Winning/tips for revolutionary level

[tssml2000]

Hello

I'm a huge fan of R&R for many years, so my first words are a big THANK YOU for the all the people that have made such a great mod, and keep on developing it!

I've been playing a lot in Patriot level, but became a bit bored as it is easy to beat and defeat all the European Powers. Revolutionary is quite a challenge in 2.4, as I never managed to keep up the growth of power (army+navy) of the European powers

Usually I play as English (libertarian, industrious)

Any advice / tips on winning in revolutionary?

thanx

 

[Sarin]

Snowball it.

Turn your starting cavalry into a scout once you found a colony, and go exploring. Ignore ruins until you get seasoned scout from village. Get more scouts. Depends on size of map, ideal is around 4-5 on huge, 7+ on gigantic. Make sure you explore ruins only with seasoned scouts, if you find village nearby training scouts...even better. It's worth even putting one on jungle tile and camping there, or just running through jungles, until you get the event from finding a remote tribe. Grab political points from it, that gets you Marquette with all those exploration points you already have. The rewards from early exploration will allow you to get an advantage early. Make sure to build a chapel in your first colony and get a preacher for it ASAP for all those immigrants. Early on...don't rely on specialists. Whoever is on hand will do the job. And expand. There will be time for building up colonies later, first go for land grab. How many colonies you need...well, depends on you, and available good spots. I'd say absolute minimum is 3 fully built up coastal ones, with more inland. Quickly rushing up three inland ones for a few free pioneers is actually worth it. Once you have two colonists of whatever type and one military unit-you'll get some from early exploration too-send out a colonizing party. Even a colony that initially is just two colonists working as lumberjack and carpenter is worth it. Gets the foundation done for later colonizing.

And download 2.6. It's much better.

 

[devolution]

Solid advice! , and this is the reason I want to "shake up" the early game a bit since it has become too "formularic" and stale. Currently there is only 1 good opener (like you describe) and that is to rush a chapel (to secure immigration) and then to produce / build political points until Marquette has been secured. I have gotten so tired of this, that I only play always war vs. europeans (I don't use the standard always war option though, since it forces you to war with the natives). That way you'll have to balance the exploration rush with defensive play (Malinche actually becomes useful, since the native mercenaries are needed to survive)
Good point on exploiting that event, I actually didn't think of that one, thanks!

I am considering adding a new game option "Always war vs. europeans" (for those who want an additional challenge) and to give all scouts 3 movement (like dragoons). Marquette then looses the +1 movement bonus (It's about time we nerf him!). We should also consider fixing the event somehow, probably by only letting it apply to a specific tile(s). Even more radical is the idea that we could randomize the founding father's position (we'd only shift 1 "step" or something like that)

I have some good news though, the AI in my test build is now much better at managing their economy, and they focus more on producing bells and less on producing worthless crap (Like mining 1000s of units of ore when the price of ore is 2) In a test-run autoplay that i conducted during the weekend, the spanish AI (Hernan Cortez) was able to win independence by about t210! by buying\building a ginormous amount of units and focusing on bells. Usually they need more than 300 turns, so this is a bit of an improvement. I hope that in the future the AI can win at least somewhat reliably by about t250, unless stopped by the human player. For those who are curious, the settings were: normal, huge, revolutionary.

All of this should hopefully be ready to ship in RaR 2.7

 

[tssml2000]

Thank you both!

Sarin, regarding the quick land grab you mention, please be more specific:
1.should I found 3 coastal colonies +10(?) inland, with minimal number of units (inc military) and only then colonize them?
2.It'll be impossible to export goods produced by the inland colonies in the beginning (as there is no time to create 10+ wagon trains), but that should not be a concern, as the only thing that matter is land grab (of good resources) - is this correct?
3.will I not slaughtered if there are no military units in almost any colony?

 

[tssml2000]

(off topic, as I just started using 2.6: is it just coincidence, or there are a lot less gold plots in 2.6?)

 

[Sarin]

How many colonies will you build depend on available good colony places, how many do you dare to micromanage, and of course, how much land will you conquer (as both natives and other Europeans will resist your expansion, and you'll inevitably have to go to war). 8 total, with three of them coastal, is minimum to have all national wonders available. But really only one national wonder is necessary, and you need just three colonies to make it available.

About getting slaughtered...of course you need to reinforce the critical areas, like bordering european AI or natives that don't like you. Keep an eye on their relations. Usually one native merc or conquistador or whatever you managed to get early on is enough to cover the colony against raids. Sometimes you loe a bit of something in raid, but that is usually not a big problem. There are some early FFs that can help with relations with natives too...

BTW, are you playing with 1 plot or 2 plot radius? That kinda matters a lot too. I play with 2 plot and all my advice is based on that....