Colonization strategy?

[dadacp]

I haven't played in a long while, but I remember this:

A very good opening gambit is to use your beginning soldiers to conquer an oppenent's starting colony. If you do it a few times, you'll be solidly in the lead. You'll usually succeed. But if you fail, you'll be way behind.

There was an exploit possible if you weren't playing the Dutch. You could go to the home port and make infinite money by equipping colonists with tools and then selling the tools. As I recall, the price of tools would stay low while equipping the colonists and then shoot up when selling, before going back to it's starting position. You just need enough colonists. I believe 6 was enough. It doesn't work with the Dutch because the price of tools doesn't go back to it's starting value.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by dadacp
I haven't played in a long while, but I remember this:

A very good opening gambit is to use your beginning soldiers to conquer an oppenent's starting colony. If you do it a few times, you'll be solidly in the lead. You'll usually succeed. But if you fail, you'll be way behind.

One huge advantage to this is that the AI seems to get expert colonists far more easily/early than is possible for players (ie: cheating?), hence taking a foreign colony after 30 or so turns will probably net you a few fishermen/farmers a lumberjack and a couple of town specialists.
Generating crosses (immigration) early on and equipping whoever shows up on the docks with muskets/horses (relatively cheaply) is a must for this tactic.

[phoenixcager]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
we had a Colonization forum at CGN but then they kicked me out and locked the whole community

CGN is back, but without a dedicated colonization forum. However, the colonization 2 project is still alive and has a forum of its own there.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I never build more than 6-7 colonies that I'm going to keep.
Sometimes there are others, but they are short-lived "mining" towns that exploit the best priced good until I knock prices thru the floor.

These colonies must become self-sufficient, as there is nothing more tedious than trying to take back a major colony of yours from the REF - so they ALL need lumber (goes without saying) and at least decent (say 6) ore production.

Once all are self-sufficient, equipped with maxed out guns and horses capacity and tonnes of soldiers, winning is a cakewalk.

And I'd be playing it right now but for the fact I can't get my dos copy to work with Win2k.

[Dark Sheer]

Ah, a fine game that I haven't played for a while

While I haven't been playing it for quite a while now, one thing I remember as most important towards the later part of the game:

1) Build lots of privateers. Use them to attack and damage those english troop ship. When the troop ship is damaged they have to return to england for repair (together with the troops). By doing this there are much much less troops to fight during the independence war.

2) Have at least a few mounted units in each of the cities. Do not let the british attack you. Colonist soldiers are weak on defense. So use the mounted units to attack the red coats out in the open before they can reach your cities. I remember this as the sure win strategy