Bought it last night....

[SandMonkey]

If any of you have ever been in the Civ2 section, you might have seen me over there before...

I bought EU last night, mainly because my physics teacher told me it was a great game and I should buy it. I ran through the tutotrial, but I couldn't find some things I was wondering in the manual. Anyone care to help?

I figured out how to colonize a land, but how do you get the colony to grow? Do you need to get trade routes with it? That's another question, I couldn't figure out how to trade within my realm.

What'd the difference between a Trading Post and a Colony? Just the initial price to build it? I realize that the ability to build a trading post came later in the game, is that the only dif.?

I ended up getting my butt kicked by some natives that built fortresses, so I just quit the game...

Thanks for your help, I am going to try this again, so I may have more questions later.

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

Open up the new province,look in the church and you will see a% growth for the province,its
best to send further colonist untill you reach 1000 people, at that point its unlikly to
decrease in size.
There is no trade as such, you get a base level which changes through time and can improve
with building upgrades.
Trading post give a higher trade return but dont grow into a city.
Go to eu web site and get the 1.8patch for your langauge version,grab husz free guide
as its full of usefull stuff.
Hannibal

[SandMonkey]

thanks!

A couple more dumb questions -

What is a good way to get a positive cashflow early? Or close to early at least... I have tried a couple scenarios, and I got my colonies into cities, even defeated the natives in the territories, but I was still losing money. Is it in the trade?

Oh, and how do I just "exit"? I saved the game... but then all I could see was surrender or some such. Is that the way to get out?

[Zkribbler]

Ha. I'm an old timer. I've had the game for almost a week.

Trading posts don't grow. Colonies do. When colonies get to a population of 700, they turn into cities. Trading posts don't have ports for your ships, and you can't recruit armies or build anything there.

You guessed right on exiting the game. First you save; then you surrender. Seems like a psychologically bad thing to do to the players.

[Zkribbler]

My question for the group:

Every once in a while, I heard a sound which sounds like a stum on a harp, but nothing seems to have happened. What's that all about?

[SandMonkey]

Thanks RobRoy, that put things a bit more in perspective.

I played all morning long as the Russians, and I was getting my arse whooped in wars. I managed to wrangle one territory from the Teutonic Knights, but that was it. How do you score a decisive victory in a war? Each time I went to the make peace screen it never let me make any demands. Do I just have to make a HUGE army and compeltely destroy my opponent? I even had "control" of other provinces, and my enemy was not attacking me at all, and yet I couldn't make any demands.

Oh, one other problem. I saved a game last night, but when I went to go play it today the clock wouldn't start, so to speak. I paused and unpaused the game, and changed the rate of time, but it still wouldn't start going. Should I pause the game when I go to save it? Or was this just a fluke?

[Allemand]

When you go to the peace screen you should see some stars (if you are winning) or coffins (if you are losing) or nothing (neither winning or losing). If you have stars you can make demands.

Don't know about the pausing. Did you close all the messages that popped up?

[RobRoy]

Cash flow - Your primary source of cash is the Census tax you get each January - only way to increase that is by getting more provinces or upgrading the infrastructure therein. You can get cash from peace, or course. Monthly income doesn't translate to cash unless you specifically order some be diverted to your Treasury. This contributes slightly to inflation and it reduces the amount available for research and stability.

Keep in mind that you get NOTHING from a trading post, directly. Your trading post(s) contribute to some Center of Trade's value. You get a percentage of a Center of Trade's value each month, depending on the number of merchants you have there, the amount of competition (if you have a monopoly), and your trade tech level.

It's tough to say whether Trading Posts or colonies are better in the long run, because your research is divided over the number of full-sized cities you have (700+). A really rich province with lots of people (like the Indian ones) is usually better as a colony, the math is not so clear (in my mind) with more mediocre provinces.

Though most colonies will grow, depending on your stability, religion, and a few other factors, this growth is awfully slow. And if your colony is in a tropical area you will see negative growth rates next to its population, untill you reach 700. So if you haven't killed off the natives, you should probably focus on building one colony at a time until it reaches city size (and gets a nice population boost for absorbing the remaining natives).

Harpsound = random event happening to someone, I believe.