Biggest colony on Governor level? WTP 2.8

[Derek Brown]

How does this compare to some of the larger colonies you've had:

Gigantic map
Denmark
Marathon speed
64 hrs played
Cash at end ~$275,000
Top 5 settlements all mine
44 founding fathers
No cheating (reloading saved games)

Facilities
~12 Govt Palaces
17 Wheelwright workshops or Great WWWS's
9 Ironworks / 4 Tool Factories / 1 GTF
2 Arsenals / 2 Great Arsenals, also about 6-7 magazines
4 Great Universities all graduating about 1 Vet Inf Soldier / turn at the end.. with education upgrades was getting each student through in 6 turns

Production Units
1147 total units (army, colonists, plus random goods on the map at the time)
33 Miners
69 LJ
18 Stonecutters
43 Blacksmiths
23 Gunsmiths
78 Carpenters
26 Pioneers
79 Elder Statesmen

Final Production - not including export goods
172 stone
436 tools
334 blades
658 guns
64 silver
33 gold

Kills - REF only shown
96 Royal Line Inf
61 Hessian
39 Light Inf
72 Royal Cav
93 Arty
31 Royal Dragoons
85 Man of Wars

Losses (not counting small amounts of artillery, colonial militia, etc)
30 Vet Inf Soldiers
6 European Line Infrantry
2 Continental Guards
1 Hessian
1 Ship of the Line
1 Man of War (stupid move, lost early in game)

Final Standing Army
152 Line Infantry (about 70% veteran soldiers)
24 Colonial Militia
2 Cont Guards
7 Hessians
Enough spare weapons for 40 more Line Infantry
4 Man of Wars
4 Ships of the Line
3 Frigates - all heavily upgraded enough to have ~80% odds on REF MOW
5 Sloops
6 Smugglers / 1 Pirate Frigate
5 whale boats

I'm guessing there's some players on here who've come close to doubling this . I didn't make it a goal to see how big I could get until about 1720 then took over a neighboring Euro. Got too lazy to wipe out the other 3 neighbors. I may try again and see if I can double these numbers. Was a very fun game although a lot of work. I'm just dabbling with automatic routes so only had 2 routes set up (1 on sea and 1 on land). So with all that work put into it, really want to see a comparison

Observations on a gigantic map with 2.8
1. Coastal ships too slow to be useful
2. Very easy to build a strong navy by acquiring ships and sending them out to explore and gain experience
3. I dealt with nearly every commodity and brought the price down to about 5-6. It only required a single manufacturing facility fully manned with specialists and usually just the middle level. High level would have brought prices down very fast
4. Was a separate thread but still finding happiness to be too easy to come by. I can send saved game if someone wants to analyze it

 

[Raubwuerger]

It would be interesting to see some nice pictures ...

 

[hifcio]

Wow, very nice. Please post a save file i'd like to see how You set up things. Did you make use of domestic market? How you keep up with labor needs?

 

[Derek Brown]

Will post a saved file after work

Looking forward to trying to build an even bigger colony on the 2.8.1 mod

 

[raystuttgart]

Will post a saved file after work

Why not post Screenshots as well?

Looking forward to trying to build an even bigger colony on the 2.8.1 mod

Give it a try, I feel it really is a bit better than 2.8 - even though it is not officially published yet.

 

[Derek Brown]

Saved game attached - one to two turns away from the end.

Used the domestic market some at the end during the WOI since my smuggling fleet couldn't get everything off. Was too lazy before that, so much easier to send ships away from Novo (my city on a long peninsula) to Europe even when the prices fell below domestic prices. For labor I invest in schools and keep training. Usually I have a few key cities that will get universities and great universities. I send a lot of new born colonists to boarding school over there then redistribute them to where needed. As I identify training needs in other cities I'll make sticky notes (btw - suggestion for team, I noticed the lines and notes menu is only available if you're zoomed out. Would be cool to assign that a shortcut key and/or make it available during the normal zoom level).

Thanks for positive responses.. was a good time. Almost hoping someone posts better numbers to give me an excuse to aim higher

 

[hifcio]

Very impresive. Good work. I was wandering is it possible to satisfy all domestic needs of your colony? Can auto wagons keep up with all that traffic? I'll try this in my next playthrough.

 

[Derek Brown]

I find that I don't need to bother with domestic market much although I think it's a cool feature.

1) I generally can get happiness to > 25 for most cities pretty easily. My people tend to love me even though I poorly distribute goods throughout the economy . In my save game one can verify. Note that Fort Nassau I believe (the south most Caribbean island) was invaded and reconquered so it was way lower than normal.
2) I generally turn my colony into a currency printing press starting about the year 1700 or even late 1600's. Even though the prices are starting to depress lower than domestic price, by then I'm also self sufficient on specialists, military, ships, and resources, so there's little I want to buy from Europe after buying a few dozen Euro Line Infantries and cavalry and the price goes up. I've found at the end before the war I'll just buy up a fleet of smugglers. That's 99% to import guns and blades rather than generate export revenue
3) I'm very lacking at setting up trade routes. I need to learn how to do this better because I spend many hours manually moving loads. I can set up one to take goods from a production city to a port city since it's a simple route. I should experiment more with a route that picks up say cigars and takes to all cities - right now my hesitancy is worrying that the AI won't do a good job. Maybe it works better than I think.

In my next game I'm going to work on #3. I also plan to use excess money more to rush buildings rather than save a big pile at the end. That will incentivize me more to care about the price I'm getting and use the domestic market more once Euro prices go down.

What would be cool is a domestic market unmet demand screen. I'll send separate thread requesting that.