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[laiocfar]

Your got nice tips to make money, but the real power in the game isnt money, its people. What do you do with the money? End buildings and buy colonist. So Smith and Stuyervescent are just two more foundinf fathers. I bet that u choose La Salle to avoid the cost of stocades.

Some nice tips there. I didn't know about the Iron Works bug. Probably because I've never built Iron Works without having ore in the settlement.

I totally disagree with what you said about getting Customs Houses early though. I thought about it and discussed it with many people online back when this game had a huge following. The agreement of most people then was that it's a nice thing to have later on, but not crucial early, and that's what I still believe.

Early on, your few colonies are usually on the shore and are easily accessible by ship(s), so it's no trouble at all to pick up exports. There is a nice cycle where ships go to Europe with exports and come back with new colonists. Suppose you built a Customs House, then what? Still send those same ships to pick up colonists, only send them empty this time?

IMO, Customs Houses only make sense once your viceroyalty spreads out a bit and starts producing exports in large quantities. Then you don't really want to bother with shipping all those goods by hand to ports, then buying extra ships to fit everything in. But this definitely happens way after you get your first Continental Congress member, so I don't think it makes sense to get Customs Houses first priority.

For me, the first priority are guys that have to do with fighting the indians. The indians living in the same area you are planning to settle have got to go soon after the honeymoon period of trading with them ends. Very developed tribes, like Azteks, have got to go as soon as you get the guy who guarantees conquered indian cities give treasure and the guy who makes royal ships transport treasure free of charge. You can make huge amout of gold from looting each of their cities, which gives a great boost to your economy, especially if you get it early on. IMO, it's very important to pillage these cities before the other powers do, because you definitely don't want any of them getting their hands on something like 50k by wiping out just one advanced tribe.

[Kon-Tiki]

There're better ways of dealing with the Indians. Just keep your colonies 'round them at a reasonable size and they'll stay happy. I think 'bout 7 or 8 on, they'll get upset, but not to the amount that they'd go full-out war. There can be an incident once or twice, but's better to look for the reason for it rather than attacking them.

Treating the Indians well'll get you two things:
1) No negative points in your score (Except if you're Spanish, then it won't give negative points anyways)
2) They'll keep giving presents you can use to gain money, while they sometimes do demand things, but that's mainly stuff like food, which's usually in abundance.

A quick thing 'bout the gifts from the Indians... they tend to give raw materials mostly. Turn them into their processed counterparts when you can, as almost always, one of the surrounding tribes will pay for them. This's the fastest way to continuously earn an extra buck.

Well, maybe it's different for me, but my indians get upset a lot earlier than that. I'm playing a game now where I am trying to recreate history a little bit more accurately than the game usually does and for that I'm not building any big colonies until early to mid 1600's. Still, even with a single colony of size 3 and NO garrison, I have alarm bells in surrounding indian villages already.

Regardless, at some point the indians will become hostile and why would you want to halt your progress just to keep them happy? They might only attack occasionally, but those attacks disrupt kill your wagon trains and treasure trains often. That is not to mention the obvious annoyance of having indian villages in your lands even when they're peaceful: they constantly block your rivers and roads! :angry: This means that a wagon train that was ment to bring tools in time to finish that building in an inner colony will take an extra turn or two, wasting production, that your colonists traveling through your country take longer than they should, etc. Like I said, sooner or later, you'll have to kill the indians that live among your colonies. It will usually only be one tribe, maybe two, but you'll have to do it, or face a lot of hassle.

Sure, you get negative points for doing it. Sucks, but what are you gonna do? It's not that much of a penalty anyway and you'll only be wiping out a few villages that are directly among your colonies. Plus, you get money from each village. With agricultural tribes it could be quite a nice amount, while with civilized tribes you get so much that it's easily worth the penalty. The advantage of doing it fairly early (but after relations start going sour) is that you get all this money earlier, which helps more than if you were to get it later.

[Gelfo]

Great tips.

I suppose the beauty of Colonization is that there's lots of different strategies to playing it successfully. Like.. I rarely build custom houses, and I never attack indians. And getting Adam Smith and therefore the factory level buildings is only a recent thing for me

Definitely. That's what I also love about this game. You don't *have* to do anything, and you can play the way you enjoy the most.

I guess I'm just a lot less patient with the locals than most of you guys. They raid my settlement, well fine, once or twice. But if they attack my units and kill them, it's revenge time! :Titan: :Titan: :Titan: And then it just kind of escalates, since once you're at war, it's pretty hard to go back to being friends again.

Here's one more good strategy, that involves indians. Usually, at least some of your enemies will be fairly far away from you. In America's map, you'll usually have at least one other civilization in South America if you are in North and the other way around. Since they are so far away, you are likely to never have conflicts with the indians who are living next to your enemies' settlements. So load up on horses and muskets and sell them to that tribe. You know, level the playing field a little, so the indians present more of a challenge to your competition.

You'll be amazed how much of a difference it makes. Indian braves with primitive weapons have combat strength 1 and so are usually a pushover. But mounted braves have strength 3, which is the same as Europeans' dragoons. Add to that their terrain bonus and suddenly they become quite a decent force. Sure, they will probably not be taking and burning established colonies with forts, palisades and cannons in them, but at least they'll be able to keep their lands and will continue to be a nuisance to the AI, especially if that AI is Spanish.

Is it just me, or is Canada and Northern US the best place to start in?

1. Tons of beaver special resources for early money.
Furs need only a road to collect at full efficiency (as opposed to cotton, sugar and tobacco, for which you need to clear the forest first and then plow) plus it's immediately visible where the especially productive squares are, so you don't need to plow the whole area to find the best spot to grow. Also, furs plus Henry Hudson is a ton of gold with relatively few people working. Later on you can build an industry using furs as raw materials.

2. Most productive forest terrain. Only Coniferous forest is the same as Mixed, while others are worse for carpenting.

3. Most prodictive food terrain after clearing mixed forests. It's not a huge difference later on, but when you have an unskilled colonist farming, it makes a big difference if the terrain he is working is more productive. Plus there's a chance of 'wheat' resource. So, fewer squares will need to be dedicated to feed the colony.

4. Iroquois are pretty good-natured indians, unlike, say, Tupi, who seem to be at my throat right off the bat in South America. They and the Cherokee are fairly developed, so you could make some money trading with their capitals and not worry too much about being scalped for a while.

Anybody else has favourite spots to start your colonial empire at on the Americas map?

Is it just me, or is Canada and Northern US the best place to start in?

[rlbell]

Originally posted by Privateer@Mar 4 2006, 12:38 AM
Is it just me, or is Canada and Northern US the best place to start in?

It depends on your style. Personally, I do not find the Tupi to be all that bad, so I prefer to start with a port at the mouth of the Amazon river system (the Orinoco is also pretty good, but the Amazon is the best. As moving along the river is as good as moving along the road, you do not have to build many roads. The only two things that are needed to win the game are tools (used to build fortresses, artillery, and muskets) and horses (you also need timber, but this is usually not in short supply). Money is useful, but it is not crippling to
have shortages of gold. The Amazon river system has lots of ore, so colonies can produce lots of tools. It is also good sugar territory. The Incas are usually happy to buy trade goods, tools, or rum and they sell ore and silver. Buy silver while the price holds up (to sell in europe) and then buy ore, for more tools.

For some real adventure (someone else having a terrible time), figure out which indians are getting pasted by the other europeans and sell them muskets and horses (but only if they are far away from you).

Trade with the incas is amazing, I made so much money (before the price of silver collapsed), that I never bothered to attack them, even after recruiting Hernan Cortez for continental congress.

[Doc Adrian]

I like Cuba usually...Arawak tribe.


I can usually get prime timber and ore..sometimes good timber and Ore. Then I use that to spread out.

Hmm, so you expand inland along the river, rlbell?

I thought this would be difficult to do initially because your colonies wouldn't be on the shore and you wouldn't be able to pick up goods from them easily. I suppose you could sent wagon trains, but it's a bit annoying to bother with them.

How do you manage to trade with the Incas? They are so far away and across mountains! When they do sell you silver, how do you get it to Europe? Do you haul it all the way to the port on the other side of the continent? Or do you only start that trading after your empire is fairly developed and you have customs house in a nearby city that produces a ton of tools for sale?

I love to trade with the Azteks whenever I'm not in the extreme South America though. Their capital is often on shore and when it's not I build a trading settlement not far from it. They, too, sell dirt-cheap silver and pay great for imports. I can usually trade fairly profitably with them for at least 100-120 years even without reloading. And when that sweet arrangement burns out, well, it's time to unleash Mr. Cortez.

That sure sounds like a cool different game of Col to try though. I've never tried to colonize along the Amazon, only either along the caribbean coast or in Argentina and southern Brazil.

I'm not sure I totally agree that tools are everything. Tools are nice, of course, but what I find to be the most valuable thing to have by far is people. Since money directly translates into people (at 600 gold per colonist, worst case scenario), my strategies tend to focus on how to get more gold. The best way is to trade with the indians and reaload whenever you tire them out by bargaining, but that seems like a cheat to me, so I avoid it. And without reloading trade loses a lot of its appeal since your profit margins shrink badly.

Interestingly, tools can also be bought for gold at a fairly reasonable price, even if they shot up high or even were boycotted. An new colonist costs 600 (since recruitment price tends to quicky jump above 600, which you need to train a new ore miner), but a hardy pioneer costs 1200, which means you get 100 tools for 600 gold. Not a great deal, but pretty good, IMO. I find myself often using this way of getting additional tools when my existing infrastructure can't keep up with the rapid expansion of colonies caused by war with advanced indians.