting around is in a heavily indian villaged area then i put that one down first (so i dont have to pay them for the land later on)

im not too concerned about puttin my colony on the square adjacent to indians if i plan on making enemy and killing them off quickly (so that 1 of 9 squares doesnt make much of a difference long run), or also if i plan on making nice with them (not far to transport converts/send colonists for training), plus if i am making nice i get making liberty bells in the colony as they will convert and simply give (actually disband) you their city!

Moderator Action: Posts merged.

 

[wurrble182]

a huge map would give you plenty of space to maneavour...

as long as you have a couple of cannons lying around here or there the indians generally keep to themselves no matter how much they hate you...be sure to add more cannons over time though =)

and theyll always train your specialists (at least in my experienece i mite be wrong) just so long as you're not actively at war

ps. doesnt scouting around for 100 turns to find the best starting places scream "cheating" to you?
or "defies the whole point of expansion and exploration?"

pps. dont let the indians give their villages to you anyway, stick a mission in them to get plenty of converted natives nearby and click "it aint happening!" if they offer their villages up.... i think this is a broken game mechanic whereby you're supposed to get natives and maybe treasure when they offer their villages up .....oh well.....the wait for a patch continues......

 

[Babibo]

You'll want to build your first colony :
- next to the sea (there are exceptions though)
- next to rivers (rivers yield +1 ressource for all tiles next to them)
- next to special resources.

1. Food is the most important resource. Sea resources like fish or clam are very good food tiles, although land tiles can be very good too with expert farmers. As far as I know, almost all land tiles are equivalent once unforested. The exceptions are hills and peaks (and I think marshes yield less food than plains for example).
2. Make sure your city has a good forest tile next to it (yielding 6 or 7 wood, depending if there is a river next to it). If not, you'll have to import wood.
3. I like to have a special resource like tobacco next to my first cities. Although there definitely are better ways to get money at start, having a tobacco planter on a tobacco resource can help your economy a lot.

4. Indian villages are a non factor for me. However, if I can see 2 good spots, and one is next to an Indian village, I'll settle the one in Indian territory first (cause you don't have to pay the indians for the first city).

Edit : BTW, using your caravel to explore the coasts and then reload is lame. If you intend to cheat, do it properly : use World builder (although it is clearly cheating, I find it to be a good way to improve)

 

[Old Coot]

Try to put your settlement on a coastal tile that has 2 or more food and 3 or more cotton-sugar-tobacco. Then, as soon as your settlement is established, open up the settlement screen and set your first colonist to making cloth/rum/cigars. This gives you something to sell right off the bat.

 

[Cutlass]

Once you've built up some liberty bells, a crowded native village will pack up and leave if you have good relations. For that reason, I don't put missionaries in villages that I may crowd with my territory later on. Send them further out, and you'll get a long string of converts. Actually, more than you want sometimes.

 

[Buligo]

I like to specialize my colonies. I am quite new at the game, but i usually make one or two 'food' colonies, one specialised in lumber (3 specialist farmers, and the rest specialists lumberjacks) and one or two colonies specialised in extracting ore (3 specialist farmers and the rest specialists miners).Thats al, 3 or 4 colonies, to keep my empire small so i need less liberty bells to..errm..CONVERT my population to become Rebels hehe. Then i select one of my colonies as a 'main' one (never the one on the shore) and i upgrade the 'main' one with the best iron-related specialists and buildings. I try to dig vast quantities of ore from the start if i can, since tons of ore are needed to make tools and weapons(to make soldiers). In my current game i settled South America and stumbled on the Tupi tribe (ok), the Aztecs (also ok) and the...Sioux? Comeon, what the heck is Sitting Bull doing in Argentina? Anyway, the Sioux have like a dozen settlements and in my former game they handed me my own little a$$ on a plate once. In the second try i owned THEM (and lost most of my soldiers -> the King's REF mopped the floor with my rag-tag militia). In my curent game (attempt no.3 of the same save game) i am churning out lots of freshmen-soldiers with like zero experience, but am having good time with the Sioux: trade money is good (no tax hehe) and i hope they will back me a bit when the time comes (they will offer me the defensive alliance). The game certainly has its limits, but it still is a blast: tons of fun and addictive like hell, almost like the original way back then, in Jurassic period ).