Colonization is, at its core, a game that emphasizes resource production and management. Its economic system focuses on harvesting raw resources and converting them into finished goods: for example, putting weavers to work, turning abundunt cotton into more profitable cloth. These resources and goods can then be bought and sold in Europe and with the natives, creating an incentive for players to produce not only a large quantity of goods, but ones of high quality too.
Each city can contain its own supply of specific resources in its warehouse (the default amount of goods at Normal speed is 100 of each). As settlements produce goods, wagon trains can carry them to sea ports, where ships can transport them to Europe. The market, particularly for some items like silver, is sensitive to rapid fluctuations in supply, causing demand to drop if the market is flooded with an excess of one good: thus, a diverse economy focusing on finished products is destined to be the most profitable. The table below outlines the available resources and average prices.
Ultimately, all successful games of Colonization will end in combat, as your fledling colonies declare independence and fight to separate themselves from the European continent. Thus, you must maintain a sizeable army, potentially consisting of soldiers, cannons, and dragoons, and, if possible, a navy as well. Keep in mind that the Royal Expeditionary Force (REF), the term given to the soldiers sent by the King in Europe, can grow in size throughout the game, and so what may have been an adequate defense years ago could no longer ensure victory. The REF, however, lands at your shores in waves, making it more manageable to handle.
There are eight playable leaders in Colonization: two each for the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies. Each leader has two traits, or characteristics that yield a special bonus. One of the traits is unique to that leader, and the other is shared by both leaders of a particular nation. For example, George Washington of the English colonies is Tolerant and Disciplined. John Adams, the other English leader, is also Tolerant, but instead of being Disciplined, he is Libertarian, a trait that no other leader has.
In addition to the leaders for European colonies, there are a few others: chiefs of native tribes and European kings. In total, there are eight different native tribes which inhabit the New World, each with their own leader and two traits, and four Kings, one for each European country.
2. REF growth
The growth of REF is depending on the amount of accumulated Liberty Bells.
At the beginning of each colonial player's turn, the King will add some units to REF, if the following conditions are satisfied.
a. not in Revolution
b. the amount of accumulated Liberty Bells >= revolutionEuropeUnitThreshold
c.
The various buildings in Colonization allow your colonists to take raw resources and produce finished goods for sale. This process, be it the conversion of ore to tools or tobacco to cigars, greatly enhances your profits, allowing your economy to grow even more. Unlike Civilization IV, buildings in Colonization require colonists to work inside them in order to produce goods: that is, unless you assign gunsmiths to an armory, tools will not be converted to guns on their own. Thus, you must manage the production of resources carefully, since a settlement requires a relatively high population in order to produce significant amounts of finished goods.
When you establish a settlement, you receive some buildings for free. However, by building more advanced structures, you will be able to produce more resources per turn. Most buildings have three levels, and keep in mind that the more advanced the building level, the more colonists that can work in it. Also, some buildings require Tools to finish construction, so having an ample supply of Tools (made from Ore or purchased from Europe) is a good idea.
In Colonization, Founding Fathers are historical figures who offer to join your colonies as you accumulate points in various categories: Military, Trade, Exploration, Religion, and Politics. For example, players receive Exploration points if they meet Native tribes, gaining extra points if they are the first European colony to do so. Similarly, building churches and cathedrals yields Religious points.
To view a complete breakdown of the points system, read this thread on the forums. When playing Colonization, you can access the Founding Fathers screen by pressing the keyboard shortcut F6, allowing you to see your current progress towards developing points. On this page, you can see a list of all available Founding Fathers, as well as their respective bonuses.
Civilization IV: Colonization is a standalone title in the Civilization series, released in September 2008 for the PC, approximately one year after Beyond the Sword, the next most recent Civ4 expansion. Despite the fact that Civ4 is not needed to run the game, many elements have stayed the same, making Colonization both an old and new game. On the one hand, it is very similar to the 1994 classic, Sid Meier's Colonization, keeping intact the founding fathers system, economic model, and overall goals (see below). However, this game utilizes the Civ4 engine, interface, and graphics, enhancing it for sure, but relying on the quality of Civ4 to provide a foundation.
I've seen a lot of confusion on the forums about how the REF, rebel sentiment and revolution works, and I've been confused by it myself. I did some research on the exact rules for these, both by looking at the game's actual code and by playing the game, and I thought I'd write up a little guide here.
First, let's talk about rebel sentiment.
There are two types of rebel sentiment: rebel sentiment % in each of your individual cities, and overall rebel sentiment % in your nation. The overall % is NOT the sum of the % in each of your cities. You do NOT need 50% rebel sentiment in each city to allow for revolution.
Rebel sentiment in cities
The ONLY thing affecting rebel sentiment is the rate at which you generate bells - the cumulative numbers of bells generated over time does NOT matter. Here's the way it works.
The rate of bell production is used to compute a target rebel sentiment value.
Not sure if this has been said before, but I hope this is a starting point for some, anyway. Comments, corrections, additions welcome…
Privateers
Privateers may well be the most versatile and useful units in BtS. They have the ability to wage war without war weariness or diplomatic penalties, while still collecting GG points and xp far beyond what can be gained from barbarians. At the same time, they can pay for themselves by pillaging and blockading AI cities – and the money doesn’t come out of thin air, it comes out of the pocket of your AI victim.
The “classic” use of Privateers is to cripple one’s opponents by starving them, pillaging their cash and improvements and sinking their less-advanced navies, while simultaneously gaining cash, GG points, and a highly promoted navy of your own.
Seems that lot of people are little lost in this game. Problem is that right strategy is pretty unintuitive, you should not build big empire or specialize in one place, both quite opposite to other Civ games. After first try out game, I played two games on second hardest difficulty and each time declared independence around turn 180 and would won easily, except some bug each time caused that king stopped sending army after I beat first few waves. Anyway here is my strategy that worked fine for me, at least with France.
Go for quality not quantity. I won with 5 cities each time (standard size continental map, normal speed). With bigger empire you need more money to buy more colonist, that means more trade and that means faster tax rises and price drop. And most importantly you will need more bells to start revolution and more bells means bigger REF. So you must find point when expanding stop pay off, which is in my experience somewhere around 60 colonist.
Im a bit frustrated that so many people seem to hate the game. I think its great despite the small flaws that will have to be fixed in an upcoming patch.
However the game is already very much fun and completely playable and most of the so called bugs, imbalances, broken concepts etc. result of severe misunderstandings of the game concepts.
Well now I think saying to these people :'Just play better !' is a bit rude. Not everbody is an expert and there is nothing wrong with it.
Well I just won my first game out of probably over 10 losses, and I wanted to make a post on how I've taken tips from here and tips from economics.
First, EVERY ACTION HAS AN OPPORTUNITY COST, which is by the way awesome. I've seen posts that almost want to eliminate this, which would be insane.
-1) You can produce Bells early to get Founding Fathers quickly, but this has the cost of making a huge REF (which in my win was not worth it). OR, you can produce Political Points to get Founding Fathers quickly, which has the cost of taking up your production queue in the town (this is the strategy I employed. DON'T JUST MAKE STUFF BECAUSE YOU CAN. If you don't have anything useful to build, build Political Points).
-2) When offered a Founding Father, you can accept him which gives you a bonus, at the cost of the cost of the Points. The earlier you get him/her, the longer you enjoy the bonus.
This is an overview of the mechanics governing the buy/sell prices of commodities in Europe. It's a bit complex and there is some math involved. The game uses the term "yield" to refer to the commodities (horses, silver, rum, etc), so I'll use that term here.
First I'll go over the variables that determine the prices then I'll explain the actual mechanics.
1. YieldBoughtTotal
For each type of yield, this value tracks the total amount of that yield that you've bought minus the total amount you've sold throughout the game. It starts off at zero. For example, if you sell 100 silver, the YieldBoughtTotal for silver goes down by 100. If you buy 300 horses, the YieldBoughtTotal for horses goes up by 300.
2. PriceChangeThreshold
For each multiple of this value that YieldBoughtTotal exceeds (positively or negatively) the price has a higher and higher chance of changing. It's stored in Assets\XML\Terrain\CIV4YieldInfos.xml.
1. Define one city as an espionage city. This is done either with code of laws, or the great wall, which ever you get first. If you don't have code of laws, try to make the espionage city the same one you put the forbidden palace in - so you don't have to forgo the reduced maintenance costs.
2. Always run as many spy specialists as possible in this city, and build any espionage generating building here first. It will generate great spies only. Settle the first one and build scotland yard with the second. After that, settle each and every one in this city.
3. Be first to communism and recieve a free great spy.
4. Use the nationhood civic.
5. A few turns of 100% espionage slider targeted at one single person.
6. Use this city to output all your spies.
7. Try to run the slider at 10% espionage early.
In this thread, I threatened to create an AAR/strategy guide for religions. Now that the game is complete, I can begin.
The questions to be answered are:
Are religions any good
Are multiple religions any good
Should I found one
How do you maximize their benefits
What victories should you shoot for
Can you get all the religions
Are religions any good?
There is certainly some debate over whether or not a religion is worth your while, and you should experiment for yourself to find your own answer. My answer is this: Yes!
My personal focus is usually on increasing my hammer output, with secondary focus on science. Sufficient Culture is needed to get the borders out there, Gold is merely a means to keep my science slider high, and Food, Health, and Happiness only serve to feed the production engine.
Traits: Organized, Imperialistic
UB: Forum (Replaces Market; +25% GP points)
UU: Praetorian (Replaces Swordsman, but has strength of 8 and no city attack bonus)
Techs: Fishing, Mining
Julius, Julius… Basically, he's strong because of the praetorians, but his traits being Organized and Imperialistic have great synergy with his style of play. Organized reduces civic upkeep by 50% (great for large empires) and make courthouses, lighthouses, and factories cheaper (cheap courthouses are very important because they cut city maintenance).
Early Research and Build Order
Getting Praetorians up ASAP is important. Your tech order should almost always go Bronze Working, Iron Working, Wheel (needed to connect the Iron for praetorians).
Civilization Revolution has six different types of Great People that provide special abilities upon their appearance. The six types are Great Artist/Thinker, Great Builder, Great Humanitarian, Great Explorer/Industrialist, Great Leader, and Great Scientist.
Every type of great people can do two things. The first is a one-time immediate bonus, which will consume the great person. Some examples of one time bonuses are instant completion of a wonder and increase population of all your cities. The second use is settlement bonus, which provides the host city benefits such as reduced building cost, experience for newly created units, and culture/science bonus. Note that only the great people settled in cities count toward cultural victory.
Colonization is, at its core, a game that emphasizes resource production and management. Its economic system focuses on harvesting raw resources and converting them into finished goods: for example, putting weavers to work, turning abundunt cotton into more profitable cloth. These resources and goods can then be bought and sold in Europe and with the natives, creating an incentive for players to produce not only a large quantity of goods, but ones of high quality too.
Ultimately, all successful games of Colonization will end in combat, as your fledling colonies declare independence and fight to separate themselves from the European continent. Thus, you must maintain a sizeable army, potentially consisting of soldiers, cannons, and dragoons, and, if possible, a navy as well. Keep in mind that the Royal Expeditionary Force (REF), the term given to the soldiers sent by the King in Europe, can grow in size throughout the game, and so what may have been an adequate defense years ago could no longer ensure victory. The REF, however, lands at your shores in waves, making it more manageable to handle.
There are eight playable leaders in Colonization: two each for the English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies. Each leader has two traits, or characteristics that yield a special bonus. One of the traits is unique to that leader, and the other is shared by both leaders of a particular nation. For example, George Washington of the English colonies is Tolerant and Disciplined. John Adams, the other English leader, is also Tolerant, but instead of being Disciplined, he is Libertarian, a trait that no other leader has.
The various buildings in Colonization allow your colonists to take raw resources and produce finished goods for sale. This process, be it the conversion of ore to tools or tobacco to cigars, greatly enhances your profits, allowing your economy to grow even more. Unlike Civilization IV, buildings in Colonization require colonists to work inside them in order to produce goods: that is, unless you assign gunsmiths to an armory, tools will not be converted to guns on their own. Thus, you must manage the production of resources carefully, since a settlement requires a relatively high population in order to produce significant amounts of finished goods. 
In Colonization, Founding Fathers are historical figures who offer to join your colonies as you accumulate points in various categories: Military, Trade, Exploration, Religion, and Politics. For example, players receive Exploration points if they meet Native tribes, gaining extra points if they are the first European colony to do so. Similarly, building churches and cathedrals yields Religious points. 
Civilization Revolution has six different types of Great People that provide special abilities upon their appearance. The six types are Great Artist/Thinker, Great Builder, Great Humanitarian, Great Explorer/Industrialist, Great Leader, and Great Scientist. 
