i played the vanilla 1x and ran into the micromanagement hell. i searched the forums here for what others had done to find if there were an easier way to play. i ran into TAC. i downloaded, tried it, and found that it made a game with promise that fell short into a playable game that was enjoyable.
since i was still really new to colonization (but have played extensively on civ 2, 3, 4, plus expansions) i thought id start on easy and figure it out from there. i picked what i thought were the easiest settings.
i went with a huge map to have more room to explore, to be able to create more cities, and thus to try out different things.
i went with two opponents thinking that it would give me less difficulties. in civ 2, 3, or 4 starting with less opponents usually makes the game easier. i picked random. for some odd reason it gave me 3 + the king. all three were native. all three had fully formed empires. my map has 1 very small island (4 squares), 2 small islands (30 or less squares), 1 big island (large enough for about 10 cities), and a huge continental land mass. one native tribe is north continental, one (montezuma) is central with (previously) the large island (which is where i made landfall, and the other is south continental and has the two small islands. i now realize that picking fewer opponents, when they are natives, just means they have bigger empires. oops.
starting on the small island were maybe 6 or 7 cities of montezuma. it didnt take long before my culture hit his and he attacked me by surprise. i had maybe 5 cities at the time and none was bigger than maybe a 9 in size. his 6 or 7 cities had maybe 80-100 warriors and it took me a LONG time to gather enough strength to hold him off and beat him. thankfully it appears natives dont use ships and thus werent able to send help from the mainland. finally i razed his cities and threw him off the island.
after i had about 10 cities with developed economies i settled the very small island to form an advance naval base near the northern continent which has very good resources. however, i decided that id already pissed off montezuma and it was better to continue to piss him off than to add another native tribe to those trying to kill me - so i came in to settle the continent in montezumas central location which is only 1-5 turns sailing from my island. i built up a navy, brought over tons of people, and built 5 cities in a wedge formation. each city had 10+ musketmen fortified. i immediately started to build up defenses because i knew what was coming.
it didnt take long for montezuma to hit me again. he never had a stack of doom but he would semi surround my cities with stacks of 5, 10, 20 troops and just keep repeatedly hitting them. he razed a few cites. i went back in time to a previous save, reloaded it, and tried again. this time with each city have 20+ musketmen fortified. this time my cities held.
i loaded 4 galleons with troops and a few ships of the line and i started floating up his coast razing cities. mostly to pull his troops that way and to get them off my cities. i razed maybe 6-7 coastal cities. then i counter attacked inland from my cities and took out another 10-12 cities. this is what split his empire in two. my northern border was 2 cities along a river and a coastal city on the pacific. i fortified troops behind the river in the woods, garrisoned the hell out of those cities, and watched him just repeatedly hit them. i razed the cities nearby to get rid of cultural overlap in the hope i could get peace. he flat out refused and told me to talk to the knife. he had 5 cities to my south that i had planned to leave as buffers between me and the other native tribe to ensure no difficulties. however, it stretched my forces too thin to guard both flanks. so i took out his cities to the south, settled 7 cities there (with another 4 on the way), and ensured i had lots of space (7 squares or more) between my cities and my native southern neighbor. as soon as i took out montezumas last city on my southern side he immediately asked for peace. ive only fought montezuma and the game shows that ive killed 637 of his natives. frankly, im a little scared to start a fight with the others.
since im mostly interested, this time through, in learned the "secrets" of the game im not really interested in declaring war against the king just yet. ive had events occur trying to force it - my capital rioted when i couldnt pay off the instigator of an protest against me and my support of king george (for instance). its almost 1800 now. it might be 1900 or so before i declare independence. who knows. when i do i want a huge military war so i have more opportunities to learn how to fight in the game. to practice some different tactics, etc. im running a military of felons and indentured servants and its about 150 strong right now. im hoping for a war in which the troops get into the 500+ range on my side.
i realize the game im playing is unconventional. however, it wasnt meant to be that way. i just wanted a huge empty map with only a few opponents to figure it all out. instead i appear to have walked into a map of massive indian nations.
i put three saved game files here. one at the start. one about 50 years ago. one is my most recent save.
