Igromania 1999 August/Igromania_1999-08.iso/DLH/dlh_8_99.exe/BASE.DLM/1296_3/COTNWFAQ.TXT

Text File | 1996-11-21 | 41KB | 807 lines

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
[e-mail]. 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.
{[e-mail]} "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?
{[e-mail]}
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
([e-mail])
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
{[e-mail]}
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?
{[e-mail]}
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.


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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
{[e-mail]}
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.

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6    Diplomacy
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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.

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7    Trade
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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.


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8    Independence
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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
{[e-mail]}
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.


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9.    Other Stuff
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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.

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10.    Multiplayer
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Urrr find someone to have a game with?
Still working on this...


THE END...so far anyway.