Caribbean

[Felch]

I just tried out Caribbean on Huge.

Difficulty was the second lowest (Pioneer?). Epic speed. John Adams of the English.

I've had some bad games where I failed to spread out quickly enough and suffered for it. I was resolved to avoid that here.

After sailing west for several turns, I finally found land. By 1666 I've got eight colonies scattered around the eastern part of the archipelago. The Dutch are settled around Hispaniola. French and Spanish are sharing the eastern part of the mainland, directly south of me.

Some notes.


ICS seems incredibly powerful in the early part of the game. Every colony is producing food and simple resources in its home square, plus a free hammer.
ICS plus certain key Founding Fathers is just plain ridiculous. +3 cloth, +3 hammers, +3 guns from a simple armory, +3 bells from a printing press. A large spread out empire is much stronger than in Civ4, assuming you're lucking with the FFs.
I'm still not understand how the points are accumulated. One of the weak points of this game is the poor documentation.
The rival empires have very few ships. I've got a small fleet of privateers, but I'm not running into very many targets for them.


Anybody else tried out Caribbean? It's pretty interesting.

[conmcb25]

Have you gotten to the end game yet? Does the lack of avenues of approach for the king help in the end game?

[Felch]

I'll keep you posted, but I'm still in the mid 17th century. I'm at the point where my economy is solid and I'm just starting to build up the Maryland Militia.

I'm worried though that the king's fleet will prevent me from being able to shuttle troops between hot spots. Even frigates are no match for his navy. Having the free guns at the Armory will be great. Every colony gets enough guns for a new soldier every 20-25 turns, depending on rebel sentiment.

[snoopy369]

You need SoL's to protect your fleet, clearly, and some privateers or other fast ships to spot incoming fleets... :)

[Aerion]

What does "ICS" stand for?

[conmcb25]

Infinite City Sprawl

A Civ 3 and earlier strategy for Civilization.

Check this out:

http://apolyton.net/misc/column/200_ics-embraced.shtml

This guy called it infinite city "sleaze" but I remember "sprawl".

[Felch]

Originally posted by snoopy369
You need SoL's to protect your fleet, clearly, and some privateers or other fast ships to spot incoming fleets... :)

Pedia showed the SoL as having the same stats as the Frigate except for the +50% vs. Frigs. Am I misremembering, or are they actually more effective vs. MoWs?

[Felch]

Originally posted by Aerion
What does "ICS" stand for?

Sorry for the jargon. The basic idea is to take advantage of the fact that the city itself generates resources from the square it's located on.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by Felch


Sorry for the jargon. The basic idea is to take advantage of the fact that the city itself generates resources from the square it's located on.

And that more cities are better, no matter what because of that.

Civ IV's maintenance model vice the early version's corruption model basically ended ICS as an always fool proof viable strategy.

Removing maintenance in CIVIV:Colonization, brings back that strategy (possibly).

[Vesayen]

The production bonuses you get from tiered buildings for processed goods is so high at medium and high tiers that sprawl is not viable. Combine harvester specialists with production specialist and production buildings and the right leaders and the output you get is enormous. You also need more statesman to build up sons of liberty which is more difficult with a spread out population.

Essentially the free resources you get from the city centers is less then the effective profit you’d get from that same unit working in a larger city.

[Felch]

Later on that's true, Vesayen. Early game though, especially before warfare becomes an issue, you benefit tremendously from having four size 1 colonies instead of one size 4 colony.

[Vesayen]

I have to disagree. I always play as the idustrialist leader, I always have my first industry building up very rapidly, I have a tier 2 production building at full capacity within 30 turns.

Those 4 size 1 do not mean much when you cannot build wagons to get the rescources between them rapidly enough, or back to europe. The best land is also often controlled by indians, so you have to pick substandard locations, or fight the indians... which is not wise. Indivian villages are like gold mines for rescource harvesters.

[Felch]

Your mileage may vary, as they say. I was having a hell of a time with my first few abortive attempts at the Col2. This has been my first success. I think the archipelago helped, because native villages were scarce, allowing me plenty of opportunities to settle. I didn't see any villages at all for about fifty turns.

On a more continental map, I could see where the problems would be. You need a more advanced infrastructure to take advantage of the inland resources, and you need to balance that with the native land rights.

[Krill]

There's no maintenence? Or corruption? Then how did they plan to slow expansion (or didn't they, considering the name of the game?)

[snoopy369]

The biggest disincentive to ICS is simply the SoL counter - the more colonies you have, the more elder statesmen you will need to convert them; and the harder it will be to protect yourself from the REF, though if you're a sadistic **** and don't mind losing half your empire this is not entirely true. :)

However, the main thing on a regular game is the natives - you only have so much room to settle, beyond that you will have to fight natives for the space.

[Vesayen]

If you never make ANY offensive or hostile acts to the natives, I don't think they can go to war with you. Several games in a row I did nothing hostile to them and they never went to war with me, they would give away their cities as I encroached.

Two games in a row I decided to steal land, the natives later went to war.

[Krill]

That isn;t a bad design decision actually; so long as they are both equally viabale approaches, and it should take a couple of weeks at the minimum to decide on that issue.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Felch
Pedia showed the SoL as having the same stats as the Frigate except for the +50% vs. Frigs. Am I misremembering, or are they actually more effective vs. MoWs?

I checked on this.

Man of Wars get a +50% versus frigates too, so Ships of the Line are a better choice.

MoW vs. SoL (no upgrades)

12 + 8 = 20

8/20 = 2/5 = .400

Compared to Frigates and Privateers.

MoW vs. Frig (no upgrades)

18 + 8 = 26

8/26 = 4/13 = .308

MoW vs. Privateer (no upgrades)

12 + 5 = 17

5/17 = .294

This is how combat works, right? I may be completely wrong about all this, but it looks like Privateers will get you the most bang for your buck. Especially because they're easier to afford and to unleash on your rivals and level up prior to DoI.

As far as Indians go, I've been pretty careful to keep them happy. It makes expansion real difficult though, since they claim territory far away from their towns. I've considered a stronger stance though.

[snoopy369]

Hmmm, interesting. I'm not sure that's entirely valid, simply because promotions use the base strength as their modifier (so +10% for a frigate > +10% for a privateer, for example), but it's certainly something to keep in mind as a possibility. Some worldbuilder tests would be useful, I think.

[Machismo]

Originally posted by Felch


I checked on this.

Man of Wars get a +50% versus frigates too, so Ships of the Line are a better choice.

MoW vs. SoL (no upgrades)

12 + 8 = 20

8/20 = 2/5 = .400

Compared to Frigates and Privateers.

MoW vs. Frig (no upgrades)

18 + 8 = 26

8/26 = 4/13 = .308

MoW vs. Privateer (no upgrades)

12 + 5 = 17

5/17 = .294

This is how combat works, right? I may be completely wrong about all this, but it looks like Privateers will get you the most bang for your buck. Especially because they're easier to afford and to unleash on your rivals and level up prior to DoI.

As far as Indians go, I've been pretty careful to keep them happy. It makes expansion real difficult though, since they claim territory far away from their towns. I've considered a stronger stance though.

Wow. Thats kind... odd.

One of the first ships I buy is one of the most effective in the late game. Now, considering it is one of the most frequent ships involved in battles early on (great to steal and hamper other colonials), it may have some excellent promotions to narrow the gap more. A few of those could, at least stem the flow of REF lands and perhaps deflect some areas from attack.