What´s your play style?

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I´ve seen here in the forums, in different topics, people describing vastly different approaches to the game. So I was wondering - what´s your play style? Describe your usual game. Do you start slow, building up a few cities or do you sprawl out fast, trying to grab as much land as possible? How do you deal with neighbors? What about the Indians? Are you going for an early revolution, do you think about winning the game or are you just winging it, roleplaying or something else? Do you have one production center, fed by small towns or many bigger self-sufficient centers? Are you a micro-manager or do you let automation do the work? What difficulty do you play on?

I think it`s wonderful that WTP doesn´t push players into a narrow box and you can experiment and still succeed and have fun. I guess some approaches make more sense than others, but essentially there is no right way to play.

 

[johnsonb2090]

I don't really play to win at this point. I tend to just roleplay a bit and give myself mini-goals to accomplish. All you need is a seasoned scout with any founding father that increases the chance of treasure, and you're basically set on gold lol

But I generally try and make things work in a logistics manner. So a city fed by towns or villages. Sometimes I'll just plop a city down and focus on agriculture and cattle, then use wagons and boats to buy raw resources from nearby villages to make into finished goods

 

[CirqueDuMal]

I've been trying to create a fully automated domestic market for all goods to be used internally. I want massive cities that have every single good coming in, and exporting their specialties.

 

[Kendon]

I was wondering - what´s your play style? Describe your usual game.

There are many possible styles of gameplay so this won't be typical.

I'm playing at Explorer difficulty, England's John Adams, on an Undiscovered World map.

I start by rushing scouts and keep adding scouts into the mid-1600s. This time my settlement spot is on southern tundra so nothing grows except trees and fur. Sweden blocks me to the north. The Dutch are on even worse land to the south so they can be ignored.

The map has long mountain ranges. The scouts can cross them. Not so settlers. Quite early my pioneers start building roads on a diagona lbecause of the square tiles, a bit of an exploit but also the logical choice. Once a road is built across a peak, settlers and workers can follow.

The other main yields in icy lands are silver, gold, gems and treasure from Native villages and goody huts. I'm up to turn 1720 and a large part of my economy is still precious metals. By buying the biggest navy and army I'm now conquering the neighbours.

That's important because their revolution index is up around 40 while mine is still at 15. I check the competition's progress by clicking on the smaller star at the top of the screen. If another colony revolts and wins I've lost, which has happened before.

I notice when I loot the conquered cities I get a lot of gold and gems, not many manufactured goods, certainly nothing complicated. The AI aren't doing much so far with the new yields. There aren't many slaves either. The ones I do capture I send off into the wilderness to stand beside goody huts until a scout can get there.

In earlier games I've been at war with the King by 1705 but that's not happening this time. Taxes are already high so when I manage to get manufacturing going on a larger scale it will be to supply the domestic economy.

One last thing. I've had a couple of crashes during this game. It's always because I move or end a turn while the game is saving. It's crucial not to move or end a turn until the “saving game” words at the center top of the screen vanish. If I then go back to the penultimate save, there are no more problems.

 

[Darnokthemage]

I mostly do historical Roleplay, sometimes to the extreme. Usually i have everyone except the Spanish, portugese and Danish start locked up until the 1580s.

 

[jaeyeom]

I usually play as a random leader, and my play style varies each time.

Before starting the game, I make decisions on the rules:

1. Can I use hurry production?
2. How many wagons can I manually control? Any additional wagons will auto transport. Typically, it's 1 or more, up to unlimited.
3. How many citizens per city can I manually assign or lock into a profession? It can be zero to unlimited. Even if it's zero, I can still use goods to emphasize or de-emphasize production.
4. Do I use a paper tablet?
5. Do I cheat to see the world map builder once at the beginning of the game?

If the leader is someone like Samuel de Champlain and I get a founding father like Jean de Brebeuf, from the start I buy guns and other items from Europe and sell them to the natives. If it's Simon Bolivar, instead of selling them guns, I conquer the natives as soon as possible. Depending on the immigrating experts, I may focus on indoor production and get materials from the natives or Europe instead of gathering from my city plots. If I get a founding father like Gregorio de Matos, I add lots of slaves and mainly focus on field work.

In some games, I produce lots of food and sell it to Port Royale or Africa, while in other games, I buy food to handle the starvation problem. If hurry production is allowed, I may buy lumber, stones, and clays from Europe, transport them, and hurry production. In those games, I produce significantly fewer hammers compared to other AI players. When hurry production is disabled, I may use LbD or focus more on schools, depending on the leader traits and situation.

There are a few things I always do. I always make use of the domestic market, and I always use ships continuously between the old and new worlds.

Stagecoaches are said to be not used often, but I almost always use them to transport units over long distances and save a turn. When I use a paper, I keep a list of passengers, their destinations, so they can work in the colony while waiting for a taxi. Petty criminals almost always become pioneers, while indentured servants either become soldiers or live among natives.

 

[raystuttgart]

Whenever I play a game I play with "house rules", that I noticed to make the game more fun to me.

Most of it is trying to keep AI in a relatively good shape ... as I like to keep them competing.
Some of it is related to "role playing" but most of it is rather trying to satisfy my "perfectionist nature".

Ensuring good starts of players:

1) I place the first City of all players myself. So each player has a good starting position - well distribued on the map.
2) I then give each player a Carpenter and a Lumberjack to ensure that they will have some buildings.
3) Also if AI gets into a War with Natives too early (e.g. in first 50 turns) I usually end it again with WorldBuilder.

Gameplay limitations:

1) Whenever I conquered another Colonial Nation (completely), I "resettle" them somewhere by giving them a new City with a few Units far away from me.
2) Map Trading is not allowed - as it is too easily exploited to rob the AI of its gold - I even considered to implement a Custom Game Option to deactivate it.
3) Hurrying Production is not allowed (for me) - as I consider it unimmersive and rather use the new feature construction materials
4) Declaring War to other Colonies requires a "reason" - e.g. being in border conflicts or AI having Privateers that attack my ship or made gold demands (insults) too often
5) Relations to Natives are very peaceful - so I never declare War on them myself. I also really prefer to use them as trade partners or for missions.
6) Using features like Privateers, Buccanneers, ... that I know are difficult for AI to defend have limits / thresholds. So I e.g. may have only one of them per Colonial AI.
7) Using game mechanics that are unimmersive to me like "Food Bombing" are also forbidden - I intend to overhaul such game mechanics anyways in the future.
8) I always set "Only one colonist per Native village" because I consider training 3 colonists at once in the same village to be an exploit.
9) When using "haggling" with Native Villages, save scumming is forbidden - as it destroys the fun / risk of haggling for me.
... and others

Additional Challenges:

1) I tend to settle a City on each big continent - also because I like to exploit as many treasuers as possible.
2) If I do not achieve to acquire certain FFs in early game that I really want, I consider the game as lost to AI.
3) I tend to settle a City at the Pacific coast and to connect it via roads to the Atlantic cities.
4) Certain Quests I consider "victory" conditions (e.g. being the first to discover pacific - related to above)
5) I usually play explicitly to acquire certain quests early (e.g. 3 inland cities) ... and losing some of them may cause a restart
... actually I have many more

Giant Empires:

1) I never automate anything. - I do not like to play like that.
2) I use Excel spread sheets to remember e.g. which City may require which Yields or Units
3) I tend to have easily 30+ Cities in endgame with many (in WTP 3.1 - as I have not yet played WTP 4.x) having 50+ population
4) I enjoy the domestic market a lot and heavily use it as a challenge in end game.

Watching old series in parallel:

In early game I usually focus on the game 100%. (As it is the most interesting and fun part to me.)
But in late game I often start to watch series in parallel on my old pc and play on my gaming laptop.

So whenever something interesting happens in the series, I stop playing and focus on the series instead.
When the series is just boring filler story, I focus on e.g. the game. (Similar to listening to an ebook while driving.)

This is e.g. how I watched "Emergency Room" many years ago, as only some scenes were interesting to me.
(A lot of the romance stuff was boring to me, but some of the medical emergency scenes were actually interesting.)

Also this is how I watched all seasons of "Battlestar Galactica" a second time.
(It was more of a nostalgia thing as I still remembered a lot of the story.)

Having to be in "nostalgia mood" and emotions of a modder:

Playing WTP is nothing I do when I want interesting story or fast action.
Then I turn to games that I have not yet played or watch movies I have not yet seen.

But sometimes I am in "nostalgia mood" and feel like turning to the "good old days".
Turning to an old game and watching an old series in parallel is strangely comforting to me ...

It is a way of "coming down" and "relaxing" from an ever faster turning world.
But it is usually not someting I want to do when I am full of energy and motivation.

Then actually modding ... i.e. creating something new in the mod or playing a new game is more fun.
And when I am too tired and will go to sleep soon, it may even be more relaxing to just read an eBook.

Also as a lot of the content is my own creation, there is a little bit of pride and satisfaction and also a bit of regret involved.
It is hard to describe the emotions to somebody that never modded ... but playing your own mod is a bit strange.

One one hand there is the positive, seeing what was already achieved. Remembering all the effort in all those years required to create it.
But there is also a lingering hunger and passion ... because you know what would still be possible to be created ... and still not yet there.

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So that is kind of the way I play.

I do not really play the game to beat AI, I rather try to challenge myself to be "better than last time".
I am extremely perfectionist sometimes and challenging complex - but still slow - games are perfect for that.

Also I kind of try to maximise "achievements", fall back into nostalgia and enjoy "my own creation".
I consider the game mostly as a "puzzle" to solve where it is about getting the "perfect empire".

So if I would summarize why I play WTP thus also affecting how I play WTP:
It is a mixture of satisfying my perfectionism, going through sweet nostalgia of good old days and enjoying my own creation.
This is something no other game could do ... and maybe something old men can understand best.

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Comment:
The Map "Two Continents" was e.g. explicitly designed for that kind of gameplay.