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Another question for everyone: have you found a way to use missionaries well? And I mean legitly, not reloading every time they get burnt or make the indians hostile.

For me, it seems that whenever I send a missionary, even a Jesuit, to the settlements close to me, they either make the indians upset to red exclaimation marks, or even mad enought to outright kill the missionary. Even when they are successful, I don't seem to get anything out of it. VERY occasionally, an indian unit would come and join me as converts, but there are too few of those and you have to wait too long for them to justify spending a fully capable colonist as a missionary.

[laiocfar]

Firstly, the best place to start is south america like uruguay, u got tobacco from uruguay, cotton from Argentina, sugar from brasil and from inlanf silver and ore.

Secondly i use missionaries to calm the indians.

[Doc Adrian]

I don't have much luck with Missionarys either, I just prefer to trade with Indians and use free colonists and train them to be experts so I don't really use converts after a while.

They are good for stirring up trouble with rival missions and euro nations.

Actually, I used to really like the Uruguay/Brasil/Argentina area as well, for just the reason you mentioned: a ton of different resources. k: But then I looked at North America a little closer and realized that you can get all the same resources there as well and right in coastal colonies. There's tobacco in Virginia (naturally!), Cotton above that and Sugar in Florida and Cuba. The Appalachians are a decent source of ore, while to the north you've got great food, wood and fur lands.

So what I like to do is start off in the northern parts of US and in Canada, where fur gives early income and a bit later good food production makes it easy to run education towns. Then I expand south further along the coast until my colonies stretch to about Texas.

I also find North America fairly easy to defend if your colony is centrally located about modern day Washington DC. Very early on, I can kick out all the Europeans that try to land and keep the whole area for myself. I just hate it when they settle near you and give you problems later on.

Missionaries to reduce indian alarm? That'd be nice. For me they seem to usually do the opposite, i.e. piss the indians off.

[rlbell]

Originally posted by Privateer@Mar 4 2006, 06:20 AM
Hmm, so you expand inland along the river, rlbell?

I thought this would be difficult to do initially because your colonies wouldn't be on the shore and you wouldn't be able to pick up goods from them easily. I suppose you could sent wagon trains, but it's a bit annoying to bother with them.

How do you manage to trade with the Incas? They are so far away and across mountains! When they do sell you silver, how do you get it to Europe? Do you haul it all the way to the port on the other side of the continent? Or do you only start that trading after your empire is fairly developed and you have customs house in a nearby city that produces a ton of tools for sale?

That sure sounds like a cool different game of Col to try though. I've never tried to colonize along the Amazon, only either along the caribbean coast or in Argentina and southern Brazil.

I'm not sure I totally agree that tools are everything. Tools are nice, of course, but what I find to be the most valuable thing to have by far is people. Since money directly translates into people (at 600 gold per colonist, worst case scenario), my strategies tend to focus on how to get more gold. The best way is to trade with the indians and reaload whenever you tire them out by bargaining, but that seems like a cheat to me, so I avoid it. And without reloading trade loses a lot of its appeal since your profit margins shrink badly.

The added annoyance of wagon trains is worth the potential reward of fewer coastal colonies. One of these games, I will manage to only have one port. A single port has the disadvantage that you need more wagon trains, but the advantage that the expeditionary force will land exactly where you expect it. If you have been profitably trading with the natives, or been sufficiently industrious, you might have accumulated enough money to buy (spend gold to complete) thirty, or more, units of artillery. Having them all in the one fortress will catch one or two the king's man-o-war in a rather nasty surprise. It also allows you to concentrate your continental cavalry where they will do the most good.

Too many colonies on the coast force threaten you with defeat in detail, as expeditionary troops arrive in large enough lumps to overpower any local garrison. A single port, filled to the ridgepoles with continental cavalry and wagon trains full of horses, is an extremely hard nut to crack

Tools are literally an essential part of industry. Tools become muskets and help build every type of advanced industrial building. There are actually rather few colony improvements that do not require tools. Also, all land improvements require the expenditure of tools

Incan trade is done by the laborious method of building a road. Admittedly, incan trade is easier if you start in the Orinoco river (modern Venezuela).

I do not dicker with the natives, as they usually offer more than the goods are worth and sell for a price that allows for a comfortable margin.

You're absolutely right, tools are important. They're just not supreme is what I ment. If I have a ton of tools, it's hard to make use of them all. Sure, some are needed to build up colonies, some more goes to developing land, but that's about it. Getting more people will give a boost in almost all situations, since there are so many things for them to do. Among other things, they can build a new colony and make tools.

I've never made a lot of muskets in this game since if you fight smart muskets are never lost - horses are. The initial supply I buy from Europe while prices are low plus an odd bunch here and there that I steal from other Europeans lasts me all the way to late game. Once my core colonies are built up and fields are plowed, need for tools in peaceful domestic applications drops by a lot and that's when I start building up an arsenal. Coincidentally, this is usually when my colonies stop needing more people to work in them and so a lot of new immigrants get turned straight into dragoons and sent to get experience in wars with indians and other Europeans. Indians are prefered, of course, since they are usually easier targets; just have to be careful not to burn their villages.

Another very important thing IMO is food, which gets you horses. They're constantly spent in wars, especially the war for independence, for which it'd nice to stockpile as much as possible. Horses also seem to become more expensive over time in Europe even if you don't buy any, and a little bit of extra money can be made by selling them in peacetime.

Wood is close there as well. You must play quite differently from me because I always end up with shortages of wood. That's one of the reasons I haven't thought about trying to settle in the Amazon basin. Rainforest is a pretty lousy source of wood compared to mixed and coniferous forests.

Basicly, my rough calculations are that a colony needs three, preferably four good squares for food production by expert farmers/fishermen. That leaves the other four squares. Two or three of them I'd dedicate to raw material production to supply some type of industry in the colony, leaving just 1 or 2 for lumber. That leaves me with only 8-24 lumber, barring a special lumber resource in a square, which is still not good enough to supply three expert carpenters. Because of this, I actually designate "lumber" as the raw material of some colonies and "carpently" as its product. This is the colony I would have cranking out artillery or ships all the time. It works OK, but still, there's never such a thing as enough artillery.

[Grand Dad]

Well I always prefer starting in the Amazon area, preferably near a hill, then expanding north and westwards. South is scrub and very unproductive. Dislike the islands - too little space and fewer raw material plus places like Cuba have the Arawaks who are very unreliable. The Tupis can easily be subdued.
Never sell horses, guns or tools to them unless you aim to arm them against the other Europeans. And I never attack a village unless they force me to.
It's always better to send a missionary to a capital. The Incas are usually very co-operative.

happy Gaming!

[Gelfo]

I think I might have said this in an earlier post, but I always play on a randomised map, that way it's more fun to explore unknown regions, and it is like a new world.

I don't bother with missionaries as I normally play as England and about half way through the game I end up with more colonists than I know what to do with! So every Colony will have 3 or 4 people sitting outside it waiting for something to do. I do think that's only because I play as england though. Spains bonus means nothing to me as I don't attack the indians, the French bonus doesnt actually seem to make a whole lot of difference and the Dutch bonus isnt a long term benefit.. although it's helpful at the start.. I think I'll be Netherlands next time I play.

[Doc Adrian]

The other advantage of taking the Dutch is you don't have to play against them, particularly on the harder levels they can be quite brutal.

What level do you usually play at?

[blastradius14]

How to use Missionaries.

They will start getting angry at you if you try to convert all of thier colonies too fast. However, if you use experts (Get the Founding Father for this) and you do it as 1 per every 10 turns you can turn even the Iroquois and the other huge indian nations into your allies. To keep them calm, give them muskets/horses/tradegoods/tools as a gift. Especially if you plan on them helping you in the War of Independence. Indians kick the king's units behind. An Expert converted city will resist conversion by other powers and the king much better than a normal missionary.

Also, don't build right next to them. If you can, be at least 5 squares away from any of thier cities. That way, you would need in excess of 40 some units in that colony to cause them alarm.