My turn to vent

[Victor Galis]

The game so far seems easy, except that I was unaware that liberty bells make the king's army ridiculously large (this was my first game).

Now it's turn 600 (of 900 on marathon), I've got about 40 dragoons and the king has 100 regulars, 40 dragoons, and 100 cannon.

I've certainly learned a lot, but I suspect I'll lose the independence war because the king's army is just enormous. Unless they come in piecemeal and I can use my dragoons really well and pretend that they're in many places at once...

[Clio]

Originally posted by Asmodeous
My question is how the heck do you get FF's without making statesmen? :/

I never generate enough politics points unless I start developing liberty bells right away, which of course makes it so that the king's army ends up being 5x as large as any militia I can field.

Me.

You can convert hammers into any of the 5 types of points, thereby gettings FFs while avoiding the REF penalty.

[Asmodeous]

You can convert hammers into any of the 5 types of points, thereby gettings FFs while avoiding the REF penalty.

But then don't you have to build an entire village JUST for FF points? Which greatly reduces efficiency? :/

Me.

[Clio]

Originally posted by Asmodeous
But then don't you have to build an entire village JUST for FF points? Which greatly reduces efficiency? :/

It is better than having to face a larger REF most of the time.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
The game so far seems easy, except that I was unaware that liberty bells make the king's army ridiculously large (this was my first game).

Now it's turn 600 (of 900 on marathon), I've got about 40 dragoons and the king has 100 regulars, 40 dragoons, and 100 cannon.

I've certainly learned a lot, but I suspect I'll lose the independence war because the king's army is just enormous. Unless they come in piecemeal and I can use my dragoons really well and pretend that they're in many places at once...

Let us know ... but 40 dragoons and presumably some number of soldiers and cannons versus 240 units isn't entirely terrible odds, really, if you play it right. They do come in waves, and the dragoons get to heal

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Let us know ... but 40 dragoons and presumably some number of soldiers and cannons versus 240 units isn't entirely terrible odds, really, if you play it right. They do come in waves, and the dragoons get to heal

Here's the best part though:

Jamestown and Roanoake are on a small 8 or so tile island. That island is over 2 turns of sailing from my mainland, which will become impossible unless the King doesn't know how to use 25 Men O'War to blockade. I had been hoping to hold them by fortifying them heavily, but from what I'm reading here, fortifications are death traps and there's really not that much room for guerrilla warfare on that island.

I suppose I could try to push rebel sentiment to 100% build more ships of the line and pray that they can take out the king's ships or at least enough of them so they can't instantly kill my fortifications. Still, it's going to be rough.

I also have other island possessions, which if taken by the king will be almost impossible to take due to his naval superiority.

And no currently, I have 4 soldiers and 4 cannons, and 40 dragoons. I can dismount the dragoons to shift the mix of forces, but I really don't have all that much population. I think i have something like 120 total colonists. I have enough guns to arm some of the rest, but due to the way things are set up the loss of Roanoake and Jamestown would be pretty fatal.

And yes, I kind of screwed myself due to the way I set up my colonies, but as this was my first game, I assumed that fortifying those cities heavily would make them safe. I'm kind of annoyed that the game forces a guerrilla warfare campaign. While arguments can be made about realism, the game allowed me to base my entire economy on manufactures (unlike the historical colonies which exported mostly raw materials). Why can't it be more flexible about fortifications.

[snoopy369]

I'd suggest just not worrying about Jamestown and Roanoke once the fighting begins. You can take him out of those cities fairly easily once you kill off the rest of his forces.

If they are where all of your arms production happens ... sorry Not a good idea to set it up that way, as you know.

Dragoons are better, of course, I'm just assuming you have more guns than horses - except for the relatively rare veteran soldier, the rest of your units are all equal when it comes down to it, and if you have 120 colonists total, that's about 90 military units. Also, don't forget you need to keep your units working as colonists until the bitter end (until the DoI) in order to build up high sentiment.

Sounds like you need a lot of privateers or ships of the line - privateers often being the better choice as you can get them more experience points without going to war pre-DoI. You need to have at least 8-10 of them, i'd guess, to counter the REF's 25 men-of-wars; you don't have to kill EVERY MoW, you just need a large enough stack that you won't lose the stack while it's escorting galleys full of soldiers to go attack The king won't build up a stack of MoW's that big.

Heck, sounds like you could consider just going SoL/Privateer-only at this point - you probably have enough military forces, if you can kill off some of the REF's shipping. Can you go hardcore money for a hundred turns or so, and put all of that money to ships, and all of your manufacturing also towards ships?

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I'd suggest just not worrying about Jamestown and Roanoke once the fighting begins. You can take him out of those cities fairly easily once you kill off the rest of his forces.

The trouble there is the shipping. Though if the REF will attack them one at a time, i could retake the one that falls from the other and vice versa.

If they are where all of your arms production happens ... sorry Not a good idea to set it up that way, as you know.

I realize this now. By the time the revolution starts I suspect I won't need any additional guns. Also each armory produces 4 guns by itself thanks to FF, so minor stockpiles are popping up everywhere.

Dragoons are better, of course, I'm just assuming you have more guns than horses - except for the relatively rare veteran soldier, the rest of your units are all equal when it comes down to it, and if you have 120 colonists total, that's about 90 military units. Also, don't forget you need to keep your units working as colonists until the bitter end (until the DoI) in order to build up high sentiment.

Right now I have a standing army of 40 (Storing that many guns horses would be a pain) and enough guns to equip about 30 more infantry. I buy horses when I get the chance, and also slowly make them. I've also ramped up food production just to make more colonists to use those guns. It's a losing battle though, I make nearly enough guns for a colonist each turn, but get new colonists every few turns.

Sounds like you need a lot of privateers or ships of the line - privateers often being the better choice as you can get them more experience points without going to war pre-DoI.

Kind of wish I'd thought this out more. The other Europeans have a very pathetic navies, and I only needed one privateer to keep the Dutch down. Of course, I should have split the exp gains among multiple ships. Even with Veteran V and Navigation II, it's not going to be that awesome vs. a MoW.

Heck, sounds like you could consider just going SoL/Privateer-only at this point - you probably have enough military forces, if you can kill off some of the REF's shipping. Can you go hardcore money for a hundred turns or so, and put all of that money to ships, and all of your manufacturing also towards ships?

There never was a point in building anything else. the Spaniards built a privateer at some point, but mine scared it into staying in Port at Havana, where it was burned by the Sioux.

As for hardcore money, there's just no money to be had anymore, taxes are already over 80% and the indians all seem to be broke If I understand the trade system, it seems that taxes get jacked up faster if you produce many things than if you rely on a single source?

[snoopy369]

No, I think you are taxed based on your single highest production resource.

[Steve Clark]

What I did was to build 1 economic/trading city (that ended up around size 10-11) and tiny cities (size 1 for silver and a size 2 for furs/sugar). Both of those cities did nothing but converted what little hammers they had to Political Points. At 1600 (turn 100), I had 0 LB points. 30 turns later, it was at 50% simply by 3 Statemen, a newspaper and a few FF.

The only commodities I bought were guns, horses and cannons. No reason to buy anything else, and no reason to have done anything with the Natives or other colonies.

The one thing I can think of to make this game remotely challenging (besides house rules) is to have stockpiling of arms increase the REF. The other thing is to have a penalty for letting the REF take your city (or you abandoning the city). In Civ4, a sizeable force inside a city is hard to take with the defensive bonuses.

[joncnunn]

I don't have the game, so I'm just going after historical highlights:

Naval:

Americans didn't have anything bigger than Frigates. But American frigates had such a remarkable quality improvement over the British that evenually the British Admiraly gave instructions to it's frigate commanders to never fight an undamaged American frigate one or one.

As to Men of War; frigates have no business fighting Men of War at all, if they try to do so they'd be massacured. What the Frigate commander would do is out run the Man of War which he could easily do unless the sails were damaged.

I'm not aware of any American frigates succesfuly intercepting British troopships in the Atlantic during the Revolutionly war. They would instead succesfuly intercept a lone British frigate and the occansional merchantman.

They did however achieve Naval Superiority over the Great Lakes. The fact that Frigates couldn't sail into them from the Atlantic so both the Americans & Brits had to locally build the ships helped a lot.

Land:

The Americans did not fight the Brits straight up. (If they had done so we'd still be part of England). They instead generally only fought when they locally outnumbered the Brits and/or used the local terriagn & weather to their advantage