Age of discovery tactics!?

[Kubannus]

I would like to know witch tactic are you using in AOD? I`m playing as a France I put 4 cities to Norht America, 3 to Africa, then I focused to "clean" a old world from others, I wiped out Porugal, Duch & Spain. Now I`m in the middle of game time and I`m planing to move my forces to N. America.

What are your experiences?
Do you thing guys, I have enough time to complete task in America?

 

[Shabbaman]

I never make war in europe, I feel that's not "in the spirit" of the scenario. If you've conquered spain, portugal and the netherlands you've already practically won.
Besides, I don't get the idea that the AI knows how to handle the "reverse capture the flag" at all, so losing this scenario would be pretty hard anyway.

 

[Kubannus]

I didnt plan it (war in Europe) but I saw, that Portugal was in war with Spain, and Spainish offered me a MA against Portugal and I took it. Than Spain attacked me, so ... I hadn`t choice.

 

[lbhhh]

I played the scenario as Portugal and used a piracy strategy. I built a ton of privateer and stationned them near gibraltar. When Spanish and French Galleons would come back from the new world full of treasure, I'd swoop in for the capture. Spain and France eventually got fed up of this and attacked but I was able to hold them off and get the win.

 

[bd7762]

I also played as Portugal with more of a trade route mentality. Build defense at home because Spain will attack, just hold them off and colonize Africa. Don't even worry about the rest of the world, once you have 2 gold mines in Africa just start shipping the treasure back to your capital and you'll hit the VP limit in no time.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I played as Portugal. If you really want to win fast, just colonize the carribean for yourself. And if you want to conquer, then play as Spain:

 

[Beam]

Played this one as the Dutch quite a while ago. The main issue with the position of the Dutch is that access through the Channel is easily blocked by either France or England. So to resolve this France was taken as fast as possible in the first couple of turns.

Then, after conquering / settling the goody cities on the Americain continent it becomes a matter of logistics to get the goodies to Europe and troops to America.

 

[Zcylen]

I played as Spain and the riches part is in south america.
I hadnt enough ships to bring treasures back to madrid
but couldnt resist to go to war and invaded portugal and dutch
great scenario

 

[Dingus McNasty]

I won this game playing as Portugal on Monarch difficulty.

It is important to get Colonization as soon as possible. Also, try to grab Cuba if you can: it produces two (2) treasures, tobacco and sugar. Other than that all that I held were enough cities to cover the gold and gem mines in Africa. I only needed to found about 4 cities in Africa and the one in Cuba to win the game.

Try to time the building of your plantations/mines/etc. so that they pop out treasures right about the same time. This cuts down significantly on the transportation problems between the colonies and the capital.

For instance, I built a tobacco plantation in Cuba that produces a treasure every ten turns. I planned to build the sugar plantation so that it would pop out a treasure about the same time as the tobacco, so that I would have two treasures appear at the same time - that could both be loaded onto the same carrack, thus eliminating the need for another shipment. I did the same in Africa - all the cities there were producing treasure units around the same times (though gold seemed to come twice as fast). The result was that I often had a carrack arriving from Africa full of treasure instead of wasting a trip on just one. Set this system up and then just try to stay out of wars, cover the carracks with frigates, and the other civs simply cannot catch you as your score skyrockets you to victory.

Another thing to remember is to always make sure that your carracks are full of troops/units that can pick up the treasures and hop right back on the ships. I used knights as much as possible for this as they were quicker at shuttling between those backwater sub-Saharan African gold mines and the ships waiting on the coast.

Oh yeah and build Magellan's Voyage if you can.