Watermelon
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2021
- Messages
- 17
Hello guys, I myself am a sucker for all kinds of guides and tips to play more optimally. I always play to min-max, sometimes using houserules/challenges to enforce more roleplaying while still playing as meta as possible. I love the complexity and choices offered in WeThePeople and with all the hours I played, I want to create a little guide on how to quickly develop a powerful colony. Please share your own strategies, as I love to explore new possibilites on building up a colony.
This guide is intended for the following settings and "house-rules":
-Large, Massive or Giant Maps, both random or pre-created
-Revolutionary Difficulty (don't worry, AI is usually a pushover, if annoying with FFs and you can prepare for the WoI pretty much as long as you like)
-Normal Speed - Every (Ship)Move counts (honestly I would choose Epic on a Gigantic, otherwise you will be really locked with your movement, but I haven't played on Epic)
-No buying Goods in Europe or Africa except for food, construction materials, equipment and ship- and wagon-building-materials. It is not very balanced and not historical to buy e.g. whale fat or skins in Europe to refine it in the Americas.
-Rushbuying buildings may or may not be allowed; For the purpose of this guide it'll be not allowed, but it'll only result in the somewhat earlier requirement to buy carpenters.
Next up our leaders combined with a small ranking, including their strongest leader (imho): // Will expand the list later on with more reasoning
Powerful:
Portugal (Martim)
Dutch (Peter)
English (both)
Normal:
Danish (Hans)
Swedish (Johan)
Hard start:
French (Samuel)
Really want him to be good, but he has a slow start. Afterwards you enjoy some nice boni.
Spain (Cortez)
Russia (both)
Absolutely the worst civ trait and a terrible start. With the leader traits and a dragoon start they'd surprisingly okay.
French, Spain and Russia all have a hard start (and are therefore weaker colonies in my eyes due to snowballing) because they miss the starting dragoon. Portugal gets the seasoned scout instead (nearly as good or as good), but the French Missionary, the Spanish Conquistator and esp. the Russian Native Trader do not give you the headstart that selling the dragoons equipment give you.
We'll choose a classic: George Washington for the purpose of this guide.
He is a Experienced General, which for the early and mid game doesn't really concern us, but his 2nd trait Expansive is really good with 20% discount on colonists and ships from Europe as well as somewhat cheaper settlers. He is an Englishman, with their civ-trait giving him mainly more crosses per preachers, less needed for immigration and he starts with the powerful dragoon and a firebrand preacher perfect for his civ-trait.
How to play optimally?
Everything can be bought with money, as such evaluate every action you do on its return of investment, measured in hard cash.
-E.g. Schools: Should a colonist train in a school to become a hemp farmer (assuming no native settlements) to exploit a future hemp ressource plantation?
No because it takes 20 turns until he is schooled, in which time he could have found a native village across the world offering another useful specialisation, or could have just worked a ressource tile, assuming a production of 6 goods for a price of 4 to 5 meaning schooling him had the opportunity cost of circa 500 gold. Instead buy two slaves with the goods produced by him or equip him as a scout with the goods he produces during that time, which both make you more money than the differential gain in productivity between a free colonist and a expert hemp planter.
-Missions: I find missions pretty weak for most due to this calculation, even considering relationship impact. Equipment for a free colonist -> missionary costs about 500, the colonist being about maybe 200-300 worth (by rushing immigration), with a 50% failure chance this averages to 1500 gold per sucessful mission.
In my experience a random mission in a high population native nation may give you a converted native every 15 turns (optimistically). A converted native being a jack of all trades raw material expert, with less unhappy than slaves. A max price slave is 300 gold + transport, so lets say for the hassle of unhappiness and domestic market a converted natives value for you would be 600 gold. (Other alternative would be rushing immigration, so 600 gold seems fair). With that or 1500 gold invested pay back 600 gold every 15 turns, meaning a measly 40 gold per turn, returning your investment in not under 30 turns, which is terrible. Native traders are much better.
As unspecialised colonists on unimproved tiles or workshops are terrible, my general strategy is to build up a single city as quickly as possible with about 2-3 level 3 industries fully supported, with other towns only supplying raw materials, to then expand other towns to fill in the domestic market gaps. Depending on your houserule regarding monarchy (easier) or democracy (harder) revolution I'd start building up farming and equipment towns for a democratic revolution after 3-4 commercial industry cities or just go full ham on commercial cities as you can still buy Units and Guns in Europe when choosing Monarchy. This works, as it is very hard to produce guns more efficiently than buying them from domestic market money in Europe with the large trading fleet you usually have, and you have all the infrastructure for gold production already in place.
Early Game:
Go to the coast and try to grab ship wrecks, the exp boost can be very valuable.
Look for a location with a river, without unhealthy terrain to settle on, flat land for more food on the city tile, access by normal coast, enough land tiles, enough forests and ideally food or lumber ressource. This city is probably the first big one, so also try to not settle directly next to natives, else they'll raid your treasures.
Take the first good spot you get, do look for more than 3-4 turns. Settle your dragoon in the city and swoop the gunpowder and guns with your ship and start looking for natives. Meanwhile build a village center and gather bells and build PP for Jacques until you get him. You should be always able to get him, if you didnt spent too much time looking for a spot. Sell your guns and powder to the first natives that show up with enough money, atleast 2200 gold. They will probably offer you less than this for both, but they key is now and later to always use the haggle button when selling guns to natives. Often enough they'll give you double their starting price, which can triple or sometimes quadruple your profit! (Remember you have to buy the guns as well, so any increase to the selling price is pure profit)
From now on regulary send ships to every Native that has 2,5k of spare change to trade for 1000 guns. I advise to haggle maybe about 2-3 each trade or until you can atleast can get double to triple of what you paid in Europe. Enterprising civs can get amazing profits, sometimes trading 100 guns for 4,5k to 5,5k. Of course take their cheap raw ressources on the back trip to Europe.
One additional small tip is to gift the natives 60-100 gold when you first met/trade. That "trick" - widespread in many business interactions or human cultures - will get you +4 relations which will give you better prices, as you showed them proper respect.
Use your first cash to buy more guns, another ship discounted by the King, and about 3 additional scouts about in that order. Also get some form of Military Unit to your settlement, so it doesnt rebel. Everyone in your settlement should be working to expand it, by harvesting wood, being a preacher, or a statesman. Try to get a chapel, pier, marketplace, town hall, lumbermill and medical office. Don't get too fancy before you have a lumbermill staffed with real carpenters, hammers will be your main limiting factor. Also buy 1-2 carpenters (the first unit bought in the royal academy so far, others will at this point be too expensive for their gain!). If you have spare cash hurry useful colonists on the dock to take them to your colonies, like lumberjacks, farmers, preachers, fishers, fitting experts etc.. Events should give you some Pioneers but you may also buy one at this point.
Should you scout out pearls, gold or silver close by the coast, start settling the respective expert there but no more. These settlement will also make selling guns to distant natives easier, as you can send your ships directly to these instead of guessing.
After getting the lumbermill in your settlement staffed with some carpenters and maybe around 3-4 ships plus 1-2 additional 1 to 3 pop settlements we'll start with the early mid game.
Mid Game
You now have to decide whether you want to go for an early whaling industry. Generally it is powerful but only when there are atleast 2 to 3 whaling resources maybe 3 turns away. In that case start by building a shipyard require for building whaling boats. Stock up ressources to build two of them. Meanwhile have atleast 5 port towns settled with atleast a pier built. Gather 2 Whale Oil Cookers and 5000 gold. An event will pop, allowing you to buy a the max level whalery and a whaling ship for 5k, also raising the price of whale oil. It's main power is by how quickly you can get it, instead of having to build a city hall and other buildings. Whalery is extremly lucrative: One Oil cooker will get you about 20 Oil a turn, that sells for about 24 gold, selling for 480 gold a turn, pretty much a gold mine. And you get three of them. Whaling ships are not too bad, costing about 1k gold. All in all, about 11k investment gets you about 1,3 to 1,5 k gold per turn. Compare that to three tobacco farmers, farming 30 tobacco a turn for 4 gold, for 120 gold a turn if sold like that.
Afterwards - no matter how you chose before - build up to a city hall and pick 2 industries you can support with your local and extended environment. If it's only flat grassland everywhere, then you have to go tobacco (though generally a weak industry) and naval supplies through hemp (surprisingly resistant to price decreases). If for me as an English Colony there are fruits nearby and sugar or a combination of two the distillery is ideal. I believe 4 English distillers take about 80 raw goods per turn, so I need to secure atleast 5-8 sugar plantation or fruitplantation tiles. Empty level 3 factories are not very efficient.
The strongest industry is the whole clothing industry, because you can get 3/4 level 3 factories refining your product. Clothing factories are the most efficient as every level 3 factory gives you not more throughput like the level 2 factory but a +50% more output produced with no increase on the input, which increases the profit for high price products way more than for low price ones. Liberty desire's boost has the same effect. Consider this:
Tobacco factory Level 2:
Costs: 12 tobacco leaves for 4 gold: 48 gold per turn
Revenue: 12 cigars for 10 gold: 120 gold per turn
Profit: 72 gold per turn per Master
Tobacco factory Level 3:
Costs: 12 tobacco leaves for 4 gold: 48 gold per turn
Revenue: 18 cigars for 10 gold: 180 gold per turn
Profit: 132 gold per turn per Master
Clothing factory Level 2:
Costs: 12 coloured cloth for 20 gold: 240 gold per turn
Revenue: 12 clothing for 30 gold: 360 gold per turn
Profit: 120 gold per turn per Master
Clothing factory Level 3:
Costs: 12 colored cloth for 20 gold: 240 gold per turn
Revenue: 18 clothing for 30 gold: 540 gold per turn
Profit: 300 gold per turn per Master
This way you also minimise the amount of raw resource gathering, which is not very profitible and whose Experts also have less demand for the domestic market.
With a second level 3 Factory and should now have about a cash flow of 3k+ per turn, with which you can build up your town for an ideal domestic market (~15 happiness, many statesmen) and build up other towns to fill in the gaps for the domestic markets.
Animal industries start getting interesting, as they are generally pretty adaptable but difficult to set up, as their experts like herders, ranchers or butchers cost as much as other masters while they by themselves only produce low value goods. Some animals industries like lined coast or goat boots are exceptional for an export industry due to their high price. Things like leatherwares or pig skin aprons should be mainly for the domestic market.
Now with that kind of cash - by before 1600 if you are lucky - you are set up to do anything you like to do, whether that be crushing some hapless AI nearby or build up more towns by using universities to educate an endless stream of master carpenters, elder statesmen andharlots sophisticated companions.
Has this guide helped you? Please share your own thoughts and strategies!
This guide is intended for the following settings and "house-rules":
-Large, Massive or Giant Maps, both random or pre-created
-Revolutionary Difficulty (don't worry, AI is usually a pushover, if annoying with FFs and you can prepare for the WoI pretty much as long as you like)
-Normal Speed - Every (Ship)Move counts (honestly I would choose Epic on a Gigantic, otherwise you will be really locked with your movement, but I haven't played on Epic)
-No buying Goods in Europe or Africa except for food, construction materials, equipment and ship- and wagon-building-materials. It is not very balanced and not historical to buy e.g. whale fat or skins in Europe to refine it in the Americas.
-Rushbuying buildings may or may not be allowed; For the purpose of this guide it'll be not allowed, but it'll only result in the somewhat earlier requirement to buy carpenters.
Next up our leaders combined with a small ranking, including their strongest leader (imho): // Will expand the list later on with more reasoning
Powerful:
Portugal (Martim)
- Civ-Trait: Decent, because Scouts are powerful
- Civ-Unit: Powerful, random maps are littered with precious metals or stones, pop him there and he'll print money no questions asked.
- Trait 1 - Adm: Powerful, as we'll see later upgraded buildungs are the real moneymakers in this game. Faster FFs are also an advantage, one reason why Portugal AI always has such a high score.
- Trait 2 - Ressourceful: Okay, free tools and hammers are handy but not so important
- Starting Units: Decent, seasoned scout turn 1 very nice, missing Guns from the dragoon not so and he also needs to stay in town for a bit to reliably get Jacques.
Dutch (Peter)
- Civ-Trait: Decent, more stable prices means more gold in your pocket. Trade goods are handy, but not important. Max Tax is completely irrelevant.
- Civ-Unit: Decent, You'll always use carpenters and they are just better at it. Though 130% better instead of 100% is not such a huge gain.
- Trait 1 - Adm: Powerful, as we'll see later upgraded buildungs are the real moneymakers in this game. Faster FFs are also an advantage. Incredibly broken with your starting carpenter.
- Trait 2 - Capitalist: Decent, surprisingly good as double move treasures makes powerful scouts even more powerful and gets your money ball rolling fast. Imagine you can also quickly construct buildings with that cash and employ people... oh my!
- Starting Units: Powerful, take the dragoons arms, sell 'em and you now start with 2,5k extra compared to civs without dragoons. Now add a carpenter, that costs 1,2k (who often has double production when building the town halls) and also a bigger cargo ship, which can pick up indentured servants from ship wrecks turn 1 (albeit slower)
.
English (both)
- Civ-Trait: Powerful, more people means more everything. Also a higher chance to roll high value immigrants. Added bonuses (esp. to LbD) are the cherry on top.
- Civ-Unit: Decent, Fruits are pretty widespread, so the 180% Throughput can often make you serious money.
- Trait - Expansive: Powerful, it's like 25% more gold period. Settlers are even cheaper.
- Trait 2 - Industrious: Decent, more hammers, more and faster high level buildings, more good. Extra Tools are also handy.
- Starting Units: Powerful, take the dragoons arms, sell 'em and you now start with 2,5k extra compared to civs without dragoons. Now add a preacher, who even gets majorly boosted compared to others civs and you'll get enough immigrants to get to ball rolling fast.
Normal:
Danish (Hans)
- Civ-Trait: Decent atleast on normal speed, not so much on slower speeds. Ships make an excellent ROI in the early game selling guns and buying raw stuff, this makes it even better.
- Civ-Unit: Decent, Youll always use this unit and it will always help you by a bit compared to other civs.
- Trait -
- Trait -
- Starting Units: Decent, take the dragoons arms, sell 'em and you now start with 2,5k extra compared to civs without dragoons. Fisherman is decent, but not powerful because very early food is not so important (just buy it from the natives).
Swedish (Johan)
Hard start:
French (Samuel)
Really want him to be good, but he has a slow start. Afterwards you enjoy some nice boni.
- Civ-Trait: Decent, really more handy than powerful. A bit better trade deals, bit faster training, easier time managing natives... Otherwise just bribe the natives to leave your treasures alone or reroute them and build a fort in their face if they decide to be annoying.
- Civ-Unit: Powerful, honestly dont know how often furs clogged up my storage, they are everywhere. Would be the most powerful unit if fur coats didn't fall in price so quickly very hard.
- Trait - Enterprising: Powerful, Arms Dealing is strong, now make it stronger. Half-Priced Pioneers also nice, little change for traders and missionaries are mostly irrelevant.
- Trait - Undemanding: Decent, more handy, because you can often add 1 more important colonist to small colonies due to the food and health is less of a nuisance.
- Starting Units: Bad, no dragoon, sadly. Hunter is okayish, missionary saves it a bit, because you can get an early preacher, dont use him for a mission.
Spain (Cortez)
Russia (both)
Absolutely the worst civ trait and a terrible start. With the leader traits and a dragoon start they'd surprisingly okay.
- Civ-Trait: Bad, offers you pretty much nothing except for the WOI where you enjoy a sligtht combat boost.
- Civ-Unit: Decent, need a lot of lumber and he will oblige. Slaves will the job for cheaper though (ouch).
- Trait -
- Trait -
- Starting Units: Terrible, no dragoon and a native trader, which you really don't need at the very beginning. Good luck raising money to do anything. Remember on normal every turn counts.
French, Spain and Russia all have a hard start (and are therefore weaker colonies in my eyes due to snowballing) because they miss the starting dragoon. Portugal gets the seasoned scout instead (nearly as good or as good), but the French Missionary, the Spanish Conquistator and esp. the Russian Native Trader do not give you the headstart that selling the dragoons equipment give you.
We'll choose a classic: George Washington for the purpose of this guide.
He is a Experienced General, which for the early and mid game doesn't really concern us, but his 2nd trait Expansive is really good with 20% discount on colonists and ships from Europe as well as somewhat cheaper settlers. He is an Englishman, with their civ-trait giving him mainly more crosses per preachers, less needed for immigration and he starts with the powerful dragoon and a firebrand preacher perfect for his civ-trait.
How to play optimally?
Everything can be bought with money, as such evaluate every action you do on its return of investment, measured in hard cash.
-E.g. Schools: Should a colonist train in a school to become a hemp farmer (assuming no native settlements) to exploit a future hemp ressource plantation?
No because it takes 20 turns until he is schooled, in which time he could have found a native village across the world offering another useful specialisation, or could have just worked a ressource tile, assuming a production of 6 goods for a price of 4 to 5 meaning schooling him had the opportunity cost of circa 500 gold. Instead buy two slaves with the goods produced by him or equip him as a scout with the goods he produces during that time, which both make you more money than the differential gain in productivity between a free colonist and a expert hemp planter.
-Missions: I find missions pretty weak for most due to this calculation, even considering relationship impact. Equipment for a free colonist -> missionary costs about 500, the colonist being about maybe 200-300 worth (by rushing immigration), with a 50% failure chance this averages to 1500 gold per sucessful mission.
In my experience a random mission in a high population native nation may give you a converted native every 15 turns (optimistically). A converted native being a jack of all trades raw material expert, with less unhappy than slaves. A max price slave is 300 gold + transport, so lets say for the hassle of unhappiness and domestic market a converted natives value for you would be 600 gold. (Other alternative would be rushing immigration, so 600 gold seems fair). With that or 1500 gold invested pay back 600 gold every 15 turns, meaning a measly 40 gold per turn, returning your investment in not under 30 turns, which is terrible. Native traders are much better.
As unspecialised colonists on unimproved tiles or workshops are terrible, my general strategy is to build up a single city as quickly as possible with about 2-3 level 3 industries fully supported, with other towns only supplying raw materials, to then expand other towns to fill in the domestic market gaps. Depending on your houserule regarding monarchy (easier) or democracy (harder) revolution I'd start building up farming and equipment towns for a democratic revolution after 3-4 commercial industry cities or just go full ham on commercial cities as you can still buy Units and Guns in Europe when choosing Monarchy. This works, as it is very hard to produce guns more efficiently than buying them from domestic market money in Europe with the large trading fleet you usually have, and you have all the infrastructure for gold production already in place.
Early Game:
Go to the coast and try to grab ship wrecks, the exp boost can be very valuable.
Look for a location with a river, without unhealthy terrain to settle on, flat land for more food on the city tile, access by normal coast, enough land tiles, enough forests and ideally food or lumber ressource. This city is probably the first big one, so also try to not settle directly next to natives, else they'll raid your treasures.
Take the first good spot you get, do look for more than 3-4 turns. Settle your dragoon in the city and swoop the gunpowder and guns with your ship and start looking for natives. Meanwhile build a village center and gather bells and build PP for Jacques until you get him. You should be always able to get him, if you didnt spent too much time looking for a spot. Sell your guns and powder to the first natives that show up with enough money, atleast 2200 gold. They will probably offer you less than this for both, but they key is now and later to always use the haggle button when selling guns to natives. Often enough they'll give you double their starting price, which can triple or sometimes quadruple your profit! (Remember you have to buy the guns as well, so any increase to the selling price is pure profit)
From now on regulary send ships to every Native that has 2,5k of spare change to trade for 1000 guns. I advise to haggle maybe about 2-3 each trade or until you can atleast can get double to triple of what you paid in Europe. Enterprising civs can get amazing profits, sometimes trading 100 guns for 4,5k to 5,5k. Of course take their cheap raw ressources on the back trip to Europe.
One additional small tip is to gift the natives 60-100 gold when you first met/trade. That "trick" - widespread in many business interactions or human cultures - will get you +4 relations which will give you better prices, as you showed them proper respect.
Use your first cash to buy more guns, another ship discounted by the King, and about 3 additional scouts about in that order. Also get some form of Military Unit to your settlement, so it doesnt rebel. Everyone in your settlement should be working to expand it, by harvesting wood, being a preacher, or a statesman. Try to get a chapel, pier, marketplace, town hall, lumbermill and medical office. Don't get too fancy before you have a lumbermill staffed with real carpenters, hammers will be your main limiting factor. Also buy 1-2 carpenters (the first unit bought in the royal academy so far, others will at this point be too expensive for their gain!). If you have spare cash hurry useful colonists on the dock to take them to your colonies, like lumberjacks, farmers, preachers, fishers, fitting experts etc.. Events should give you some Pioneers but you may also buy one at this point.
Should you scout out pearls, gold or silver close by the coast, start settling the respective expert there but no more. These settlement will also make selling guns to distant natives easier, as you can send your ships directly to these instead of guessing.
After getting the lumbermill in your settlement staffed with some carpenters and maybe around 3-4 ships plus 1-2 additional 1 to 3 pop settlements we'll start with the early mid game.
Mid Game
You now have to decide whether you want to go for an early whaling industry. Generally it is powerful but only when there are atleast 2 to 3 whaling resources maybe 3 turns away. In that case start by building a shipyard require for building whaling boats. Stock up ressources to build two of them. Meanwhile have atleast 5 port towns settled with atleast a pier built. Gather 2 Whale Oil Cookers and 5000 gold. An event will pop, allowing you to buy a the max level whalery and a whaling ship for 5k, also raising the price of whale oil. It's main power is by how quickly you can get it, instead of having to build a city hall and other buildings. Whalery is extremly lucrative: One Oil cooker will get you about 20 Oil a turn, that sells for about 24 gold, selling for 480 gold a turn, pretty much a gold mine. And you get three of them. Whaling ships are not too bad, costing about 1k gold. All in all, about 11k investment gets you about 1,3 to 1,5 k gold per turn. Compare that to three tobacco farmers, farming 30 tobacco a turn for 4 gold, for 120 gold a turn if sold like that.
Afterwards - no matter how you chose before - build up to a city hall and pick 2 industries you can support with your local and extended environment. If it's only flat grassland everywhere, then you have to go tobacco (though generally a weak industry) and naval supplies through hemp (surprisingly resistant to price decreases). If for me as an English Colony there are fruits nearby and sugar or a combination of two the distillery is ideal. I believe 4 English distillers take about 80 raw goods per turn, so I need to secure atleast 5-8 sugar plantation or fruitplantation tiles. Empty level 3 factories are not very efficient.
The strongest industry is the whole clothing industry, because you can get 3/4 level 3 factories refining your product. Clothing factories are the most efficient as every level 3 factory gives you not more throughput like the level 2 factory but a +50% more output produced with no increase on the input, which increases the profit for high price products way more than for low price ones. Liberty desire's boost has the same effect. Consider this:
Tobacco factory Level 2:
Costs: 12 tobacco leaves for 4 gold: 48 gold per turn
Revenue: 12 cigars for 10 gold: 120 gold per turn
Profit: 72 gold per turn per Master
Tobacco factory Level 3:
Costs: 12 tobacco leaves for 4 gold: 48 gold per turn
Revenue: 18 cigars for 10 gold: 180 gold per turn
Profit: 132 gold per turn per Master
Clothing factory Level 2:
Costs: 12 coloured cloth for 20 gold: 240 gold per turn
Revenue: 12 clothing for 30 gold: 360 gold per turn
Profit: 120 gold per turn per Master
Clothing factory Level 3:
Costs: 12 colored cloth for 20 gold: 240 gold per turn
Revenue: 18 clothing for 30 gold: 540 gold per turn
Profit: 300 gold per turn per Master
This way you also minimise the amount of raw resource gathering, which is not very profitible and whose Experts also have less demand for the domestic market.
With a second level 3 Factory and should now have about a cash flow of 3k+ per turn, with which you can build up your town for an ideal domestic market (~15 happiness, many statesmen) and build up other towns to fill in the gaps for the domestic markets.
Animal industries start getting interesting, as they are generally pretty adaptable but difficult to set up, as their experts like herders, ranchers or butchers cost as much as other masters while they by themselves only produce low value goods. Some animals industries like lined coast or goat boots are exceptional for an export industry due to their high price. Things like leatherwares or pig skin aprons should be mainly for the domestic market.
Now with that kind of cash - by before 1600 if you are lucky - you are set up to do anything you like to do, whether that be crushing some hapless AI nearby or build up more towns by using universities to educate an endless stream of master carpenters, elder statesmen and
Has this guide helped you? Please share your own thoughts and strategies!
Last edited:
