Wayback machine: Some strategy tips

[AncientPlayer]

This got circulated years ago when Col was new. Not sure how useful it would be to anyone but who knows, can't hurt much. Just don't take it as gospel--your mileage may vary
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting Started
Although it resembles Civ in many ways, when you first open the game box you are going to notice a couple differences right away. Gone are the slip cover boxes and multi-color printed manuals. The manual is smaller and both the text font and the graphics are smaller. But who reads manuals anyway!? Well, if you do read this one you'll find that its adequate, if not awe inspiring--covers the essentials of you'll need to know and has the usual set of short background articles about the history behind the game. However, as the manual points out, if you've played Civ, then just skip it and get started--go back and read it when you wish to or need to look up something specific because otherwise you'll not need it.

Okay, you set the manual aside and pick up the "Technical Supplement" and get to work installing it. This process is pretty painless as such things go, but you will need to know some details on your sound card. Most should find the process easy. You'll need a little over 5MB of hard drive space.

Installation tip: a DOS batch file will be installed that will invoke an opening logo screen and then the program itself. If you want to bypass this opening, just run "VICEROY.EXE" or edit the batch file to do so and skip "OPENING.EXE".

Once in the program, Civ veterans will feel right at home--start a game a prestored map, make a random map, customize a random map, or load a saved game are your choices. The random map building process is also much like Civ where you can set various climate factors to vary the map and influence the amount of land area that will be present. Before Version 3 the only prestored map was the historical Americas map. With Version 3 you can build your own maps with the separate map editor utility--something I've wanted for Civ and RRT for a very long time (thank you Brian Reynolds, the main programmer for Col). Once that's done you'll choose one of five difficulty levels and which European nationality you want to be (English, French, Dutch or Spanish). Unlike Civ, your choice of nationality has some real consequences other than just what your cities will be named. Each has some advantage over the others (the English get new colonists faster than the others, the Spanish get a bonus when attacking native villages for instance). Then the map will be generated and you'll find yourself placed on the map's eastern edge with a ship, one colonist and one soldier. Actually the colonist is a "pioneer" which is a colonist who has been equipped with "tools", just one of over twenty types of colonists. And the soldier is a colonist equipped with muskets, one of three basic military units (artillery, infantry and cavalry).

Once you're playing, what’s it like? One of the common complaints about Col is that, at first, the many types of unit icons I mentioned above can be hard to tell apart. I found this to be true and its mainly due to MPS' limiting the game to a generic VGA resolution. Not many pixels can be devoted to an individual unit icon, so it is likely to take a little time before you remember that if those few pixels that make up his shirt are green, then he's a tobacconist. But after awhile I found it to be no problem at all. The graphics weren’t the strength of Civ or RRT, and Col won't win awards there either. The maps are more detailed and contain more information than in either Civ or RRT, but aren’t particularly impressive. Still, the map and icon graphics are functional and serve their purposes. Besides, at least in my case, all the graphics glitz in the world can't make up for a poor game system (can anyone say "Outpost"?) and a really good game can shine through mediocre graphics.

Now just because Civ and Colonization seem so much alike, don't assume that beating Colonization will be a snap if you're a Civ expert. It won't be for two reasons--first, Colonization is not an easy game to win at first, and second because your Civ experience is likely to lead you to play it too much like Civ, and that's a dandy recipe for losing the game in Colonization. This is a different game even if it has a great deal in common with Civ and needs new strategies to be successful.

The Goal
Unlike Civ or RRT, the goal in Colonization is not to conquer the world, to achieve some great technological feat or to accumulate huge wealth. Your goal is to establish a viable, independent nation. To do so, you must build up a colonial economy and government, declare independence and then defend yourself against your sovereign's attempts to crush your rebellion. There is but one way to victory in game terms--defeat the expeditionary force in the field and control every one of your colonies (cities). You can "win" with one colony or many. You can be the dominant force in the New World, or a minor player. You can be enormously wealthy or cash-poor. These things will influence only the level of your victory but they will not determine whether you win or lose by the game's definition. Lose sight of this and you will find it hard, if not impossible, to win. That doesn't mean that the game can't be enormous fun to play, but you will have defined "victory" conditions other than what the game measures.

Getting Started
Like Civ, your first concern is where to put that initial city/colony. Good starting sites in Colonization need four characteristics: direct access to the ocean, an ore source available (mountain, hill, mineral site), at least one forested square and at least one square that will allow high production rates of food. Food and lumber are the critical resources to start with and good supplies of both are vital. You can build a colony in a site without an ore or lumber source, but it is so severe a disadvantage that you shouldn't consider it for the first colony at all. Ideally you want that first colony to not overlap with an Indian village's resource areas, but this is less important than having all the right resources. Fortunately, its not normally difficult to find a site that is at least minimally suitable. Ideal sites will also include at least one of the prime resource types: wheat, fishery, prime lumber, ore deposit. If you can also include one of the prime cash crop resources (tobacco, cotton, silver, etc), so much the better. If forested, you should take the time to clear the site and plow the square before or after building on it. This enables maximum food production and usually generates a cash crop in the same square--the only time you'll get two things from one square. (Exception: if you choose a site with the minerals icon, or one is revealed when you clear the site, don't plow it because that will destroy the minerals, just build on it and reap the benefits of your good luck.) Finally, if I have a choice between two areas or land masses I will pick the area with the highest native tribe civilization level--the higher that level, the larger the cash value of their initial gifts.

Colony Development
What things you build within your colonies will somewhat depend on your own style of play, but some basic ground-rules seem to apply. For any site that will allow it, building Docks first is what the game will select and either that or a Lumber Mill is the right choice. Docks let you use ocean/lake squares for high production rate food squares without having to spend the time and tools to improve land squares. Having the Lumber Mill in place will speed the process of building everything else. If this is an inland site, then the game will normally select a Warehouse as the first build. However, I prefer to change that to a Lumber Mill if I have the minimum population level of 3 to qualify for it. My preferred pattern of building the first few items is: Docks/ Lumber Mill, then Printing Press/Blacksmith Shop--the order for each pair isn't terribly important and most colonies will need these four as their initial builds. After these are in place, next will come either a warehouse, fortification improvement, or one of the specialist's "houses."

Long term development is very dependent on your own style of play, but here are a few thoughts. Fortifications are needed in every colony and every port should eventually be built up to the Fortress level. Having the School-College-University group in at least one colony is more useful that it might appear because it can develop many of those expensive but high-productivity specialists. Factory-level improvements are useful, but only when you can keep them busy and supplied with raw materials which usually means having a couple sources of supplies with at least one of them being a "prime" site. Set up a dedicated trade route or two to bring in supplies for the factory, add a Customs House to the colony and you'll have a steady flow of cash with virtually no action on your part. Churches and Cathedrals are normally not very good investments. They are used to create missionaries and accumulate "crosses" that trigger new colonists by religious discontent. However, you can create missionaries on the docks without a church and except at the very beginning, your population will grow much faster internally and through recruitment. Early in the game when you don't have tools to spare and you don't have anything else useful to build, go ahead and make a church, but otherwise, invest the resources in an armory and lots of artillery.

More Colonies
Once your initial colony is established, your next goal is exploration. For this you'll need a Scout. First priority is to explore the land mass your initial colony is on. You need to know whether any of the other European powers are in the area, which native tribes are present and where the attractive colony sites are. In the process, you'll may want to trigger the "Lost City Rumors" for cash, and an occasionally colonist, but there’s also a reason to wait (below). You should visit every native village to find out what their specialty is and collect anything they may give you. No matter what your ultimate intentions may be, you want keep the peace with the natives at this point so you can explore the area and collect the "freebies" they offer. In the process you're also likely to become aware of other nearby land masses, so a second ship and another scout will be valuable. However, I will often delay exploring outside my immediate surroundings until after I have Cortes and De Soto Congress and can affort to buy a Privateer. That maximizes the likely cash that ends up in the bank from "Lost City Rumors". The Privateer is used to rapidly explore, moving a scout or two from land mass to land mass. The usually results in a vastly increased bank balance and many more colonists. Later, this Privateer can go hunting cargo, especially those inbound to the other colonies since these will carry the horses, tools and muskets I need to equip all those colonists and found new colonies.

Choosing sites for those next few colonies will be driven mainly by the availability of suitable nearby locations. Keep them close, but spaced out enough to avoid any overlap--those nine developed squares are all you'll have and you want to think hard about any overlaps. Look for locations with "prime" resources, oasises, and silver deposits. If you're on a large land mass, mentally stake out the area you want to claim and plan for a nice compact group of colonies. Unlike Civ, more is not necessarily better--either in territory or colonies. In fact, large numbers of colonies can prove a big headache during the War of Independence later and trigger the unit limit (below) troubles. Plus, when your colonies are spread out over a large area or several land masses, defending it all can become difficult. Remember, you must control EVERY colony to win--even that one on that great little island a few hundred miles away--and he needs to seize and control only ONE of them to defeat you (three guesses which one he'll go after). Resist the Civ/RRT temptation to spread out from "sea to shining sea" and pole-to-pole, or at least resist it if you want to take the game to a victory as the game has defines victory. Clusters of 4-6 colonies seem to work well for me with each cluster being compact enough to facilitate my War of Independence tactics (see below). A total count of more than about 15-20 colonies is probably too many to defend and you're virtually certain to run into the units limit. If I'm planning to play this game through the War of Independence, then I will normally set a target about a dozen colonies, excluding of course, the temporary outposts I will establish and then abandon to collect specific resources or as a base for exploration.

Liberty Bells
One of the key elements of the game is Liberty Bell production. Its easy to overlook or underestimate the importance of this factor--but don't do it. Achieving a 50% rebel sentiment in a colony confers a +1 to the production level of every colonist in the city and a 100% sentiment confers a +2 bonus. The impact of these bonuses is enormous and the sooner they are achieved, the bigger the cumulative impact. In addition, the allowed size of the colony before the "inefficient government" penalty is imposed is determined by the rebel sentiment level. Like railroads in Civ, Liberty Bells are a key to the game and everything you can do to promote their development will have profound effects on the game--and your success!

 

[AncientPlayer]

Religion in the Colonies
On the surface, the impact of the religion on the game seems considerable--missionaries, building churches, generating crosses to trigger new colonists, etc. In my experience however, the impact is (with one exception) more apparent than real. To some extent, if you intend to play a game where you avoid attacking the natives, then you need churches because you need missionaries to help bring the unrest level down, and your frequent shortage of cash will increase dramatically your dependence on religious unrest to generate new colonists. With a large cash flow, this isn't very important since you can simply "buy" whatever number of colonists you want whenever you want them. The exception to this comment pertains to missionaries sent to native villages before you conquer and destroy them. Having an expert mission there at the time you attack will often generate a large influx of converts fleeing the village. These converts are an important population resource and they are very effective for food and lumber production. Later in the game you can then select de la Casas to join congress and he will convert all these to standard free colonists who are then suitable for turning into soldiers or factory workers. So, while the impact of religion on the game is substantial, I don't find it nearly as important as Liberty Bells, so I tend to build Printing Presses and Newspapers in my colonies rather than Churches and Cathedrals.

Continental Congress
One of the subtle, but important variables in a game of Colonization is how you select the members of your Continental Congress. Like the technological advances in Civ, the various members of congress grant special advantages to you as you acquire them. And like Civ advances, most of them are useful but a few are really critical. Which ones are critical is dependent on how you want to play, so take these comments as a guide and not a prescription. But money is a critical resource no matter how you play and the "Lost City Rumor" squares are a ready source of cash, so having Cortes and de Soto in congress are my first priorities. Next in line are the guys who increase my Liberty Bell production -- Bolivar, Paine, Jefferson. Washington is a priority if you're going to employ a militaristic strategy. If you're planning to stay mostly friendly with the natives, then Washington can wait until later, but Pocahantas should be high on your list. Brewster is another one I like to get early on since eliminating the servants and criminals will save time and effort in making new colonists productive. Of course, you want them all by the time you declare independence.

TIP: In version 1 (only), there's a bug which will let you control who is offered as possible Congress representatives. If the list doesn't contain who you want, hit the "escape" key. The menu may reappear immediately with some new names, and if not, will reappear next turn usually with some new names.​

Colonial Economics
Like the real world, cash is what makes the colonization world "go 'round." There are several methods you can use to acquire the money that you'll need:
-- sell various commodities and processed goods to either the home country, the natives, or a fellow European;
-- roam the new world uncovering all the "Lost City Rumors" which will sometimes generate huge amounts of cash (and new colonists);
-- visit all the native villages and collect the various things they sometimes offer you that have cash value;
-- attack the natives and pillage their villages.
The latter is the single fastest way to accumulate large quantities of cash, especially if the target is one of the high-civilization-level native tribes, the Incas or the Aztecs. Regardless of the moral issues, it worked for the real Spanish Conquistadors and it works in the game.

But if Conquistador isn't your style, then you'll have to make your money with the other methods. A quick way to generate a fair amount of cash at the start of the game is through exploring the map. This is great for a while, but it will eventually run out. Fortunately, while this source of income is diminishing, your economy will be expanding and can take its place. At first your economy won't be capable of generating all the cash you'll want, but in the long run, if you stay peaceful with the natives, then this must become your primary source of income. In the first part of the game you'll have to ship raw materials like cotton, tobacco and sugar for sale. Later you can process these raw materials into finished goods and these will bring better prices. Once you've expanded into a half dozen or so colonies and built up a factory-level processing center or two, you can generate quite a bit of cash this way. There isn't a lot of difference between cigars, coats, cloth, and rum as far as the price structure goes, but you do want to build up a nice flow of at least two or three items to keep from depressing any one commodity's price too fast. Silver is an attractive commodity at any point in the game because of its higher price, but its volatility is also much higher than the other commodities, and the mines will eventually peter out, so you can't fuel a major portion of your economy this way.

The War of Independence
Declaring your independence immediately changes the entire focus of the game. From that moment on this is a wargame, even if its a simple one. Economics are a secondary issue--you must survive the attempts of your King to crush your rebellion and fight your way to freedom. While it won't be easy, this military campaign doesn't have to be particularly difficult IF you're well prepared and exploit the severe weaknesses in his tactics. Basically, there are three things to consider--preparing for it, the timing of your declaration and then winning the war.

Preparing for the War of Independence
Actually, this is what you're doing throughout the entire game--and failure to remember that will make things more difficult. The middle to late part of the game must be especially focused on building up your colonial army and preparing for the war to come. Your overall objectives are: build a large, veteran army; equip all your colonies with lots of artillery (you can't have too many!); increase your rebel sentiment level as high as possible; and build large stocks of war material (horses and muskets).

The most important part of the process is building up a large, veteran army. Basically you can either buy it or grow it. You buy it by accepting the offers of mercenaries and through the "train" option on the home port menu. This is an expensive way to acquire your army however. There are two ways to grow your militia into an experienced professional army--through education and through experience. In most games some combat-experienced veterans will develop as a natural by-product of playing the game. If you are playing a Conquistador-style game, then crushing the natives will both generate a huge bank balance and can build up large numbers of veteran troops. If you don't want to do that, then the alternative source of experience is to undertake military campaigns directed at your fellow Europeans. This will generate small amounts of cash, but you can capture large numbers of colonists, which avoids the need to spend cash on population and training. Either way, by simply sending the militia out on your campaigns and drawing the experienced troops back to the garrisons you can, over time, grow a large number of veteran soldiers. By placing a College in a colony, you can also generate veteran soldiers by educating colonists who don't have some other skill. Rotating unskilled colonists through one or two "military academy" colonies can generate a fair number of troops. In my experience, you'll need to do some of all three to build up the size and quality you need.

When to Declare Independence
Based on my experience, here are the criteria I use to judge when my preparations are complete and I'm ready to declare independence:

1. overall rebel level is at least 75%
2. every colony has:

either a Fort or a Fortress and every port colony has a Fortress.
at least 3 artillery units, and 3 veteran dragoons,
at least 200 horses, 100 muskets
at least some of the non-specialist colonists are veteran soldier-farmers, etc.
rebel level of at least 50% with every port over 90%​

3. every separate land mass has at least one non-port "counter attack" colony that has:

a magazine and expert gunsmith
5-10 artillery units over and above its garrison of 2-3 units
at least 300 horses, 300 muskets (excess in wagon trains if necessary)
6-10 Dragoons with most of them Veterans
most of the rest of the non-specialist population is veteran soldier-farmers, etc.​

4. Colonial navy of 10-20 privateers and a few frigates
5. Cash reserves of at least 50,000 to buy mercenaries if offered

Once your preparations are complete, you can either declare at that point or wait until the last possible moment (1800). If you want to maximize your score, then waiting seems to be the right answer. Although there is an "early independence" bonus, the bonuses for population size and wealth are more important and will probably be larger than the "early" bonus. There is also a bonus for being the first power to gain independence so you might need to either force them to delay or declare just before he can do so.

Winning the War of Independence
If you're properly prepared then winning is a foregone conclusion--the question is not "if" but "how fast" you win. And the key to winning quickly is exploiting your strengths and his weaknesses. Your strengths are numbers, your fortresses and the "ambush" bonus. His primary weakness is his near total focus on capturing colonies and ignoring your army in the field.

On the turn following your independence declaration, the Expeditionary Force will land next to at least one of your port colonies. On that turn he cannot attack, but you must. Immediately start bringing in your troops from the inland counterattack pool and, if need be, draw off part of the garrison from surrounding colonies to form a large and strong army in the field. This group must immediately attack the invaders with the objective of blunting their attack coming on the next turn. Do not attack from within the fortress, unless you can attack exposed artillery. Instead, use the ambush bonus in the attack and the fact that your field army will largely be ignored while he attempts to take the colony. Hold the colony and keep pounding him from the outside. Dragoons that lose a battle must then withdraw to either the colony under attack or (preferably) a neighbor to get more horses. Also reinforce the colony under attack with more artillery and dragoons so that you will have at least as many units inside as he has attackers outside. That way he can never eliminate a soldier-colonist until you've run out of horses and muskets. If that colony does run out, bring more in with wagons and if that's not possible, then send those soldier-colonists to a colony with muskets and horses available, don't let them get trapped in a colony if it does fall. With average luck in the combat results you should be able to repeat this pattern for as long as he can send in the invading units. With less than average luck you'll eventually lose the colony, but it will have cost him enormously. If you do lose a colony, don't attempt to retake it right away--keep it under guard and attack any forces that come out. Once you've seen the last of the invasions, then you can plan your campaign to retake any colonies you had to give up. When more than one colony is under attack in the same area, and you're not sure you can hold all of them, fight a delaying action in one and counterattack in the other(s)--sacrifice one if you must to hold the other(s). The computer shows a strong tendency to re-attack a colony if his first attempt fails or if you retake a colony, so watch out for that. At sea, you must do the same thing--be aggressive and counterattack immediately. Attacking a Man-of-War with a Privateer may sound suicidal and you may well lose them all--but a surprising number will damage or sink their opponents. Remember the attack bonus and the "Drake" bonus--you're better off attacking than being attacked, so be aggressive. Those Privateers won't do you any good if you lose the war anyway and if you win, the game is over!

Another part of your preparation was setting up all the colonies so they can collectively generate huge numbers of liberty bells quickly--that's what will trigger another European power to intervene on your side. Once that happens, you've won, although some tedious fighting will linger while you retake a colony or two and crush the remaining expeditionary forces.

The End
You will lose the game if you lose control of all your ports or any combination of colonies such that he controls 90% of your population. You win when you are in control of all your colonies and have reduced his expeditionary forces to almost nothing. Winning rewards you with a nice music and graphics show of fireworks over what looks like colonial Philadelphia (where the real Continental Congress met). Then you'll get your final score which is based on population, year of independence, and other factors. The final evaluation is similar to RRT, only this time you get something named after you (a bug, fast food chain, bridge, a state, etc.) as your final reward.

 

[AncientPlayer]

Other Tips and Tricks

1. In version 1, there is one whole menu structure that will not appear unless you edit MENU.TXT--the debug and "cheat" code. Version 2 had this disabled entirely, but version 3 again supports it, this time by typing the letters W,I,N while pressing the ALT key. When enabled, you can use this menu to examine the entire map, see it from any player's perspective, create units at will, remove entire native tribes from the map and turn on some interesting-but-not-too-useful debug parameters.

WARNING: I strongly recommend that you not make changes to any of the .TXT files or enable the "cheat" menu until after you've played at least a couple games to conclusion. Changing some of the parameters can have fascinating effects, but you won't be seeing the game as it was intended and you really need a basis of comparison for what you'll see afterward and this can only come by playing the unaltered version for a while. Then get in there and tweak and cheat to your heart's content--just remember that at that point we're playing different games!

2. Its worth sending an expert Silver miner to a coastal site anywhere on the map you can find an deposit. You might want to send a soldier along for protection, but this is optional if there aren't any other Europeans around the area. Once the mine is depleted, just pull the miner out and move on. (Keep food production to zero extra or remove any colonists generated so it doesn't acquire a stockade and prevent you from disassembling the colony.)

3. "Resource colonies". Sometimes you'll find an ideal location for a colony, but it lacks ore or timber. Fine--build it anyway and find a site nearby that can produce the missing commodity. Build a colony there with the sole purpose of supplying ore/lumber to the other colony. Use a single specialist and don't let it get to size 3 -- that way you can remove it just before the Revolutionary War.

4. "Colonist factory". Once in a while you'll find a site with one or more "wheat" squares, but no hill (for ore) and no forest (for lumber). Without ore or lumber using this site would appear to be more trouble than its worth--and it is as a conventional colony. Instead build here and maximize the food production, building no improvements or just a dock if there's a fishery. Its essential that you be able to remove this colony before the war of independence, so don't build a stockade and if you have La Salle in Congress then you can't allow it to have more than 2 colonists. This colony's sole purpose is to generate new colonists, and it will do so much faster than religious discontent. This isn't very important if you're wealthy, but if you're strapped for cash and need more people this can be an effective (cheap!) way to help with the situation.

5. Rip-off the competition. This is a very powerful strategy that will at least give you a quick head-start, and can virtually guarantee that you will dominate the European powers. Instead of building that first colony, find another European power and seize his! It's very common for the computer to use both the pioneer and the militia unit to start colonies. That leaves both of them with no protection at all for at least a couple years. So use your soldier to take them--its a good idea to start as the Spanish to do this so you'll begin with a Vet Soldier. Either just move in to stay or disassemble the colony and move it to a spot you like nearby. Normally, he'll come right back to the same or a nearby location and try to reestablish his colony--more additions to your population. Often the computer will repeat this several times before finally going off to some distant corner of the map. In the meantime, create a couple Dragoons, buy a merchantman and go find one of the other powers. Its easy to do this to one European power and possible to do it to them all. With one, you've gotten a powerful headstart. Do it to all and you'll be the dominant power for sure. This strategy will generate many colonists for you and puts the computer player(s) at such a severe disadvantage that they will often never catch up--good news because that means they won't be able to reach independence before you do.

5. H. G. Wells in Congress. While the “cheat” menu provides a quicker way, if you’re using version 2 then there’s still a simple way to get a big advantage on the competition. Start the game and immediately save it. Now go exploring for up to 99 years, save again, and restore the 1492 game. That last save is now a nice map and a time traveler's "future history" for the other powers.

 

[covok48]

Christ this thing is huge! Looks like I'm just gonna put it in simpletext format and read it there.

They do have a good point though. I played it like Civ and thus it took me half a year to get the hang of it.

 

[dalgo]

5. Rip-off the competition. This is a very powerful strategy that will at least give you a quick head-start, and can virtually guarantee that you will dominate the European powers.

This is my favourite strategy. In my current game it is 1636 and I have a population of 250. The English have 2, the French 1 and the Spanish have withdrawn. I have two groups of dragoons parked at their entry points and they provide a regular supply of new colonists.

 

[civ2]

I like this game very much.
And I changed the "rules" (don't remember the real filename) so that the production is now several times better by default.
It's a BIIIIG pity that you CAN'T destory a civ...
I tried killing a single caravel (the only unit left for somebody) some 10 times with Frigates and Privateers but it won't DIE!!!
It's absolutely easy for me to become a world-dominating power very quick.
I tried to kill all Indians several times but got so bored...
This game is good if you haven't played it for some months...