Though I'm a Chinese, I try to write the introducing in English. Its name is Colonization (Sid Meier's).
Thank for Microsoft Word that it correct my mistakes.
Suppose that you have a basic contact with classical Civilization II (or the most disappointing rubbish CIV3). Most hotkeys are same. Now let's just play it. "Start a game in New World".
Then you have to choose the difficulty, from easy to tough, you get differently Title, they are "Discoverer Explorer Conquistador Governor Viceroy" as the difficulty you choose. I have just as Conquistador played. Then select the four nations (maybe arrantly bandit), among them has Dutch a relative "better" reputation. I played as Dutch. Every nation has different bonus advantage, name of leader and cities.
Nation: Leader. Advantage
English: Walter Raleigh. To get new emigrate you just need to glean two-thirds of "Cross" as other powers.
Francaise: Jacques Cartier. You cause the alarm of Native at only half rate as other European powers.
Espana: Christopher Columbus (Italian?). Get 50% bonus during Attacking Native as their profession.
Netherland: Michiel de Ruyter. The commerce, by dumping and purchasing are commodity (maybe it means only rum cloth cigar coat) prices not be effected so drastic as in other nations. And it will soon recover to normal price.
After a read of their brief we get to start the game.
If you select Easier, you got 1000 at the beginning, and 300 for easy, and 0 for other levels. You get one unit soldier with gun and another with tools. It depends on the level you selected. For some you can get veteran soldiers. By easier levels are the expedition forces weaker.
At the right side, upper is the minimap, in middle is Info Window. Date, tax-rate, treasury, locate moves ship type terrain onboard units. Upper there is the menu. File-->Game Option, Strongly suggest that you switch the "End of Turn" on, it's very important. If you play it first time, please switch "Tutorial Hints" also on. And "Auto save" also as being ragged by AI in CIV2. You can also read "colonizopedia" before engage in it. If you don't have CD's track, you can rip music of KOEI's Dahanghai4, they are deadly good but not long enough. You will see some Event pictures when some event happens. E.g. meet the native, meet other European rivals. Press E to go to Europe. If you play on Laptop, it is not easy to go diagonally, but either move diagonally or straightly spends 1 move point, as king in chess.
At the first glance of natives, they ask you for peace, if you don't agree, then they come into war. They are weak facing the musket armed army. They can learn to feed horse, and to buy muskets. If they attack, they got 100% bonus for ambush. There are following natives: Incas, Aztecs, Arawaks, Iroquois, Cherokee, Apache, Sioux, Tupi. Each deals with you friendly at first. But if you damage too much forest will enrage them. Before that they will warn you. Then if you don't stop doing that, they will attack you. They protect the environment and their land from pollution as night elf, keep their land to nature, they don't fare of war against modern European. If the natives are still friendly to you, you can send your colonist or servant to learn skills from them. They don't have much money, if you send goods to them, they can't afford enough payments. And sometimes they make ambush to destroy your wagon.
The Natives give you some gifts when you are in peace. For more information, call 0800-XXXXX, oh, hehe, no, press F9 to see the information. As now then, you can press F2-F9 to view the reports, you can easily get them. Hints: By F4 you can click them to see where they are. You can invite Jan de Witt to join your congress to get more information about your rivals.
You can send Missionary to their tribes, if they are friendly with you, some will join you. You can let criminals to do that, because they work very badly in buildings. Natives work even worse in buildings, but good in field.
Now go to establish the colonies. The 8 grids around the city center are area of the city. Natives' tribes have also these occupations, but somewhere wider.
Come into the city. Red tree presents that they belong to Natives. Click on it, you can select to buy or to encroach it. Click House, Gun, and Tool to see how the resources, presents units or what is being built are. If there's fish, suggest that you build dock at first, then only one people can supply food for all of them, and your men can begin to work for others. Otherwise you can build Lumber mill, with which you can build other buildings faster. But if you build dock at first, then you can get more people to build, maybe it is faster than build lumber mill at first. You can let people with tools to cut down trees. Then you will get a good mount of woods (don't let citizen cut woods if you are doing that, for you don't have enough room for woods). Try to click to learn operation. And to see what the grid will to be, if the trees on it are cut down.
The resource where the city centre lies is being gotten automatically. Most times are fur, you can sell furs at first. At the beginning is the price of musket and tools very cheap, later they will rise until 19 and 8.But if you sell furs or horses intensively, the price will fall down and don't rise up for a long time.
Hire Scouts with horses to explore the lands. Where you see a mask, go to it. You can get many things. And you can also load/save to random for a pretty penny or youth foundation. Vite! And take good care of it; everyone is trying to rob it, especially natives. Try to buy a galleon to carry them by you, and then the government can not take biggest piece of the cake.
If others attacking your village, let criminal/farmer/fish man to fight you will have more luck than let missionary/statesman/weaver. You know why.
You can get Found fathers as research in Civ2, but they function as wonder, some even allow you to open new options. Try to Save/Load to get who you want. They are very important and useful!! My suggestion (Style: peace and prosper)
You must get Benjamin Franklin most urgently, and then you don't need to pay for war.
Earlier, better:
F. Magellan: Your ships run faster.
H De Soto: With Save/Load you don't need him more.
La Salle (If you are in war): If you don't have Franklin, you need a "Great Wall" to defend your colonies.
J de Witt: Function switcher, as you get Sid Meier to edit the game rules in CivX. As later the tax in motherland will be very high, you can trade with your rivals, the trading with your rivals are available. In the later rounds you must trade with them.
W. Penn: To get more crosses.
You must invite, but not very early:
Adam Smith: At first you can't build factories.
T. Paine: At the beginning he hasn't big effect, but others are more important.
La Salle (If you are in peace and want to be Independent): If you don't build stockades, you'll save 64 hammers in each colony.
The following are maybe for some other style useful, but in some situation useless.
J de Sepulveda, J de Brebeuf, La Casas (for Missionary engaged)
G. Washington (you have school, but if you will have war with the King, you must have him)
F. Drake (for privateer zealot and you can buy many privateers to disturb your rivals. But they are weak when facing Man-O-Wars.)
H. Cortes (for Spain Conquistador)
P. Revere (if you are always attacked)
W. Brewster (They can learn to be other man)
I don't know how to use: P. Stuyvesant (You can build Custom house)
Don't waste the precious quota on them: Somebody only save some money, and compared with the wonders, money are nothing.
J. Fugger (unless you never kiss the ring or pay the tax),
J.P. Jones (you can build frigate)
Pocahontas (If you keep on attacking them, you don't need the forgiving of them)
P. Minuit
T. Jefferson (How many Statesmen have you?)
H. Hudson (fur can be get automatically, and you always don't have enough warehouses for it)
F de Coronado (Most people explore the map [because they want digging treasures!], and you can always see where you've already explored as in Heroes2, but the map is not big and there are many natives, here are no Zone-of-control, you can go everywhere you want)
Suppose you don't build stockade to wait La Salle to come, you save about 64*10=640 hammers. If we set 1 hammer to 6 units of money, you don't get too much.
If you have Franklin in your side, you are safe. Then you can engage yourself in develop the economic and prepare for the final expedition, but it will be boring than fighting with other rivals. If you have Paul Revere and La Salle and enough artillery, you don't need to worry too much about your safety.
The cost of ships: Price Hammers Tools PR H:G
Caravel 1000 128 40 600 4.6
Merchantman 2000 192 80 1200 6.25
Galleon 3000 320 100 2000 6.25
Privateer 2000 256 120 800 3.2
Frigate 5000 512 200 3000 5.86
Artillery n*(n+1)/2*100+n*400 192 40
To make it easy, we set the price of tools as 10. PR represents the price minus the cost of tools. If we add 400 units of money (the cost of tools), it's the same price between a Merchantman and an Artillery (1600 n=12).
If you buy it in colony (fast build), the price is 1 Hammer (with wood) equals 13 units of money. It is much too expensive! Every round 3 men work for that (food collector, lumberjack, carpenter, supposed with lumber mill), and you get 12 hammers by each round. You can't exchange between manpower and money. If they work as fur traders, you got 6 coats (price 50), for 13 rounds you get 50*13(the price falls) 650+40*10=950. But when you build bigger ships, the cost (price-tool costs) are 200*(3 6 10), and you need hammers 64*(2 3 5), so if you want caravel, it will be only a little [(2-3/2)*64*6=192] cheaper, if you direct buy it in Europe. You need Tools to do more things, so if you need a privateer, buy it. During the Independence war you should attack their Man-O-War to sink their land armies. For these reason you need frigates.
Artillery should be only used to defend.
You can save 5000 to let one attack another, strongly suggested. And don't give England, because it develops very boom (for only 2/3 crosses). Give them to another who is stronger (between Francaise and Espana), and let it attack England.
Before Franklin joins you, please buy enough artillery, each time you bought one, the price rises by 100. Send scout to explore more lands, open more "Masks" as you play Warlord.
Some grids connect two pieces of seas, you must build there. It can save much time. And some places you can build more cities, then build roads to connect them, and build wagon trains to transport them as canal. But the cities must lie in shore, unless you can't load cargos there.
If you want to load/unload some of them, please press Shift and then drag them. It is very very important; it is the same in Heroes2. If pioneers go out, they take tools as many as up to 100; I still don't know how to let them bring less.
You must buy horses from Europe. Don't buy many. You get more horses only by foods, and then you can sell them back to Europe if the price is still 5/6, I guess that there can be other continents, after they feed the horse too, the price falls down to very low. The natives need horses indeed, you can arm them to let them fight against our rivals, and they weep the natives out to a certainty. And then there's fertile soil without owner, you can settle there after Franklin joins.
The most important things is to produce, it is similar as in Civ2, you don't need to develop a colony poise. Some should be factory of Rum, some for Cloths. Transport tools from other colonies. You can't find a place with all wanted resource. You must deploy them; I mean that let one place be the ore-->tool colony, the tool-->musket colony can lie nearby or just the same. But a colony which plants Sugar, you'd better build the Rum-factory there. And bring the professional worker there. The product speed can be doubled, every level of auxiliary building (for 2nd level to upgrade the building you must have Adam Smith as your advisor) doubled the speed. And school--college--university lies in traffic centre. Somewhere are there prime timber, a lumberjack cuts 20 woods every time, where is good for ship-building.
Special Diggings of ore and silver (more than normal to mine) can be depleted, the others not, sometimes the tree will be less. If you can't build some buildings, that's because of you don't have enough population there.
Sometimes the king raise the tax-rate, the best way is to load again. If you don't do it, you can hold the party of something, then you throw the goods away, but the tax will not be raised. And you are facing boycott for what you have thrown away. You can not import or export this good until punishment is paid. If he rose by 7% (at most), and punishment is 3000, you throw 150*8=1200(average), you sell about 43000 net with extra tax 7% to hand up tax 3000. And you don't sell so much, so follow this calculation maybe we don't need to hold the party. But once, at the early time of the game, my advisor asks me if I need a frigate (5000) from motherland, and I say Oui. Then I don't have money, so the tax was raised by 10%, and I hold the party, then I paid 2000 for punishment.
If you lead to the war, I suggest you equip your men with horses. It only costs food when they growth. The advantages are. 1: 50 horses are much cheaper than 50 musket (if they routed, they lose horse, if they don't have horse, they lose their weapons). 2: They move faster. 3: Dragoon is stronger than Soldier.
Privateer sails very fast, you can let him to do some emergency works. But don't let it go automatically (with G), with G it doesn't know to evade fortress, and will be damaged or sunk.
How to build ships DIY. You should build dock-->dry-dock-->shipyard. So there must be enough forest and enough food/fish for supply. You need at least two grids of forest (2 lumberjack), and ore from another colony transport (1 ore miner, 1 blacksmith with building). A lumber mill is essential and 2 carpenters too. Here are 6 people, and you need 2 fish man/farmer to feed them, so 8.
The tax-rate rises until 75%. Raw material from Natives is very cheap. When the tax-rate is high, you'd better trade with natives, and then you should to remember what they want. They are poor, but you buy something from them are cheaper. If you have too many furs, you can bring them to your rivals, they will always buy things from you. And you can decide if you want money or goods.
If your colonies are near to your rivals, then maybe some grids are being "public", if it's red squared in the city view, then it means that it is occupied by other cities. You can let your armies Fortify there, then it will belong to you, but it causes problem, not war, but conflict. Yes, in the game you can make small conflict without war declaring. If your privateer has attacked others ships, they will revenge against you. But by F8 information they are still in peace. If you attack them back, they declare war on you. If you fear of that, you can use your frigates to sweep the privateers. Seldom will their goofy privateer attack your frigate.
Are the mercenaries profitable or cheap? Sometimes somebody offers you that at the price about 1500 every units. 50 Guns cost 1000, 50 horses cost, let us set about 100. You need population at the first. Because after every emigrant you need much more crosses to get the next. (For this reason, sometimes hiring trained people are good for long-sight investment since it saves many crosses!! You can cancel their special skill). But if you are in war, you can capture people from your rivals, and protect your colonies, for such a situation they are precious, until after a long time of safety (but if you don't have Franklin and not be very strong, they don't offer you that) and you have enough colleges, you don't need them more. Because through getting more foods you can get new colonists and then can train them into veteran Soldier. For 400 foods, 100horses, 100muskets, and some time for transporting and training (let's set it to be 400). 400 foods+2000(muskets but you won't buy them) +100 horses (maybe some foods). But I don't think somebody will buy the muskets from Europe at the price of 20. Most prefer to buy tools to produce muskets.//This part is not right.
If you play the game as waiting the final war (the expedition), I suggest that you build wagon trains to save horses. The men don't come at one round; they will be transported by the man-O-wars. Maybe one round your colonies suffers 4 attacks; you won't lose all 4 combats. So if you have 3 soldiers forting, you can only store more horses (cheap) and fewer muskets (expensive), every round mounts them with new horses.
Combat analysis:
Royal Army (5) + attack bonus (50%) +bombard (50%) + Tories unrest (average 20%) =11.25, (120%)
Defend intensity: Continental Army (4, artillery (5+3)/2=4) +fort (+%150) =10. (150%)
If you are in Fort and your enemies in field and you attack him, you get 50% and he gets nothing. Then it will be 4* 150%=6:5, you have advantage.
If you are in Fortress and your enemies in forest and you don't need the grid to transport or to collect resource, you don't need to attack them. Grow more horses.
Let your soldiers (not Cont. Army) attack their artilleries to promote them into Cont. Army. He will easily win the combat with little risk.
At most situation the AI (level: moderate) will not attack the inland colonies. So you'd better build Fortress for harbors. Stocking horses are much cheaper, but the number of units in the game is limited. You can't get as more wagons as you like, so you can anchor your ships to let them work as wagons. The more horses you have in colony, (horses in cargo will not be counted) the number growths faster. You'll find with a stable is much better.
At the beginning they have many Royal Cavalry and we have less continental cavalry, but as the war going on, we will have more elite soldiers. We must store enough weapons to strike them back. You can also build some useless colonies before the declaration to scatter their forces. Fortress (320 hammers, 200 tools) is too laborious to build, and only add 50%, the same effect as other defend fortification. Store cargos until it displays that there can't be more units created.
In the game are there 508 rounds. (1600-1492)+(1800-1600)*2=508. You can win as a colonist, and also can win as a revolutionary, and then you get doubled scores. That is, before 1800 declare the Independence and before 1850 win it. Then you should face the expeditionary force. Not to survive, but defeat all the expeditionary force and retake all colonies. If you declare that, one nation will withdraw all its lands to another, (make room for memory arrays) then the expeditionary force comes. His troops are stronger than yours, but you can ask for intervention from another nation. (Gain 5000 bells).
Sometimes the Man-O-War sails by your harbors, your artillery will attack it, but in most times it will be 8, seldom it will be 16. So I'd like to believe that Artilleries from Europe are stronger than one built in New-World. (The Artillery in Expedition army is 7, while yours are 5.)
Your score will be so accounted :( about Population*3) + (Number of founding fathers*5) + (Money div 1000) + Rebel Sentiments (percent) - (Number of burned villages)*3. If your Independence war is triumphed, then your score will be doubled.
I've in 1800 it declared, he attacks everywhere and easily I've won the war, but it doesn't record my score. TMD. Then I declare it earlier, he use all his troops to attack one of my village. I spent very long time to Save/Load.
Someone tell me that there's chess of Civilization, we don't need so many elements for every technical levels as Civ, and Colonization doesn't need so many different items to represent units. It's a passion game. I hope one day I can play it as Monopoly! Enjoy it. You can get the game from: http://www.classic-trash.com
Maybe now it doesn't exist more.
Author SpongeBob--Schwammkopf
Alles klar, Kinder? - aye, aye captain
Geh't das die Lauter! - aye, aye captain