Post Short Tips/Tricks Here

I know someone has mentioned killing off the other European colonies very early, but I have a little tweak (exploit)

I killed off all 3 of the other colonies mid game. Their kings kept sending more colonists. I kept capturing their new colonists (getting 1 to 3 extra pioneers every other turn or so). Here is how it worked. Defeat last colony & all colonists. Kill caravel with SoL or Privateer. Next turn, new caravel arrives from Europe with the civ's starting colonists (pioneer & soldier). Wait for them to land and make new colony with soldier. Invade. Capture/Raze colony. Capture helpless pioneer. Take said pioneer to your production city. Give him some guns. I've done this @ 10 times now in my current game. It has really helped build my military quickly (along with a food city popping new citizens about every 7-8 turns)
 
1. Use coastal cities to manunfacture and inland for resources. Don't make one city for all industries. After WoI and if you lose one you can still manunfacture one resource in the other and shift raw materials there. Provided you scan still trade with Europe.

2. Buy horses from Europe and make guns in the new world as it's meant to be. As someone said before, if a city is under siege swap wounded soldiers with healthy colonists.

3. Use Wagon Trains for more than route and two ways if you can. That is if you have 1 cigar factory and 4 towns that produce 3 tabacco each use one train for all 4. That way you will move more than 3 tabacco each turn.

4. If you feel you will lose a city, move all units out and let the King capture and simply retake it after. Attack settlemend bonuses help a lot.

5. (Exploit) The ReF is based on rebel sentiment. If you delay generating liberty bells and then spam them with lots of statesmen the ReF will be much smaller as the King won't react fast enough.

6. Watch out for Open Border Agreements. More often than not, you will see the AI privateer happily docking in your port revealing its nationality.

7. On Marathon you need 600 food for new colonists ;)
 
If you are working a tile for silver and it yields one silver only (no mine or river adjacent) then a converted native is just as effective as an expert silver miner, because natives get +1 to collect any resource.

You will generate 38 gold per turn instead of 19 this way, if you were just using a regular colonist.
 
In combat you can find out the likely outcome of a battle before you fight it. Select your unit with right click and drag the mouse over your opponent. The combat odds for that battle are listed on the screen. If they are favourable to you simply release the mouse button and the battle begins. If you don't like the odds drag the mouse back to your own unit and release. You can also use this method to test several of your troops to find out which will be the most effective. Obviously it is not infallible - the RNG gods will still have their say - but it is a handy guide.
 
For naval victory:

In battle against the Royal Navy, privateers are more efficient than Ships of the Line. Typically I sacrifice one or two privateers, then sink the MoW with a second or third. It typically takes two SoL to take down a Man o' War anyway.

To be more effective, create Great Admirals. Put the privateers you wish to promote in a port (expecting the usual 20 points divided among the ships), then commit a Great General. Be sure to move the garrison out of the port temporarily or you'll put points on them too.

This is particularly powerful with Simon Bolivar's bonus to combat strength, and of course it's a lot easier if you delay your LB production to minimize the size of the Royal Navy.

With Bolivar and 9 privateers I lost 3 or 4 privateers but wiped out the 5 MoW. With the Dutch I had 11 privateers (and 2 token frigates) and sank the 5 Mow at a cost of 5 privateers. [Frigates are useful for finishing off cripples but of course are at a big disadvantage versus MoW.]

Merchant ships in coastal waters can be sacrificed to soften up Royal ships to make things easier for the privateers. The MoW attack the "helpless" caravels but may lose a few points in the process. This led to my proudest moment: "...your Caravel has killed a Spanish Man-o-War."
 
This seems obvious unless I've missed something important. Play on the largest board. You can still play your three towns and have treasure streaming to your port for most of the game by scouting the supersized board. Is there a downside to this?
 
This seems obvious unless I've missed something important. Play on the largest board. You can still play your three towns and have treasure streaming to your port for most of the game by scouting the supersized board. Is there a downside to this?

Yes. The larger map makes the indian tribes larger, stonger and more aggressive. However your troops will ultimately benefit with more experience so you can turn it to your advantage, just don't leave any colonies undefended.
 
I've seen many people talk about using blacksmiths and gunsmiths and ranchers to produce tools, guns, and horses. Given the stability of the economy in europe (vs the old game) why would you ever build a tool. Ore pays 2 or 3 (sometimes more) in europe, and tools cost 2 or 3. Just buy them.

Yeah, but after buying a few hundred tools the cost rises fairly steeply. Plus they take precious cargo space and time to transport.
 
The old ramp-up in prices just doesn't occur any more. Kind of a shame, because that was something Col1 got right. Of course, the game is a lot shorter, so I guess the purchasing of weapons and tools expedites the Revolution Phase so you can finish in time.
 
Yeah, but after buying a few hundred tools the cost rises fairly steeply. Plus they take precious cargo space and time to transport.

True. Even when you play as the Dutch, prices rise fast.

Welcome to the Forums. :beer:
 
Question: What triggers the citys culture expansion?
My capital city lost 3 tiles due to another nations citys expansion
Any ideas?
Bob
 
Question: What triggers the citys culture expansion?
My capital city lost 3 tiles due to another nations citys expansion
Any ideas?
Bob

Liberty bells. If he is producing more bells than you then his borders will expand faster. The simple solution is to buy some cannons and take him out.
 
Re this: "This seems obvious unless I've missed something important. Play on the largest board. You can still play your three towns and have treasure streaming to your port for most of the game by scouting the supersized board. Is there a downside to this?"

This can make it harder to use the exploit "capture massive numbers of pioneers by sinking caravels using privateer/merchantmen combos", since you may wind up with the enemy ships respawning faaaaar away from your cities, or having varied respawn points. And, to use this exploit, you have to wipe out their entire civilization, which means by the time you find a distant enemy and raise the military to defeat them and send your armada overseas, they may be really dug in and hard to take out. Whereas if they've built their first city 10 squares from your capitol, you can take them out early and then rapidly build a city capable of building privateers.

Yes, the treasure from a big map is nice, and getting enough exploration points for FFs on a small map is hard, but once you've got the pioneer capturing exploit up and running, your civilization will start growing exponentially. It's a judgment call.

And, there's something to be said for randomizing everything when setting up a game, including map size. Makes you try different strategies. My current entirely randomized game I wound up on a small map with a small near-polar continent full of fur and tundra and severely lacking in food, which made for some interesting compromises. THREE cities with coat factories cranking out the cash, out of just 5 major cities (with two little "pocket" cities to exploit some silver resources), with every single land and sea square on the tiny continent developed and being worked by a specialist. Oh, and I had to take out the native cities on that continent early on, because the native civilization gets really pissed when you take over all the squares surrounding their cities.
 
I know someone has mentioned killing off the other European colonies very early, but I have a little tweak (exploit)

I killed off all 3 of the other colonies mid game. Their kings kept sending more colonists. I kept capturing their new colonists (getting 1 to 3 extra pioneers every other turn or so). Here is how it worked. Defeat last colony & all colonists. Kill caravel with SoL or Privateer. Next turn, new caravel arrives from Europe with the civ's starting colonists (pioneer & soldier). Wait for them to land and make new colony with soldier. Invade. Capture/Raze colony. Capture helpless pioneer. Take said pioneer to your production city. Give him some guns. I've done this @ 10 times now in my current game. It has really helped build my military quickly (along with a food city popping new citizens about every 7-8 turns)

what will happen to your diplomacy with others, natives, or replacements; do natives know of your hostile activities and react? not that it really matters since you're going to wipe everyone out anyway...
 
The most important resource for your starting settlement is Food ... you need to expand, you need to be able to work everything in your settlement to the max, they all need food. Preferrably find a spot with access to 2 fish or 2 corn. Second to that, it needs to be near Lumber and Ore ... if not within the settlement square itself, then accessible with a nearby second settlement.
 
Lacking a resource? I'm just not that great at balancing my settlements for optimal resources. I'm constantly over-producing some resource, such as a raw material like tobacco or cotton, especially when its something in the all-resources-harvested center settlement square, and frequently struggling to get my wagon routes to supply enough ore and lumber to fuel my coastal cities in my attempts to build up an arsenal of weapons, troops and warships. I'm further hampered by my (tangent tip) means of reducing the effects of the King's ring kiss demand by the fact I keep my gold-on-hand low by always buying troops, etc. ... I've found a solution (if anyone else is as numbskulled as I about this and need to feed their big industrial cities some ore or lumber) in swapping resources with the AI ... although for some reason trade doesn't mean actual barter, you can find an AI (preferrably rival Europe Colonies, as Natives don't tend to stockpile 300 qty.) who offers a 300 load of ore or lumber, and will generally sell it to you for less than they will pay for a load of other raw resources. That means you can get the resource you really need basically in exchange for stuff you're not using and is getting lost anyway.
 
Hiding gold from your king -

Tired of that fat tard stealing your gold while you are trying to save up for some shiny SoLs to send his MoWs to the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle? Keep your gold-on-hand low by wheeling and dealing and keeping as much of your assets non-Gold as possible. Getting a miserably low profit on a load of tools (as much as you can buy) to sell to the Natives beats the heck out of losing half or more of your gold to kiss that filthy jewel! The king can't steal gold you don't have!
 
Get the fewest tax increases for the most profit -

I use several methods to maximize my trade without getting rapid tax increases. First and foremost, conserve your trade with Europe ... only sell fully loaded Galleons' worth of goods to Europe because one big Galleon trade (1800 cargo capacity) can only trigger a single tax increase, versus three separate Caravel (600 cap. each x 3 = 1800) trades. If you really have a solid trade good production going, send several loaded Galleons at once.

Second, learn to trade with Natives and rival European colonies .... Natives tend to pay okay for finished goods (ESPECIALLY guns and horses, but make sure you're on very good terms with them or selling them arms could be very well selling your own coffin!) if they have some gold, likewise for rival Europeans with raw goods. Trading with natives/rival colonies does not trigger tax increases (so far as I know).
 
The king can't steal gold you don't have!

Trading with natives/rival colonies does not trigger tax increases (so far as I know).
It makes sense that minimizing your treasury minimizes the amount the King can demand, but refusing those demands for cash has absolutely no negative consequences (beyond losing the ability to request military help from the King). Just tell him what *he* can kiss instead.

You are correct about trade within the new world: no tax increases get triggered.
 
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