Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Akura]

I'll start by saying that my experience with this game is limited to FreeCol, but as far as I know, if a settlement reaches 200 food, it gets consumed to create a new colonist.

[USEC_OFFICER]

That happens in the original Colonization also, so you should check if you have more colonists kicking around. The game might set them to work automatically so checking your colonies in-depth would be a good idea. Given how important colonists are and the time it takes to immigrate from the home country, pumping out extra bodies this way is pretty damn useful. Sure they don't have any skills at first, but you can always educate them yourselves or give them on the job training in your military.

[Micro102]

I'll start by saying that my experience with this game is limited to FreeCol, but as far as I know, if a settlement reaches 200 food, it gets consumed to create a new colonist.

That makes so much sense, thank you.

[sambojin]

Loved Colonization (and FreeCol). The extra civs in FreeCol are nice, giving a few extra playstyles to try out. Though admittedly, some are a bit OP (Russian fur-trapping almost always gets you a huge lead in your initial exports, which means early scouts and ships, and where there's beavers, there's wood too ).

I found that an early scout rush of 2-3 scouts was the best strategy. Free gold, free resources, and getting to know where the tribes are for expert gathering/farming/fishing training is a massive boon in the early game. It gives you stuff to do early on, and is "how the game is meant to be played" (I didn't realize how big a difference it makes for ages when I played this originally. Having 2-3 scouts or more, not just 1. It's a bit random, but even just visiting tribes is a huge help. And you're not "just pressing Enter", you're doing useful stuff). Every scout will almost always earn you far more than even an expert in production would, and any that don't go *poof* can come back to town after you've nabbed all the nearby goody-huts (ruins) and first-contact-free-resources from the natives (you don't get a positive for being the second-to-meet any village, just info/aggro). Doesn't really matter what your docks are filled with, throw them on a horsey and go a-plundering (nicely of course). I usually let the home civ transport the first 1-3 treasure caches, after that I'll probably have my own galleon. Buying certain experts is perfectly acceptable (an early'ish statesman for founding father "research" and eventual production bonuses is probably worth it, or an expert in your main production type), so's speeding up dock times (everything's a basic scout or pioneer for a bit of extra cash at worst).

The "no criminals" founding father is one of my top choices early on, because it saves so much time and micro on training as well making your docks better. A useless free expert is still a colonist. But you'll want almost everyone to be expert'ish eventually, proper col or not. Natives ain't bad at some stuff. The "custom houses" one is a top pick later on, because they're brokenly good. If custom houses comes up early, grab it anyway. Screw taxes, screw embargoes, instant trade, don't ever miss out on this one (its not "necessary", but in classic Col it's brokenly-good). "Free transport of treasure" isn't bad either, because it turns 1000 gold into 2000, and 6000 gold into 12000, for no effort at all. Works on ruins, not just conquering native villages. Saves you buying a galleon until you actually want one, which is a big saving anyway. It *sort of* reads as: "You just made 4000 gold or more for choosing this guy, as long as it's still pretty early and you're still scouting. Almost (sometimes) every time." Which is nice. A huge swing on cash/cost, even for one poor find, and you may find more gold than that. You really should be investigating all ruins as it is, just to deny them to others, even if it kills a scout (try to use actual colonists or seasoned scouts on horsies, never criminals (definitely) or servants(? forget if they give a negative)).

I found that the only real let-down of the game is that the best strategy is to only ever have 1-3 towns. Most often I have two proper towns at endgame, and maybe a "native reserve" army barracks on completely indefensible terrain with no walls (sell them before the revolution, or just before it falls) if I'm food/pop capped in the other two towns. Harsh, but true. They're pretty amazing before the revolution, they'll cav-snipe what they can, but I've gotta prioritize somewhere. I don't want to have difficulties taking it back either. Just two proper towns works best though. Go high, not wide, with max defenses and main production/liberty boosters in your main towns. Then over half the motherland's army will splat itself on your cannon laden fortresses, and you can sally forth after that.



((some will poo-poo my picks on FFs above. But like anything Civ related, it's all about turn-advantage. MP or against the AI. Not having useless colonists on the docks (or ones you *have* to train or missionary out) is 5-10 turns pop of movement/production advantage in many cases. No bads = good, and it will save you plenty of movement/training time and native village slots to do it with, not just time on the docks. Stuyvesant's instant trade and being able to flood the rivers with tea is 5-20% trade advantage, never losing your terrain advantage, and insta-tick income (rather than multi-turn "lumps"). So you can buy stuff earlier to scale that to your advantage (after 100+ goods build-up lag), and always have your main goods saleable at low taxes as well. Cortes is random, but you always should be aggressively scouting and taking ruins anyway, so it makes that so much better when it pays off (even de Soto doesn't give that sort of swing. 4000+ gold production advantage is worth quite a few turns of advantage, even optimally done, and you did it without any movement time or ship cost. Always positive results doesn't equal immediately bankrolled with no cost. Hernan Cortes does). And if you do get into a native war, then at least it has a reasonable chance of a good outcome for you as well))

[sambojin]

Oh, it's also a surprisingly moddable game as well. There's a few .txt files that let you edit pretty much everything.

"names.txt" is the main one, letting you edit everything from hiring costs (for cheating purposes) to cargo/building prices (for differing economies) to AI use of units (may crash game, but have a fiddle for different era's and unit types).

It's all pretty easy to read and understand. Way easier than DF modding due to its brevity. I don't know of any mods actually made by anyone, but I've always wanted to have a crack at making an Australian one just to see if it would work. May be a bit weird due to mechanics->nations->history and the time period, but so's vanilla Colonization in some ways. Sort of an alt-history, the Great Australian Revolution.