Beating Colonization

[buthe]

good tipp

just get one town, with a connection to ore, and build it up, then assemble all units there and declare independence, if you wanna win quick.......

[Sava]

I've finished a ton of colonization games. I have never finished a Civ3 game. The key to winning is building massive amount of your own troops. Sell tobacco, tools, and trade goods to the rich natives to get tons of cash. Build a small group of colonies that have access to lots of tobacco, wood, and ore. Have your colonies specialize in an area. It's important to have one dedicade to building muskets and cannons. Have about 7 cannons in each colony. And about 15-20 Dragoon units per colony available for counter-attack and defense. Make sure all of your colonies are Fortress!. When they attack, you'll take some initial losses, but be sure to counter-attack. That's the key... let them surround your cities, then counter-attack with your human wave attacks of Dragoons. That's why you want to have so many.

[Makeo]

My strat to win on Viceroy is to build 2 or three cities. Pump out the liberty bells as much as possible early to get the 100% production bonus and build those cities up. Pump out veteren soldiers with Universities and Cathedrals bringing in the recruits. Usually the ideal site has two ore producing squares, two forests and the rest ocean. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I'm playing around with mass genocide right now. Pretty easy 15,000 for each incan city right now with Cortes.

[bwa]

hey i used to play this game for years than the only comp i had with it on it crashed and i had to get rid of it what you need to do is try to get a medium sized island with 4-5 fortess' on it all connected by roads lots of artillery would help also. Having draggons outside the colonies isnt always good either keep your frigates or man-o-wars outside and make sure to have a lot of them

[Ellestar]

Originally posted by Makeo

Usually the ideal site has two ore producing squares, two forests and the rest ocean.

or 1 square w/ore + 3 forests for building artillery at max speed

[GePap]

The best defense is a good offense. You have a huge advantage attacking the REF, and since their forces always attacks the turn after landing, if you can get enough of your own troops in the are, you can wipe out their landing forces before they attack you. Attackign their forces is a huge force multiplier for yourself. I say, defend with arty, and use all your dragoons to attack, attack, attack thier forces on the field.

[Ozz]

Don't trade with your own country, Take the Tax revolts
when availble. The REF is increased by selling you goods and your trading Tax. Trading with Indians screws the REF (watch it your bext game, it doesn't increase randomly)

Don't turn on custom houses until the revolution (if
then even)

[LordEd]

Well I have just finished up a very satisfying Colonization game. I had not played it in many years, and I just reinstalled it. The difficulty was Viceroy (the hardest) and I customized the world to play on one with Small Land Mass and Archipeligo. I planted all of my colonies on the sea (except for three that were right next to the sea and connected by short wagon trade routes).

I continued selling my goods to Europe, and did not do much in the way of Indian Trading. However some of my favorite strategies are as follows:

1-Trade muskets and horses to all of the indians near any European nation other than you. I had great success with getting the Incas and the Aztecs to respectively attack both the English and Spanish.

2-I eventually stopped sending ships to Europe at all. I built 4 customs houses and had all of my ships head there from the other colonies. I would also make sure to equally produce all trade goods, so that the bottom would not ever drop out of any of the markets.

3-I had 11 colonies on my main continent, 8 on the sea and 3 inland. I also had 9 other captured colonies on various nearby islands. My colonies ranged in size from 7 to 23. (23 was of course my state-designed Utopia, "Stalingrad". I was getting 45 guns/turn out of that place, as well as 45 hammers/turn).

When I geared up to declare Independance I got each and every colony up to 100% Rebel Leaning. Also, I put forts in every colony (fortresses I could only afford for a few). At one time my money was at 60,000, so I just bought a bunch of forts and units (a pile of privateers and artillery).

Then I started fortifying my cities. When it came time to declare Independance, I had 1-2 artillery and 1-2 dragoons in each city. However, I had also linked them all by roads, and had stockpiles of horses and muskets (50-100 each), and some backup veteran soldiers working as colonists.

To put this in perspective, the Dutch Expeditionary Force had in its command 100 regulars, 30 dragoons, 30 artillery, and 18 man of wars. However they kept landing piecemeal. For example, on a small southern island that I had 3 cities (and I mustered 3 artillery and 8 dragoons), the King literally wasted half his entire force a little bit turn by turn. I did not lose a man. All in all, I was expecting a tougher fight.

So having said all that, it is indeed quite possible to win without massive forces. Now let me see what I can do with your game.

[Fighter]

Your absolutely right. I find that with every war of independance, Im always let down by how easy it is.

I expect it to be a seat of your pants, oh no Ive lost all but these two cities about to lose one of them affairs. If I prepare for it though, I find I just sit back and watch the REF hurl itself against my walls.