Welcome to the Conquest of the New World FAQ. v1.0 compiled by Stephen McInerney alias: CNW, CotNW Any additions/corrections can be suggested to the author (who may ignore them at his discretion), who can currently be contacted at stevemci@dsb.mil.adfa.oz.au. Please put a CNWFAQ: in the start of any subject line as it makes it easier to partition work email from private. Spelling is from an Australian dictionary, my apologies to those for whom this will surely annoy. The more technical discussions in this FAQ assume that you have read the manual that comes with CNW. If you have not already done so - then do so, the manual contains a lot of very valuable information about the game and its mechanics. Acknowledgments: This FAQ owes a lot of its content to the many discussions in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic newsgroup. Also a big thanks to Michael Gerard from Quicksilver who has helped provide a lot of the detail about the game mechanics and provided heaps of very good advice on playing CNW. Contents 1 About CNW 1.1 So what is CNW? 1.2 Is it a turn based game or real-time? 1.3 Is there a demo available? 1.4 Whats the current patch version? 1.5 How long does an average length game run for? 1.6 Whats the AI like? 2 Starting a game of CNW 2.1 Should I play as the Natives or Europeans? 2.2 Starting options 2.3 Whats the deal with the two ship startup? 2.4 Where should I start my first colony? 3 Colony Building 3.1 Where should I start my first colony? 3.2 How do I get points for building colonies? 3.3 Whats specialisation, and how does it work 3.4 Hints for the beginning CNW player 3.5 Fast ways to build up Colonies 3.6 Colony building strategies 3.7 War College Research 4 Exploring 4.1 Any hints for exploring? 4.2 How does the points for exploring work? 5 Combat 5.1 Which of the opposing countries should I attack first? 5.2 I keep getting beaten in the Combat mini game - any clues? 5.3 Combat Detail 6 Diplomacy 6.1 Peace? 6.2 Sabotage Missions 6.3 Spy Missions 6.4 Country feelings 7 Trade 8 Independence 8.1 When should I declare independence? 8.2 Bidding for peace 8.3 Independence Details 9 Other Stuff 9.1 My units take forever to get anywhere - how can I improve on this? 10 Multiplayer *********************************************************************** About CNW *********************************************************************** 1.1 So what is CNW? CNW is a game of exploration, colonisation and the fight for freedom from the oppressive and every greedy Mother Country (MC), and in fact, any other country that gets in your way of domination of the riches of the new world. This game is a yet another with a very fine balance between expansion and hunkering down and building strength - expand too fast and you will get walked over - too slow and all the prime spots will be settled before you get too them. The big difference between this game and others of this genre, is that in CNW you tend to only startup a few cities and build multiple objects each turn in each city. This is opposite to other games which have lots of cites and can only build one object per turn in each. CNW was written by Quicksilver (www.quicksilver.com) and published by Interplay (www.interplay.com). 1.2 Is it a turn based game or real-time? CNW is a turn based game with a sub-game (also turn based) based around the combat sequences. 1.3 Is there a demo available? Yes there is a demo. It follows the tutorial in the full game. The demo can be retrieved from Interplays web/ftp site at ftp1.interplay.com or www.interplay.com and search from there. 1.4 Whats the current patch version? The latest patch is v1.11. However 1.11 is a progressive patch to v1.10 so you'll need both 1.10 and 1.11 patches, which can be retrieved from Interplays web and ftp site. 1.5 How long does an average length game run for? Ages... This is not a quick and dirty game like some others - especially on the harder levels. It has been mentioned that there have been games where players were still fighting with muskets in the latter part of the 20th century... This game rewards those who prefer the more drawn out style of long term strategy gaming. An average time would be a couple of hours a day over several days to a week. I tend to take 2-3 weeks to play a full game at the hard and very hard levels. 1.6 Whats the AI like? Hmmmm loaded question. Personally I feel that the AI in CNW is one of the better ones produced to date. This is (perhaps unfortunately) reflected in the time taken between turns in the later stages of a game, a wait of several minutes on a P133 is not unheard of. The price paid for a more intelligent opponent. Compared to a human player who can take around 1/2 an hour or more, its not quite so bad. The AI in the combat sequence is positively nasty and too clever by half - strategies on how to beat it (or at least come out without too poor a showing) come later. If you display a weakness in your defences the computer players _will_ exploit it. They dont blindly attack your strongest points - but have been known to bypass relatively defenceless colonies to attack others. The computer has presumably not spied out that particular colony to find how vulnerable it is. Basically the computer does not "cheat" to discover your weaknesses - It is using the same methods and procedures that you have to discover information. The designers of CNW are quite proud of the fact that CNW is based more on a human player and uses the same limitations that a human player has. {mig@quicksilver.com} "We wrote the AI to be as "human" as possible: ie: a bunch of backstabbing opportunists. If the AI sees a weak target really close to his powerbase, he'll often just go "oh, thank you!" and take it for himself." *********************************************************************** 2 Starting a game of CNW *********************************************************************** 2.1 Should I play as the Natives or Europeans? A beginning player should steer clear of playing as the natives - there is a quantum leap in difficulty between European and Native players. Also the playing style between the two is quite different. The natives also have restrictions placed upon them, typically seen with the highest level of structure that can be built. Also have a look at the section for beginning players - this provides some good advice for beginning players. 2.2 What use are the various custom options and skills at game creation? RTFM is a good start :-) - but additional notes shown below. Most skills vary from the 10 point cost shown in the manual the true cost is shown in brackets after each name. Miser(5): Useful in a points game - useless elsewhere. This is not a cumulative bonus either. The bonus is ?%. Colonist(10): Useful in a points game - useless elsewhere. Again is not a cumulative bonus. The bonus is ?%. Discoverer(5): Useful in a points game - useless elsewhere. Doubles the value of each find. Eg A 10,000ft Mountain is worth 10 points, with discoverer, however, it is worth 20 points. The overall addition is not that great, youd be lucky to break 1000 bonus points with this skill. The above three are all very valuable in a points game but Id give preference to the Colonist skill - mainly as you tend to get bigger bonuses from it - Its not unheard of to get a 3000+ bonus from colonist. Pacifist(5): The pacifist skill is a must take in a non-points dependant game. It reduces the cost of research for defence by half. It provides a bonus of 75% to your colony points too. Or a loss of ?% if you go on the attack. Its low cost and huge benefit to unit defence makes this skill exceptionally useful. Cartography(15): This can be very useful to have in any game - as it allows _all_ of your land units to move further. Hence explorers, explore a bit more each turn. Military units move a bit further, thus they get to a target faster. The increase in movement is fairly small. This is a skill that is probably of lesser value compared to some of the others. Navigator(10): Similar to cartography but for ships only. This is of even less use than cartography - better to get another skill. Conqueror(15): This can be very valuable for a native player, but is not so useful for the European player. Mainly as its generally only when you have one or two colonies that you run out of unit "slots". Typically youll have more slots than you can fill - even when you go on a major military adventure. Craftsman(10): Very valuable skill. Pretty much a must have. It increases the value of commodities sold to Europe as shown in the table below: Wood, Metal Goods or Crops Buy from Europe 10 30 Before Independence Buy from Native ? ? With Craftsman Sell to Europe 6 18 Sell to Native ? ? Without Craftsman Sell to Europe 5 15 Sell to Native ? ? After Independence With Craftsman Sell to Europe 10 18 Sell to Native ? ? Without Craftsman Sell to Europe 8? 15 Sell to Native ? ? Admiral(10): Another not so useful skill. Can be valuable to the native player though, as it will make it easier for the native player to sink European ships before they disgorge an army on top of one of your colonies. Missionary(15): Missionary is very valuable to the Native player as it gradually reduces the Hostility of natives towards you. This effect is increased by the number and level of churches. 2.3 Whats the deal with the two ship startup? The first ship is Capt. James Cook, Christopher Columbus - whoever first discovers the New World. They send out a small wave of explorers who can rapidly discover the riches evident in this new land. The second ship carries your initial wave of settlers, come to make a fresh start in the new world. Both ships carry a small contingent of soldiers as well - however this is where the game departs from reality, in that these troops are not enough strength to start wiping out the locals. They are barely capable of withstanding native attacks on your colony so use them principally as a defensive measure. On easier levels if you come across a CP near you, it can be worthwhile launching an all out attack on his leaders before they start building and defending a colony - if youre lucky, thatll be one less CP to have to fight later. This is not recommended on harder levels - youll find the locals will often raid and destroy your colony while your troops are away, or the CP will easily beat off your attack, leaving you defenceless. *********************************************************************** 3 Colony Building *********************************************************************** 3.1 Where should I start my first colony? The ideal first site is placed near a river at the base of mountains with access to the sea and a good mix of plains and forests/jungle nearby. Use the Z key here - this will display a shading of the buildable area around your central choosing point. On earlier versions successive presses of the Z key showed successive growth in colony bases, the latest version only has a single shading - but shows all areas via alternate shading. Principally you should be looking at the 2nd level of zoning. It is relatively easy to get your colony off level 1 and is recommended that you do so ASAP. I usually concentrate on getting a good wood and metal production started and use this to get enough supplies to be able to expand to a level 2 colony base. Keep an eye on your population too - its very easy to have too many producing squares and not enough population to run everything effectively - you would have been better off building a church or two instead. When your settler unit first arrives - instead of off loading and moving the settler separately, place the settler under the leader on the same ship. This will allow you to get the settler unit moved further than it would on its own. 3.2 How do I get points for building colonies? {mig@quicksilver.com} If I remember correctly, colonies score points at 5 points per city center level, plus one tenth of a point for each building level (ie: 4 level 4 mills are worth 1.6 points). If you do some quick math, you'll see that a full level 4 city is worth ALOT of points per turn. Computer players won't make more than 5 or 6 colonies, but if he has 6 and you have 3, he'll be making lots of points on you. Also, if he captures 2 or 3 colonies, he'll be growing them and making points on them, that's likely the source of his rapid point acceleration. There is a strategy guide and it's fairly good at explaining how to properly build colonies. Might be worth picking up if you don't think your colony-building is as strong as it should be. You can also learn a great deal about that by putting your colony on "AutoColony" right when you create it and see what the computer AI would be doing if he put the colony down in the same place as you. Not as fun as playing the game for yourself, but it's a good learning experience. 3.3 Whats specialisation, and how does it work (mig@quicksilver.com) Specialisation bonuses are based on building-level-grid-squares (ie: farms are worth 4 points per building level), in blocks of 20: the first block is worth 1% each, the next block is worth a 0.5% each, the next block of 20 is worth 0.25% each, such that you asymptotically approach 40% total possible bonus. Once this bonus is calculated for the largest commodity sector in your colony, the bonus value of the SECOND largest commodity is subtracted from the first. As you can see by how the numbers start high and then shrink, even having 10 building levels of another commodity reduces your possible maximum to 30%. Bonuses are calculated for mills, mines (gold and metal lumped together), and farms. Commerce does not gain production bonuses. 3.4 Hints for the beginning CNW player {mig@quicksilver.com} 1) Start on the easier levels. While this may be obvious to most people, some have tried to jump in on the harder levels and gotten massacred by the computer. This game can't be played in the "traditional" map strategy style (aka Civ, Civ2, MoM, whatever), since the basic modelling of growth and economy is so different (in those other titles you tend to have large numbers of cities and build one thing over many turns, in this game you only build a few colonies, but build numerous things per turn in each) 2) Be very careful about placing your first colony Colony location will make or break colony growth, and since all growth in any of these games works off of the "compounded interest" concept, being a few turns behind the computer at the beginning of the game can often be a drastic difference 50-100 turns later. Since wood and food are necessities of any colony, try and place your first colony on the border between forests and plains, building your producing buildings (mills and farms) where they will get the most production bonus (production bonus along with resource and labor costs are displayed in the statusbar at the top of the screen). If you can also get your colony near enough to mountains such that you can build good mines by the time your colony grows to level two or three, that's a bonus, but you _MUST_ make sure you have access to either the ocean or a river that leads to the ocean in order to be able to trade with your mother country in order to get the GOODS resource. The goods resource is generated from commerce buildings and, you'll quickly notice, a commerce building requires two goods to build, thus you're required to trade with your mother country to start up your own self-sufficient goods production. Flat land is also a must for your colony site, so use the Z key to examine possible locations to get a better angle on how much flat land there is in that area. 3) Manage your pipelines carefully There's two separate "pipelines" in the economic model of CNW. The first you'll have to work with immediately, that is your Labor pipeline. If you don't have enough labor to staff your colony, your production will begin to rapidly suffer. Your colony population will grow 8% plus 10 per church level every turn, but if you don't have enough empty housing for them, they won't show up. Thus if they ever do maximise housing you'll have to build houses that turn, which won't appear till the next turn, which means your population growth will be stalled for two turns. Always keep an eye on your housing. In the same vein, try to get a good handful of churches in your colony, too, as they'll significantly increase your population growth early on (when it's most important to grow fast). Also, all "happy native" increases caused by the Missionary specialisation are centred on the churches in your colony, so if you're playing with Missionary try to place your churches where they'll have the most impact on neighbouring tribes (without taking up high- production-bonus land better put towards mills/mines/farms). The other pipeline in the game is the goods pipeline, which you'll have to start dealing with once you begin to upgrade your colony and its buildings to level 3. Goods are generated by Commerce buildings which consume 1 wood, metal, and food per good created (although higher level commerce buildings consume less as a percentage than the level 1 building). These resources must be available to the commerce buildings at the end of the turn, such that if, say, you exhaust all of your wood on your turn, you won't be able to produce any goods during the turn processing. Keep an eye on how much your commerce buildings consume and try not to let your commodity levels drop below those values. 4) Butter before Guns This isn't as exact a rule as the above, but our general feeling for the game is that the LAST player to militarise his colonies tends to be the one who wins, so long as they have enough military to match whatever the other colonies have by the time the other colonies can bring their military to bear on him. That may be a bit confusing, but suffice to say that it's not terribly important to build up a strong military early on (though a single fort in place to provide militia cannon against raiding natives is quite useful). Once you do begin to militarise your economy, make sure to get a war college built and start spending money on military technology. Technology advancements are often the needed edge in properly carrying out a full scale invasion of your neighbours. 5) Don't play as the Native.....yet. The "Native" player is meant for people who have at least a fair amount of experience with the game environment and tends to be more difficult to play at the same raw "difficulty level".... playing the Natives at "Very Hard" is our version of the "Impossible" level found in other games. Because the natives have a much lower economy level, you have to be quite adept at building up large numbers of colonies rapidly and at being able to command large numbers of armies in the field in cooperation. Once you feel that you've got those basics down well, give the Natives a spin and you'll find that the game takes on whole new levels of subtleties 6) Practice combat Lastly, one of the most important things you can do is to practice the combat mode using the combat demo accessible off the main menu. This is where you can learn how to kick conquistador bootie without having the outcome affect a full strategy game in which you've invested a great deal of time and effort. There's nothing more discouraging in spending 10 hours building up a nice brace of colonies only to see them swept over in a firestorm of military from one of your opponents. Use the combat demo to learn the necessary tactics of using Combined-Arms (attacking with different units at the same time.... cav-art-inf) and Flanking (attacking the same square from different directions at the same time) to get the attack bonuses needed to turn the enemy's army into nothing more than a bunch of blood-splats on the ground. 7) Use the most current version As an afterthought, if you're not already, you should hit our website or interplay's and grab the most recent patch, which has a number of bugfixes and extra features (including interface tweaks). The most recent version is 1.11 which is a progressive upgrade to 1.10 (you have to upgrade to 1.10 then to 1.11 since 1.10 patches some of the actual datafiles). 3.5 Fast ways to build up Colonies 1) Use trade from more established colonies for the lacking materials - usually wood, metal and goods. 2) Build a colony near an enemy colony, and then raid that colony. This can give a huge influx of commodities way above and beyond what would ordinarily be accepted by your colony. 3.6 Colony building strategies There are two schools of thought about the general strategy behind a colony layout. 1) The more popular (or so it would appear anyway) method is to build colonies that make the most use of the specialisation bonus. This results in colonies that specialise in metal production or wood production or farm production. It is not unusual to see the farm producer also having a very large number of forts as well - which then becomes a troop factory for rapid production of armies. 2) The "lazy" method (sorry mig ;-) ) is for those who couldnt be bothered managing all the trade from specialised colonies. This strategy is to build generic colonies everywhere. Yes some will be better at a certain commodity than others, but not to the total exclusion of one over all others. In any case, these are general outlines of strategies followed. I prefer the specialise strategy but am not fanatical about it. There are other deciding factors: Terrain, has a huge impact on what each colony can or will build for; Current needs, I may not need a metal producing colony as my initial generic colonies can cover that aspect; Initial colonies, my initial colonies are as generic as I can make them - though possibly with more of a slant towards wood production. 3.7 War College Research Start dumping excess gold into a War college as soon as you get on your feet. You will need its expertise to produce troops of a quality to match the CP's. You only need one War College so use trade to shift gold to it. Concentrate your gold into one topic at a time. You will get more useful returns, faster, that way. Defence is cheap, so initially I prefer to spend my money there rather than on attack bonuses. Mainly, as in my games, I tend to be the subject of attacks early on, rather than leading them. Don't worry about spending money on the leader topic for a while. A level four leader can be bought with 11/7 (units/#attacks) stats, which is sufficient for some time. And incidentally fits nicely onto a level four ship. *********************************************************************** 4 Exploring *********************************************************************** 4.1 Any hints for exploring? Initially you should be manually controlling your explorers. The computer does a fair job of exploring on its own, but can do some odd things. eg It tends to group your explorers together, rather than spreading them around so as to cover a wider area. Use your ships to follow the coastline - this will help discover river mouths - which your explorers can rapidly move up to get extra points (and naming rights) for rivers. Rivers always lead to mountains so keep those explorers heading uphill to discover mountain peaks. It is quite difficult to tell from most peoples normal zoom level which way is up on mountains. A way around this is to zoom almost right in. This makes the subtle gradient changes far more obvious, especially the "hidden" back side of mountains - Ive previously sent explorers over these "cliffs" on many an occasion - often losing discovery rights because I was in a race with a CP for the top. If you find a mountain range, send at least one explorer along the ridge at the top to get the discovery for finding the peaks, try and send at least one explorer along the base on either side to collect the rivers. If you are not in a points game though, you are far better off by scouting the surrounding land and sea around your expanding colonies. This is to minimise the risk of an enemy army sneaking up on you. 4.2 How does the points for exploring work? {mig@quicksilver.com} You score 1/10th of a point (I think) for every new square of the map you uncover, PROVIDED that no other player uncovered that map square first. A good strategy (the CP doesn't yet know about) is to leave one explorer on the boat and sail the boat halfway around the world before letting him off, so he'll be in virgin territory and score major points. The native player, who starts off on the other side of the world, has a major advantage here, since it is a long time before he is competing for exploration of map squares. *********************************************************************** 5 Combat *********************************************************************** 5.1 Which of the opposing countries should I attack first? One thats attacking you is a good start here. But if youre at peace with everybody - as you will be upon reaching independence - youre going to have to make the unfriendly overtures yourself (Damn! :- ) ) Id avoid getting embroiled in wars before I had achieved independence. Youre much better off waiting till after independence before striking back and exacting revenge for those cowardly raids. Its a good idea to read the last news page before you read the messages box - this gives a lot of clues as to the state of general friendliness between the other countries. For instance if you read that Portugal is attacking French colonies - and from your map you notice that the French have only got two colonies left, compared to the Portuguese eight, then its a good bet that France would be pretty easy to take out. Also in a case like this the Portuguese often wont have their colonies that are away from the frontline as well defended - and can be taken with little fear of immediate retaliation. Its always a better thing to attack someone who is already embroiled in a war with someone else. Nations that are trying to bid for independence are also vulnerable or nations that have yet to try for independence are also vulnerable. The reasons? Those who are bidding are being blockaded by their MC and hence can be suffering due to a lack of resources. Those who are not already independent will have huge tax bills imposed upon them and consequently wont have been able to spend as much on research. Your troops will therefore, more easily win with minimal casualties. It is most effective to build up one leader to do all the attacking. This individual will get heaps of experience which can be split amongst more units, more attacks and a better move, I tend to not worry about morale as this is usually covered by reputation. When you do start to attack another nation, dont do it half- heartedly. Go all out! Ramp up your troop producing colonies to maximum output of new units and leaders and use ships to bring these units to the frontline as fast as possible. Create spare ships to act as blockade units - to stop the computer landing troops behind your lines. This is especially important for the native player. If the CP is acting true to form, youll be able to capture a colony every other turn - this rapidly puts them out of the way. The blitzkrieg works very effectively here. Just make sure you get reinforcements into those captured colonies, as the CPs will viciously counter-attack and can cause a lot of damage if you dont have adequate reinforcements available. For a more military inclined nation Id suggest at least two full complement leaders worth of reinforcements - say 20-30 units. Its better to have fresh troops for each counter- attack than having to rely on injured ones. Usually the CPs counter- attack with the ejected leaders and all on the same turn. 5.2 I keep getting beaten in the Combat mini game - any clues? The manual has some very good hints on what you should be doing but Ill spell them out here. 1) Combined arms attacks The odds of getting a hit on an opponent is outlined in 5.3 but basically - the more different types of units attacking, the better the odds to damage opposing units. 2) Cavalry Charge Cavalry get a charging bonus - use it! While cav can work in a hoof-to-foot slugfest - they are more effective when charging. The most effective way to do this is to have at least two cav units in the one column. While one charges the other retreats, so as to charge on the next round. This is even more effective with a couple of inf units and an artillery barrage. 3) Flanking Again another bonus is for flanking attacks. Especially if you can manage to do it from three sides. But the flanking doesnt stop there with a simple bonus - this is the basis of your attack that you should be aiming for. Concentrate your forces on at least one flank preferably both. You will need some in the centre column but these can be fairly minimal - any opposing units that get up here will/should get flanked pretty badly. 4) Cavalry is vulnerable Dont let your cav units advance too far too fast - they can get easily flanked and destroyed on the third row. However if you can get to the opponents back line youre on a winner. 5) Retreat mauled units Any units that have been excessively mauled (eg 1**** or 2***) should be retreated to your baseline, rather than leaving them in the attack. This is done so that they can survive to (hopefully) gain experience and get that coveted 6. Generally only badly injured units will get the upgrade. It is, however, recognised that sometimes you have no option but to stay in the fight with very badly injured units - good luck! 5) Defending from raids Remember when you are attacked by raids that the object is not annihilation of the enemy (though that is a good thing if you can manage it), rather you are trying to win the combat ASAP. So while you concentrate flanking forces as per normal, do most of your attacking down the centre, and keep a spare cav unit for that final charge into the flag zone. 5.3 Combat Detail {mig@quicksilver.com} Each numeric value on a combat unit is both his hit points and attack dice. When he attacks, he rolls a 40 sided die for each number he has left. Each die roll is applied against a target selected kinda at random of units in the target square. Standard attacks hit on a roll of 6 or less. Attack research adds 2 to the threshold, defence research of the target unit subtracts 1 from the threshold. The threshold will never go below 2 or above 38. Bonuses are as follows: Combined Arms 1 = +4 Combined Arms 2 = +6 Flank 1 = +4 Flank 2 = +6 Flank 3 = +8 Cavalry Charge = +6 Note that a cav charge bonus is the same as the base die roll, so forgoing an attack in order to move a cav back will not gain you anything. Of course, if you attack with other units, it's often useful to move a cav back in order to get the bonus the next round. I often pair cav against an opposing square, charging with one every turn and moving the other back. Every time a unit takes damage, it has a chance of retreating. A unit is more likely to retreat the more damage it takes (a unit originally with 4 dice who now has 2 dice and is hit down to 1 die is more likely to run than a unit that starts with 2 dice and is hit down to 1). A unit always retreats backwards and if the square it wants to retreat into is too full to accommodate it, it takes an extra point of damage. *********************************************************************** 6 Diplomacy *********************************************************************** 6.1 Peace? You probably won't see this on the easier levels but try and make peace with independent nations, after your own independence of course. Non-independent nations are easier to take out than independent ones. Build your strength up and then attack the strongest independent nation - but dont tell them that youre coming, leave it as a surprise. This is especially important for the native player who can avoid a lot of wars by using the diplomacy. 6.2 Sabotage Missions I tend to ignore trying these for a couple of reasons: 1) Youre spys almost always get caught 2) When you do destroy something the overall effect on the opposition is fairly negligible, unless you manage to do it right at the start of the game. 6.3 Spy Missions These are also fairly useless. The information received is usually dated by the time you can act upon it (when priming for an attack). However you do get points (I believe) for successful missions, not many, but this might be valuable. Keep in mind that both spy and sabotage missions do cost gold to run (?g for a spy mission and ?g for a sabotage). So it can be best to avoid using them entirely. 6.4 Country feelings The part of the diplomacy model that is missing is a table showing who is at war or allied with whom. This information can be useful in working out who to attack next. You can infer this missing information though, from watching the combat screens and messages at the end of each turn. *********************************************************************** 7 Trade *********************************************************************** Trade is CRUCIAL to success in this game. Shift needed commodities between your colonies, especially to the new/starting ones. This helps build them up much faster. As you capture European colonies it can be more effective to transfer the commodities from them directly to you war college colony and let it handle the selling of the commodities. This helps minimise the delay in selling goods to Europe. *********************************************************************** 8 Independence *********************************************************************** 8.1 When should I declare independence? That is subject to a large degree on what level youre playing at. For the harder levels its best to wait till youve got level 4 forts and a level 4 leader with max troops in each colony. Its a good idea to have several extra troops as well - principally as the Mother Country (MC) will sometimes attack the same colony over several turns - gradually wearing your troops down - till you have to fight with injured units, which is a "bad thing". I usually concentrate on getting a good stable group of colonies going - build up their defences and then wait. I always stop paying my taxes about 10-20 turns before I expect to be ready for independence - I dont see the point in declaring independence straight away - by not paying taxes you end up at the same outcome - you can just spend the money on War College research instead. For myself, I find that by the time my taxes are reaching 400-700 gold mark is about when Im ready to stop paying taxes (actually Im always ready to stop - just shouldnt :-) ). Usually this is before the CPs bid for independence, which gives you a huge advantage if your bid is successful. Its also a good idea to keep a very close eye on the diplomatic table - If possible, try and wait till your MC is in at least 1 preferably 2 wars. The MC wont have as many troops to spare in such a case - and will tend to send pretty ineffective small attacks which are easily beaten off. I do not recommend declaring independence when you have fairly wimpy colonies - the MC will prefer not to attack - and instead just blockade you. This can make it very tough to survive - (a) you have pretty wimpy colonies to start off with and (b) you cant get any resources from the MC to help beef those colonies up. If your mother country is in any wars, you might get troops from one of those countries come and attack you as well as your MC. Dont bother setting up a counter blockade to intercept the MCs attacks on your colonies - they "magically" appear on your front doorstep and go straight into combat - so you are always defensive against mother country attacks. 8.2 Bidding for peace A good trick to be aware of with independence is the "sue for peace" option. If you're finding yourself under attack by both the MC _and_ being raided by Europeans is to check this option. If accepted the MC will immediately stabilise relations with you at Neutral, but will require you to pay all your back taxes. Obviously you ignore paying taxes and can rebuild a bit before the MC gets annoyed with you again and attacks. 8.3 Independence Details {mig@quicksilver.com} Anyhoo, here's the straight-poop on Independence (without giving away the actual numbers, since I don't have my crib notes with me to be able to rattle off the numbers anyhow): The SIZE of a force that the mother-country attacks with is based upon a large number of different elements: 1) How many wars is the mother country embroiled in? Something most people aren't aware of is the fact that the number of "pooled troops" the mother country has to attack you with is governed by how many wars (ie: diplomacy rating of "hostile" or below) it is currently in with the other European mother countries. Suffice to say that three concurrent wars will have significantly less troops than no wars whatsoever. 2) How many colonies do you have? If you have a number of colonies, the mother country attacks with fewer units... it has to split its forces amongst your colonies (however, after its first attack, it may decide it wants to attack the same place again). If you only have one colony, it will feel free to joyfully throw all of its available troops at your single colony in one horrific battle. 3) How large is the colony? After determining what colony it will attack that turn (if any), it will pull a number of troops based mostly upon the size of the colony it wants to attack: it's not going to waste a large amount of troops on taking a small target. Also, it should be noted, the number and sizes of your colonies affect WHEN the mother country attacks as well... If you don't have a great deal of stuff, the mother country will tend to take an embargo approach to try to strangle your economy before committing troops. If you're big and powerful when you declare, it won't bother with an embargo and will tend to attack every other turn, every third turn, whatever. 4) What difficulty level is it? After doing all this, we will have generated the number of troops to attack in a "very hard" difficulty level. For every difficulty level less than that, we subtract 20% (ie: "hard" is 80% of the number, "very easy" is only 20% of the number). A single level4 colony attacked by a mother country in no other wars in a "Very Hard" game will get hit by about 40 troops. Owtch. The numbers scale down from there. *********************************************************************** 9. Other Stuff *********************************************************************** 9.1 My units take forever to get anywhere - how can I improve on this? All military units should be placed under the control of a leader. This way they use the leaders move not their own. For moving units across long distances, place the leader and troops in a ship, ships can move a lot further than walking. To rapidly get reinforcements to front line leaders it can be useful to create leaders with no extra points in combat - just put points into troop capacity and movement - and use them purely as ferries. This tactic is especially important for the native player as they cant as easily repair injured units like the Europeans can. This can become very important when the main fighting is very much inland or to send ships would take too long owing to a major detour. Settler units should always be transported with a leader and a starting garrison of troops (usually 6-10). This means that the settler will arrive in a timely fashion and when it does and builds a colony base, it already has a garrison to protect it from native raids. *********************************************************************** 10. Multiplayer *********************************************************************** Urrr find someone to have a game with? Still working on this... THE END...so far anyway.