Easy victory strategy

[AgentTBC]

I think I have the victory strategy on regular maps (as opposed to the scenario stuff) down pretty well. I just won two games in rapid succession without any problem at all. As long as you don't get an awful starting location it's hard to lose.

It's pretty simple. You don't want more than 2-3 cities ever, regardless of map size. One city should be on the coast with LOTS of food. The other city should be on some resources. Use three cities if necessary as you want to be able to decently trade two refined products at an okay clip but no more as you want to win FAST. Lastly, you want a scout right away. Sell your initial pioneer or whatever if you don't see one available to rush in Europe at the start.

All you do is run the scout around getting money and treasure from everywhere you can. Ship him across water if you have to. Use the money (sell treasure even if you don't have a galleon) to get your 2 (maybe 3) cities producing two things you can sell as fast as possible. Then just keep shipping that stuff to Europe and buy a statesmen. Use the rest of the money to buy 10-15 cannons and a whole bunch of guns and horses and to hurry a school and a college in the coast city. Put the guns and horses in your cities and/or in a bunch of wagon trains sitting in the cities. Enough guns and horses for like 10-15 dragoons is enough.

When you get the statesman, put him in the city with the college and slap three colonists in there and make them statesmen. Replace the statesmen you make with 2 more colonists until you have 6 statesmen (or 9 if you have 3 cities). While all this is going on build newspapers in your cities. If you are really rolling in cash you can buy statesmen, of course, but 3000 gold is a lot when it shouldn't take more than 30 turns or so to educate 5 statesmen in a college if you haven't educated anyone else and you can use that money for other stuff.

As soon as the statesmen and newspapers are finished put the statesmen in all the town halls, assuming you have ready the 10-15 cannons and enough guns+horses for 10-15 dragoons. If you have excess population (natives or whatever) you can dismiss them to get your pop down so the revolution happens sooner. You should go to 50% liberty bells in just a couple of turns and can declare independence while the REF is still like 10 regulars, 10 dragoons, and 8 cannon. Maybe a little more. In any case, as soon as you declare independence, slap guns and horses on all your colonists, drag everybody two hexes away from the coastal city, and wait for the REF to land in the city.

Wipe it out with maybe 1 casualty. Repeat for the 4-5 waves that will happen. Victory!

The only problems I've encountered are map screws where there isn't anything but a bunch of smallish islands so you can't make good money with your scout. As long as there is one, two, or three big landmasses you should be good to go.

The best leader for this, by far, in my opinion is that Dutch guy with the +100% time between tax increases. That's helpful, but starting with a Merchantman is HUGELY helpful. It lets you divert it to shuttle the scout around a bit if you have to. The other leaders are actively detrimental in a lot of cases. Samuel de Champlain and the English guy giving +liberty bells for example.

Anyway, this seems the optimal strategy until the REF gets fixed to start at a much larger size.

[snoopy369]

Increasing the initial REF is definitely an interesting idea ... I'm not sure if you'd need to have different sizes for the starting difficulty level, or not, though.

[The Rusty Gamer]

I tried the Dutch but didn't get a merchantman, just a caravel. Is it just me or something I did?

[snoopy369]

You get a merchantman as the dutch... unless you did some change in the XML files, anyway?

[AgentTBC]

I'm not sure. I just loaded up a new game on the second highest difficulty with the Dutch and started with a merchantman. Are you sure you loaded Dutch and not another nation by accident? I tried both Dutch leaders and started with a Merchantman with both.

After playing a couple games with the Dutch I wonder if starting with a Merchantman isn't overpowered. Maybe it just suits my play style but I can't imagine playing as, say, the English.

[AgentTBC]

Won a couple more games on higher difficulty levels. Dumping a bunch of guns into Indian villages for a quick cash infusion early is another way to go and helps.

I fear becoming bored rapidly with this game, as promising as it is. Hopefully the patches will fix the balance issues because as it is, it's trivial to win.

[N35t0r]

The problem here is that it's extremely easy to beat the REF by letting them capture cities and then attacking those... It should be really tough to oust the REF once it captured a city off you, especially if it's got a fort, with them having naval superiority... Forts (are there fortresses as well? I haven't had time to play much) shouldn't be bombardable down to +0% def, you should be able to, at most, reduce stockade% defense bonus in any instance. And Artillery vs. artillery attacks to/from forts should not take innate artillery city attack or city defense bonuses into account (or rather, arty should have the same city attack and city defense bonuses)

[bmac2112]

I followed AgentTBC's approach. Before I failed miserably over and over again. Now I can win 100% of the time.

I was frustrated by having such difficulty the first few times, but with AgentTBC's strategy, now I'm just flat disappointed.

In the patch thread he points out there's no real reason to have a large number of cities. The only reason to have a large number of cities is to support a large number of cities. I've realized this to be a truly fundamental flaw. You can certainly have fun with a lot of cities, but there's no strategic advantage to it.

Now I like the fact this game doesn't absolutely require you to have a large number of cities like Civ does. But it would be nice if there was an inherent advantage/disadvantage to each style of play.

[AgentTBC]

bmac sums up my thoughts exactly. I had a back and forth with, I think, snoopy in the other thread about advantages to lots of cities. Snoopy pointed out that more cities give you more money and thus more guns and horses and such. What I believe he misses is that the only reason to have more guns and horses is if you have more cities. It's a catch-22.

What is the advantage to more guns if you only have 2 cities? Answer: There is none. And it's actually easier to win with fewer, smaller cities because you can go from 0% liberty bells to 50% liberty bells in fewer turns and thus face a smaller REF.

As bmac says, it can be fun to run a lot of cities. But it's actually counterproductive. There should be actual advantages to lots of cities. I don't consider "having lots of cities gives you enough money to counteract the disadvantages of having lots of cities" to be the same as advantages.

An advantage is something that makes it easier to win, not just something that helps offset a disadvantage. Here's an example: If I bash myself in the knee with a hammer a lot, it hurts. But my body starts producing endorphins to lessen the pain. Is the fact that my body produces pain-blocking endorphins an advantage or is it just a way to counteract the disadvantage of bashing my knee with a hammer? Similarly, having enough money to buy more guns and stuff with more cities isn't an advantage, it's a way to counteract to disadvantage of lots of cities.

The way the game is currently structured really is a fundamental flaw. There should be a reason to run a large colonial empire, not just the ability to do so if you feel like it.

[snoopy369]

If there is no advantage OR disadvantage to lots of cities (up to a point), then it is balanced correctly. This is a fundamental lesson that was learned in Civ4 versus early Civs: ICS (building a lot of cities rapidly) is something that needs to be discouraged, but not eliminated entirely. You should be able to win with relatively few cities, and also win with more cities, depending on your preference. More cities = more micro required, so requiring people to build many cities to win is bad.

That said, you should have enough of an advantage that it offsets the disadvantages of multiple cities. Agent, I presume you're saying that the disadvantages (larger REF) outweigh the advantages (more stuff=more army). If you are saying that they cancel out, then you're simply wrong; that is exactly where they should be (with a reasonable minimum and maximum). Offhand, I'd say that if you have an equal ability (no larger or smaller) to win with 4 cities as with 9, then it's probably about right; and your ability to win should decrease as you get fewer than 4 and more than 9, on a normal map on normal speed.

That's a lesson that they learned with Civ4, and if you nail Soren down and ask him, he'd probably give you an answer similarly (well, he'd probably give a much better and more well-understood answer, but it would be along the same line). "More cities is better" is bad game design; "More cities is worse" is bad game design. "More cities is about the same" is where it should be, and actually something Col doesn't get horribly wrong (though it probably allows a bit too few cities - 2 is probably too few in my opinion; but then again, who's to say someone playing Suriname or Macao shouldn't be able to?).

Particularly this:

There should be a reason to run a large colonial empire, not just the ability to do so if you feel like it.

is entirely incorrect from a game design perspective. The game should not force you to build a large empire in order to succeed; it should allow you to. Different people have different preferences for gameplay, remember, and there are plenty who prefer a smaller, more compact game, rather than a large sprawling empire.

[AgentTBC]

Snoopy: Would you say that Civ4 forces you to play aggressively on Emperor level and above, or is peacenik builder play just as viable?

I'd say that, in Civ4, the higher the difficulty level the more aggressive you need to play to have a good shot at victory. I don't think that means that Civ4 is a poorly thought out game. Similarly, it seems to me that the higher the difficulty level in Col2 (yeah it's not Col2, but hey) the better you should have to be at managing a colonial empire. Higher difficulty levels should require a larger number of colonies, more money, and more troops to win.

If playing on a harder difficulty level doesn't require you to successfully manage more cities, more money, or more troops then it what sense is it a higher difficulty level?

I agree with you that at the medium or lower difficulty settings it should be just as viable to play with a small colony as a large one. But I strongly feel that the higher the difficulty, the "better" a colonial manager you should have to be to win. And that means you should need more colonies, more money, and more troops.

As it is, you do not.

[AgentTBC]

To put it another way, do you really think I should be able to regularly win on the highest two difficulty levels with 2-3 population 6 colonies?

[snoopy369]

Agent, if Civ4 allows you to play peacenik and win, it's well designed... it does to some extent, actually, many do play fairly peaceably.

2-3 cities may be too few - not sure what the reasonable 'minimum' is, I'd say 4 probably - but it needs to allow fewer and more cities equally, at any given difficulty level. The difficulty is in winning with what you have, not in what it takes to win in terms of city count. Higher level - more cities should be harder than lower level- more cities, and higher level-fewer cities should be harder than lower level-fewer cities; but there should not be a relation between Higher level - more cities and Higher level - fewer cities, in my book, if it's designed well. There usually is, mind you - usually more cities makes the game easier - but that's not a good thing, as they found with Civ3/Civ4.

[bmac2112]

I understand that it's more complicated than just adjusting mechanics to require more cities; we'd just have another Civ game if we did that.

But more cities = more trade = more money. And the value of goods and money doesn't scale proportionally to quantity of goods and money, because after 2-3 cities the value tapers off; I simply don't need that much goods/troops to win.

It's not one of several strategic choices to win; it's the BEST choice to win. I don't like having an absolute best choice enforced by the game mechanics. Choosing to have lots of cities and trade routes becomes... well... merely aesthetic. (Spore anyone?)

Having more cities has clear disadvantages. Borders encroach on Indian territory and they get aggressive, for example. But where's the inherent advantage that can't be accomplished by staying small?

This might be a premature thought, but I think liberty bells should not be generated by statesmen. They should be generated by having lots of cities + population + territory. This coincides with the notion that more territory = more national identity.

Maybe statesmen should be kept, but their presence should be less impactful. Or maybe it should cost a lot of money to employ them since they are, after all, statesmen, and even disseminating their ideas and administrating the local gov't should cost something.

[snoopy369]

That's the difference between what you're saying and what Agent's saying, and I'd agree with you (if you're accurate) while disagree with him. If having a few cities is a BETTER choice than having many cities, then it's imbalanced. If having few cities is EQUAL to having many cities, then it's well balanced.

I don't know that I agree that it is inherently imbalanced against having many cities, however. I would say you can't have a TON of cities, but you certainly can have several cities and still be successful. More cities = more guns, that equation never will change; money is irrelevant, frankly, in that equation - you can simply settle as many cities as you like and have them all generate ore -> tools -> guns. As long as the REF is balanced appropriately, more cities is not a bad thing in that sense.

LB will be generated by statesmen, that is not going to change, but actually LB are one of the 'city-encouraging' factors (REF aside) - they give you more FF's if you have more of them, quantitatively.