Imperialism 2 is hard.

[lord of the mark]

I mean really, maybe its just me, but it seems that at the FAIR level (no cheats for AI) its about as hard as Civ2 on Deity, and harder than SMAC on transcend.

I played as England, and managed to keep up, but made some stupid strategice decisions (fought the wrong people, for too long) and ended up clearly unable to win.

Next two games I fell behind from the beginning - as France it took way to long to get sufficient iron, and as Spain im having resource problems all around - of course ive pretty much neglected Flanders, probably a bigger mistake than my strategic mistakes as England.

[Grumbold]

I find it a bit of a coin toss. If you can get a good mix of resources in your home territories and find a lucrative colony to grab it is easy. If you fall behind its very hard to regain ground.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I find it a bit of a coin toss. If you can get a good mix of resources in your home territories and find a lucrative colony to grab it is easy. If you fall behind its very hard to regain ground.

thats a big piece of the problem, even with two explorers ive been having trouble finding lucrative new world provinces.

[General Ludd]

It's a cake walk if you can get early claims on good resources. It's been a while since I've played, but I remember using about 4 explorerers to quickly scout out all the good resources and then spending all my money buying up native land and taking over peacefully.

[child of Thor]

I've never played a game through to the winning stage, but one thing i notice is that even if the early game seems quite relaxed and you have all the time in the world - you dont!
So churn out as many explorers as you can and get finding resources(as this is probably the key to the game). If you play it too easy ealry on by the time you start to have problems with the other powerful nations its usually too late to do anything about it

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I've never played a game through to the winning stage, but one thing i notice is that even if the early game seems quite relaxed and you have all the time in the world - you dont!
So churn out as many explorers as you can and get finding resources(as this is probably the key to the game). If you play it too easy ealry on by the time you start to have problems with the other powerful nations its usually too late to do anything about it

Next game I'll try 3 explorers instead of two.

OTOH, i came close to winning as England (real old world map, which i like) execpt for above mentioned strategic mistakes, so maybe I'll go back and try them again.


There I didnt play optimal early game, i ended up with spice provinces and later silver and gold provinces instead of diamonds and gems. I could have gotten the gems and diamonds IF i had quickly made peace with Spain, and turned on Portugal which held them. Instead while I tried to round out my colonial frontier by grabbing worthless provinces from Spain, France seized the Portugese colonies, and France was much stronger than Portugal. I long war with France for the diamond colonies left my empire drained.

[CapTVK]

Just blockade his homeport with an assortment of sloops and galleons. If his merchant fleet is sufficiently damaged, he's toast.

[Zkribbler]

Thanks for the tips about the multiple explorers. My opening stategy has always been to develope my resources as much as possible and to only have two or three explorers. Although this powers me throught the mid-game very well, I'm always struggling because the other powers have the gems, diamonds and gold while I'm left with the silver and spice supported by lots of trade. Money; I need money!

[Az]

Imp 2....hmmm, it's been a while...

[pg]

it is quite hard. the gameplay isn't very balanced - it's almost entirely dependent on how lucky you are. if you find some very good stuff you'll have a shot at winning but if you don't you are practically doomed to lose. the game has a bad power curve where if you start to lose you'll have an even harder time clawing your way out of that hole.

i also suspect the game/ai cheats somehow because i normally have a hard time finding very good resources but at least a few ai's seem to find them right away. related to the power curve it seems like the ai has a very hard time losing, while i don't, if that makes any sense. it's like the ai gets bonuses the worse it does, but the player will have a much harder time the worse he plays.

last time i seriously played imp2 i could regularly beat the normal settings(iirc the one where you don't get bonuses and neither does the ai supposedly). i think i generally used as many explorers as possible for the begining few turns(until turn 20 or so) then disbanded them after i discovered everything. i definately used more than 3 or 4. also a good start is absolutely necessary - iirc you need a few iron along with a good amount of everything else. you should have your mainland up and running in under 5 turns if possible(and maxed within 10?). the start is much more important than the end game since the balance of power is basically decided after the new world is claimed.

[lord of the mark]

Im still playing as Spain, and have managed to claw back from my poor start. Its hard but possible. Its 1845, and if I dont win, I will end up just a few provinces short of victory.

[pg]

this thread made me start playing again... here are some screenshots from my game tonight(easy difficulty of 20 except i choose my capital city site). i would have gone on to win before 1800 but the game got stuck in autocombat and i couldn't get out it(that's a bug i've never seen before).

after playing again i think a good start is the most important thing. whatever your strategy is you need to be able to pull it off without waiting turns for resources as that has an exponential cost in the long run.


i was killing natives with my army every other turn or so(so they could heal back up inbetween). is there any advantage at all to peacefully assimilating natives? i know at the harder difficulty levels they are much stronger military so you can't always use brute but brutce force seems to work best if you have it.


galleons are great as i usually have excess bronze compared to cast iron. also building them lets you upgrade to a warships later which have less cargo but by that time my economy is booming so i have no problem building larger merchants to make up the difference.


before the game got stuck it was in the 1760s and i had taken germany, france was reduced to it's capital province and i was at war with the evil swedes. i was also just a few turns away from letting scotland join my empire(and thus just being a few provinces from victory).

playing gotcha(when you and your enemy move around unoccupied provinces every turn) in natives lands is annoying. i had an army not large to guard my flanks so it took quite a long time to get france's army isolated enough to engage(see ss 1 and 4).

i also found another bug where sometimes if you put the computer in control of trade he will be able to to trade more things. i was only able to trade 3 but after i let the computer automanage it, it went up to 6. after i changed it back it was at 3 again.

[lord of the mark]

well i won my game = Holland diploannexed on the last turn - one province to spare.


So i played again as England (BTW, ive played with historical Europe map, i dont feel ive exhausted the replayability with that yet, and it adds versimilitude) built 3 explorers this time. With 3 explorers and good luck i had a much better start. quickly found a province with diamonds, and another with gems. began to develop aggressively.

Still screwed up on diplomacy though. Was allied with Sweden and Holland. Sweden ends up at war with France and Spain. I honor the alliance, then Holland breaks our alliance. No problem, we can take on France and Spain - no border with Spain, a relatively narrow colonial border with France. I can fight aggresively or not as I choose. Then Holland attacks Ireland, my pact ally. Greedy for Ireland, I go to war with Holland, enabling me to diploannex Ireland. Well Holland has one colony on a continent that i otherwise completely control. And bordering on several provinces. Im quickly losing (low value) colonial provinces, and to hold on im building a larger army, and running short of food. Sweden is, of course, completely ineffective as an ally. So im basically fighting three powers, and im not ready.

Time to reload - ive got a save from before the wars begin. I think I will avoid the war with France and Spain, and take on Holland, to round out my colonial continent.

[lord of the mark]

yeah playing gotcha really is annoying. Im thinking of focusing on "rounding off" continents wherever possible to avoid that, and the associated tedious task of constantly reassigning armies.

[pg]

i used 4 explorers last time and i had them within a few turns of the start. i also rarely ally myself in the early game as you can get tied up fighting when it's not effective to fight at that time(later on in the game is when to start fighting). actually quite a few games i don't ally until i am forced into war or i want to start a war. i find you are generally taken advantage of by the computer in alliances.

i'm going to start a new game too(on normal difficulty this time) and probably on the old europe map. i think i'll play sweden but not sure. i'll post some ss's if i do decent.