Man, I love this game! And that's true even though I'm continually getting hammered by the AI by turn 50.

I've been playing the Conquistador scenario and trying to build 3-4 specialization colonies and usually have the capital at 1000 or so pop and the other 3-4 colonies 200-800 in size. By about turn 40-50, the AI's have tons of ships and high level troops and just wipe the floor with me. I did notice that in most cases, the AI only have one very large city, usually at 7000-10000 pop by that time.

Obviously, I'm missing something, so any help is greatly appreciated.

Raj

I pretty much just play on custom very hard; I've actually never played the scenarios since they don't have difficulty settings. I assumed the scenarios were not as difficult, but the AI never invades in my games unless you attack them or have a nearby colony. Maybe I should try the scenarios out.

My advice should still be useful.

The first half of the game is all about reinvesting your production into your economy. A good rule of thumb for each turn:
1. look at the population tab or a house, and build houses until you can house at least two more turns worth of growth.
2. if your food surplus is low build/upgrade farms - always maintain a surplus. Crops are cheap to build, so sell any excess to natives/mother country. That way if you accidentally starve your colony you can cut back on trades rather than watching everyone die while you build a farm.
3. build/upgrade mills/mines/commerce until your run out of labor. DO NOT ALLOW LABOR TO GO NEGATIVE. Your churches don't work properly if you have no free labor. Also leave enough free labor to cover your next turn's troop, settler, and ship building. If your colony is above level 1 then aim for three times as much wood production as metal production. Once your colony is level 3 try to build or upgrade a commerce building every turn or so. 5 or 6 commerce are typically enough. It always is better to build new mines, mills, and farms or upgrade lower level ones than it is to upgrade to higher level ones. The opposite is true for commerce.
4. Look back on the resources you have left over. Why did you stop building? If you ran out of a resource, go back and build/upgrade more buildings to produce that resource. If you have lots of any one resource left over, you are being wasteful.
5. If you stopped building because your ran out of labor, use your leftover labor to build churches. I usually find that 6 churches is the right amount. At some point churches will no longer matter, and they will be demolished. Try to build them in 2x2 squares so you can use the space for an extra fort. Don't demolish your churches until after you build all the settlers you plan on building.


My first reaction to your description was that you are building too many colonies. 3 colonies total is enough. If I go for that, then I try to get a generalized capitol, a specialized farm/fort town, and a specialized minetown. I'll send out my first settler around turn 20 and another around turn 30. With that setup, you can have enough forts and produce enough metal to build a full army every turn with plenty leftover without ever building a level 3 mine. But you can also win with 2 colonies, or even 1 if you have lots of space and know what you're doing. Extra colonies can be fun, but there are two big drawbacks: firstly, you need to build an extra army and level 4 forts for each extra colony. Secondly, you may grow slower if your wood has to wait an extra two turns before it can be used.

What really helped me improve my game most recently was realizing that I needed to settle on my goals, and look at what I needed to build to get whatever it was I wanted. You will almost always find that you need less than you think you need.


There is more to say, but following that advice should help you a lot. Also, this is a lonely forum, and I won't say more unless someone proves that they read this by posting.

Solid advice there.

I would perhaps add that when choosing site to set up colony, ideally you´d want some mountain, a lot of forest and some plain. Ideally with a river running by the woods.

However, to simplify this: make sure you have forest and that a mountain is reasonably close so that you can produce some gold.

At the end of the day , farms will work decently enough even if they are on forest.

Farms and mills improve radically when next to rivers.

my 2 cents...

My first priority is forest, since they wood is critical to early game growth, and the entire game rests on that. Then I look for flat land, since you spend so much space on your forts, war college, houses, and commerce, and extra farms are great to have (see below). Next priority is grassland, since farms are the best source of gold. A river is nice, but flat land is more important. You of course need access to a river or coast, which ensures that you have at least one farm at +0%, even if there is no grassland. I'll place near a mountain if it has everything else going for it, but I don't sacrifice anything for them.

I don't think mountains are necessary at all. It's nice to have a bonus to your mines, but they won't come into play and it really restricts your colony placement. Without a special resource, you don't get much of a bonus until you're within 1 or 2 tiles of the mountain. That means that either you get no benefit until colony level 3 or 4, or you get fewer tiles on colony level 3 or 4. That is a serious trade off. Secondly, you don't grow much faster from bonuses to mines. Level 1 colonies don't need metals. Level 2 colonies don't use it either until you have built all the level 1 buildings you can, and even then you might be upgrading to colony level 3 before you need to build level 2 buildings. So you are restricting your colony choices to get +50% on a few tiles after 20 turns? It's nice to have the bonus, but it often isn't worth it.

As for gold mines, they are not worth the investment. Ever. The only benefit is that you get some gold while at war with the mother country, but a little planning eliminates that problem. Take a +100% mine / +0% gold square. A gold mine will get you 20 gold, and a metal mine will get you 2 metals, which can be sold for 12 gold. The gold mine costs twice as much in terms of labor and resources, so the return on the metal mine is 20% higher. And in any case if you want gold, you shouldn't be selling metals for it. Grassland farms produce 4 crops at the cost of 4 wood, mills produce 1-2 at the cost of 3, and metal mines typically produce 1 for the cost of 4. Build/upgrade farms and sell the crops for all your gold, or your mills if you are short on crops.

Zantan's advice led me to run a few starts.

First off, cities get a bonus to their dominant industry. This bonus is shown in (parentheses) and approaches 40% asymptotically, depending on how many more squares that industry occupies versus any one of the others. Except Goods, they don't count. For example when querying a Mill you might see "+116% (35%) [29%]," it means that there was a terrain bonus of +52, a nearby Tree resource is giving +29, and the overall size of the Wood industry in the town compared to Metal and Crops gives +35.

One challenge is how you might play to make maximum use of this bonus... or will you just build balanced cities?

From what I can tell, it makes sense to go so far as to dedicate the first city to Lumber. By this, I mean the city should go well beyond what it needs to grow itself and pull in the largest possible bonus for its mills. It should have just enough farms to feed itself, then 2-3 times that many metal mines, some commerce, forts, and such, and cram in as many mills as possible. Farms are so cheap to build, and Commerce probably gives the most cash per square, but with Wood you have no delay. You don't have to sell goods or crops, wait for money to arrive, buy materials, and wait for them to arrive. This speeds up development drastically.

Also to prevent the labor from going negative, watch out on the following items- they draw surplus population on that turn and if they make your labor go negative your economy gets mauled.

- War College (120)
- Settler (150-600) level 1 to level 4
- Infantry (10-25)
- Cavalry (10-25)
- Artillery (5-20)
- Ship (80-200)
- Leader / Scout (1)

Concerning living space, Colony Center adds the same amount of Housing as a House of its level. Farm also adds 40-160 Housing. Troops in town take up living space, but they are castrated robots. They don't eat and don't contribute to pop. growth.

Well, you surely need to have a decent colony by turn 50. By decent I mean, 7k+ people and most buildings at level 4 if not all already; producing 200+ metal, 300+ wood, 160+ goods per turn. It easily can be your only one still by that time. But not much any longer.

I'm heavy builder, prefer to play on max sized worlds and have 7 and more (sometimes much more) colonies by turn 100~110, but rarely spawn my second base before turn 50 - only if stumble upon a nearby place seriously better for a decent balanced colony than my early start itself. Else I only recruit level 4 anything, especially settlers.

And here comes my advice, always plan for level 4 colonies, no matter how crippled they may look at lower levels. And the first one is not a real exception here. You should get it up to level 4 by turn 25~30, consider it to be your main objective until then.
(Get one level 4 fort then ...and maybe even one level 4 tavern if you can do it fast - level 4 explorers are seriously faster... but that may only matter on huge world with "difficult" movement - what is my preferred settings)

As to spin off additional colonies, starting with level 4 settler and decent base that can boost it you can get any colony center to level 4 in 8 turns or less:
1. Build the colony. In the same turn build 4 houses, a farm or two, 3-4 mills, up to 3 mines, 2 docks if you have a chance, but don't restrict your placement choice by this (many of my colonies only have access to any water by level 4). Whatever you build, make sure you left 20 wood in reserve.
2. Upgrade colony center to level 2. Start a transfer of 10 wood.
3. Usually you can't do much if anything in the new colony this turn. May add a mill if want, 1-2 docks if have chance opened by upgrade. Increase wood transfer to 20 and add a transfer of 20 goods.
4. Build a house or two, and/or second farm if still not have, but make sure you will have 40 wood next turn. Transfer 20 wood, 200 gold.
5. Goods arrive, upgrade colony center to level 3. Transfer 20 wood, 20 metal.
6. Build 2 commerce. Feel free to spend all wood and metal you have at this time. Transfer 3x 30 wood.
7. Feel free to spend wood you have, make sure there will be 20 metal next turn. (Change one of transfers to metal. Or anything you want. If anything at all.)
8. Upgrade colony center to level 4.
9. Consider the new colony finally founded. It will normally already have around 1000 people and small income of all resources. Plan out the optimal layout for it now. You may want to demolish some of the early built structures later.

It not crucial you send gold or metal first at turns 4. and 5. (but I prefer gold first just because else I may accidentally spend that sent over metal early), and you may be able to upgrade at turn 7. already if build less (or nothing at all) . Also, if you have early docks, each add a trade slot and that may spare at least one or two turns still. Of course, if transfer times are longer than one turn, it will slow you down a bit, about 2x the delay for the full sequence, so try to send from nearby colony, you can even relay transfers if need to (and have enough trade slots at midway station).

I won't be so badly concerned about this.
Sure, you want to watch labor availability for your first colony, but don't let it slow you down too much; if you in negative upgrade a house instead of industry, or even drop another church if early enough (but I rarely build those at all, and never bother to upgrade them above level 1 (well, I make one level 4 somewhere if I spot the Ancient Ruin to make sure it not unlock the Crusader).

Overall, if you fall short of labor, your dominant industry of that town will suffer gradual reduction of output until it not much of dominant anymore, after that all others will be cut proportionally. Sure, it not nice in your first town early on while every single thing matters badly, but in additional colonies that receive most resources by transfer initially I can't bother less. I have had 3k colonies with 8k labor demand, as long you don't have housing shortage it not tragedy, they will come eventually.

Now, some tips to save on labor.
- start with a single Fort initially. Forts require labor, and draw it before any industry do. I never recruit lesser units anyway (unless heavily pressed to do so) and it is much better to start and upgrade them to level 4 one-by-one.
- eventually you want 12-14+ docks in your main commuting cities (and at least 4-6 anywhere else), but be mindful of spamming those too early - they require a lot of labor when upgraded, and just as forts draw it before industry.
- only place War College when you are ready for it. For me it means to be able to spent upwards of 2k gold on it every turn from then onward, it barely makes any sense to have before that. (btw, I spend my first 30k on leader research for nice recruits with 40 points; before I do that I only recruit one leader next turn after upgrading my first town center to level 4)
- for me, it is more labor-effective to upgrade industry buildings not place many more low-levels. It may not be true, but I have feeling it also hurts less if (when) you fall short of labor if you have few high level buildings against having a multitude of small ones (possibly they shut down one building at a time, low ones first?).

Obviously, finished colony should have about 600~1000 more housing than labor demand to house army and offer flexibility for various recruiting. I have seen old tips suggesting the opposite must be true, but I will agree with you on this. So, it is worth the risk to keep army near the town not in it for the few first turns while there is housing shortage.

Yeah the war college is timed by the map and situation. Natives or one of the european nations starts out at war with the mother country? War for independence? If the player is Dutch, things should be delayed absolutely as long as possible to allow gold interest (5%) to pile up.

I was trying to work out some guidelines on upgrades but they're hard... since obviously it changes depending on % bonuses. But no matter the bonus, it takes more time for a building to pay for its higher levels. This applies to all producers except the Commerce building. A commerce should be upgraded all the way before a new commerce is built. The other producers should cover all available land before existing ones are upgraded. The Center should be upgraded to Level 4, and everything sprawled out, before there are many Level 2 buildings. I think what happens is that specialists in the forts remove a new soldier's entire abdomen as soon as he is inducted into the brotherhood, and replace it with a fuel cell core, just like they did in colonial times.

1st main Goal:
- Declare Independence before turn 75
+ Do this by:
*having no more than 3 Cities; instead have settlers positioned where you want a future colony to be
* Mother Country is defeated when your War College is at LvL 3 to 4;
=Upgrade only attack-calvary, attack-cannon, and defense-calvary to lvl 3-4
*declare Independence by removing auto pay taxes and not by declaring indepence. this will give you about
eight turns to spend income on war college
*allway be adjusting your deplomacy towards peace to avoid fighting.

2nd main Goal:
- Create Income Network
+ Do this by:
*build focused-cities. i.e. Wood-City, Commerce-City, Fort-City. FCs sell to Europe and send gold to Port-City
*After focused-cities, then build two Port-Cities. PCs are cities with as many docks as possible.
=One Port-City to receives gold from all FCs and then sends all gold to the second Port-City
=Second Port-City has the only War College in all of your cities. All gold received is spent in the War College

3rd main Goal:
- When your war College expense is maxed out, then you build two More Port-Cities. One to receive gold, the
other with War College number two.

The AI stops playing around turn 250. I wish i knew how to mod games to see whats going on.