Beat the REF using economics

[prolefeed]

The socialist view of warfare is you need to shut down big chunks of your economy to go on a war footing. But, you get better results harnessing capitalism and a free market to wage war.

Basically, it's a numbers game -- since soldiers don't require ANY gold or food to support in Civ Colonization, you want to generate as many militia units as possible, and arm them with guns and (as needed) horses. By the time it's time to declare war, you should have a pile of junk or unspecialized units in each city (free colonists, indentured servants, petty criminals, blacksmiths, ranchers, scouts, etc.) equipped as soldiers and fortified to get that maximum 25% combat bonus. In particular, you want your coastal cities close to Europe well stocked with such fortified units to withstand the amphibious assaults that will be launched against you.

Now, I'm not saying you should "turtle" against the REF and play defense, because they'll kick your ass if they get to use artillery against your cities. Rather, the strategy is to have fortified units in those coastal cities to fight off amphibious assaults, and then as needed convert fortified soldiers into dragoons to kill the REF land units that are dropped onto your territory. Plus, have some cannons on hand to take out any units that land in native villages within two squares of each city, since those villages give cannons their 100% attack bonus. Oh, and you should have built roads EVERYWHERE so your dragoons can foray out, kill the REF units, then duck back into a city with a unit sporting a medic promotion to heal.

So, how do you get this huge stack of unspecialized units to equip as soldiers? Economics. That is, create lots of cash, and buy soldiers.

You can generate soldiers/dragoons/cannon in several ways: buying them in Europe, creating food and getting population growth to generate free colonists, getting them off the docks due to your church/cathedral(s), and freeing the slaves when you declare independence to get two Indentured Servants per city.

By the time you're ready to declare war with Europe, it should be getting prohibitively expensive to get units off the docks using cathedrals. So, finish building whatever unit is in the queue, then turn your Firebrand preachers into fortified soldiers.

You can buy Veteran Soldiers from Europe, but the price escalates rapidly with each purchase, so after buying perhaps two to four such units, you should call that method quits also. The price of cannon doesn't escalate so rapidly, so can buy about a dozen of those before the price gets too high, and stick them primarily in coastal cities close to native villages.

So, after you've tapped out these methods to generate soldiers late in the game, you're left with either cranking out food to generate Free colonists, building cannons in your cities, or buying units. Which is cheaper?

Well, on the Quick setting (which is more fun to play IMO anyway), generating a Free Colonist costs 150 food, while buying the cheapest specialists costs 450 gold. So, each spare food you generate should be valued at 3 gold. So, place each specialized unit (and generate a mix of the right specialized units) so as to maximize the gold output. Basically, you want to maximize the gold from each highly productive square worked.

For example, if you have a square that can be worked by either an Expert Farmer for 9 food per turn (at an effective tax rate of 0% on food), or by a converted native for 7 cotton worth 5 gold apiece at a 30% tax rate in Europe, which is the better deal? Well, the Expert Farmer will generate a surplus of 7 food, for a total productivity of 21 gold. But the converted native will generate 35 gold worth of cotton, minus 6 gold worth of food consumed, for a total of 29 gold before taxes. Now, if you apply the 30% tax rate, that seemingly chops off 9 gold, dropping the value to 20 gold, slightly less than the Expert Farmer. But, if that cotton isn't sold in Europe, but is fed into your cloth weaving factory, then the yield stays at 29 gold if worked by a converted native. Plus, since it costs gold to either buy an Expert Farmer or lose another unit's productivity for several turns while training in a native village to become the farmer, while the converted native is generated for free once a mission is set up, you should factor that expense in, too.

So, work that square with a converted native to produce cotton.

Speaking of factories, the most highly productive units you will have will generally be working in all those factories processing raw materials into finished goods. For example, if you have a Master Tobacconist working in a cigar factory processing tobacco worth 5 gold into cigars worth 10 gold and a tax rate in Europe of 20%, with productivity boosts from rebel sentiment hovering around 50%, for each turn the tobacconist might turn 12 tobacco into 21 cigars. This means your costs are 60 gold for the tobacco plus 6 gold for the food consumed, while your pre-tax income is 210 gold! Yes, the taxes on the cigars will run 42 gold, but you also avert 12 gold in taxes on the tobacco.

So, this one specialized unit can clear a profit of 114 gold per turn, meaning in less than 4 turns you will make enough cash to buy another unit in Europe you can turn into a soldier or dragoon (or put to work somewhere if you're still ramping up prior to declaring war).

So, become a capitalist, buy units, and kill the REF. Happy hunting!

 

[Wejer]

On the point of Capitalism & Socialism: they really have little to do with having a professional army vs. having a militia, instead it is about who controls the means of production: if individuals control the means of production you have capitalism; if it is controlled by a collective or the state then you have socialism. And since every single unit & settlement is ultimately controlled by YOU (the Colonial State), it really has little to do with Capitalism on a philosophical level.

Nonetheless, great game tips overall!

 

[prolefeed]

Perhaps the terms collectivist (or statist) versus individualist would have been more accurate terms to use than socialist / capitalistic, since what is now called capitalism by many is oftentimes a type of crony capitalism infused with a great deal of government control, and not the sort of free market arrangements practiced in colonial America and commonly called capitalism then. This is akin to the word "liberal" being hijacked to the cause of profoundly anti-liberal people, at least as the word "liberal" was used in colonial times. A "modern liberal" holds views essentially 180 degrees opposite of the views of a "classical liberal".

A professional standing army paid for by the state via involuntary taxation (as opposed to voluntary donations, or voluntary subscriptions to a defensive service) is collectivist / socialist, since as you put it the state controls the means of production. There are degrees of collectivism to that -- having military conscription, where people are forced to join the military or else, is profoundly collectivist, and was only recently renounced by the federal government.

Volunteer militias composed of individuals who own private arms and who are under no compulsion to show up and fight when an alarm is raised, other than a concern for the wellbeing of their families or the regard of their neighbors, is profoundly individualist, and is the societal model being emulated in this game.

It is true that the player in this game controls the movements of all the pieces, etc., but the question is whether the player is acting like a feudal lord or general forcing everyone to their will, or an oppressive colonial government acting similar to that, or whether the player is simply acting as a proxy for the individual decisions made by an entire colony of free individuals, each acting as their conscience dictates. I prefer to think of it as the latter, and that closely approximates how the American Revolution played out, where they had an extraordinarily weak revolutionary government with no compulsory powers of taxation (note that the only taxes collected in the game are by the tyrant king, who takes the money and gives nothing in return).

You are free, of course, to regard yourself as a benevolent dictator controlling every aspect of your subject's lives in the game, but that doesn't comport well with the game hints being given, or with the historical reality of a profoundly anarcho-capitalistic / minarchist revolutionary society, which by slow degrees over the following 2+ centuries has morphed back into the sort of collectivism that precipitated the original revolution. The people who wrote the Articles of Confederation (followed by the more collectivist Constitution) would be appalled at the coercive government we suffer under now.

My apologies for not posting any actual gameplay hints here.

/ libertarian rant

 

[Wejer]

It is true that the player in this game controls the movements of all the pieces, etc., but the question is whether the player is acting like a feudal lord or general forcing everyone to their will, or an oppressive colonial government acting similar to that, or whether the player is simply acting as a proxy for the individual decisions made by an entire colony of free individuals, each acting as their conscience dictates. I prefer to think of it as the latter, and that closely approximates how the American Revolution played out, where they had an extraordinarily weak revolutionary government with no compulsory powers of taxation (note that the only taxes collected in the game are by the tyrant king, who takes the money and gives nothing in return).

I have never actually thought of it that way before. Very interesting views!

 

[colonization]

On the point of Capitalism & Socialism: they really have little to do with having a professional army vs. having a militia, instead it is about who controls the means of production: if individuals control the means of production you have capitalism; if it is controlled by a collective or the state then you have socialism. And since every single unit & settlement is ultimately controlled by YOU (the Colonial State), it really has little to do with Capitalism on a philosophical level.

Nonetheless, great game tips overall!

This is getting a little meta here, but since we all are able to create our own colonies, we are indeed pursuing "individual" courses of action to achieve our intended goals. All those colonists in the game become the labor pool we require in order to achieve our ends. Technically all of this labor is "slave" labor, since we buy the labor and don't pay them any wages except food. If you view the colony as a giant plantation or corporation, you can also view it as "capitalism" at its finest, especially since we are rebelling against a totalitarian monarch, and marginalizing our labor costs to the greatest extent possible.