I'll be happy to answer strategy questions while I work on a guide

Is there a way to train Veteran troops at a university like there was in the first Col or must they all be purchased in Europe?

Do you advise warring with natives to gain veterans over being nice and getting their training and converts?

 

1) No

2) It is not an either-or proposition; but yes some warring is advisable. When the REF lands you'll want your experienced soldiers inland and waiting to strike at targets of opportunity. That, plus warring with Natives will get you some treasure (take out the Incas for sure on any map, once you get any training you need).

 

You cant train Vets yourself. Pity.
You must make due with what you get from immigration / can afford to buy.

On natives - you could get both - trade with them, let them educate some ressource-specialists for you. Then once they have nothing left to trade and the Education start to take forever... Well... You will not only get XP from attackng them, you will also get some (puny) terasure and sometimes a converted native when you burn a village.

 

I've only played on Pilgrim so far , but this strategy has worked with each of the 4 Civilisations (I usually win about 1650):

- build only one coastal town. This gets Docks, Printing Press, Newspaper, Warehouse, School, Armoury, Stables, Lumber Mill, Stockade, Fort and Fortress. (The School is for Elder Statesmen - get one from Europe, then school the rest.)
- build a few small inland towns, each near a special resource. They only build Wagon Trains (i.e. no buildings), otherwise they churn out political, religious or military points. Use these to get helpful Founding Fathers.
- your Pioneer connects your towns by road and builds on each special resource.

- get a Scout as soon as possible (preferably two) and visit every village, burial ground and ruin.
- set up a mission (or three!), preferably using Criminals or Servants.
- use villages to train natives, servants and criminals.
- trade with villages. Always pay for land (moving the site one square can reduce the cost). Always agree Defensive Pacts with natives.

- Use Elder Statesmen only in your coastal town at first to avoid alarming the King. When close to Independence, give each other town its own Statesman.
- always agree to the King's tax increases, but never pay him gold.

- use a cannon to guard each town.
- pile almost all of your Dragoons into your coastal town.
- when the war starts, attack! Once you have a Great General, promote one unit (preferably a dragoon) to Surgeon 1, Surgeon 2 and Surgeon 3. (He stays in your coastal town and heals everybody).

Good luck.

P.S. I enclose an example game.

 

Does it matter what kind of unit you turn into a soldier? Would petty criminals make worse soldiers than a colonist? Or, once a unit is converted is the petty criminal status gone?

 

I haven't noticed anything that indicates a difference between converting a free colonist to a soldier compared to a indentured servant or petty criminal.

 

I can beat the game just fine; it just isn't the immerse colony-building experience it should be.

In a word:

If nearly all of the optimal ways to win involve tailoring all of your early gameplay with beating the REF in mind, the game is failing to do what Colonization has always been about.

There's just a big disjunct in this game. Playing exceptionally well in the colony-development phase of the game is more or less totally unconnected to success against the REF. Crushing your economic rivals and cultivating massive patriotic sentiment is no longer at the core of winning this game. It can just as easily be won with some cheesy, one-port tactics.

Crushing Colonization I on Viceroy was a much more enriching experience.

 

Thanks for the answers to my basic questions.
I've tried a few more games and yesterday I managed to finish one where I wasn't completely clueless as to what I was doing. Still, it was only a game at a low difficulty level, because I still don't understand a few things and I don't know what works and what doesn't.

I figured out that native settlements allow the training of petty criminals and useless colonists that lose out on production. I also found out that converted natives can be tought in settlements or in the universities until they are experts (or masters, not sure... is there a difference?). That's very helpful. However, questions always remain.


I see that most people only make a few cities, whereas I've made cities to cover almost the entire first continent I come across, flipping native settlements left and right.
As such I can build up a decent resource tradenet and after a while I'll start to gather tools and weapons which I need in some cities to construct the afvanced buildings and to gain soldiers for the end game. I only ship finalised goods to my main coastal city (often the capital) for shipping to europe.

When I ship goods to the natives, will they provide me with the same amount of gold as europe? The europe market fluctuates rather quickly, is the native market price standard?
Also, how do I figure out what the natives need most? They always start saying that they need guns... yes well, so do I, so how do I find out what else they like.


My capital and main production city also build up lots of ore, tools and weapons mostly. As such they require a lot of inhabitants and run low on food. Hence, I build only food in some city sites and ship it to these construction cities.

Is there a better way of doing this? Is it important to balance food for every settlement or will my strategy work fine on higher difficulties?


When I go to europe I never hurry immigrants unless the first batch has a horseman for scouting. I find that I like the bonus the crosses provide because it is rather swift. Instead I buy immigrants using the money sign. Is this a smart thing to do or does hurrying help too? I find the costs of a cross very expensive in such a way that I would rather build a church and get a priest to work inside to build the crosses because it seems to pay off more.


When I come across treasure I can ship it to europe in a galleon. Those are costly, so saving up on the gold works nicely. However, sometimes it takes a long time to wait for gold to buy this ship and I sometimes feel that if I cash in the treasure and buy the things I need, I'm better off early in the game. Do you guys have a suggestion? Is there a quick way to buy a galleon early game?


Will the natives be more aggressive at high difficulty levels? At my current level they do nothing but gift me goods.


Founding Fathers... how are the points calculated each turn and how do you time your points? Why don't we get a popup saying that multiple fathers want to join and we have to choose?

 

In some Jobs they called Experts (Mostly Ressource Gatherers) in other Jobs they called Masters - just a name...

Building a few Settlements (and having low population) prooven to make beating the game (the REF) easier.
But making a big Colony with prospering economy is certainly more fun. And can still be won on higher Levels (i didn't tried Revolutionary yet). Just make sure you can make a lot of LB's fast when you want to Revolt. (Stockpile [but not use in Town Hall] Elder Statesmen, Build Newspapers) and don't start making *[a lot] of LB's before you are ready. *[A few LB's from one or two statemen in your main Production town to get some Political Points for a FF and the production Bonus is fine]

No, native have different values.
Some goods (I.e. Muskets) you can make a lot of profit if you buy these in europe and sell to natives. They will run out of money rather fast tho.
Buying Ressources from them might also be profitable (And will give them money you then can get back by selling what they desire.).

Trade with natives is also not subject to taxes.

After you talked with the chief, you will se a icon in the settlement bar, telling you what they desire.
However, you will often get more profit by just sellling Muskets to them, regardless of what they really need.

I think it doesn't really matter - your main Production city needs lots of workers (+Students, +Statesman later on) so it needs lots of food. It needs lot's of raw material as well...
You could settle it in a high food location... But theh you will need to ship Ore/Ressources into it... So in the End it's the same.
Shipping food usually woks fine.
Having Food and Shipping ressoruces works fine too.

Only if it's cheap. And only if you really want the specific dude - like you said - Early Scout is nice.
You will get the Guys at the docks from crosses anyway (sooner or later ), so unless it's really important to get them right now, no need to hurry.

I usually buy my Producers - the ones you can not get from Native Villages - Because training them in my university will take forever, after half dozen or such... So keep your Education Facilities for the REALLY expensive/important ones [=Elder Statesmen].

With Ressurce Gatheres it's cheaper to make a High Food city produce Free Colonists (Or use Missionaries to get Natives... Or both...) and train these in Native Villages.
Use different Villages, if possible - Training everyone in the same Village will make this one Village very slow.

If you expect a lot of treasure (you usually do ), a Galleon is well worth it. Besides giving 50% to the king is just If you plan on getting one, don't ship Treasure off with the Kings ship at all.

Getting early Galleon is not that hard - i usually make it my first big purchase in Europe.
Sell the Guns grom my fisrt soldier to natives. Use the money i get to Buy more guns in Europe and sell them to natives again. Should leave you with ~2000 Gold. If you got some gifts from natives you should have enought for the Ship.

I prefer to get Peter Menuit first.
You will get a lot of Trade FF-Points from these trades. Build Political Points in your city from the beginning. If you have enought food one Citizen can work Lumberjack other Carpenter.
If you happen to get a eraly statesman - run him. I usually Run 2 or 3 Statesmen in my capital [only!] through the game. It will slowly add to the REF, but it's not too bad, and the FF points + Production bonus in the City is worth it IMHO.

I want Menuit to be my First FF ASAP (to benefit from his enourmous bonus for every purchase i make in the game). Refuse all FF that come before Menuit.
Then i can have Menuit and the Galleon for 2250 Gold around Turn 25. Sooner, if i got lucky with the early Statesman.

If you also want Las Casas (I usually do) it's important to keep your Religion Points down till you got Menuit - because if both are eligible, you will get offered Casas first.

Edit: Should the King pop up with a ridiculous demand - "Give me 2240 out of your 2250 Gold for ...erm... Stuff" (he usually will), you of course just tell him to stick it.
I generally refuse all demands higher than 100 Gold. Sometimes i refuse the others as well.

Slightly. If you are nice to them they are still nice to you. But they will get mad faster if you steal they land...

If you get offered a FF, you can use "See the Big Picture" to look who else you could get.
If you have Points for more than one, then if you refuse the first you will get new Popup for the next one right away. Otherwise if you refuse, you just keep the Points, and will be offered more expensive FF a bit later.
It's well worth to refuse most of them, saving your Points for these few you really want. (Did i mention Menuit already )

If Multiple Fathers are eligible at the same turn, you will get the offers in the order of the tabs in the screen - like - Religion before Trade etc. The only case where it matters to me is Menuit/Las Casas. But depending on your strategy, there might be other ties.

Here's some deatil on making points. It's not 100% accurate i think, but it will give you a good idea.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=292815

 

Purchasing a carpenter and lumberjack and making a galleon the 4th or 5th build in your first colony (warehouse, 2 docks, maybe something else, galleon) works pretty well too. During this time you are still exploring and waiting for those crosses to accumulate so I found I could do this a little more quickly than purchasing - and you save the gold for specialists later.

 

Since TheLibra so generously is putting together a strategy guide, I thought as a Libra myself, I'd share a few thoughts after just slaughtering the king on a Revolutionary huge Western Hemisphere map with absolutely no competing European colonies on the map when I won. I was Bolivar with the Dutch. Perhaps some of these ideas you'll find good enough to include in your guide. Feel free to repost this wherever I don't care. I apologize if it's in the wrong place.

1) First and foremost, I adhere to a few simple structures: The colonies must produce at least 3 cash crops. Colonies should be adjacent whenever possible, and never overlap native culture. Limit 2 port cities as close together as possible. To get the ideal starting location you may need to reload as many as 20 times at my best estimate. The hardest thing to find is a contiguous open space free of indian culture that includes perferably a food resource and/or a source of ore.

2) Nuke your competitors. It's so easy it's ridiculous not to utterly dominate them and keep them out of your FF facebook. Here's the trick. Don't kill their caravels. If you focus on just continually defeating their cities, I've found the caravels don't know what to do any more and just kind of wander around the map. Usually it seems, one of the competitors will disappear immediately from the game after their initial settlement(s) have been razed. I don't keep any of em. Just raze em and be rid of em. I had 100% of the early FFs. Equip a weaver with horses or whatever just get scouts all over, buy cannons early and take the time to get them to the enemy with your ship. It's worth it. Otherwise they'll just sit around until the king comes.

3) Colonies took the following characteristics:
a) (New Amsterdam) the learning capital/main port: contains the most experts for training purposes, the main university, shipyard and enough food to feed all of them. All exports to Europe should be set to import in this city.
b) the cotton mill / cigar rolling station / fur trader hub / distillation center. I usually aim to get three of these as convenient. You've gotta have at least one sugar planter -- the only female colonist available -- so you can empower her and send her off to war eventually. These can totally be inland to take advantage of arable land.
c) ore bases. Without ore you're dead. You need hills or mountains available to mine. Have at least one city strictly dedicated to producing ore, tools and guns (so have a friggin hill in that city's radius, genius! This was the hardest thing to figure out when I was a kid playing the old Col.) Sometimes the cash crop centers can sneak in an ore production chain, which is good too. But best case scenario have at least one spending all its food on gun / hammer production and not a cash crop.
d) gourmet gulch. One of my cities I made just produce food and a tiny bit of ore off its map. It became a catchall for the population that was outpacing my food production in other towns. That seems to be the main issue is that you cannot really support all the population you can get in just 2-3 cities while you are trying to maximize production and not use the town hall (this is important see #5). So this became overflow central. Well-promoted scouts and a general-led veteran soldier hid out here as farmers just waiting for their chance to pounce on the king.

4) Set up a domestic trade network. Have all raw materials routed to appropriate production centers. Get wagons, set up your settlement lists and hit auto. Many of my cities had tobacco on the city square, so they just sent that to the settlement with tobaccanists and a cigar factory. No tobacco farmer required. All finished goods get exported to the main port. Of course nothing can beat a city square producing a raw material like cotton, one expert cotton planter on a cotton resource and a master weaver in a textile mill. That's tasty. I sold thousands of tons of cloth. Export excess ore and lumber to under producing settlements. My gourmet gulch was a port settlement (founded on a former apache village) with no trees that still produced a lumber mill, drydock and fort in time to protect it against a direct and feeble amphibious attack from the king. By the end, its lumber stash was overflowing from excess the other settlements had exported. All of my cities produced guns through my ore network as well. The wagons I stole from my competitors helped set this in motion early without wasting hammers.

5) No statesmen may be placed until 3 elder statesmen are available for each colony. Spend plenty of time getting it just right. Train up what you need from the natives, start with the food experts, then go to carpenters / jacks on the docks and last add cash croppers and the ore chain. Here's the trick. If you don't have an expert stick whoever you got in there until the expert becomes available. You might get too attached to having a weaver weave. But if you need a carpenter to get your dock up, or a lumberjack to start stashing wood, guess what, the weaver can do it. You can always leave a colonist in the garrison for a few turns if you don't have the food to support them. Actually -- if colonists get attacked they can get lucky especially against natives. One of my expert farmers beat some apache brave ass out in the woods. And holy cow don't try to whack a competitor's master blacksmith that's running around some hilltop. That blacksmith will own your scout. Wait for the doofus to found a city and then just capture it.

6) Get a rotation going on political points. Take turns with having one settlement (at first, and then a few at a time) produce political points through the 15 and 1600s. Once you got your FF switch back to building your stable or whatever and put the next settlement on PP. I didn't build schoolhouses or stockades since I knew a FF would help me out. I did build a schoolhouse in the learning capital and got started early on a college and university. I strictly used learning to create more elder statesmen and rarely a carpenter, blacksmith, gunsmith or rancher. Once the stockade's up I did go ahead and build forts/fortresses though some tell me they don't work. Hm. I like the way they look. I miss that cannons can't fire on ships from a fort. That was a great feature of the old Col.

7) Have a box of weapons around at all times. One in each settlement in case the natives go haywire. The apaches took me on until I razed two of their settlements. After making peace, they began settling new camps among the Iroquois which caused a war between the natives. The Iroquois just utterly crushed the apaches in about 3 turns, wasting no less than 8 apache camps in one turn. Which was all good because the Iroquois were my friends even though I declined to help them. A notable thing about my war with the apaches was that once I destroyed the braves with the guns I had sold them, they couldn't resupply and reverted to bows. Of course they also gave me room to expand my little nation.

8) Sell to the natives as much as possible. It's duty free. Be careful who you give guns and horse to, only those you think you can trust -- I chose poorly. After selling go immediately to the Europe screen and spend your money before the king can steal it. Sell your first batch of guns to the natives, then grab a full load from Europe with your money, sell that to the natives and you should be able to grab a privateer to ensure dominance of competitors. If your land forces are dominating the opposition, you may be better off getting a galleon. Enjoy bringing back nearly every single ancient treasure from the map while the competition is being destroyed by your other scouts and cannons. When in Europe with a ship and no one to carry back, grab a set of tools, guns or horse to sell to the natives when you get back. Each tribe has its own pool of cash. Once you exhaust it, going to a different settlement of that same tribe won't result in more available cash. Rotate tribes. Buy a ship, or use Verazzano's caravel to serve just the natives. I had a merchantman selling all my banned goods to the natives and Verazzano running silver to Europe for a pretty consistent flow of specialists, guns/tools and cannons back to my warehouses even as late as 1740.

9) Once you have everything in place and you have some gun and horse production in place, aggressively gather armed colonists from the docks and cannons until they get up around 4k. Don't waste any production. If your warehouses fill up with guns get wagons and stash them. Once you've explored the map, you won't really need your galleon to transport treasure, instead use it to store guns and horses. Despite what they say you can have a few dudes per settlement sitting in your garrison and still get your freedom percentage up ... and here's the trick ... IF you have your 3 elder statesmen per colony hiding in town. They can be filling a spot like asst. carpenter, in the churches, maybe farming or even by god fortified unarmed in the friggin garrison. Once you're ready place all three in the town hall, and who cares if your town is now starving. Before long the independent sentiment will increase food production and offset your loss. This may give you an opportunity to add a colonist from the garrison -- replacing an elder statesman working as a farmer in an attempt to offset this loss as well, but more likely that colonist should grab a gun if possible.

10) What about the king? Who? I've found that you can snub him with little to no effect. Sure he'll be furious, but I haven't seen him declare war on me prematurely yet. I only kiss his ring if he asks for a small piece of my gold stash. If he's asking for almost all of it and I have a lot and I'm trying to save up for something (elder statesman), I say no. So what? Sure maybe his tax rate gets more aggressive, but the tax rate starts to help you as the FFs kick in. Still, I don't have anti tax parties until the first half of the 1700s and I have more return selling to natives. By then the king was pretty pissed at me and my tax rate was in the 50s. I cut him off at 67% and just partied around 1740.

11) Now keep your eye on the independence meter and as soon as it gets to 50% arm your men and measure up. Take all the cash croppers (ex: planters and weavers), all the preachers, all the students, and probably one or two farmer/fisher dudes and make em dragoons and soldiers as possible. Leave statesmen, ore/gun chain and ranchers alone. Retain a healthy food production, but always try to dedicate at least one food producer to the army -- you won't need him to make food after you've removed all those other colonists anyway. I ended up having a little over half what the king had. I had almost as many cannons as he did and only one privateer.

12) Declare. Slavery sucks. Free your men and give them guns and horses. Screw Europe, you can't get your ships past the Man O War anyway. I think you're better off having Theocracy and Right to Bear Arms. I also went with Free Elections to try and get the last few FFs. I didn't get them all. But if I had my wish I'd have wanted Cyrus McCormick earlier (at all). He's probably #2 after Peter Minuit in my book. More food = more peeps in your cities = bigger army. The trick is to hide your statesmen like secret agents until you're ready to attack the king's forces, no matter how big your population, the king will scale accordingly: pathetically. He can only deliver a portion of his force, so the overall numbers don't matter as much if you have all yours clumped around your close-knit colonies. I did not use any of my 35 colonist soldiers except for two that died defending my capital and one who went on a successful commando mission out in the woods.

13) A quick side trip. Hey well listen, I did do one on Explorer before this game when I had a silver miner way off on the other side of the map. I built up the silver miner in to a little town with a small garrison of troops. When the WOI came on that map, the king split his forces yet again, and sent a small posse up to my silver mining town that easily fell victim to the independent garrison of 2 dragoons / one cannon / 2 soldiers up there.

14) Back to my Revolutionary game. The king actually founded a settlement (Amsterdam -- duh. Wasn't that already taken?) during the WOI that I let the Iroquois capture for me. Too fun. Just get your dragoons and kill the king's men already. Get a deep stack of men and stick em in the port city kingy's trying to attack and you can't lose if it's deep enough. I lost no colonies.

Thanks for reading. Hope that helps anyone and everyone.

 

I would like to share my 2 cents, but I started playing yesterday so dont expect anything revolutionary

First of all I guess city specialization is a good way, since you can transport goods between cities...

Do try to get a galleon ASAP cause my merchantman with full cargo got busted by a privateer, try to build a decent navy ASAP...

Have one or two Firebrand Preachers early in the game to pump Europian newcomers, IMHO trying to expand the city is way harder to have a colonist...

Try to grab silver deposits cause they mean cash... much cash

 

The only silver deposits I use in my game now are very easy to use - I simply sit around the Spanish, and thwack their caravels. No better piracy option than stealing 80 or 90 silver.

 

Welcome to the Forums UWHabs, macmert, and ocnitsa.

 

Thank you for the greeting

I want to ask a question, isnt it a bit weird, the price of tools is incredibly low but iron ore is way more expensive?

And, do the prices drop if I sell, say, too much iron ore or cigars? so is the economy dynamic?

 

For this reason, don't produce tools. Just buy them... Until the prices get too high.

 

I only started making tools recently, when my price of ore was 3 or 4, 30% tax, and tools is now at 3 to buy. Sad no longer taking my shipments of 200 or so ore, selling it, then buying 200 tools for my return trip.

 

Be sure to include using the first soldier to seize AI's colonies + the free worker. (see other thread)

 

What do the different difficulty levels do? There is no documentation I can find to explain the differences.

Fardaza

 

Actually... Not much...

Mostly higher difficulties will give bonus to AI (other colonies) giving them some advantage in production, growth, some combat bonus vs Natives/King (Not vs. Human).
Does not do a lot. In the end it will play as dumb with 50% Production Bonus as it does without.

You get less [or no] Gold to start with;
You will also get more bad results from Ruins/Natives Gifts on high difficulties (that you can offset using Seasoned Scouts);
The Natives will get faster, and the prices for goods will drop (/raise) sooner;

I might have missed some effect, but i think you get the idea.