Win by raising a huge army of freed slaves

[prolefeed]

Re this: "There is another difference between Game 1 and Game 2 - a small matter of 2500 guns and 2500 horses for the extra dragoons. That is unless you really are going to war with just soldiers in which case you only need an extra 2500 guns (and good luck with those soldiers)."

If you're playing on the quick setting, you only need 37 guns and horses to equip a dragoon, so a shipment of 100 fur or whatnot with a 35% tax rate or so will equip two dragoons. Getting guns has never been a problem for me, between setting up factories to crank out manufactured goods and getting a gun producing factory going. This requires choosing monarchy for your constitution so you can keep trading with Europe. It also helps to use the quick setting so there are fewer turns available, and thus fewer tax increases that occur, allowing you to get to revolution with a manageable tax rate below 40%.

And, you DON'T need guns and horses for every unit you have. If you're mismanaged things a bit and are short on guns, you can put the wounded combat survivors back to work in your cities until they heal, and hand the guns over to their reinforcements. If you do have enough guns, you make EVERY unit pulled off of production and turned over to combat into a fortified soldier, then unfortify them and turn them into dragoons only as needed to take out the REF units that drop onto your territory. So, you need fewer horses than guns, and you have better fortified defenders to fend off the amphibious assaults. Finally, soldiers work better than dragoons on forested hills adjacent to your cities if you've got the FF bonuses such as Ethan Allan that only apply to soldiers and not to dragoons.

Using this strategy, you need perhaps a 3:2 ratio of guns to horses, maybe up to a 2:1 ratio if the REF keeps making the tactical mistake of landing on the same forested hills next to your port cities.

 

[Droknar]

The REF won't generally attack cities located in the interior or on the side of your continent farthest from Europe.

That is not true at all. The REF simply starts on the "east" side. But the REF will go for any city, anywhere, if it still has troops left. What usually happens is that, because the REF focuses on occupying settlements, it leaves behind a portion of its troops with each city it conquers. Eventually it runs out of troops. Also, if you put up a fight at one city, then it will continue to use its remaining, nearby troops to attack there.

Either way, the REF will continue to move on ALL settlements until it runs out of troops. Because it starts in the "east", as a simple consequence of attrition, it usually runs out of troops by the time it gets further inland or toward the west. The map shape and randomized troop distribution also profoundly affect whether the REF has enough ships to conveniently make map-wide landings. I see "west" coast troop landings all the time, but they usually come after the initial landings on "east" coast.

I even tried an experiment once by establishing a city in the exact center of a large western island-continent with absolutely NO port city. It was at least 6 tiles from water on any side. Amazingly, while I was fighting off the AI's main attack on my founding "east coast" port city, the AI managed to drop off 6 units on the remote western island, and they slowly moved, one tile at a time (I didn't build any road access) to my "hidden" city. The AI clearly "cheats" because it knows exactly where all your units and settlement are located. But its troop size is limited, so as it occupies cities (or is killed off by you fighting it), eventually it runs out of troops to continue attacking.

That is why building a lot of crappy cities is a good strategy, because the AI always leaves behind 3-6 units in every city, so eventually it runs out of troops to the point where your existing army can easily defeat the remaining troops, ...thereby completely halting the advance of the REF. Then, at your leisure, you can rebuild your army and start taking back any cities that were taken.