I feel like I'm taking a final exam that gives me 30 minutes, when I know I'm gonna need an hour. I'm stressed out over independance before even sighting the shore.
Here is my complaint. In Col1, I declared independance because the king was becoming insufferable. In Col2, my only concern is the turn count. I think there was a turn limit in Col1 but it was never an issue. There I was at turn 230 paying 15% taxes, which seemed very reasonable to me. I would have lost any war I would have been in but there was one war between the French and an indian tribe (ironically), but not much can happen in 300 turns really. I think we all knew that when we heard the number 300 some weeks ago.
It's the kings arrogance that should drive the pacing, not a number. What I would most like is to build a large country with multiple fully developed, self sustaining cities, and then an invasion force big enough to crush it nonetheless. I'm going to try these settings again and really focus more on crosses I guess.
Try this:
Play John Adams, primarily for the immigration boost (works perfectly for this strategy).
1. Your starting colonists, find two spots close on the coast (even 1 tile separating is fine here, two perfect). If one is clear and the other spot overlaps indians, then place the overlapping one first as the first land grab is a freebee.
2. Immediately assign the worker in the colony to process the centre tile's raw good. So if the colony centre has cotton, set the worker on cloth. Ore, then put him on tools.
3. Explore for about 10 turns with your boat, then return, pick up the goods and go to Europe.
4. Sell all goods, buy one expert scout and load him, and pick up another colonist. If there's a pioneer, don't grab him yet (you should have two on the docks by now).
5. Establish colony three and don't worry about just grabbing the land off the indians. 99% of the time you get the initial freebee, then a second free grab before they get so pissed they DoW you. But never free grab more than the initial freebee and this one. Guarenteed DoW by the Indians. Once again, the worker goes onto processing the centre tiles raw good.
6. Manually talk to the chief and explore ruins surrounding your colony. If you find another Euro then talk to the chiefs around him too. Then auto explore him.
7. Meanwhile, explore the other direction for a few turns, return, load up with the three cities goods and bring back two more colonists. Leave pioneers behind. If a seasoned scout is on the docks, he takes priority. Two seasoned scouts exploring are great, three perfect. First two promotions have gotta be exploring 1 & 2. Anything else, and pack up the game and return it cuz you too stupid to be playing this.
8. Establish colonies like this till you have 6, all with one pop processing the centre tile's raw good. I aim for 4 coastal and 2 inland (do the inland last). MAKE SURE TWO COLONIES ARE SETTLED ON HILLS, WITH A COUPLE HILLS EACH! These will become your tools cities.
9. Your inital cities have probably built their docks and warehouse by now. Third build priority is two wagon trains. Set all but the city closest to Europe to export their raw material and processed good, and the other city to import it all. Set the two wagon trains to auto trade routes (the box with the four lines button). Click and forget.
Later on, add a third wagon train, and then later a fourth as the cities grow, but that's after turn 100.
10. Now just let your explorers explore, pioneers build roads between every city and the closest indians, and your ship trade everything. When you have 3000 gold, buy a galleon. Any treasures up till now just sell to the King.
11. Use galleon to move trade and treasures, buy a second one when you can.
12. Get missionaries to 3-4 indian settlements before turn 100. The natives from these settlements will become your farmers, fishermen, ore miners and other "outside job" workers. You can literally run a colony with all natives in the fat box (well it's not a cross anymore
) and have your colonists working inside the colony.
So now it should be pretty much turn 100 (hopefully earlier). You have 6 fledgling colonies, roads everywhere, some other improvements, 3-4 missionaries, a couple of trade ships and most of the map uncovered. Well done.
Fairly quickly, build a church in every colony and place an expert firebrand in them. Buy them if you have to. They help with the colonist flow from the docks. Don't bother with the time to build cathedrals, unless you really have firebrands to spare. Three firebrands in a cathedral is worth the investment, otherwise I don't see the point.
Now, literally stop expanding and build up your cities. Don't bother buying the ticket of colonists waiting at the docks, only buy specialists from the menu. And then, only buy firebrands, blacksmiths, expert statesmen, gunsmiths and soldiers. You may want the odd other specialist to fill a spot, but it's not worth it.
Concentrate each colony on their centre tile raw good chain. This is where settling on different terrain types is key. As a diversity of goods keep prices stable. So aim for one colony on grass, one on plains, one on marsh (you MUST have fish to compensate), one on tundra if you can and two on hills for tools. Your main city should not expand past the centre tile for goods processing, as you'll use this city to make guns. Get a magazine and three gunsmiths in it. The two tools cities, making 20 tools a turn will be able to feed the main city. I even go so far to buy tools from europe so I don't interupt this flow.
Also ensure you have a ranch and two master ranchers (buy or Indian train them) in the main city.
By turn 200 you should have some ripping colonies going. Two galleons are perfect, as you get them into sync where one is selling in Europe the same turn the other is loading at your main city. This brings consistent cash flow. A lot of your outside colonists (farmers, planters, lumberjacks, etc) should have been replaced by Indians. Have those freed up colonists processing, preaching and building.
Once you hit turn 200, go into overdrive for independance. Every tool that arrives at your main city becomes guns. Put all your cities onto building FF points. I prefer politics as those politician FF's really help out now.
Your colonies must have a warehouse and expansion, a lumber mill and fort well before this time too. Every colonist that hits the shore picks up guns (and horses if available). Move them to a city and settle in the city. Make them make food, so more free colonists are born, to pick up guns and settle in colonies. With two expert statesmen, it should take ~50 turns to hit 100% rebel sentiment. You don't need to hit that in the cities, just enough so the rebel counter hits 50 and you can declare revolution. As soon as you declare, every colonist who picked up guns and horses before leaves the colonies and defends their city. Any canons you have are useful to move quickly to defend the city that the King targets. Get those SoL's ready!
Now, here are the tricks!
1. Buy enough expert statesmen before turn 200 so there is two per colony. DO NOT SETTLE THEM IN THE COLONY TILL YOU GO INDEPENDANCE OVERDRIVE! Settle them at turn 200 instantly into the town hall. Your goal is to have zero sentiment when you start this phase. Why? Because when your rebel sentiment is rising, the King is adding troops. If sentiment is zero, the King will not add troops. So you want a short fast zip from zero to as high as needed sentiment.
That keeps the invasion force low.
2. As soon as you hit independance overdrive, start rejecting the Kings tax increases. Oh, and ALWAYS reject requests for money before hand. The only thing you kiss the pinky for is tax increases..... until turn 200. You'll probably be running between 45-50% depending how profitable your colonies are.
3. When you hit independance overdrive, every cent you earns buys colonists. But here's the trick. Don't buy off the docks. Waste of money. Let religion naturally bring colonists to the docks. You'll be paying upwards of 4000 gold per colonist. Buy specialists. The cheapest one is 800 gold, and shoots just as straight as one bought on the docks for 4000. So you'll probably end up with a lot of ore miners in this phase.
4. Don't go to the King, let him come to you. Load up the cities he's targetting with troops, and as soon as they get adjacent destroy them. Don't meet the King in the field, unless you have a definite superiority. Sorte out of cities instead.
5. Having your SoL's take out MoW's means less troops hit the shore, PLUS, if you destroy them all then whatever troops are still in Europe stay there and the King surrenders. SoL's can make an early King surrender.
6. Between turn 200 and declaring independance, make sure you have nearly every colonist in a colony. The big rebel counter takes into account colonists in and outside of colonies. So having a large army is useless as your rebel counter will stay low. Only colonists in cities count toward rebel sentiment. That's why you pick up guns and hourses, then settle them in another colony. So they convert to rebels.