COLONIZATION NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
-----------------------------------

                     Garry J. Vass
                     100020,777 or 72307,3311
                     October 30th, 1994



This file contains my notes on playing COLONIZATION.  It does not
present a sure-fire method of winning the game, but rather the
tactics that I have developed.  My overall comment is that this
game, like CIV and MOO, favors the player who pays rigorous attention
to the game "accounting" system and who follows a disciplined strategy.

When I say game "accounting" system, I mean all of those numbers
that show up on the advisor screens - the commodity bid-offer spread
in Europe, for example.  I also mean keeping a close eye on
raw materials to assure that they are exploited in a way that
maximizes the objective - which is to have a self-sustaining
economy capable of supporting a large army.  If you play it
this way, you can win almost every time.  On the down-side, the
economic development phase that occurs in mid-game is a real
drudge. 

1.  Cities.  For reasons known only to myself, I like to have
13 cities.  None of them overlapping.  Of these 13, one
is my "power" city, my "export" city, and one is my "patsy" city.
More about the "patsy" later.  In general, I usually end up with
around 16 cities, but I think the key point here is that a huge,
sprawling empire won't work.

2.  Where to build the first city.  I sail around for a bit
and look for wheat.  If I can't find it after a few moves, I'll
take anything that can produce revenue.

3.  Where to build additional cities.  There are two ideal places that
I know of to build additional cities:  1.  On an Indian village - Miami,
Chicago, Manhattan, etc. and 2.  On the site of another European
power.  Generally, it is easier to capture a European city, but
that leaves you with supply problems.  So most of the time I
take villages.  I know it hurts the score, but not that much.  The
tribes themselves forget about it after a while anyway.

My rule of thumb for expansion is not to locate a city further away
than a mounted unit can reach in two moves - assuming that the path
is paved.

4.  Taking an Indian village.  If you like to gamble, I suggest
capturing one right off the boat in the first round of play.  Sometimes
it works, most of the time not.  But given that it is the first round,
you don't have much to lose.  Otherwise, a much sounder strategy is
to wait around until experienced soldiers can take it.  If it
is a good village, it becomes my "power" city.

5.  What to do with the booty.  Since purchasing a galleon is
out of the question, I simpy fortify it until the right fellow
joins the congress.  When that happens, I move the wagon one
square outside the city and then back in.  Yup.  Off to Europe.

6.  Taking a European city.  These are good because they are almost
always plowed and paved.  I like to pull up to the front door with
two cavalry units, and refuse peace.  At that, the CP offers somewhere
from 400 to 1,000 golds.  I take the money, wait a few rounds, and try
it again.  When he finally doesn't offer gold, I take my two precious
mounted units to the next colonial power and start over again.  After
this whole intimidation process is complete, the CP has generally
financed the loss of one of his cities.  They forget about it after
about ten years and I trade with them.

7.  City development.  I am a fanatic developer.  I will try to
outfit a unit with tools whenever possible.  I first connect
the cities with roads.  To do that, I send a unit from one city
to another and watch the path it takes.  Then I pave it.  Then
I plow all the land squares.  I've had cities to size 17
to 19 with just common settlers doing the farming.  With
that, you can forget about the experienced farmers.  Rule of
thumb:  if you see a unit moving from one city to another on
a square that is not paved, pave it - you will need it later.

7-a.  Uprooting a city.  If the city looks like a loser, or
it is a European city just too far away from my own core.  I will
uproot the whole city and move it to a better place.  To uproot,
I outfit pioneers and militia to drain out tools, muskets, and
horses.  If it has ore, I will send a wagon train.

8.  Once a few cities are in place and garrisoned, begins the
drudgery process of moving a wagon train around.  Pick up wood
from the city that's being plowed and move it to the power
city, pick up cotton at one city drop it off at another, and on
and on.  I monitor the Economic Advisor each turn to stay on top
of the bid-offer spread.  Unfortunately, I never learned to
set up trade routes because the German documentation is just
too impossibly difficult, so I just slug it out until my
"export" city builds a customs house.

This drudgery phase can be relieved a bit by uncovering the
mounds, treasures, and what-not.  I use a mounted unit to locate
the mounds, and common settlers to actually uncover it.  That's
because of the chance of losing the unit. 

I also build roads up to Indian villages just to make the
trading trip easier.  Later, I gleefully learned that roads
into Indian villages have a much more productive value - more
about that below.

9.  The King wants to raise taxes.  I refuse every time and
have the "tea party" instead.  I will lift the boycott for
muskets and tools - it's equivalent to one Indian coffer or
so.  Similarly, when another European initiates a dialog, I
refuse peace every time - there's a chance to pick up some
extra cash if they feel threatened.  If the Indians want
peace, I accept every time - there is no benefit for refusing.

10.  Revolution planning.  Once my power city has a university,
I get a Statesman.  The preferred way is to capture a European
city that has one already.  I figure it's cheaper that way because
I can probably pick up a few other masters of this or that in the
process.  Otherwise, I try to recruit one; and when all else
fails, I buy one.  He goes straight to the university and starts
cloning.  First, all my cities get one Statesman, then two, then
three.  I don't suggest that it works out every time in that
mechanical fashion, but it's at least my objective.  Anyway,
that takes care of the bells.

10-a.  Revolution planning.  My objective here is to check the
Congress Advisor to determine the size of the army I will need.
I try to match the CP evenly on artillery, double his cavalry,
and match his infantry with roughly one and a half times with
my cavalry.  For example, if the CP is capable of sending 50 infantry,
25 cavalry, and 10 batteries; I then try to raise 125 cavalry (75 plus
50) and 10 batteries.  This is over and above the standing garrison
of two cavalry units for each city.  I don't use infantry if I can
avoid it.  The odds here are somewhat daunting, but on the good
side, the units do not desert - as they did in real history.

10-b.  Manpower.  The first step is to get several cities with
colleges and start cloning off soldiers.  Since all my cities are
plowed, they can feed themselves adequately with ordinary settlers,
so that's the manpower source.  I set the settlers as farmer-fishers
and when one of them gets converted, it leaves to go pick up it's
muskets and horses.  On the next turn, the city grows another settler
who takes up as a farmer-fisher, and the cycle repeats itself.

10-c.  Firepower.  Somewhere else, there's an arsenal manned by a
master who is turning out muskets.  Materials are brought in from
the other cities on a mechanical basis.  If I overproduce muskets,
I create militia with settler units and then decommission them as
soldiers come on line.  I never export muskets.

10-c.  Horsepower.  A stable with 100 horses will produce 10 horses
on each turn.  When a stable reaches 150 horses, I skim off 50.  If
I overproduce horses, I "inventory" them by creating spies with settler
units, and then decommisioning them as horses are needed.  I never
export horses.

10-d.  Seapower.  This is where the CP cheats are the most blatant.
In the first place, the CP can run a blockade - I don't know how,
but he can.  And in the second place, he can move in, unload his
landing party, move back out, and sink a blockading ship all in one
turn.  In recognizing this, I plan to concede sea power, and to use
whatever ships are around.

11.  The "Patsy" city.  This is critical.  When you declare independence,
the CP assembles his landing party and selects a target city.  As
far as I can tell, he scans through them and selects one based upon
two factors:  1.  The closest to Europe, and 2.  The least defended.

In recognizing this, it makes sense to help the CP select the optimal
city for you.  The ideal "patsy" city looks like this:  it is a coastal
city with a mountain next to it (the mountain gives your skirmishers
a terrain advantage).  It has a standing garrison of one artillery and
one cavalary.  It has 300 horses and 300 muskets in inventory, and
a galleon about 4 squares away with 2 muskets, 2 horses, and 2 batteries.
Inside the city are, of course, a "5th column" of 8 soldiers working
as farmers and what not.  Note that the hill cannot be a landing square
and that you cannot have units on a landing square.

Within a one move reach of the city are the remainder of your batteries
and NO MORE than 9 units - I'll come back to this number "9" later.  On
the hill are three units standing by as skirmishers.  Oh, two wagon
trains as well, one with horses and one with muskets - to replenish
the stables and resupply your garrison.

It is worth mentioning here the logistics of becomming a war
machine.  Consider the "patsy" city as the center of gravity for
experienced cavalry.  The base unit gets created in the outlands.
It moves to the next city to acquire horses, and the next city
to acquire muskets, and the last city to stand fully deployed.
So it makes sense then, to arrange these cities so that this flow
is optimized for expedience.  Not that I arrange this every time,
but it's an objective to think about.

12.  Independence Day.  First, clear off the docks of any waiting
passengers.  Anything that cannot be retrained as a military unit
gets trained as a missionary - that comes free.  Passengers on the
docks count against your unit total, even if you cannot pick them
up anymore.  Be sure that all the ships are back stateside also.

Look for towns with 100% Independence and start retraining the
Statesmen as soldiers - you will need them.  Also, start deleting
out any Indian farmer-fishers so that they can be replaced with
settlers in the normal population growth cycle.

Raise the maximum number of mounted troops so that the maximum
number will be promoted on Independence Day.  What about units
that do not get promoted?  Well, remember those roads leading
into Indian villages?  Every few turns, I ride a cavalry unit
up to the village and pop it.  If it gets promoted, so much
the better; if not, it gets sent back for horses and tries
again.  It is important not to destroy the village - so be
careful.  European settlers and pioneers also work as promotion
vehicles, but not as well as Indian villages.

NOTE:  When a Continental unit gets shattered, it loses Continental
status and has to be promoted all over again.

13.  The War.  If things were set up correctly, a landing party
will appear at your "patsy" city.  If the landing party appears
somewhere else, I either restore a previous version and look for
what went wrong, or simply write the city off.  I suspect that the
CP gets an extra combat bonus until it has captured a city anyway.
But for the moment, assume that things work as planned.

In the worst case, the landing party consists of 2 frigate class
ships unloading onto 2 squares.  If units are on those squares, they
are overrun.  That means a total of 8 units in the first assault.  It
is critically important to count and keep track of how many there are,
who has fired, and so on.  If there are 8 enemy units outside of a city,
that means I fortify 9 units inside - always 1 more than the assault
force.  That means that the city will survive another round of play.
Units in excess of the basic fortification are used to counterattack.

At the beginning of each round, I click up the unit window and arrange
things as follows:  damaged artillery to the front, followed by good
artillery, followed by cavalry, followed by infantry, followed by
Continental cavalry, followed by Continental infantry, and finally
the fortified units.

When it becomes my turn, I throw all of the damaged artillery on to
one enemy-occupied square.  This, hopefully, reduces the force on
the square at the expense of artillery (but I never found any other
value for damaged artillery).  Next, the cavalry units attack with
the prospect of being promoted.  Then the infantry follows suit.  And
when all else fails, the Continentals attack.  The entire round
focuses on a single square until it is eliminated, or until the
only units remaining on the square are damaged loyalist artillery.

Finally, I activate my skirmishers (remember the skirmishers on the
hill?) to to pop off damaged loyalist artillery.  This is the easiest
opportunity they will have to become promoted.  If they get promoted,
they move into the city and give another unit a chance.

If the CP captures the city, I withdraw all my units beyond artillery
range and simply pop the settlers it sends out.  I don't start to retake
lost cities until I have successfully repelled a landing party.  From my
experience with the game, I can say that retaking a city requires a
minimum engagement of 12 mounted units.  I park them outside of the city
and don't attack unless they have all 4 moves.  When they get reduced to
infantry, I fortify them - attacking a fort with infantry is useless.


ASSORTED WHAT NOT
-----------------

1.  The Ship Anomally.  If an empty ship is moving to Europe,
and it crosses paths with a full ship moving to a city, sometimes
the cargo jumps off onto the empty ship and returns to Europe!!??!!
If the shipping lanes get busy, I take the ships off of auto-pilot
for that reason.

2.  The Ship Anomally II.  This deals with laden ships from Europe
showing up in the wrong ocean.  Somewhat irksome.  I stopped this
from happening by deciding that all ships would come and go from the
Atlantic and controlling it manually to assure that it works.  After
a ship unloads, rather than sending directly back to Europe, send it
to a "debarkation" city on the East coast.  When it arrives at that
city, move it into deep water manually.  It is a trade-off between
convenience and logistical predictability.

3.  Unit Stacking.  I have stacked up to 130 units in a city without
problems.  I don't know what the limit is.  There is a limit, however,
to the number of units in the window.

4.  The "Cannot Create Unit" Message.  This is horrible because it
happens just when new units are needed.  I stopped this from happening
by developing a better growth strategy.

5.  Indian farmers.  I see them as simply place-holders until they
can be replaced by settlers.

6.  Social dregs.  The petty criminals and indentured servants waiting
on the dock get made into missionaries.

7.  Cheats.  I made my own cheat program, it should be included in this
archive in both source and executable form.  MPS also added a cheat menu
that you can raise by changing MENU.TXT with an ASCII editor.  With some
bit fiddling you can also change your gold, but that makes everything
else more expensive.  In my experience, these mechanisms tend to snow-
ball - you need them more and more to continue the game, and the game
itself becomes less realistic.

The best cheats are those built right into the game:  promoting your
units by popping Indian villages; and setting up a "patsy" city - which
amounts to nothing more than an elaborate trap.

Enjoy the game!

