Tools trading scheme for the original Col

[Tristan_C]

I noticed that in the original version of Colonization, when you equip colonists at the docks with Tools, horses or guns, the markets do not react to your activity until the next turn. This is different from buying commodities outright for the ship's hold, which does cause the markets to react. Another thing that can squeeze in before the markets react is sales made through the customs House at one of your ports. So look: that's two occassions, a time of buying and a time of selling, where you can get the full size of your orders in before the market in Europe has a chance to react. That means, that if you can make HUGE purchases at low prices, you can turn around and sell that purchase at a high price after the reaction occurs. Here's what I tried:

1. Built up a lot of capital sacking some natives, like 25,000g, have a lot of cargo ships ready to do some sailing, and had Peter Stuyvesant in my congress, so I could build a Customs House. If you plan to be friendly to the natives, then a cash crop works great instead, it just might be a tad slower strategy for getting the gold.
2. Recruit/train as many colonists as I could afford; enough, at least, to fill the four galleons I had at the dockside.
3. As I recruited, I equipped everyone with Tools. For me, tools were selling at 2g/ea (it's still early in the game and I hadn't been buying any).
4. Once recruiting gets too expensive, you just pay tuition for Ore Miners for 600g. Keep equipping them with tools, tools, and more tools.
5. Do ALL of this on 1 turn, and get those boys sailing to the new world.
6. Over the next few turns, the price of Tools should go through the roof in reaction to your activity. Even if you're Dutch. You just need to have bought a lot of tools.
7. Once in the new world get all your fake pioneers into the city with the Customs House, have them unequip the tools, and instruct the House to sell all tools over the next turn.
8. Your Customs House will lock in that high price on tools, sell your entire inventory, and net you galleonloads of cash from it!
9. If the market plummets, you can repeat this dastardly plan for more money.

I tried this while playing the Dutch. It's probably more powerful with a different nation since the dutch market is more resistant to your shenanigans. Still, lets see... I bought 2400 tools at 2g apiece, used 500 of them to improve my land and build some stuff, and sold the remaining 1900 at 8g apiece.
2 x 2400 = 4800g buy
8 x 1900 = 15,200g sell
profit: 10,400g
However, I can't forget that I used approximately that much money to recruit people to hold the tools. So essentially, what this operation did was put me ahead by 24 people and 500 tools. It tied my navy up for about 6 turns as well, but all in all I think a got a pretty good haul from this scam.