Powerhouse Economy

[TimmyKGB]

I had an interesting game on a custom map today. My colony was founded at distance 2 from the travel to europe zone.

I was playing on quick speed which meant 1 turn trips to Europe.

My first FF was the -50% travel time to europe guy. And he rounds down!!! So this meant I went form 1 turn trips to 0 turn trips.

I later added the +1 speed for a bunch of ships guy to my FF's. I now had a 5 speed merchantman.

This ship was to start in the arriving from Europe tile, travel into my colony, trade/unload, travel back out of the arriving tile. Go to Europe, trade, and arrive from europe in a single turn. That seems pretty insane!

Anyways with all this shipping power I was able to setup what I am starting to believe is the optimal colony design.

Basically I didn't bother with developing any resources, I imported lumber, tools, cotton, fur, tobacco, and sugar and horses. I exported cloth, coats, cigars and rum.

The reason not developing any resources was so powerful for me was that enabled me to use all 8 adjoining tiles for food. By taking advantage of natives to train expert farmers and fisherman this allows one to support massive colonies that can have:
8 food makers
3 Statesman
3 Clergy
3 Carpenters
15 Producers

which gives a total size of 32 (requires 64 food).

Note that a relatively bland tile gives +2 food, which is +3 with a farm, and +6 for an expert farmer with a farm.

Similarly all coast tiles with no bonus resources give a minimum of +3 (after docks), or +6 with an expert fisherman.

This means even if one had 8 1 fish tiles surrounding an island that had a +2 food tile (a pretty terrible location),
one could still get 50 food or 25 population (before bonuses).

Note that with the rebel sentiment bonuses one can easily ramp this up fairly significantly, so even that marginal a site leaves the possibility of a size 32 city in play.

This means one wants non-landlocked (way too much work to do all this with wagon trains), tiles that aren't next to any 0 food tiles. One needs to find easy access to expert farmers and expert fishers. One also wants specialists for the production areas (these are generally bought from europe or found on the docks).

The following specialists are not valuable in this system:

All non-food tile specialists

The following specialists are essential to this system:

Expert Fisher, Expert Farmer (foodies)

The following specialists are useful in this system:

Carpenter, All production specialists (including elder statesman and firebrand preacher).

Note:

Elder statesman early is very valuable in this system as you can start making liberty bells immediately and build political points. This enables you to jump start your FF's.

You can deal with the massive REF by having a swarm of elite cavalry (Dragoons).

Use your huge profits to buy population to turn into dragoons.

I wanted to post this strategy because it lets you experience playing the game probably close to the way it was intended (actually try and get FF's, enjoy bonuses from liberty bells and fight a huge cool war in the end rather than a lame small one).

The dutch are far and away the best team for this because of how explosive they are at the start of the game, and because of the market stability skill.

I prefer the +25% production bonus, but a good argument can be made for using the slower tax increases guy. My experience is once you're up and running you can survive massive tax because for every sugar you buy you produce 2 rum (at 100% liberty with rum factory), and sugar is cheaper to buy than rum is to sell. Even at 75% taxes, buying sugar at 6 and selling rum at 12, one breaks even. I've never had 75% tax so I expect to always be making money.

As long as one uses this huge economy to keep a strong well-trained army (on horseback) oen should be ok in the end fight.

[Sir Alkis]

At which level was that game of yours?

[TimmyKGB]

One of the lower ones

It was a low level game, I turned difficulty down to try non-standard strategies, at high levels of difficulty playing 3 settlement seems to work best.

[Sir Alkis]

Thanks for answering. I play low level too (explorer) mainly because I hate Civ4 battles.

For that reason I rarely build factories and declare independance early, about 1620. In fact there are a lot of buildings I don't use. I don't build univercities, shipyards stables and forts, cathedrals or factories very rarely.

And yes 3 cities, that's how I play.

[TimmyKGB]

I agree on the entire education system.. just buy experts or train with the natives, and any shipyard after docks (cheaper to buy the ship than buy the guns and tools and build it). I've declared independence at all sorts of difficult time scales.

I can do quite well with the 3 settlement strategy on revolutionary but when I try and do crazy stuff I play on lower levels.

[Sir Alkis]

I tried with less settlements in my last games. One city is definately hard because 3x expert statesmen are not enough to raise the rebel sentiment sufficiently. In the end I had to dismiss a lot of colonists to achieve the needed 50%

But 2 cities do work. By the time you are ready you get some FF that give bonuses to the LB production. And of course, now you have 6x expert statesmen and 2 town halls.

[DarkCloud]

How did you handle the embargoes?

[Sir Alkis]

I submit to the will of the King most of the times, unless it's something not important like food or trade goods.

In the original colonization there was the custom's house that let you auto-trade and also one FF who let all your embargoes to be forgiven. But they took that out unfortunately.

[DarkCloud]

That's why I was wondering how you dealt with them in this version. It seems more difficult to deal with fast-rising taxes than it was in the older edition.

Thank you for the response.