Win on highest difficulty

[themightydouche]

Am i the only person who finds this game really easy? I started a game on highest difficulty(marathon), declared at about 1575-ish and won in 1596.
I'm definitely no super-strategist, it just seems this game is loaded with exploits. This is what I did to win:

1.Start-go back to Europe,unload soldier and pioneer,sell rifles and tools, and make one into a scout. If you're lucky there may be a seasoned scout to buy instead. Drop scout and colonist off in New World and auto-explore. This will raise money and treasures from Native settlements/ruins...go back to Europe. Repeat this process until you have a few scouts exploring(I'd say 2-4 depending on whether they are seasoned or not).

2.When you have enough money to buy a galleon,buy one and then you can take all those treasures back to Europe

3.Make a settlement somewhere, NOT on a small island or a hill,preferably with access to lumber.

4. Don't get any more colonists from now on, you need to keep your total population below 6-8.

5.Raise money:
trading guns from Europe to the natives is best
buy silver from natives and sell to Europe

6.Your aim is to buy 3 elder statesman a.s.a.p. Put these to work in your settlement, building a printing press then newspaper.Do NOT use them to make liberty bells.

7.Next buy cannons.As many as you can. Once you have a few, you can raise even more money(for more cannons!) by destroying native settlements. Use converts in your settlement to make goods for cash(cigars etc).

8.As long as you don't output any liberty bells, your king won't add to his army.

9.When you have enough cannons(about 20 should be enough-but get as many as possible) and your newspaper is finished, it's time to put your elder statesmen in the town hall. Make sure to disband your native converts so your population is about 6-8. Have your galleon loaded up with enough guns/horses to make all your people into dragoons(your former scouts should have picked up some exp. and make good fighters). Declare as soon as you can.

10. To win the fight: arm up all but one of your colonists, and move your whole army outside your colony(not on the coast-they'll attack you straight from their ships) and wait for them to come.Let them take over your colony, then attack them when they are inside it. When there is only one unit left inside, use a dragoon to kill it so you can move back out afterwards...repeat this and don't forget to promote your units!(Formation and Charge are useful)

I pretty much breezed it like this and, like I said, I'm not a superstar by any means(I suck at civ 4). I love this game, I loved the original, it's just a shame that it's so broken. Roll on the patch...

[AgentTBC]

I played most of a game with a similar strategy to see if it would work; the truth is it will work a lot of the time on larger maps. My impression is that this won't work on small maps because there aren't enough ruins and villages to get enough money/treasure lying around.

But on a big map, this is a pretty obviously broken exploit. Making cannon units count against your population if they don't already would be a first step. But yeah, it's kind of broken on bigger maps.

[themightydouche]

Fair point. I did this on the Western Hemisphere(Huge) map - which seems to be way bigger than a random huge map, for some reason - so you could be right. Although on a smaller map, with less money available, i think it could still be done by trading for cash over a longer time period. I dunno, i guess i'll have to try it

[Krill]

Marathon isn't difficulty, marathon is the game speed, ie amount of turns required to do a given action.

[DarthVeda]

Why have the REF system when it's so easy to circumvent and meta-game?

It's like this: You can steal from the Dragon overlooking the town, but if you steal too much, the Dragon will attack you. The solution is to never steal from the dragon.

Just as the "strategy" presented by every winner thus far has been to ignore producing liberty bells.

So why is there even a dragon?

[themightydouche]

Originally posted by Krill
Marathon isn't difficulty, marathon is the game speed, ie amount of turns required to do a given action.

Yeah I know...The way i wrote it was misleading
Should have said highest difficulty AND marathon...

[themightydouche]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
Why have the REF system when it's so easy to circumvent and meta-game?

It's like this: You can steal from the Dragon overlooking the town, but if you steal too much, the Dragon will attack you. The solution is to never steal from the dragon.

Just as the "strategy" presented by every winner thus far has been to ignore producing liberty bells.

So why is there even a dragon?

Sucks eh...It removes the founding fathers from the game really, unless you use hammers to get politic points instead.

The whole game feels like it has been shoe-horned into the Civ 4 engine, and feels rushed and incomplete. Shame really, with a bit more time and care it could've been great.

[Aerion]

I was actually intending to try this on my next game to see if it would work. I guess that answers that question.

[Krill]

I don't think difficulty really comes into this game, definately no where near as much as it does in CIV; no tech tree and no maintenence/corruption basically means that there are no negatives to the human player as you increase the difficulty level (maybe costs for buying experts/resources though? But you can play the game without alot of these and not have a real problem, sop lojng as the crosses required for immigration don;t change with difficulty).

When difficulty increases the AI boni..well, that only matters when you compete with the AI, and as you don't in this game, it doesn't really matter, as there are still strategies that work. So difficulty doesn't matter in COL

[Krill]

I would love it if this economy was modded into CIV though...that would be a very nice game and I'd forgive Firaxis for most of their past mistakes...

...hint hint Trip

[AgentTBC]

Producing liberty bells at all until you have a whole bunch of elder statesmen and newspapers is definitely a loser's game in this version of Colonization. Frankly, I avoid placing colonies anywhere near the other European colonies because I don't want to have to produce liberty bells to prevent encroachment by their cultural borders.

I don't have a good answer for decoupling liberty bells from the size of the REF. What do you base the REF size on otherwise?

[Senator]

[SIZE=1]
I don't have a good answer for decoupling liberty bells from the size of the REF. What do you base the REF size on otherwise?

Well you could base the REF size on things more directly related to your military strength. Your total military power or maybe the volume of the goods you sold in Europe so far (i.e. your economic power).

From a realism standpoint it would also make more sense, as those things are more easily measurable than something as abstract as "rebel sentiment".

[DarthVeda]

Just look at the original for inspiration.

Start with a large REF. Have the REF grow slowly as you advance your economic size.

It's kind of hard to avoid trading with Europe, but not impossible. Makes the value of trading with natives greatly increase.

[AgentTBC]

I'm an idiot. I didn't even think of that.

Yeah, starting the REF so small is what makes this the best tactic. Simply starting the REF big enough that you CANT have a revolution with one pop 6 city (or 2 or 3, well except on a tiny map maybe) would help a lot.

If the REF starts larger you need the economic base of more cities producing resources.

Of course you still don't want to produce any liberty bells, but it wouldn't help.

[DarthVeda]

In original col, they also had it so that the starting size of the REF varied VASTLY depending on difficulty.

For instance, the starter force on easy was something like 15, on hard it was over 50.

Edit: To get back the sense of "small empires can win too" victory, it's probably good to give huge score bonuses to those who win with a smaller number of colonies or population.