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1. Preface
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- 1.1 Notes
- 1.2 Credits and Legal
- 1.3 Version
- 1.4 Most Frequently Asked Questions
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2. Introduction
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- 2.1 What is Anno 1602?
- 2.2 Who developed Anno 1602?
- 2.3 What are the minimum requirements?
- 2.4 "Anno 1602" or "1602 AD"? What are NINA, the Gold Edition and
Konigsedition? How many different versions are there?
- 2.5 Where can I get demos and patches?
- 2.6 What expansions and addons are there?
- 2.7 Can I run the game on Linux?
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3. Gameplay
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3.1 Essential Concepts
- 3.1.1 How are resources revealed?
- 3.1.2 How is territory gained?
- 3.1.3 What limits how I develop colonies?
- 3.1.4 How does cashflow work? What costs are there?
- 3.1.5 Must I keep my people happy?
- 3.1.6 Is territory important?
- 3.1.7 How do service areas work?
- 3.1.8 How do roads and carts work?
- 3.1.9 How does production work?
3.2 Setup and Interface
- 3.2.1 Where is the manual?
- 3.2.2 What are the differences between continuous play difficulty settings?
- 3.2.3 How do I pause?
- 3.2.4 How does the game end?
- 3.2.5 Can you change the names of colonies and ships?
- 3.2.6 Is there an undo button?
- 3.2.7 How do I meet a 'balance' objective?
- 3.2.8 Can I see the objectives during play?
3.3 Resources
- 3.3.1 Where do I get Tools or Ore from? How do I mine?
- 3.3.2 Why does my mine not extract ore from a deposit?
- 3.3.3 Where did my gold or ore deposit go?
- 3.3.4 Where is the gold?
- 3.3.5 Can I have Aristocrats without Gold?
- 3.3.6 What are north and south islands?
- 3.3.7 How do islands vary is in size?
- 3.3.8 Why are my crops dying?
- 3.3.9 Why do wild animals die?
- 3.3.10 Are patchy green/brown areas of land less fertile?
- 3.3.11 Can I clear mountains or rocks?
- 3.3.12 What areas of water provide fish?
3.4 Colony Buildings
- 3.4.1 How do can I build a ...?
- 3.4.2 How do I demolish buildings?
- 3.4.3 What do Gallows do?
- 3.4.4 How do I get a monument?
- 3.4.5 What do Palaces, Arches of Triumph and statues do?
- 3.4.6 Do I need Schools if I have Colleges, Chapels if I have Churches, and
similar?
- 3.4.7 What are the advantages of stone roads and squares?
- 3.4.8 Why can I not build across a river?
- 3.4.9 How do I build Warehouses?
- 3.4.10 What do docks do?
3.5 Colony Development and Events
- 3.5.1 What does a question mark above a building mean?
- 3.5.2 Why aren't my houses developing?
- 3.5.3 Do I need housing on production islands?
- 3.5.4 How much of ... will my population need?
- 3.5.5 What can I do about plague?
- 3.5.6 Why do fire carts not come to put out fires?
- 3.5.7 Why do opponents not advance?
- 3.5.8 How much is buried treasure worth?
- 3.5.9 What triggers bankruptcy?
3.6 Trade and Diplomacy
- 3.6.1 How to set transport routes?
- 3.6.2 What does the 'check your trade routes' message mean?
- 3.6.3 What are wagons for?
- 3.6.4 How many market wagons can I have?
- 3.6.5 How do I trade with Free Traders?
- 3.6.6 What do Free Traders sell?
- 3.6.7 Can I trade more from a larger Warehouse?
- 3.6.8 Why are am I being attacked?
3.7 Pirates and Natives
- 3.7.1 Where do pirates come from?
- 3.7.2 How do you bribe pirates?
- 3.7.3 Can pirates steal ground units?
- 3.7.4 What do native curses do?
- 3.7.5 How do I trade with natives?
- 3.7.6 Is it normal for natives to walk around my town?
3.8 Ships
- 3.8.1 How can I order soldiers to get into and out of ships?
- 3.8.2 How do I build ships and supply shipyards?
- 3.8.3 Can I buy ships from other players?
- 3.8.4 Why does nobody buy the ships I sell?
- 3.8.5 How can I get more than 33 ships?
- 3.8.6 How do I repair ships?
- 3.8.7 How do I mount guns?
- 3.8.8 Can cargo be retrieved from sunken ships? Can I pirate or capture
ships?
- 3.8.9 Can ships be sunk by sea-life?
- 3.8.10 Can I attack Free Traders?
- 3.8.11 How can I set a patrol around an island? Can I escort ships?
3.9 Combat
- 3.9.1 How can I order soldiers to get into and out of ships?
- 3.9.2 How do you build ground units?
- 3.9.3 Is there a limit on the number of ground units I may have?
- 3.9.4 How do you heal troops?
- 3.9.5 Why don't groups of troops work?
- 3.9.6 How do I retire soldiers?
- 3.9.7 Can I destroy trees?
- 3.9.8 Why don't my towers shoot?
- 3.9.9 How do I conquer enemies?
- 3.9.10 Why can't I delete old roads on an island I have conquered?
- 3.9.11 Why do I lose money when I take over another players' city?
- 3.9.12 How do I invade an enemy that keeps on rebuilding walls?
- 3.9.13 Can I garrison troops?
- 3.9.14 Can city gates be shut?
3.10 Multiplayer
- 3.10.1 How can I find online games?
- 3.10.2 Can different versions be used by different players in multiplayer
games?
- 3.10.3 How do you load a multiplayer saved game?
- 3.10.4 How do you chat?
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4. Scenarios
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4.1 Tutorials
- 4.1.1 Overview
- 4.1.2 Explore
- 4.1.3 Settle
- 4.1.4 Trade and Diplomacy
- 4.1.5 Naval battle
- 4.1.6 Land battle
4.2 The End of a Long Trip
- 4.2.1 Objectives
- 4.2.2 Resources
- 4.2.3 Map
- 4.2.4 Strategy overview
- 4.2.5 New concepts
4.3 One Lone Settlement
- 4.3.1 Objectives
- 4.3.2 Resources
- 4.3.3 Map
- 4.3.4 Strategy overview
- 4.3.5 New concepts
- 4.3.6 Secondary colony
- 4.3.7 Florinz
4.4 The Search for Ore Deposits
- 4.4.1 Objectives
- 4.4.2 Resources
- 4.4.3 Map
- 4.4.4 Strategy overview
- 4.4.5 New concepts
- 4.4.6 The mission does not finish when using the Dutch version. Why?
4.5 Peaceful Reign
- 4.5.1 Objectives
- 4.5.2 Resources
- 4.5.3 Map
- 4.5.4 Strategy overview
- 4.5.5 New concepts
- 4.5.6 Mixed trading and colonization strategy
- 4.5.7 Minimal trading strategy
4.6 The Test (The Trial)
- 4.6.1 Objectives
- 4.6.2 Resources
- 4.6.3 Map
- 4.6.4 Strategy overview
- 4.6.5 New concepts
4.7 Little Land
- 4.7.1 Objectives
- 4.7.2 Resources
- 4.7.3 Map
- 4.7.4 Strategy overview
- 4.7.5 New concepts
4.8 New Discoveries
- 4.8.1 Objectives
- 4.8.2 Resources
- 4.8.3 Map
- 4.8.4 Strategy overview
- 4.8.5 New concepts
- 4.8.6 Land grab
- 4.8.7 How do I get a 500 trade balance?
- 4.8.8 One AI player does not settle. What happened?
4.9 Good Neigbors
- 4.9.1 Objectives
- 4.9.2 Resources
- 4.9.3 Map
- 4.9.4 Strategy overview
- 4.9.5 New concepts
- 4.9.6 I have enough money, goods and the right people, but the largest other
island is stuck at 9xx inhabitants. What did I forget?
- 4.9.7 Does it matter which neighbour I help?
4.10 Dark Clouds on the Horizon
- 4.10.1 Objectives
- 4.10.2 Resources
- 4.10.3 Map
- 4.10.4 Strategy overview
- 4.10.5 Colony development
- 4.10.6 Early combat strategy
- 4.10.7 Trading strategy
4.11 Competition
- 4.11.1 Objectives
- 4.11.2 Resources
- 4.11.3 Map
- 4.11.4 Strategy overview
4.12 The Monopoly
- 4.12.1 Objectives
- 4.12.2 Resources
- 4.12.3 Map
- 4.12.4 Strategy overview
- 4.12.5 What is a trade balance?
- 4.12.6 Can I share an island with another player?
- 4.12.7 Why did I get deposed?
4.13 Cooperation
- 4.13.1 Objectives
- 4.13.2 Resources
- 4.13.3 Map
- 4.13.4 Strategy overview
4.14 The Alliance
- 4.14.1 Objectives
- 4.14.2 Resources
- 4.14.3 Map
- 4.14.4 Strategy overview
4.15 A Plague of Pirates
- 4.15.1 Objectives
- 4.15.2 Resources
- 4.15.3 Map
- 4.15.4 Strategy overview
- 4.15.5 Pirates
- 4.15.6 Economy
4.16 The Intruder
- 4.16.1 Objectives
- 4.16.2 Resources
- 4.16.3 Map
- 4.16.4 Strategy overview
4.17 The Fortress
- 4.17.1 Objectives
- 4.17.2 Resources
- 4.17.3 Map
- 4.17.4 Strategy overview
4.18 NINA Campaigns and Scenarios
- 4.18.1 What is the order of the NINA campaigns and scenarios?
- 4.18.2 New Horizons: Halfway There: How do I get started?
- 4.18.3 New Horizons: To Each His Own Island: Why can't I build an Iron mine?
Why can't I get tools?
- 4.18.4 New Horizons: To Each His Own Island: Why does the game not finish?
- 4.18.5 New Horizons: Appearance can be Deceiving: How do I finish?
- 4.18.6 Trust No One: Humility Is a Virtue: How do I keep the other players
friendly?
- 4.18.7 Trust No One: Humility Is a Virtue: How do I find the Gold needed to
create 1200 Aristocrats?
- 4.18.8 Trust No One: The Thief: How to get started?
- 4.18.9 The Magnate: Gold Rush: How to finish?
- 4.18.10 The Magnate: Spice Monopoly: What's the objective?
- 4.18.11 Unfriendly Neighbors: Break the Spice Monopoly: What's the
objective?
- 4.18.12 At His Majesty's Service: Veni, vidi, veci: My trade balance is
above 500. Why does the game not end?
- 4.18.13 At His Majesty's Service: At all Costs: How to get started?
- 4.18.14 Delusions of Grandeur: How to get enough Aristocrats?
- 4.18.15 Fireland: How to get Tools?
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5. Strategies
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5.1 Colony Planning and Building
- 5.1.1 Initial colony building
- 5.1.2 City planning
- 5.1.3 Ultimate city designs
5.2 Industry Planning and Building
- 5.2.1 Limited island resources
- 5.2.2 Planning and construction
- 5.2.3 Ultimate industry designs
- 5.2.4 Ore and Stone
- 5.2.5 Food supply
- 5.2.6 Vines or Sugarcane to produce Liquor?
- 5.2.7 Sheep farms or Cotton plantations for Cloth?
5.3 Colony Management
- 5.3.1 Tax
- 5.3.2 Alternative uses for market wagons
- 5.3.3 Fires
5.4 Trade and Diplomacy
- 5.4.1 Trade
- 5.4.2 Trade routes
- 5.4.3 War or peace?
- 5.4.4 Alliances
5.5 Pirates and Natives
- 5.5.1 Dealing with natives
- 5.5.2 Dealing with Pirates
5.6 Military Units
- 5.6.1 Ship choice
- 5.6.2 Ground unit choice
5.7 Military Tactics
- 5.7.1 Economic warfare
- 5.7.2 Defence
- 5.7.3 Invasions
- 5.7.4 Destroying towers
- 5.7.5 Naval battles
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6. Cheating, Editing and Custom Scenarios
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- 6.1 What are the cheat codes?
- 6.2 How do I access all the scenarios?
- 6.3 Are there other gameplay 'cheats'?
- 6.4 Are there any trainers?
- 6.5 Can I create scenarios and custom maps?
- 6.6 Can I create custom islands?
- 6.7 Where can I get custom scenarios and maps? How do I play them?
- 6.8 Can I play custom scenarios without NINA?
- 6.9 Can I create campaigns from scenarios?
- 6.10 What are the editor codes?
- 6.11 Can I open a saved game in the editor?
- 6.12 Can I change the music?
- 6.13 Can I place treasure using the editor?
- 6.14 Can damaged ships or buildings be set in the editor?
- 6.15 How do the editor's passivity and activity settings work?
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7. Technical Issues
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- 7.1 Why does installation under Windows XP/2000 fail with file name too long
or similar error messages?
- 7.2 Does the game run under Windows XP/2000? Why does it crash during
battles or after an hour of play? Got any troubleshooting tips?
- 7.3 How do I backup the game prior to reinstalling? How do I move savegames
between machines?
- 7.4 Can I save more than 12 games?
- 7.5 How do you take screenshots?
- 7.6 Why can I not see the cursor in-game?
- 7.7 Have you got any suggestions for dealing with CD-ROM problems?
- 7.8 How do I play across a firewall?
- 7.9 Why do online multiplayer games crash frequently?
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8. And Finally...
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- 8.1 Don't you hate it when...
- 8.2 That's odd...
- 8.3 Ways you can tell that you play 1602 too much...
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Appendices
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- A. Building and Industry Data
- B. Production Links
- C. Population per Industry
- D. Production Efficiency
- E. Military Data
- F. Final Score
- G. AI Trade Prices
- H. Keyboard Shortcuts
This FAQ is based on the original United Kingdom English version, which was
called "Anno 1602 - Creation of a New World". It does not specifically cover
the new elements in the NINA expansion, which was included in the North
America and Australia version "1602 A.D.", and the Gold/Kings editions. These
later versions are all based on the original, and the core of the game is the
same for all versions. Where possible, I have integrated information relevant
only to the NINA expansion. For a full explanation of the different versions,
see "Anno 1602" or "1602 AD"? What are NINA, the Gold Edition and
Konigsedition? How many different versions are there? below.
Anno 1602 is well documented in German, with many fan sites and a published
strategy guide by Markus Betz. A basic German FAQ was written by stormbringer
in 1998. It was translated into English by Manny and Neferankh, but is no
longer online. This FAQ attempts to take a slightly different approach: To
pool a lot of knowledge found on forums into a single English language
reference document, with a walkthrough, strategy guide, technical support
notes, and lots of data. This FAQ was awarded the title "FAQ of the Month" for
April 2003 by GameFAQs. Cool.
You may notice that some names are used inconsistently. For example "Alcohol"
is interchangable with "Liquor", and there are several different variations on
"Fire Department". Some of these reflect laziness on the part of the author,
some reflect inconsistency between the game and manual, others reflect
translations of words from one language version of the game to another. Common
sense should hopefully be sufficient to determine what names refer to what
things.
This FAQ was written by Tim Howgego (also known as timski), copyright 2003-
2005, unless otherwise stated. Errors and suggestions should be reported to
tim (at) capsu (dot) org. Please put "1602" somewhere in the email subject
field. This FAQ includes ideas and strategies posted on Sunflowers' forum
(both http://forum.sunflowers.de/ and the old Sunflowers' forum), the official
site ( http://www.anno1602.de/ ), and found lurking on fan sites, especially
Manny's (now offline) and http://www.anno-zone.de/Charlie/index.html (archive
of http://www.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/~kaufmann/ANNO1602/ ) - contributors
are noted with the relevant text. Special thanks to prolific forum posters
like FrankB, Budgie, Zomby Woof and Gunter, without whom this FAQ would be
much less detailed than it is, and Manfred for (among other things) posting
these words in December 2000: "There are so many questions and even more
answers on this board, it'll take a life time to re-read all the posts and put
them in a halfway decent order..." This FAQ is in the public domain: You may
copy and repost this FAQ, but the content of the document, including the
credits, must remain unchanged. Informing the author that you are hosting it
is appreciated, but not mandatory. Ensuring you host the most recent version
is also appreciated, but not mandatory. If converting from text to HTML,
please note the use of fixed width text in diagrams and greater/less-than
characters. Trademarks and copyright are owned by their respective trademark
and copyright holders. This is not an official FAQ. It is not endorsed by the
game's developers or publishers.
The most frequently asked question is "how do I load troops onto my ship?"
This is totally unintuitive because it needs more than a simple mouse click.
The answer: Move the ship next to the coast; select the military unit(s) to
load on the ship; [Ctrl] + click on the ship; the unit(s) will board the ship.
Those purchasing budget versions of the game often ask (or should ask) about
the manual, which is on the CD, but with no indication that it is lurking
there - see Where is the manual? under Gameplay. The most frequently asked
technical issue relates to Windows 2000/XP crashing sometime after play starts
- see Does the game run under Windows XP/2000? Why does it crash during
battles or after an hour of play? Got any troubleshooting tips? under
Technical Issues. Those who are inclined to cheat often either cannot get the
cheat codes to function, or spend hours inputting hoax codes - see What are
the cheat codes? under Cheating, Editing and Custom Scenarios. The most common
strategy questions relate to making money early in the game (read some Initial
colony building strategies, and examine some Tax strategies) and getting Tools
(see Where do I get Tools from? How do I mine? under Gameplay).
Anno 1602 is a real time strategy game, set in the Early Modern (around the
17th century) period of history. The game is based around colony building and
resource management on a series of small islands. It includes aspects of
exploration, combat, diplomacy and trade. It is set in the same period as Sid
Meier's Colonization, but involves more detailed colony management, with no
"Old World" politics. Parts, like expansion and movement of resources, are
similar to the early Settlers games. 1602 is an economic, rather than combat,
orientated strategy game. Players are rarely challenged in battle. The game
design is noteworthy for its attempt to implement a 'progressive' AI
(Artificial Intelligence). This should mean that the pace of the game changes
in response to how quickly players act.
The game was developed by Sunflowers Interactive Entertainment Software (
http://www.sunflowers.de/ ) subsidiary, Max Design. Programming was by Albert
Lasser and Wilfried Reiter, animation and artwork by Ulli Koller and Martin
Lasser, music by Marcus Pitzer, and production by Juergen Reusswig. The game
was published variously by Bomico (first in Germany), Infogrames, GT
Interactive Software, Infogrames again, and Electronic Arts. It sold more than
1.7 million copies worldwide. Albert Lasser and Wilfried Reiter originally
wrote "1869", a 1992 DOS/Amiga game set in a similar historic period, but with
more emphasis on a trading from a single ship. Anno 1602 has a sequel, Anno
1503/1503 AD, released in 2002/2003.
Windows 95/98 (can normally be made to work with Windows 2000 or XP - see
Technical Issues below for tweaks and fixes), Pentium 100, 16MB RAM, 2MB PCI
graphics card, 4-speed CD-ROM drive, 85 MB hard drive space, SoundBlaster or
compatible with DirectX support, and mouse. The game requires DirectX 6 or
later.
2.4 "Anno 1602" or "1602 AD"? What are NINA, the Gold Edition and
Konigsedition? How many different versions are there?
Anno 1602 was first released as a German title in 1997. In 1998 Anno 1602 was
released in Europe and Japan, with versions in English (United Kingdom),
French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Japanese. This second release is
sometimes referred to as the 'International' edition.
An expansion set "Neue Inseln, Neue Abenteuer" (NINA - New Islands, New
Adventures) was released for the German version in the same year. Shark_Dus
lists NINA's features as: "Map editor, Watermill, Option to release unused
military, Option to sink unused ships, Subdirectory 'own scenarios',
Additional videos, Additional music, Extended limit of 33 ships, Extended
limit of production facilities (in total and per island), A frame showing the
current screen on the survey map [this appears in some of the International
versions too], Warehouse/market opens with a double click, More activity on
the ocean (whales, dolphins, octopus), More activity on the streets (children
running, a gambler in front of every market), Volcano eruptions from time to
time, Better AI, 20 additional scenarios in 6 campaigns, 7 new singleplayer
scenarios, 30 additional multiplayer-scenarios."
In 2000 the game was released in North America and Australia as "1602 A.D.", a
version that included the original game, expansion and patches. An
'International' (primarily United Kingdom and Dutch) "Anno 1602 - Gold
Edition" was released in 2000/2001, which similarly contained the expansion
and patches. This version almost wasn't produced at all (Infogrames rather
lost interest...), and it was not widely distributed.
From Shark_Dus: "[Germany] also had an additional mission pack, 9 months
later, 'In the name of the king' ('Im Namen des Konigs') from a different
publisher (but authorized by Sunflowers): 27 scenarios in 6 additional
campaigns, 8 single-player scenarios, 5 multi-player scenarios." The final
German version was the Konigsedition (Kings Edition), released in 1999. It
included the original game, *both* expansions, and patches.
Demos and current patches are available from Sunflowers,
http://www.sunflowers.de/english/support/downloads.php and
http://www.anno1602.de/ .
From Jochen Bauer: "Do not use the patches with the US version of 1602.
- Patch 5 for Anno 1602: Download Patch 5 and follow the instructions of the
installation-assistant. This patch is for all players who have installed Anno
1602 without the expansion set 'New Islands, New Adventures'. This patch is
only for German versions of Anno 1602.
- Patch 5 for the expansion set 'New Islands, New Adventures': Download Patch
5 and follow the instructions of the installation-assistant. This patch is for
all players who have installed Anno 1602 and the expansion set 'New Islands,
New Adventures'. This patch is only for German versions of the expansion pack
'New Islands, New Adventures'.
- Patch 1.04 for the Dutch version of Anno 1602: Download Patch 1.04 and
follow the instructions of the installation-assistant. This patch is for all
players who have installed Anno 1602 - Dutch version.
- Patch 5 for all countries except Japan and Netherlands: Download the
soundpatch and follow the instructions of the installation-assistant. This is
a patch for all international versions except the Japanese version of 'Anno
1602 - Creation of a New World', which fixes the double sound problem with
some PCI sound cards running under Windows 98.
- Patch 2 for the Japanese version: Download the Soundpatch and follow the
instructions of the installation-assistant. This is a patch for the Japanese
version of 'Anno 1602 - Creation of a New World', which fixes the double sound
problem with some PCI sound cards running under Windows 98."
The only Sunflowers expansion is NINA (Neue Inseln, Neue Abenteuer/New
Islands, New Adventures), which is included within 1602 A.D. and Gold/Kings
editions by default. NINA was only released as a stand-alone expansion in
German. A second expansion, Im Namen des Konigs (In the name of the king), was
also released only in German, and is also included in the Konigsedition.
Unofficial addons have appeared, including "Pirate's Isle" and "A.D. - The
Conquest Continues". Various custom scenarios are also available for download
and use by those with NINA based versions - see Where can I get custom
scenarios and maps? How do I play them? below.
Officially no, however - from cipher: "This game almost works on Linux
completely. Only thing that I haven't been able to get working is the
Multiplayer feature. The single player works fine because when you hit the
single player button it loads it within the same screen. Multiplayer, however,
loads a new screen from what I've been told and that causes it to freeze
(using 100% CPU, and due to Dxgrab, mouse is stuck in the window). I've been
using Winex to try this game."
This section contains short answers to specific commonly asked questions.
Associated Strategies are contained in a later section. For gameplay related
'exploits', see Are there other gameplay 'cheats'? below. This section assumes
one has at least skimmed through the manual, attempted to play the game and/or
completed the tutorials: It does not cover absolutely everything, just topics
which have confused new player enough for them to ask the question.
Sail your ship to close to each island. Once stopped, selected the 'eye' icon,
which explores the island. You must let the red bar around the eye fill to
complete exploration. Exploration will determine what special crops can be
grown, and what ores (if any) can be mined. Special crop are Cocoa, Cotton,
Spices, Sugarcane, Tobacco and Vines. Grain and trees do not require specific
soils, and can be grown wherever there is room. The same applies to the
grazing of livestock. Once explored, suitability is shown by moving the cursor
over the island: It will display something like "Cocoa 100%, Cotton 50%,
Spices 100%", meaning these three crops can be grown here, but if Cotton is
grown, half the crop fields will fail. Iron ore deposits are shown as a pair
of hammers over the mountain. Gold deposits appear in a similar way. Islands
without mountains do not contain ore deposits.
Lord Khang has a warning about exploration: "I prematurely ended my
'scouting'. When I came back to finish scouting it did not give me the scout
out island button again. Later in the game, after the computer had settled
that same island, I went and looked at it and bingo, the computer had dropped
a gold mine in one of the mountainsides... I needed the gold, so I whacked
him, but it would not let me build a Gold mine in the same mountain."
You may only build in territory within the service area of your Warehouses and
Market places. Initial colonization requires a Warehouse to be built. The
Warehouse is the only buildings that you build from a ship moored next to the
island. The ship needs to have the required materials (6 Wood, 3 Tools) and
you also need 100 coins available. For further expansion into new areas of the
island, you must build Market places. Build these at the limit of your
existing territory and if the territory was unclaimed, your territory will be
expanded. If the territory is already claimed by another player, you'll need
to destroy their Market places, Warehouses, and any military towers using your
military.
Individual buildings require different volumes of raw materials - coins, Wood,
Bricks, Tools and/or Cannon. Most buildings are only available to build once
you have met or exceeded specific population requirements. These requirements
involve having a minimum number of people at a certain civilization level.
There are five levels, starting from Pioneer, which is what you get when you
build new housing. A list is contained within the Building and Industry Data
in the appendices. All housing requires Food. In order to develop, housing
must be supplied with different goods, and provided with access to different
facilities. For example, to develop from Pioneer to Settler, the population
must be supplied with Cloth, and have access to a Chapel and Market place, in
addition to being fed and not being over-taxed. Basic demands can normally be
met from one island, but the higher civilization levels require many goods,
some of which must come from other colonies.
3.1.4 How does cashflow work? What costs are there?
Taxation is the main source of revenue. Civilization level is the primarily
determinant of taxation. The most advanced (Aristocrat) housing can house 20
times as many people as the basic (Pioneer) housing. More people means more
potential tax revenue. Buildings require coin to build, in addition to
construction materials. Buildings, except houses, have an operating cost,
which needs to be met. In some cases this can be reduced by de-activating the
building. Ships and ground units require coin to build/train (in addition to
construction materials. Military units require upkeep to be paid in coins.
Ships may need repairs if they become damaged, which requires repair materials
(Cloth and Wood). From Robitoby: "Tax collection and taking away the
production-costs from your money, happens all together within 60 seconds at
speed F5. Means if one of your inhabitant-groups says you get 500 gold it
would mean you'll have these within 60 seconds." Trade with other players,
Free Traders and pirates is based on exchange of coin for cargo. Trade with
natives does not require coin - one exchanges cargoes. All coin expenditure
and revenue is shown on the Player Status screen. Military upkeep is included
with Military Cost, not Operating Cost. Certain expenditure, like trade, is
only partly averaged out over time. This can lead to temporary oddities and
extreme values, notably when reloading a game. Shark_Dus writes: "The
financial data is updated constantly. The irritating thing is, that the AI of
the game splits your trading volume (sales and purchases) in 10 pieces and
spreads this volume over 10 consecutive cycles (1 cycle = approximately 1
minute). Then it averages the last 10 cycles, so that the financial data shows
some purchase even when you did not purchase anything within the last 9
minutes." Coin is pooled across all islands - there is only one treasury per
player. This varies from commodities/production, which are island-specific.
Ensure that they don't become unhappy for long. Unhappy residents will leave
and cause housing to decay. Mildly annoyed residents will not develop their
houses. Happier residents may allow taxes to be increased, and will eventually
fill available housing space. It is important to differentiate between demands
and needs. Demands are those things the population want to upgrade their
houses. You do not have to meet those demands for the current population to
remain happy. For example, Settlers would like a Tavern, because it is one of
the things that will allow them to upgrade to Citizens; however Settlers do
not need a Tavern to remain happy Settlers. Needs are more critical: For
example, deprive the population of food and they will become unhappy because
they are starving.
In order to develop many facilities, you will need a lot of space. Cities need
as much space on one island as possible, in order to fit in all the public
buildings needed by advanced civilisation levels. Some or all of the city's
demands can be produced on other islands, and then shipped to your main city
island. Sometimes you will not be able to control all the territory you need
to produce everything, and will be forced to trade with other players.
Although multiple players can settle the same island, this leads to tension
and war, and the relatively small size of most islands means it is common for
one player to wholly own each of the islands they have colonies on.
Buildings that produce things need to have access to the raw materials they
need within their service area. For example, for a Weaver's hut to function,
it needs to have sources of Wool (Sheep farms or Cotton plantations) in its
service area. Alternatively, both industries need access to a Market place or
Warehouse on the same island. The overall transport requirement tends to be
lower when industries can find the raw materials they need without using
Market places, although with clever colony design, Market place based supply
can be the most efficient. The service area is the highlighted area you see
around the buildings when you build or click on it. The same logic applies to
public buildings, but in reverse. For example, only housing in the service
area of a Fire department will be protected when fires start.
Most buildings need to be linked with roads. Roads need to touch at least one
square of one side of each building. Buildings do not need to be aligned to
roads. Road connections make buildings accessible to carts and fire trolleys.
Buildings that produce items will store them in the building after production.
Production buildings have limited storage capacity. If storage capacity is
filled, production will stop. If a road connection is available, a cart will
eventually run out from a nearby Warehouse or Market place, pick up the stock
and return. Once the stock has arrived at the Warehouse or Market place, it is
available for other uses on the same island, or shipment elsewhere. Each
market place adds two carts. Travel speeds can be increased by paving the
roads (cobbles and squares). Having good road networks and enough carts to
service all your buildings is essential.
There are two exceptions to cart transport, both involving industries that
source their raw materials by using donkeys or walking to the supply of raw
materials: (1) Stonemasons will walk to the Quarry, mine stone, and then bring
it back to the Stonemason's hut. In this case, carts will never take stone
from the Quarry - they will only transport Bricks created at the Stonemason's
hut. (2) In certain other cases, such as Sheep farms, Weavers will walk to the
farm to fetch the Wool, so roads are not required. However, any excess Wool
that needs to be moved into your warehouse does require road access. Not
placing roads in the last case prevents large excess amounts of production
from being stored. The second case applies to most basic farm types, Ore
smelting, and shipyards.
Primary production involves growing and harvesting crops or livestock, or
mining. Secondary production is often needed to process these into useful
goods. Most production is a simple case of taking one raw material to a
processing industry, and returning with the finished product. In a few cases,
two items need to be used for production to occur. For example, Ore smelters
require Ore and Wood to produce Iron. Sometimes more than one production
process is needed. For example, after Iron is produced it is made into Tools
or weapons before it has any proper use. End products are consumed by your
population, or used by your military (ships, troop training, etc). Appendix B
shows Production Links, appendix D shows Production Efficiency.
3.2 Setup and Interface
______________________________________________________________________________
3.2.1 Where is the manual?
Earlier versions shipped with a printed manual. Later versions (including the
US version) have a manual as 1602manu.pdf on the CD, which opens in Acrobat
Reader. [This is asked quite a lot.]
3.2.2 What are the differences between continuous play difficulty settings?
Based on the observations of Charlie, when comparing the Easy and Difficult
settings: 20,000 starting coins on Easy, 10,000 at harder settings; 30-50%
less chance of finding suitable land for crops at the hardest setting; 75%
less chance of finding large (endless?) ore deposits at the hardest setting;
less chance of finding treasure at harder settings; pirates in all except the
easiest, with increased pirate activity at harder settings. You cannot opt to
have fewer AI player opponents in the continuous game.
Press the Pause key. From Helen: "Or press [alt]+[tab] to pause, the game
minimizes. Or you can press the question mark, the statistics comes up, and
pauses the game aswell." MWHC has a method that allows one to pause and view
the map (may not work on all versions): "Shift+P will bring up the screenshot
window. Move it aside to gain a view over your island. When you are done, just
move back your window and cancel the 'save'-window."
Scenarios have specific objectives which you must meet - often related to
population. Continuous play mode has no fixed objectives, and it is up to the
player to decide when to finish. This can confuse some players, who defeat all
the other players and expect the game to end. Games may be played to maximise
Final Score, details of which are given in the appendices.
3.2.5 Can you change the names of colonies and ships?
Yes. Manfred writes: "Click on your City or Ship name tag and use 'backspace'
to erase the old name. Now type the name of your choosing (for example,
'Cottonville' for your cotton producing island) and hit 'enter'."
Shark_Dus writes: "There are two different types of balance: (1) total balance
= tax income+trade income - production costs+military+purchasing goods; (2)
trade balance = only traded goods count (sales and purchases)."
3.3.1 Where do I get Tools or Ore from? How do I mine?
Initially, buy Tools from Free Traders or Pirates, or buy Ore from traders,
smelt it and then make Tools. Tools can initially be brought for 71 coins (or
just above), more later in the game. Robitoby writes: "The free traders have
inexhaustible tool-stock as long as no one started to produce them. Once
someone produced the first tools, their stock gets down until they have to buy
from someone who sells them." Remember that your initial ship normally carries
a large number of Tools. Budgie adds: "In case you buy Ore from the Free
Traders - pay no more than 45 coins per ton." Manfred writes: "As soon as
someone on the map has a mine, even if it's you, the traders will sell ore."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "To get more tools you have to have settled on an
island with an ore deposit (hammers circling above an ore nugget above a
mountain). After you have 120 settlers you will be able to build a small ore
mine in the side of the mountain. Next you build an ore smelter (ore plus wood
goes in, iron comes out). When you build a tool maker, every ton of iron is
turned into two tons of tools. For efficiency, it's good to have a marketplace
close to the ore mine, along with the smelter and tool maker for speedier
transport between the different parts of the production chain." Budgie adds:
"The first one to start working is the smelter. He needs ore and wood. When
you have it in your marketplace, he sends a mule to get it automatically. As
soon as your smelter produced his first iron, the toolmaker will take it to
work it up."
On stone quarries, Budgie writes: "You can place a quarry only at the bottom
of medium or large mountains. Make sure the place is within the influence area
of your marketplace or warehouse. When you got a suitable place (must be a
straight line of rocks) you will see a flashing quarry silhouette."
3.3.2 Why does my mine not extract ore from a deposit?
From the official FAQ: "You probably built a normal iron mine, whose supply is
eventually exhausted. Now you have to build a deep iron mine to get at the
rest of the ore."
Ore deposits may eventually be exhausted due to mining. From FrankB: "If you
don't have a mountain with endless ore, your deep iron ore mine will run out
after 240t of ore (that includes the first 80t you already mined with the
small one). Generally, there are three ore deposits possible: small (80t), big
(240t), and endless." Robitoby comments: "The deep ore-mine has 2
possibilities, but you will only know which one is the case after you built it
and let it work for a while: (1) Deep ore-mine runs out after 240 tons have
been delivered. (2) Deep ore-mine is inexhaustible." All big ore mines on the
same map will be the same type - all either finite or all inexhaustible (from
Sir Henry). In later versions, volcanic eruptions will make any deposits in
volcanoes impossible to mine.
Gold deposits are not exhausted by mining. However, destroying natives on the
same island may remove any Gold deposit. Guardian suggests this only occurs in
later versions of the game, not in the original. From robbie47: "When the
natives have explored the goldmine [and you then destroy the natives], the
gold will be gone and the headman's curse will prevent you from getting any
gold. However, when the gold is within their territory but they don't have a
mine, it's yours after you conquer their land. The headman will curse you, but
that does not make a difference to the gold."
Sir Henry explains the game design logic behind Iron being exhuastible and
Gold generally being inexhuastible: "Iron ore is only needed as long as you
build. Once you have built everything you do not need any ore/iron/tools any
more. That's why ore deposits may be exhaustible. On the contrary, gold is
needed even after building is finished, that is why gold deposits are
inexhaustible."
Gold deposits tend to be in short supply on most maps, however there is
normally at least one deposit. However, as Gunter notes: "In some of the
continuous maps there's no gold, it's one of the few bugs of the game. I
suggest that you restart with another map."
From FrankB: "To be exact, your people needs one ton of it to upgrade -
provided you have for at least a short time full supplies of all goods. After
the first house upgraded, you can stop delivering jewelleries - lower the
taxes a bit, and your people will be happy (they will demand jewellery, but
even without it you can get monuments)." From Dread Pirate Terry: "Aristocrats
with jewellery pay 35% taxes, those without pay 31-32%." For a slightly under-
hand method of creating small volumes of Gold, see Are there other gameplay
'cheats'? below.
Islands in the north of the map tend to be suitable for farming Tobacco, Vines
and Sugarcane. Islands in the south tend to be suitable for farming Cocoa,
Cotton and Spices. From anto: "Islands with palm trees are the southern, and
the ones with pine trees are the northern." Grain, Wood and livestock will
grow fully any island.
Manfred writes: "There are five size categories for islands in 1602: (1)
large, size 100x90, file name laryy.scp; (2) big, size 70x60, file name
bigyy.scp; (3) medium, size 50x52, file name medyy.scp; (4) small, size 40x40,
file name mityy.scp; (5) little, size 30x30, file name lityy.scp." Guardian
adds: "The large type came with NINA."
During droughts all crops will die - there is nothing you can do about this,
except wait. You do not need to replant drought-afflicted crops. A proportion
of special crop (Tobacco, Vines, Sugarcane, Cocoa, Cotton and Spice) fields
planted on islands with less than 100% suitability, will die. Neferankh
writes: "No matter how many times you replant, the crop will not grow on all
squares unless your island has the crop at 100%." Charlie discovered a pattern
for which fields dry up and which do not on 50% suitable islands. The pattern,
three blocks of which are shown below, repeats across the island. "F" shows
fields which will not dry up, "-" indicates a field that will dry up:
F - F F F - F F F - F F
F - - F F - - F F - - F
- F F - - F F - - F F -
F - F - F - F - F - F -
F F - - F F - - F F - -
F - F F F - F F F - F F
- - F - - - F - - - F -
- F - - - F - - - F - -
Deer require a mixture of trees and open land to survive. Eric Lorah writes:
"Apparently even too many trees will kill them." Robitoby writes: "Deer/elks
die when they eat Tobacco/Spices/Cotton/Sugarcrane, no matter if the balance
of wood-free fields still is good for them. Strangely they survive eating
wine."
3.3.10 Are patchy green/brown areas of land less fertile?
From the game's readme file: "Some islands not only have fertile topsoil, but
also desert and steppes. If you plant crops in one of these areas they will
grow more slowly." From robbie47: "It is less fertile soil, the agricultural
production is supposed to be lower there. I actually never noticed a
difference though."
Mamayourpeoplearehungry, translating AnnoPhil: "The transition from the
country to deep lake goes over the following stages: (1) Country - no fish.
(2) Embankment - no fish. (3) Beach - no fish. (4) Shallow water - no fish.
(5) Shallow/middle water - fishing area. (6) Middle water - fishing area. (7)
Middle/deep water - fishing area. (8) Deep water - no fish. Fishing is not
possible either directly on the bank nor in the open sea."
Buildings require construction materials, coin, flat land, and certain
population requirements to be met. For requirements, see the Building and
Industry Data in the appendices. Construction materials must be available on
the island you are trying to build, meaning in your Warehouse on that island;
not in your ship's hold (except for the first Warehouse on an island), or on
another island. You can only build within your territory (see How is territory
gained? above).
Use the demolition (hammer) tool on the build menu. Llgrzzy adds "...also you
can delete an area by left clicking where you want to start and drag the mouse
to the spot you want to stop." Helen notes: "If you want to delete your
warehouse, you have to demolish all buildings first on the island." Also, take
care when deleting market places - you can give up settled territory.
From Eric Lorah: "There is a thug/robber that goes after the cartmen. The
gallows is supposed to keep him away." Zomby Woof comments: "The thief only
appears on islands with houses on it." FrankB comments: "I do not build the
gallows anymore; I could not see any effect of it, I do not like it, and it
costs me money. The robber appears with and without gallows." Carl's
experience: "I put a hangman [Gallows] at a busy intersection near the
warehouse. The little green mugger dude came out of the house right there on
that corner and thumped the cart guy and took his goodies. Right in front of
the Hangman."
Mircea writes: "You get a monument (Arch of Triumph) every time you defeat an
enemy and one when pirates are defeated [if the scenario specifies them as
enemies]. You get a Gold Statue after playing the game for 30 minutes on
normal speed, with your people 'happy'." Your population need to be at least
Citizens. FrankB adds: "Have a look in your build menu, public buildings.
There you will find the triumphal arches [and other monuments], provided you
really defeated the AI." Normally there are no more than three opponents.
However, Charlie reports that if sufficiently large empty islands remain after
defeating the original opponents, new competitors will emerge. This may allow
many more Arches of Triumph to be built. Palaces and Cathedrals can only be
built once per game.
3.4.5 What do Palaces, Arches of Triumph and statues do?
They look great :-) . On Palaces, Robbie47 adds: "And you can increase the
taxes for a while." Charlie suggests this effect lasts no more than 30
minutes. Zomby Woof adds: "Same effect with the cathedral." You can only have
one Palace and one Cathedral, but you may have many statues. From Eric Lorah:
"You get one statue for each 'satisfaction' point." Dread Pirate Terry writes:
"I only build statues and monuments on palace islands when I'm feeling
particularly vain. ... Monuments just take up space that can be better used
for something productive."
3.4.6 Do I need Schools if I have Colleges, Chapels if I have Churches, and
similar?
No. So long as the higher-level building covers the houses covered by the
earlier building, you do not need to retain the earlier public building.
Manfred writes: "As soon as you can build the church, you can destroy the
chapels within the influence area of the church. Same goes for
cathedral/church and college/school."
3.4.7 What are the advantages of stone roads and squares?
Carts move along them quicker. Stone bridges cannot burn, like wooden ones.
The game's readme file says: "Dirt roads are slowest and squares are fastest."
Charlie, citing Gamestar July 1998, suggests carts move 30% quicker along
paved roads. Stormbringer comments that Squares allow market carts to run
diagonally, thereby reducing the time taken to move along a diagonals and to
turn corners. From Robitoby: "It seems like the cart-drivers are moving even
faster on squares than on stone-roads ... [but] the mule will be slow as hell
always. ... Square 3 is fastest. I checked it. On squares the cart driver is
even faster than on roads and on square 3 he moves fastest." Dread Pirate
Terry notes: "The added speed on squares doesn't matter much in the case of
the cart-pushers BUT, it can make a difference to the fire-fighters and
doctors." Manny adds: "Squares have another advantage over dirt and
cobblestone roads: they don't get destroyed during volcano eruptions."
Rivers can only be bridged at straight sections of the river, not on corners.
AnnoDan1602 notes: "I put 10 bridges next to each other over a river. Then one
of my wagons started going up river on the bridges, using them like a normal
road." City walls cannot be built over rivers except by the coast. From
chrishillcoat: "You can build walls over the mouth of a river... but you don't
need to build them over rivers, because they stop soldiers getting through
anyway."
The first warehouse on an island is built from a ship moored on the coast -
the ship must have the required construction materials onboard. From Robitoby:
"You only can build warehouse II, III and IV above an already existing
warehouse." Under normal circumstances, you can only have one Warehouse per
island. FrankB notes: "There is a limit for the number of players (i.e. human
and AI player, pirates and natives) settling on one island - and I think it
was seven." Sandmonkey adds: "When you build a warehouse, 1T of food is
automatically placed there. ... But they also never eat that 1T of food, no
matter how long it sits there."
An exception to the one Warehouse rule, from joe_44850: "After defeating one
of the Pirate's docks (they had 2 on one island), I was able to place a
warehouse on it. Then, on the other side of the island, I destroyed the
Pirates hideout, and was able to place a second warehouse on the same island."
Gunter, "...found that there seem to be 2 sorts of pirates' warehouses which
behave differently when you delete them (provided that you deleted also all
his towers before): Either all the pirates' nest is deleted immediately when
the warehouse falls in ruins (which happened to me all the time until now) or
you can replace the pirates' warehouse by an own one. ... I found out now why
sometimes a pirates' warehouse doesn't disappear as soon as it falls in ruins:
it depends if there's still a food supply (hunters, fishers) with it. When you
have shot these as well (and there are no more towers in the nest), the
warehouse disappears immediately and all the other pirates' houses, too. This
means that you can always replace the warehouse with your own one, as long as
you don't destroy its food supply." In normal play, two pirate bases on one
island is unusual, but this situation can be created using a custom scenario.
Nemo has another possible method (unconfirmed): "The marketplace was directly
on the coastline. When I sailed next to the marketplace the ship's 'cargo
crate' icon appeared. It was then possible to 'trade' directly with the
marketplace."
You do not need docks to dock ships, as Lord Khang comments: "I deleted the
piers and completely surrounded my warehouse with stone defence towers. ALL
ships (my own, free traders, computer AI) still managed to 'dock' at it and
conduct trade as usual." Shark_Dus adds: "The docks don't increase the
influence area of your warehouse. The influence area (lighted area if you
click on the warehouse one time) is fixed." Zomby Woof writes: "You can use
them as a road, for example to reach a mine which you can't reach with normal
roads because the mountain is standing too close to the shore. Or you use
docks to reach your fisher huts so you can save some squares of room to build
other things." BigTiny adds: "By your warehouse, they will allow soldiers to
go around the corner."
3.5.1 What does a question mark above a building mean?
It means production is currently not occurring even though the building is
turned on. From Manfred: "The reason can be: (1) The resources necessary for
production do not exist or are not in reach. (2) The resources have to grow,
i.e. forester/trees or cattle farm/cattle. (3) The building was placed in an
unfavourable spot (fisher hut with too few fishing grounds within service
area), or the plants for a plantation have not been planted at all. (4) A mine
is completely exhausted. (5) An often appearing question mark requires a
thorough investigation of the efficiency of your building and possibly
corrections."
You are not meeting enough of the requirements (click on them with the
information ("?") menu showing to see what they need, or whether they are
unhappy), or construction materials for upgrading houses are not available. If
you have such materials in stock on the island, check that you are allowing
your residents to access them. Do this by ensuring the 'materials to
population' icon, seen when clicking the Warehouse, is not crossed out.
Zomby Woof answers: "No, you don't need inhabitants on production islands.
There is no effect on production efficiency if you build houses there."
Workers count towards your total population, regardless of whether there are
houses for them. Folgra writes: "When you build a building, it comes with its
own labor. This lets you settle feeder islands without having to make housing
or supply food." Shark_Dus adds: "Production efficiency depends on fertility,
influence area, distance to a marketplace... but there is no dependency from
the size of the population."
A utility called 'Milan's 1602 Calculator' can be used to calculate these
requirements - it is available from http://www.annopool.de/index.php?subcat=9
. A table of Population per Industry can be found in the appendices.
Neferankh writes: "When a house is infected with the Plague, a skeletal figure
with a scythe appears above the house swinging the scythe back and forth." The
solution is to build Doctors, and ensure all of your houses have access to the
Doctor(s). Road access is not always required, but they must be in a Doctor's
service area. Doctors require 50 or more Citizens. If you are unlucky, it is
possible this level of development will not have been reached before plague
strikes. There is another method, see Are there other gameplay 'cheats'?
below.
3.5.6 Why do fire carts not come to put out fires?
The building needs to be in the service area of a Fire department, with a road
link between the two. There is an occasional bug that prevents fire carts
appearing. FrankB writes: "All you need to do is not to build your fire
brigade right beside a house or a market place."
Neferankh writes: "In most cases, the reason your Opponent isn't expanding is
because he doesn't have enough of the right islands. Sometimes these islands
don't have to be large, either. Check your Opponent's island. What can he
produce at 100%? Does he have islands available to settle which give him the
products that he doesn't have? If these islands aren't available, make them
available by deserting some of the ones you have settled and let your Opponent
settle them."
From vipris: "The opponents normally chose an island with iron ore, they build
some markets and when the mountain is too far from this markets they don't
advance. I don't know why they don't build more markets, I guess the AI
doesn't want to spend more money."
Gunter theorises: "Just remember what the manual says about it: The AI is
programmed to follow the development of the Human Player. This means that if
the AI has an advanced settlement but the HP [Human Player] hasn't, the AI
will try to fall back to the level of the HP and therefore has to destroy
everything which is more advanced." To which FrankB responds: "The AI is not
willing to destroy its aristocrat buildings. The AI adapts itself to the Human
Player (I wouldn't say it follows him), but I think that is more related to
the speed of its development and to the actions of the Human Player (for
instance, if you build a new ship, the AI will also try to build one)."
Rendell writes: "I started a scenario, saved the game looked around the map
and then reloaded. About 15 minutes later I realized that one of the computer
players hadn't formed a town. I looked and their ship was still sitting at the
starting location. Finally after several hours of play the other computer
player expanded to a new island and then the 'stuck' computer player
immediately also built a warehouse on that island, but then only had room for
a foresters hut since they were choked out by the one that had expanded
there."
3.6 Trade and Diplomacy
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3.6.1 How to set transport routes?
Stefanus Franzosus answers: "(1) Select the ship you want to send to your
other island. (2) Click the auto-trade icon on your sidebar. (3) Click one of
the bars with two blue areas beneath it. (4) Click on the island you want to
trade with. (5) Click on one ore more of the panels, then select the goods you
want to trade. [The arrow pointing right indicates loading, the left,
unloading.] (6) Select your home-island at the second bar, as described by 3
and 4. (7) Select the same goods as you've selected before, but now click the
arrow beside, so that it's pointing the other way. (8) Click the 'start auto-
trade' button on bottom of your screen." Budgie adds: "When you've made your
settings, you return to the ship menu. There you find a ship icon with a red
cross. Click the cross, and the ship immediately starts its route. To pause
the route, you can click that icon again or stop the ship manually." FrankB
notes: "Your ship will not transport more than 100t of one good: Even if you
set up a trading route to pick up 100t food on one island and another 100t on
a second one, your ship will only load a total of 100t of food. But if you
load, for instance, 100t food on one island and 100t spices on another one (or
even on the same island), the auto-route will work fine."
Neferankh writes: "The main thing to remember when setting auto-trade routes
is that the ship, basically, does not know what it is picking up. Say, in your
1st destination, you load Good 'A' and Good 'B' into holds 1 and 2. At your
2nd destination, if you want to load more of Good 'A', you have to load it
into hold 3 and then Good 'C' into hold 4. It is when you are unloading that
the problem occurs. If Destination 3 is your unload island, the ship will
unload by hold. If you ask it to unload Good 'A' and Good 'C', it will unload
from hold 1 and hold 4. It will not look for more of Good 'A' in hold 3 unless
there is none to start with in Hold 1. I generally try to unload in the same
order as loading to make sure the Goods are removed. The above may be a little
confusing because a ship will fill a hold from 2 islands under some
conditions. If the 1st island has none of Good 'A' to pick up and Hold 1 is
empty, I believe the ship will load Good 'A' from the 2nd destination into
hold 1. I have had problems with ships when this occurs. If too many of the
Goods are the same, it confuses the ship." PacificSeaMonger adds: "You can
have 3 loads/1 unloads. For example, let's say you control three small
islands, and they each produce spices. You set one ship to load up to 50 spice
from each of the three islands, then unload the spices to the fourth."
Neferankh agrees, but notes: "The problem occurs when you are producing heavy
on any of your 3 loading islands. It will fill the holds but not unload them."
3.6.2 What does the 'check your trade routes' message mean?
It may mean there is a logic flaw in one of your trade routes. From Robbie47:
"When you check your routes look for the following: (A) Wrong arrows (like
loading everywhere and not unloading anywhere). (B) The warehouse you try to
unload at is full. (C) When trading, your customer may not be buying right
now. (D) The warehouse you try to load at is presently out of stock. (E) When
trading, your supplier may be unwilling to sell right now." You may not find
any problems. From Manfred: "The message starts the first and the third time
one of your ships tries to load/unload without success, either because the
warehouse at destination is full or the origin warehouse does not have enough
goods available." Lord Khang writes: "Solution: Program
Files/1602ad/speech8/610.wav. Deleted it, and it never bothered me again."
WGaryB writes: "I took this [any] .wav file, renamed it 610.wav and replaced
that annoying 'Check your trade routes' message in the game. I renamed the
original 610junk.wav (SPEECH8 directory) first of course."
From Gunter: "The wagon can be used only for trading with other players on the
same island, like the natives or an opponent. It works like trading with your
ships. Another possibility is also to use it for some extra storage." Wagons
(or teamsters) differ from carts, which are used to automatically transport
goods within your own colonies. Wagons are operated in a similar way to ships.
Market wagons cannot be removed once placed, however they can be put to a
creative use if not needed for trading - see Alternative uses for market
wagons below.
One per Warehouse. Gunter's method of creating multiple market wagons on the
same island, is to build a Warehouse, create a teamster with market wagon,
destroy the Warehouse, build a new Warehouse, and so on. He adds: "It depends
on the size of the island how many teamsters you might get like that, since it
seems that each new warehouse has be outside the range of the former one."
To trade, set buy and sell levels at your Warehouse. There may not be any Free
Traders initially, but Budgie notes: "As soon as you build a second warehouse,
the traders will appear." FrankB adds: "If there are Free Traders, they will
appear on the map as soon as you build your first warehouse. They will come to
your warehouse, but will not move as long as there is no second one (AI
warehouses also count)." In some scenarios Free Traders will never appear, but
this a specific condition set in the scenario, and is not normal. BigTiny
writes: "That black line indicates how much you are selling or buying. Those
products should have an arrow pointing either in or out (buying or selling) in
the upper left corner of their box. The color of that arrow matches with your
selling or buying price line."
From Shark_Dus: "The free traders only sell goods, which are produced by one
of the players (iron ore excluded, they have a unlimited deposit of it
somewhere outside the map." FrankB adds: "Tools and ore (after the first
player started mining it) are always for sale. All other goods will be sold
only if someone sells them to the Free Traders."
Yes. The table below shows Warehouse trading capacity and the number of
different sales and purchases that may be set at one time for different
Warehouses:
Others players are rarely hostile without good reason. Pirates are the
exception, since they are hostile unless tamed. FrankB writes: "Maybe you
settled on the AI island (the same if the AI settles on your island), or there
is a soldier on an AI island (even if the island is settled by two AI
players), or the AI needs an island as their population is too big. Maybe you
accidentally clicked on an AI battleship in battle mode... Or the scenario is
set up so that the AI will declare war on you if you reach a certain level
(for example, aristocrats) and/or the AI sinks below a certain level. ... If
the AI does not find a suitable island (i.e. one with 100% of a missing good),
it may settle on your island. As soon as the AI settles on your island, it
will declare war on you - the AI just does not like you to be on its island."
Guardian adds: "Be sure not to blockade their warehouse. Keep 3 tiles away,
otherwise he will declare war to you." Folga comments: "I believe if your ship
isn't armed and it's trying to load, you won't be attacked by the AI, assuming
of course that you aren't blocking all access to its dock."
Neferankh explains envy/pacifism levels (this is partly relevant to the
editor, but the behaviour can also be seen in the standard game): "The left
slider is 'Pacifism' and determines when, in the Computer's development, he
becomes aggressive towards you. If you set it as high as it will go, the
computer becomes aggressive as soon as his population drops below Aristocrat.
If you are in a 'start from scratch' Scenario, he is aggressive towards you
right from the start. If you leave it right at the bottom, he will not be
aggressive towards you at all once he advances some houses to Settler. The
right slider is 'Envy'. The higher the slider the longer it takes the computer
to become envious of you. Basically, the more red showing on the slider the
more aggressive the computer player is. When you make soldiers, you are
exhibiting a sign of aggression. This production must add a factor to
Pacifism/Envy to increase the amount of red. Similarly, settling on an island
already occupied by a computer player is a sign of aggression. As well as
landing a soldier on a computer's island."
Natives rarely attack, and normally only because you have provoked them,
specifically by moving military units into their settlement. Wars can be
started accidentally, as FrankB notes: "You might have accidentally fired on
their huts, trees or people." Eric Lorah writes: "I have found that it is
possible to have the market wagon in 'combat mode'. If you accidentally have
the wagon in combat mode and you click to close to the native chief's hut
while trading, then you will be at war with the natives." Wargamerit notes:
"If you shoot at trees in native's country, they take your shooting like an
attack, and never trade with you."
Frieden answers: "There are three kinds of games: (1) games with no pirates;
(2) games with pirates and you can defeat them so that they will appear never
more (ships AND town must be defeated); (3) games with pirates and you can NOT
defeat them. They will always appear from 'nowhere'. If there is a nice island
free, they will settle. Maybe." Shark_Dus adds: "The pirates do not always
have a nest. At the beginning of the game they come from outside the map and
leave the map the same way." Neferankh writes: "If I recall correctly, a
competitor's ships will turn into Pirate ships if they do not have enough
materials on board to build a Warehouse or if there is not a suitable place
for them to settle."
Answer from Dread Pirate Terry (appropriately enough): "Go to the pirates'
warehouse, with an unarmed ship [else they will shoot at you], click on the
pirate and you have the choice of buying protection from the pirates or
bribing them to harass one of the other players." Later in the game, the
pirates' Warehouse can be found on one of the islands. At the start of a game
they may not have a Warehouse. Disarm your ship by putting Cannon into the
hold (or offloading them completely). Frieden adds: "Tribute is not forever;
only for a while." Bribes will not work of you have settled the same island as
the pirates (from FrankB).
These occur when you destroy a native settlement. From Zomby Woof: "They mean
you will get droughts, fires and plagues more often. Also, you can't trade
anymore with the natives, and gold deposits which are under control of the
natives will be destroyed." Also see Where did my gold or ore deposit go?
above. Joe Cool adds: "Curses don't last forever. Maybe about 15-20 minutes of
game play or so."
From FrankB: "Click on the chief's hut to see the goods the natives are
interested in. If the highlighted area covers a bit of the sea, you can sail
your ship there and trade. Otherwise, you have to build a warehouse at the
island, clear the path to the natives, and send a teamster to them." Trade
with natives is based on exchanging goods. Robbie47 warns: "Don't attack the
natives: If you attack one tribe nobody on the map will trade with you again."
3.8.1 How can I order soldiers to get into and out of ships?
Move the ship next to the coast. Select the military unit(s) to load on the
ship. [Ctrl] + click on the ship. The unit(s) will board the ship. To
disembark, click in the ship's hold when you are adjacent to an island. [This
is the most commonly asked question of all. "The soldier loading question
comes up every few days since 1998." (from Manfred)]
From Dread Pirate Terry: "As soon as you have 120 settlers you can build a
small shipbuilder (see the build menu). After you have your shipbuilder, and
enough cloth and wood, you can build new ships and repair damaged ones. Its
production is much faster if your shipyard is as close as possible to your
warehouse or a marketplace." Wood and Cloth will be collected by donkey as
required. The shipyard must have a marketplace within *its* radius. Ships need
to be ordered at the shipyard, but once ordered, materials will be transported
automatically. Large shipyards build smaller ships almost twice as quick as
Small shipyards, but require 500 Merchants. FrankB writes: "To build big
battleships with a small shipyard, you need a big shipyard, too. Select the
big battleship from the build menu, but do not click on the build button.
Then, go to the small shipyard, select it, and click on the build button - the
big battleship will be built there. It takes a bit longer than on the big
shipyard." Sometimes other players will sell ships, so you do not always need
to build them yourself.
Yes. Alaskan writes: "When the game says 'a rival is selling a ship' just
click the alert mark at the bottom left of the screen and you will be at the
ship that is for sale. If you have the money and want it, just click on it and
your flag will be flying on it. If you happen to be at war with the player you
are purchasing it from, I would advise you to make all haste away from his
walls and ships or else they will sink you." From FrankB: "The AI will sell
ships only if it has enough wood and nothing else to do with it."
From Eric Lorah: "If you are playing against the computer 'AI' player(s), it
is unlikely that they will buy any ships." Falke writes: "When the AI has no
ship and no Ship-Yard he will buy your ship." Robbie47 puts it more directly:
"Sink his last ship, destroy his yard, build a ship and put it up for sale...
Then, when the AI buys the ship, which he will, shoot it. And then sell him
another ship."
Eric Lorah writes: "You can only build 33 ships, but apparently you can buy
ships from other players to exceed this number." Worker72 writes: "Every time
I received another Arch [of Triumph] I could make another ship even though I
already had 33." Zomby Woof adds: "If you conquer a ship yard just when a ship
is built there the ship will be yours. So you can 'expand' the ship limit."
AnnoDan1602 notes: "You only get 20 ships on our [United Kingdom] version."
The 20 limit also applies to the original German version.
From Render: "Travel to your shipyard, and click on the repair-button. If the
repair is in progress, the repair-button has a yellow edge. You can only
repair one ship at the time. Remember that you need Wood and Cloth to repair
you ships. It saves a lot of time if you place a marketplace directly next to
the shipyard." Wood and Cloth will be fetched from the Market place by the
shipyard mule, as required. Dread Pirate Terry adds: "Be ready in case you
have to click the white flag icon to save yourself from the pirates. Also when
repairing a ship you can have the white flag flying the whole time your ship
is in 'drydocks'." Worker72 has some ship repair troubleshooting tips: "(1)
Make sure your shipyard has a clear path to the market or warehouse. (2) Make
sure your ships can access the shipyards area of influence. (3) Make sure you
have enough wood and cloth stockpiled on your island."
Transfer Cannon to the ship as cargo from your Warehouse. Select the ship,
with the combat menu selected. Click on the Cannon in the ship's hold to mount
them. To unmount Cannon, click on the larger Cannon icon in the upper part of
the ship menu. Cannon will not be equipped automatically when you build a new
ship (only the AI players can do this, and then only with a single Cannon -
they cheat ;-) ).
3.8.8 Can cargo be retrieved from sunken ships? Can I pirate or capture ships?
No. Jochen Bauer writes: "The floating cargo is for your information only. If
you click on it you'll know the ship's name, the cargo and the route. It's
easier to replace the ship if you have this information."
3.8.11 How can I set a patrol around an island? Can I escort ships?
From Zomby Woof: "Enemy ships can circle around their islands, you cannot."
Patrols can only be set between two points: (1) the location of the ship when
you set a patrol, and (2) the point you set for the patrol.
There is no automated feature to escort ships. Since cargo and battleships
generally move at different speeds, setting a pair of similar trade routes
will fail. Robitoby's solution: "Produce a fleet that only exists out of big
battle-ships." Battleships make quite effective cargo ships, and can defend
themselves against most attackers. Sir Henry writes: "The best way to deal
with the problem is to sink those enemy ships first before you start attacking
their island. You also might want to park one or two of your ships in front of
your enemy's shipyard to sink the new ships they build."
3.9.1 How can I order soldiers to get into and out of ships?
Move the ship next to the coast. Select the military unit(s) to load on the
ship. [Ctrl] + click on the ship. The unit(s) will board the ship. To
disembark, click in the ship's hold when you are adjacent to an island. [Yes,
I know this question is repeated, but it is asked a lot. Regular forum newbie-
helpers run a competition to see who can answer this question the most
times... ;-) ]
From Robbie47: "You can start building up an army when you have 200 settlers.
Then you can build a Sword smith as well as a Small castle, where you can
train your troops. When you have Swords, you can get infantrymen and
cavalrymen. Quite a bit later in the game you can get to make cannons, you
need 400 citizens to build a cannonmaker. Then you can also train cannoneers."
FrankB adds: "You need weapons to train soldiers, and you should have a clear
path (not necessarily a road, but there should be no trees) to the next market
place/warehouse."
3.9.3 Is there a limit on the number of ground units I may have?
Yes. No more than 99 at one time (from BigTiny). However, Joe Cool has a
method to exceed this unit limit on troops: "Send about the amount of soldiers
your castle holds to a hospital [doctor's] for healing. When they are in
there, click your castle and recruit soldiers. When they come out of, say of
the medium castle, you'll be 5 soldiers up." This method can be repeated
multiple times.
Waywardsoul writes: "Move them to the doctor's place, then click on the troop,
and [Ctrl + click] on the doctor's office. They will go in and get healed then
come back better." Helen writes: "Actually, you don't need to hold down the
[ctrl]-button, they march to the hospital perfectly fine." Zomby Woof adds:
"Don't save the game when soldiers are getting healed, they will disappear and
you'll never see them again." It's a bug. Michael adds: "While the soldiers
are in the doctor, you don't pay them, military expenses go down." Robitoby
warns: "The Symbol with the doctor-symbol [when selecting troops] means you
just select the most wounded soldiers of the already selected troops [it does
not heal them]."
This refers to grouping units using CTRL + 1-9, and then recalling then using
1-9. FrankB writes: "The numbers from your num pad will not work (at least
they don't on my PC). If it works, you will see a small number at the green
line above your ship(s) or soldier(s) when you zoom in. The group numbers will
be lost when you restart your game. ... It works with the AI, and with human
players in multiplayer, too." You can assign group numbers to opponent's
uints, to find them quickly.
Later versions have a button to do this. Earlier version does not. Frieden
suggests: "(1) [For ships] place the ship in front of a pirates' tower, (2)
let the soldiers attack pirates or natives... one by one, (3) send them to a
doctor, save the game quickly, load, bye bye soldiers, (4) place the soldiers
at the coast where pirates come along." Warren1954 adds a method of avoiding
payments for retiring soldiers: "Instead of disbanding them (and paying the
$s) build a small trading ship load them on it and sink them."
On your enemies' islands, instruct your units to attack trees by pressing
[Ctrl] and click (from Gunter). Dread Pirate Terry notes: "If you haven't been
able to land troops the ship can clear trees from the shore. Hold down control
and fire away."
FrankB answers: "You are not at war with the other party, or the enemy is not
in range of the tower (8 fields - click on the tower to see the area it can
defend). ... If you build more [than 255] towers, they will not shoot at the
enemy anymore." It is not possible to build towers without a pair of cannon,
and the cannon will remain until the tower is destroyed.
Robitoby writes: "After you destroyed him and he sure has NO completely intact
market-place and warehouse [or towers] on that island, you have either two
ways to give him the final push: (1) Load one of your ships with enough
material to build a warehouse and just place it exactly on his warehouse. You
now will take over all still standing buildings and have all the goods in
store that he had. Yet, you still have to 'repair' the market-places to
prevent them from decaying. (2) Wait and watch him getting smaller and
smaller. Always he rebuilds his warehouse or any market-place, destroy it,
until the island is 'free' again."
3.9.10 Why can't I delete old roads on an island I have conquered?
Zach82 replies: "It's impossible to delete them, it's a bug." FrankB adds: "If
you conquer an island, try to expand with market places very fast, then you
can delete the tiles often. Last time, when I re-installed the game, I even
could delete tiles which were not possible to delete before..." Koemi writes:
"They can be destroy when you have not build your warehouse or the land is
still your enemy. Select some troops and press Crtl when order them to destroy
the tiles." Michael writes: "It appears it is actually possible to delete
squares. After taking over yellow's island, it was possible for me to delete
some of the squares there. I might have found the solution: It appears that
the towers has an action radius, that the AI can build in, even though it is
out of reach from the marketplaces. If the squares are not covered by
marketplaces, but only towers, and you take it over, it is possible the delete
the squares." Sir Henry has written an "Anno 1602 Tile Softener" utility. It
is available at http://www.annopool.de/ under utilities. Use of this utility
may corrupt saved games completely, so it is recommended you make a copy of
the saved game file.
3.9.11 Why do I lose money when I take over another players' city?
Budgie answers: "Look at the balance of the AI city. You will see that it's
deeply in the red. Shut or tear down everything that you don't need." From
Governor Benji: "Also stop buying unnecessary materials that the AI was buying
because you keep their buying list." Eric Lorah writes: "Also, if a lot of
houses were destroyed in the war, then there are few if any taxpayers. If you
plan to settle the island, then start building some houses as soon as you can.
Don't forget to give the people food."
Joe Cool answers: "There is no way to garrison soldiers in a castle, unless
you keep them in there, which means you can't produce any more within that
castle." Troops may be safely garrisoned inland, out of range of passing
shipping. There is a slightly unusual method of hiding troops completely - see
FrankB's comment under Are there other gameplay 'cheats'? below.
Look for lists of players in the Multiplayer thread here,
http://forum.sunflowers.de/forumdisplay.php?f=22 or here,
http://anno1602.silverinterlocution.org/ . There is no multiplayer network
known to host the game, and no persistent servers. Instead players exchange IP
addresses via online messaging services (ICQ, AIM, etc). IP addresses can be
revealed by running winipcfg.exe (Win9x) or ipconfig.exe (Win2000/XP) from the
command prompt, or by using services such as http://checkip.dyndns.org/ or
http://www.dslreports.com/ip/ .
3.10.2 Can different versions be used by different players in multiplayer
games?
No, all players need the same version: The US version is not compatible with
United Kingdom or German version; original versions are incompatible with
those that include NINA. Marc Huppke also suggests using the same version of
DirectX on both computers.
Gunter writes: "It's possible for everybody to load a multiplayer savegame in
single player mode, but you can only continue to play with the host's game.
The AI players will still go on, but the other human players will stay at the
saved status, can't develop anymore and will finally retrograde due to lack of
supply. If you want to continue the savegame in a new multiplayer session, it
must be on the host's PC. He will then reload it for everybody instead of
selecting a new game. Depending on your line capacities and the size of the
savegame, this may take several minutes during which nobody must take any
action. Multiplayer savegames can be recognized in the savegame listing by the
grey icon with a number inscribed at the right side of the list."
- Alt + 1 = Chat to red player,
- Alt + 2 = Chat to blue player,
- Alt + 3 = Chat to yellow player,
- Alt + 4 = Chat to white player,
- Alt + 5 = Chat to all players.
This 'walkthrough' is based on the original Anno 1602, without the NINA
expansion. NINA adds additional scenarios, which are not described here in any
detail. The original scenarios start with "The End of a Long Trip". Once you
have completed each scenario, a new one will be added to the list. Many
comment that the scenarios provide a more gentle introduction to the game than
the campaigns. The initial scenarios are effectively extended tutorials,
albeit without in-game help. The later scenarios are much more free-form, with
objectives that can be met by a variety of methods. For this reason, as the
scenarios develop you will find the suggested strategies become less specific,
and far more conceptual.
I have attempted to introduce the new concepts that you are most likely to
need in each scenario. In some cases you will be able to build items and do
things before they are mentioned. However, I suspect you will not need those
buildings and techniques to complete the scenario in question. In other cases
you may not need a specific building or technique until a much later scenario.
The objectives, starting resources, limitations, and basic map layout of each
scenario will be the same for most scenarios each time you play. In a few
cases the map layout is truly random (although one needs to shutdown and
restart the game for the full randomness to become apparent - if one simply
replays the scenario, the same map layout will appear). Precise island shape,
rivers, resources, existing inhabitants, and AI player actions are more likely
to change. Again, this varies by scenario. I cannot always be sure precisely
what you will be facing.
Basic ASCII maps are provided for scenarios with fixed maps, with islands
shown in square brackets. The top of the map is the North side. Where
relevant, the starting location is shown with an "@". Islands large enough to
sustain primary colonies and vacant at the start, are shown "!", those likely
to be better suited to secondary colonies or set up in order to gain specific
resources are shown "?", those with no code are unlikely to be large enough to
consider any settlement at all, or are already occupied. Use these as an
indication of size only. There are always exceptions and times when an island
is worth settling, even if one can only fit one farm and a Warehouse on it.
The tutorials are fairly self explanatory, and hence so is the guide covering
them. Simply follow the text, voice and arrow instructions in-game. The
concepts introduced during the tutorials are assumed to be known in subsequent
scenarios. Take some time to get familiar with the basics.
New Concepts:
- Sailing ship: Click on ship, then click at the destination.
- Exploration: Sail close to an island. Stop. Click the eye icon and wait for
the red bars to fill.
- Resources: Move mouse over an explored island to display suitability for
crops in the bottom text bar. Small 'twin hammers with nugget of ore' icon
above mountain shows an ore deposit. The island on the far left of the map has
the ore deposit.
- Building Warehouse: Select ship. Click warehouse icon. Select a location on
the coastline, so that the docks are on the beach and the main building is on
the land.
- Unloading cargo: Move the ship next to the Warehouse. Click on the ship,
then the wooden door icon. Use the arrows to move cargoes between ship and
Warehouse.
New Concepts:
- Building: Select construction menu, then submenu, then item you wish to
build. You may change the orientation of the building, but in many case it
does not matter which way the building faces. The dotted line (highlighted
area after building) around the building is its service area. You can only
build within your territory (initially close to your Warehouse).
- Forester's hut: Needs to be placed with trees in its service area. Plant
additional trees if required.
- Fisher's hut: Needs to be placed on the coast, with the largest possible
area of mid-blue sea - if you move the mouse over the mid-blue sea, the bottom
text bar will read 'Fishing grounds'.
- Roads: Roads are needed to move goods between most buildings: In this case,
to move Wood and Food from the Forester's hut and Fisher's hut to the
Warehouse. Roads only need touch one square on one side of each building to
connect. Once roads are built, you will see a man with a cart run out to pick
up goods. Once the goods arrive at the Warehouse, the are available for use in
the colony. Cart transport will stop once the Warehouse is full.
- Houses: Houses all start as basic 'Pioneer' housing. Road access is
optional, but recommended so that later in the game services such as the Fire
department can reach them during emergencies.
- Information menu: This mode retrieves information about buildings. For
houses, it allows tax to be set for all houses of the same type on the same
island. One can also see demands and population happiness.
- Sheep farm: Needs to be placed surrounded by open ground for grazing. Road
connection is optional - the weaver will collect Wool on foot, however a road
will allow excess Wool to be collected by cart and stored for later use.
- Weaver's hut: Place with the Sheep farm (or later Cotton plantations) in its
service area for optimum efficiency. Weaver's hut can have access only to a
Warehouse or Market place, but Wool will first need to be transported by cart
from the Sheep farm(s) to a nearby Warehouse/Market place. Road access is
essential.
- Market place: These expand the territory in which you can build, and also
provide two extra carts for transporting goods about the island. Market places
do not need to be connected by roads to one another, although this will help
distribute carts across your island, which improves overall transport
efficiency.
New Concepts:
- Diplomacy: The diplomacy menu allows trade agreements to be signed, peace
treaties to be signed (in all scenarios you will start at peace), and tribute
to be offered.
- Trading: Trade with other players works in a similar way to using your own
warehouse, except demands and supplies are limited by what the other player
wishes to sell and buy. They may not, for example, be willing to buy all the
Cloth you have for sale immediately.
New Concepts:
- Arming Cannon: Select your ship. Click on the cannon in the hold to arm
them. Cannon can be de-armed by clicking the larger cannon icon at the top of
the ship menu.
- Attacking: Select your ship. Select combat menu. Click on the ship you which
to engage. Multiple ships can be selected by drawing a marquee around them.
- Unit damage: The health of the unit is shown as a small red/green bar,
displayed above the unit when selected. Damaged ships move slower. Obviously,
when fully damaged they sink.
- Patrols: The area to be patrolled is that between the starting location and
the location you select with the patrol button.
New Concept:
- Unloading troops: Select the ship carrying soldiers. Sail to the coast.
Click once on each cargo hold containing soldiers. Since you are wondering,
you can load troops by moving the ship near, selecting the troops, and CRTL +
clicking on the ship. If you unload troops in a wooded area, you can clear
trees by selecting a unit, and CTRL + clicking each square of trees to make
them attack the trees.
Settlers require feeding, Cloth, and access to a Chapel and Market place. You
will need 7-10 houses, and an adequate supply of construction materials to
upgrade those houses from Pioneer to Settler. Colony building is similar to
the Settle tutorial, but you will need more houses and a Chapel. Positive
balance means not just having money, but on balance earning money. Initially
you will lose money, but so long as you restrict your building to what is
really needed, it should not be hard to make the colony pay by the end. Stay
focused on the objective, and don't simply build everything you can: You don't
need everything, and everything will cost you a lot of money to maintain.
New in this scenario:
- Selecting islands: If in doubt, try to settle the island with the largest
buildable area of land for your first colony. In longer running games, having
enough space on your starting colony is more important than what resources are
available there. Avoid settling islands that have already been settled by
another player - this reduces the scope for expansion, and can lead to
tension. In this scenario, neither resources or space will be particularly
important - just avoid the tiny islands.
- Trees: You may need to clear trees to create open spaces on which to graze
sheep. You should plant additional trees around your Forester's hut to
increase production efficiency.
- Multiple production facilities: You can have more than one of any production
building. In this scenario you should consider more than one Forester's hut
(to increase the rate at which Wood is produced), and possibly a second
Fisher's hut (to increase food supply). Alternatively consider other food
options, such as Hunting lodges.
- Operating costs: Most production buildings have an operating cost associated
with them, so do not build more than you need, or you will not be able to
sustain a positive balance sheet. You can toggle buildings on and off, by
selecting the building, and clicking the "Z" type icon at the bottom of the
menu. This may save some or all of the operating cost, depending on the
building.
- Tax: Pioneers can support 47+% taxation so long as they are supplied with
food. Increase taxes on Pioneers by selecting a Pioneer house with the Info
menu showing, and adjust the tax slider.
- Civilisation development: All houses start as Pioneers. All Pioneers need is
food and they will remain happy. To develop Settlers you need to supply
Pioneers with certain services and products - in this case Chapel and Market
place access, and Cloth. Cloth will be delivered automatically, so long as it
is in stock in your Warehouse. Houses need to be in the service area of
Chapels and Market places to benefit from them.
- Trading with Free Traders: You may be able to complete this scenario without
trading. However, if you run short on Tools, encourage Free Traders to supply
them. Click on your Warehouse, click Buy, click and empty cargo space, select
Tools, and a price and the maximum stock you wish to buy to. Early in the
game, you should be able to buy Tools for 71-75 coins each.
- Balance sheet: You can view your finances by clicking on the Info menu ("?")
with nothing else selected. To view a specific colony, do this with the
Warehouse selected. At this stage you only have one colony, so both should be
the same.
Develop an initial colony of Pioneers into Settlers by providing food, Cloth,
market place and Chapel, as before. The catch is, space is very tight on the
starting colony. It is probably just about possible to develop using only the
starting island, but it will be easier to start a secondary production colony
to produce certain things, and then ship them across. It is tempting just to
settle an entirely new colony and build the population up there, but that will
take longer and is not required. Again, keep focused only on what is needed to
complete the objective: You do not need to meet every demand your population
ask of, just those related to keeping Settlers happy.
New in this scenario:
- Secondary production colonies: Often one colony cannot produce everything it
needs on the same island. Secondary islands need to be settled with the
purpose only of producing goods, which are then shipped to the main colony.
Secondary colonies do not need any population supporting facilities, such as
housing.
- Automated trade routes: Select your ship. Click set automatic trade route.
Click one the first "?" next to 'select target'. Click on the starting
island's Warehouse. Select one or two cargoes to load or unload. Swap between
loading and unloading by clicking on the arrow to the left of the cargo. Right
pointing arrows mean load, left pointing, unload. Repeat for at least one
other island's Warehouse (the destination). Once the trade route is set up,
return to the main ship information screen, and activate the route.
- Regulate population's use of construction materials: You can stop the
population from using construction materials to upgrade their houses by
selecting the Warehouse, and clicking on the 'construction materials to
people' icon. Toggle this back by clicking again.
- Trading with Free Traders (partial reminder from earlier): In this scenario
you will be able to trade only after you have settled a second colony. Also,
since there are no other players, don't expect to be able to buy anything of
use except Tools. You may be able to complete this scenario without trading.
However, if you run short on Tools, encourage Free Traders to supply them.
Click on your Warehouse, click Buy, click and empty cargo space, select Tools,
and a price and the maximum stock you wish to buy to. Early in the game, you
should be able to buy Tools for 71-75 coins.
- Demands: You will start to hear and read things like "your people want a
Tavern". Don't panic and give in - they want more than they need. Taverns,
Schools and goods such as Liquor, are not required to keep Settlers happy,
they are only needed for Citizen and higher. There is no requirement for
Citizens in this scenario, so do not try to meet these demands.
There is little that you can achieve on the original colony without Cloth and
Wood. Wood can only be harvested inefficiently on the first island, and there
is a lack of space for efficient grazing of sheep. Load some Wood (all you
have) and Tools (12t) into your ship, and find an island nearby with plenty of
space. Set out a pair of Forester's huts, a Sheep farm and Weaver's hut. Set
up a trade route for your ship between the new colony and Florinz, taking
Cloth and Wood from one to the other, and nothing in return.
Stop the population using construction materials - you don't want them to
start developing before you have everything they will need in place. 100
Settlers will need at least 17 houses, so you have enough houses on the island
already. One Fisher hut will only sustain about 60 people, so build another
one. Add in a Market place by deleting a section of road on the northern east
side of the island - you should be able to position the Market place so that
is covers all the houses. Add a Chapel at the end of the road leading from the
original Fisher's hut towards the mountain - you should be able to cover all
but two houses with one Chapel. Don't worry about the last two houses, the 15
houses covered by the Chapel will be plenty. Start buying small volumes of
Tools from the Free Trader. Allow your people to access construction materials
again, and sit back and watch them develop their houses.
Find an island with an ore deposit that is also large enough to sustain a
primary colony (perhaps the large island just to the south east of your
starting position). The criteria for an Iron mine is 120 Settlers, so you'll
need to repeat much of what you have done in earlier scenarios. Slightly more
Settlers than this is recommended, to help generate enough tax revenue to
operate a mine. Iron mines also require Bricks, which you will need to make
first. Stay focused on the objective: Don't make things with the Iron you
create, just let it stock up in your Warehouse. If, at the end, you find
making the account balance hard, turn off non-essential buildings like the
Iron mine and Ore smelter.
New in this scenario:
- Quarry: Quarries and Stonemasons are required to make Bricks. Quarries must
be positioned at the base of mountains and large rock formations. Two
Stonemasons can work the same Quarry without efficiency loss. For best effect,
place the Stonemasons right in front of the Quarry, so the Stonemasons do not
have far to walk. Stonemasons need road access to a Market place or Warehouse.
Quarries do not need road access, just a clear walk path between them and the
Stonemason(s).
- Paved roads: You can improve the efficiency of your carts by using bricks to
pave commonly used stretches of road.
- Iron mine: Iron mines are built in the same way as Quarries, except that the
mine must be placed in a mountain containing an ore deposit. The Iron mine
does not specifically need road access, just a clear walk route to the mine
from an Ore smelter. However, road access will allow excess stock to be taken
from the mine and stored.
- Ore smelter: Place this with a source of Ore (probably your mine) and Wood
(probably a Market place) within its service area. You will see a man with a
donkey go and fetch the required items to make Iron.
- Fire department: Probably not essential to this level, but it will become an
increasingly important building. Fire departments put out fires that occur
within their service area. Without them, all you can do is demolish buildings
that catch fire. Try to place Fire departments with good road access to the
buildings they protect. Fire only occurs in housing and due to volcanoes, so
there is no need to protect absolutely every building.
Citizens require everything needed by Settlers, plus Tobacco *or* Spices,
Alcohol, a Tavern and a School. Your starting island is fairly small, and all
but one of the other islands has already been settled. You'll only need 14
houses to complete, and you start with more than that. The most obvious
strategy involves colonization of the one vacant island, and then trade for
remaining goods you need. It is also possible to win without a significant
amount of trading. There is no military option: The three existing players are
far better developed, and you have no easily way of building military units.
So long as you are not hostile to the other players, they won't attack you, so
don't be frightened by the size of their colonies compared to your own.
New in this scenario:
- Combines: Combine is a phrase used to describe pairing raw material supplies
to processors, specifically when dealing with farms. For example, a sheep
combine, would be 2 Sheep farms and 1 Weaver's hut. Combines balance numbers
of different buildings to one another in order to (near) optimise production.
This is the first scenario is which you start with a sheep combine, and is the
first scenario is which you will certainly need the level of Cloth production
a sheep combine offers.
- Plantations: For optimum efficiency, plantations should be built on islands
which are 100% suitable for the crop being grown. 50% suitable islands can
still grow the crop, but will work at about 50% efficiency. Plantations should
be surrounded by fields of the relevant crop. Sugarcane, Tobacco and Cotton
plantations also need processing buildings to convert the crop into something
consumable.
- Pirates: This is the first scenario to include pirate ships. There is
relatively little you can do to counter them in this scenario - they don't
have a base, and you don't have any firepower. Try to avoid them, and if
caught, raise the white flag by selecting the ship, and clicking the white
flag icon on the combat menu.
- Citizens: Citizens require everything needed by Settlers, plus Tobacco *or*
Spices, Alcohol, a Tavern and a School. Each Citizen house contains up to 15
people.
- Warehouse expansion: During this scenario, you may find it useful to expand
the size of your Warehouse. This can be done by building a larger warehouse
version on top of the original warehouse. This will increase storage capacity
on the island, and give you more trading options.
Address some of your colony's (Offenpach's) starting problems - impending lack
of Food (add a Fisher's hut or two), Wood supply (plant trees to cover the
full catchment of the Forester's hut, and re-route the road slightly). Set
your Warehouse to buy in Tools at low prices and sell excess (everything above
about 10t) Cloth.
Now move your ship across to the vacant island ([V] on the map). Settle the
island, building your warehouse on the western side (facing Offenpach). Build
a Quarry and two Stonemasons nearby - two Stonemasons will happily work in one
Quarry. Plant out Spice fields for one or two Spice farms, and when you have
enough spare Bricks, build the farms. You only need one Spice farm, but a
second one will allow Spice to be traded. Planting crops before the farms are
built means that the farms are not idle whilst the crops are growing. Start
shipping Bricks from the new colony on the Vacant island to Offenpach. Watch
out for pirates, who may engage your ship: Surrender if you need to - you
don't have the firepower or repair facilities to attack pirates yet, and you
cannot afford for your ship to be sunk. Initially, use newly delivered Bricks
to build a Tavern and a School.
Get a trade agreement with Player C (via Diplomacy screen). Now set up a trade
route from C1 to Offenpach with Liquor, and Vacant (new colony) to Offenpach
with Spices and Bricks. Consider automating the trade route - you may only
need a few runs if shipping full loads. If one of the other players puts a
cheap ship up for sale, consider buying it, and using it to run the same
routes. Stop selling Cloth. Gradually the number of Citizens will increase.
Whilst you are waiting, you should be able to increase the tax rate paid by
the remaining Settlers. You don't need any new housing - every Citizen house
holds 15, so you only need 14 houses to reach 200 Citizens. Additional housing
might be desirable for tax revenue, but it will put additional pressure on
supplies of Food and Cloth, which you can do without. You may need a Fire
department, to put out fires, although the probability of having to deal with
a fire on this scenario is quite low.
The main weakness with this strategy is Liquor can be in short supply - you
are at the mercy of the AI players and ships to sell it to you.
This strategy makes a similar start to the Mixed trading and colonization
strategy above - deal with a few starting colony issues, and colonize the
vacant island. In addition, place a second Market place on the north tip of
Offenpach, which opens up the whole of the island for development. Destroy the
existing southern-most Sheep farm, and build a replacement in the newly opened
area on the northern tip (clear the forest around it). In the space between
the Weaver's hut and the Forester's hut, you will be able to build two
Wineries. A third Winery can be placed to the west of the housing. Three
Wineries should be sufficient to meet the Liquor demand. The island only
supports 50% Vines, so half the Vine squares will die and the Wineries will
operate at less than 50% capacity.
This map is random. There will be about 20 islands, 4 of which will be large
enough for large primarily colonies. Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and
Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton and Spices towards the south. Chance of
Ore ~60%. Chance of Gold ~15%. Chance of natives ~0%.
500 Citizens need at least 34 houses. You'll need to build up one or more
colonies from nothing, but there are no specific new challenges. This scenario
brings together everything you've learnt in previous scenarios. Land should
not be a problem, but you should expect to settle more than one island and
secure all your own supplies: Trade tends to be hampered by the slow progress
of the other players, who tend not to have enough goods for sale to satisfy
your demands.
New in this scenario:
- Doctor: Required to control plague. Best placed before plague strikes. Once
a plague starts, you will be a 'grim reaper' type symbol above houses. Shortly
afterwards, the doctor will walk to the house and tend to the sick.
- Gallows: These are supposed to reduce the activity of a robber, who will
periodically steal from carts moving around your town. Many find Gallows make
very little difference, and are a waste of money - preventing a few tons of
Wood going missing (occasionally/maybe) is not worth the 20 coin a minute
operating cost of a Gallows.
- Tool maker: These process Iron into Tools. During this scenario you may
notice Tools purchased from Free Traders become increasingly expensive, so you
may wish to consider your own source of production.
\,--------------------------./
|| [ ] [B] [ ]||
||[ ] [ ] [!] ||
|| [?] [?] ||
|| [ ] [?] [ ]||
|| [!] @ [?] [A] ||
|| [ ] ||
||[ ] [ ] ||
|| [?] [!] [ ] ||
|| [ ] [?] [ ]||
/'--------------------------'\
* @ = Starting position.
* ! = Probably large enough to sustain primary colony.
* ? = Probably large enough for secondary colonies or resource gathering
colonies.
* A = Adfael. Player A colony.
* B = Essix. Player B colony.
Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton
and Spices towards the south. Chance of Ore ~50%. Chance of Gold ~10%. Chance
of natives ~%25. Pirates.
Repeat the last scenario twice over (in effect), and with a lot less land to
choose from. Secure two of the larger islands early in the game, ideally one
Tobacco/Liquor island and one Cotton/Spice island. Develop one to Citizen
level first, since this will allow access to more buildings. The two different
large islands strategy allows Cotton and Liquor to be shipped between, with
Spice and Tobacco supplied only to the islands it is produced on. This only
requires two islands in total, although space will be exceptionally tight and
trade routes will need to be carefully balanced. It may be easier to settle
some other small production islands, with a network of trade routes using more
than one vessel.
New in this scenario:
- Small shipyard: You may need to build ships during this level, in order to
move enough goods between islands. For optimum efficiency, place the shipyard
right next to a Market place, on an island with good Cloth and Wood supply.
New ships need to be ordered individually.
- Cannon foundry: These become available once you have 400 Citizens. They are
not essential in this scenario, but it is possible you will want to build one
in order to produce Cannon for your new ships. Cannon are not automatically
added to new ships - you need to take the new ship to your warehouse, transfer
Cannon to the hold, and then click on Cannon in the hold to mount them on the
ship.
- Cotton plantations: Cotton plantations are more space-efficient than Sheep
farms, but are only effective on southern (Cotton) islands. Build
approximately one Weaving mill for each pair of Cotton plantations.
- Counting population: New buildings become available based on the population
on your most developed island. This means that having two islands, each with
200 Citizens, only counts for 200 Citizens, not 200 + 200 = 400. To maximise
the number of buildings available, concentrate effort on developing one colony
first.
- Monuments: You may get a statue during this scenario. You will get one if
you keep your Citizen level population happy for 30 minutes. Statues can be
built like conventional buildings.
- Trading with natives: Trade with natives is based on exchange of goods -
typically Cloth or Liquor for something like Spices or Tobacco products. See
How do I trade with natives? above for further information.
Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton
and Spices towards the south. Larger islands are all 50%-50%-50% and devoid of
Ore.
This scenario is quite a big jump on from earlier scenarios. You start with
less money, making the early part of the game a little harder. You need to
develop your population up to Merchants (Citizen requirements, plus Cocoa,
Church and Public baths), and then go one stage further for a small number, to
Aristocrats (Merchant requirements, plus Jewellery, Clothes, College and
Theatre). The fact you only need three Aristocrat houses to reach the
objective is misleading: You will need at least 300 Merchants to build all the
pre-requisite buildings, and probably a few more than that to fund them. The
map is also characterised by a general lack of resources: Each of the large
islands, suited to building your main colony, are devoid of anything useful
except land; Gold is only found on one island; and other islands tend to be
only suitable for only one crop at 100%. This is likely to mean multiple
colonies with complex trade routes, which will entail building additional
ships. The final hurdle is to create a sufficiently large trade balance, which
will primarily mean trading with other players, so it will help if you are on
good terms with them.
New in this scenario:
- Merchants: Merchants require everything Citizens require (including *both*
Spice and Tobacco products), plus Cocoa and access to a Church and Public
baths. Merchant houses contain up to 25 people.
- Aristocrats: Aristocrats require everything Merchants require, except Cloth.
They also need to be supplied Jewellery and Clothes, and have access to a
College and Theatre. Aristocrat houses contain up to 40 people.
- Gold mines: Gold deposits are unlimited, and only run out in rare cases (see
Where did my gold or ore deposit go? above). One can place multiple mines
under one Gold deposit without any drop in long term or short term mining
rate.
- Deep iron mine: These extract ore from deposits after conventional Iron
mines have stopped working - after the first 80t of Ore have been mined. You
can place a Deep iron mine on a fresh deposit - there is no need to build a
regular Iron mine first.
- Churches and Colleges: Churches supersede Chapels. Colleges supersede
Schools. So long as the new buildings cover the houses the old buildings used
to, you can remove the old buildings.
- Bribing pirates: This is likely to be on of the first scenarios in which
eventually the pirates will settle an island. Once they settled, you can bride
them not to attack you. De-equip any cannon, sail to their island, and pay
protection money. There are other methods of dealing with pirates, see Dealing
with Pirates below.
There are three large islands, all of which are resource poor (maximum 50%
suitability for crops, with no Ore or Gold deposits). A profitable Aristocrat-
level city will benefit from having plenty of space, so don't worry about
resources at the start. The other players are predictable at the start of this
scenario: They head north towards the large island with natives on it (marked
"n" on the map). This island is worth trying to settle before them: It has the
least clutter (mountains and rivers) of the three largest islands. If you stop
to explore, they will settle it before you. Explore after building your
warehouse and they will go elsewhere.
Aristocrats require Jewellery to develop, which requires Gold, and there is
only one Gold deposit on the map. Settling the island in the south west corner
("og" on the map) should be an early priority, even if all you do is stake
your claim with a Warehouse and Market place. You should get an Ore deposit in
with the deal. If you don't take the Gold deposit, trade or invasion are
possible, but may take a long time. Processed Gold in the form of Jewellery
sells for 500-600 coins, and will make achieving the required trade balance
fairly easy.
Trade balance is the difference between trade purchases and sales. Neferankh
writes: "Sale of Jewellery, Clothes and excess Tools should easily produce the
500 Gold trade balance. Just turn all buying off." You do not need to sustain
such a trade balance, just reach it.
4.8.8 One AI player does not settle. What happened?
From Wargamerit: "In the 'New Discoveries' scenario sometimes the yellow ship
does not move from his initial position. After some trying, I discovered that
at the start of the game if I change immediately the screen view out from the
ships and click on a target point for my vessel, when I return with the screen
view on the ships I see the blue ships moving, my ship moving to its target
point but the yellow ship freeze on his initial position. The yellow ship
appears nail to his initial position for all the game. Seems that without
focus, that is the initial screen view, the AI lost the yellow ship and miss
the search for a good island to settle..."
This is the first of several scenarios based around co-operation. These can be
frustrating at first, because you can only have limited influence on meeting
the objective - you cannot physically build another player's city for them.
Several different strategies are possible. One can rely on trade to both build
up your own colony, and support another neighbour. Alternatively, attack and
destroy one or two of the other players, creating space for you and your
remaining neighbour to expand. Consider building your main city on the island
shown as "G" on the map, and building a second colony on the island shown "C"
to supply some Liquor and Tobacco. During the initial phase of the game, you
may also need to trade. There tends to be a lack of space to expand, and if
you expand to occupy all the available islands, you may find the other players
refuse to expand further. Consider only occupying two islands, and leaving the
others for the AI players. You should stay on friendly terms with at least one
neighbour. Help them develop by selling them what they need, and offering
tributes to help them fund their city buildings.
New in this scenario:
- Large shipyard: These become available with 500 Merchants, and allow the
production of larger vessels. They can also produce smaller ships, and so
supercede Small shipyards. Large battle ships are recommended instead of large
trading ships, since they move faster with the same load, and carry better
defences.
- Castles: These train troops. They require the appropriate weapons (Cannon,
Swords or Muskets) to be available.
- Loading troops onto ships: With the ship near the coast, select the unit(s)
and CTRL + click on the ship.
- Tribute: The diplomacy screen includes the option to give another player
money. Such donations will help them to expand, and tend to keep them friendly
longer. The position of the hand on the diplomacy screen varies according to
how good your relationship is with them. The hand will move from 'thumbs up'
(good) to 'thumbs down' (bad).
4.9.6 I have enough money, goods and the right people, but the largest other
island is stuck at 9xx inhabitants. What did I forget?
Robitoby writes: "When this happens, the chosen AI has built his bathhouse and
his church in a way that only a few houses are in the influence-area of both
these buildings. Here only helps one thing: Load troops, go to his island and
destroy his church (or his bath-house, I recommend the building that's closer
to the shore and the city-boarders...) Once you destroyed it just load your
troops back on ship and sail away, so you only destroy this single building.
If he rebuilds at the same place: destroy it again. If he positions it better,
then you pay a little tribute so he makes peace with you again and provide him
all supplies he needs."
From the official FAQ: "It's important to make sure that the southernmost
island is not settled, as otherwise the computer player does not have enough
room to expand about and the mission cannot be completed. The yellow computer
player must have at least three islands available for settlement."
From Eric Lorah: "Help the one who is already doing better than the other two.
You can even conquer one or both of the ones that don't go beyond the
'settler' stage, because the one that you are helping might want the islands
that they have. Eliminate the competition." Mircea adds: "I started trading
with all neighbors and watch who become stronger."
This tends to be the first scenario to confuse players, primarily because the
objective is not clear: You must defeat the other player. The scenario
requires you to work quite quickly, to fix your own economy and deal with your
opponent, both at the same time. It also requires some quite complex trade
route planning.
The other player was totally reliant on you for supplies. Without your
supplies their impressive looking city will rapidly decay, and their
population will drop to about 20% of its starting level. Their reaction to
this will be to declare war on you. Fortunately for you, their economy will
not be able to support much of a war. Different strategies are possible, which
vary depending on how rapidly one wants war to start. These are described
below in more detail.
As if the threat of war was not enough, you will have deal with several
initial problems in your own empire: Colony design is poor on some islands -
for example, on Ullitho, your main colony, fires tend to occur in houses that
have no road access, and there are far too many Gallows in my opinion. Trade
routes need to be set up to move goods around your empire, and odd
selling/buying settings at your Warehouses need to be reviewed. When you set
trade routes, avoid any routes that passes close to your opponent's island:
Once you go to war, your supply ships will easily be destroyed if they pass
too close to the enemy's island. Some production facilities are not operating
efficiently, but are costing you upkeep all the same.
The criteria for conquering enemies, and hence completing the scenario, are
described under How do I conquer enemies? above. Strategies for Invasions are
covered in the strategies section.
Large fleets and armies require population development in order to meet the
requirements for buildings things like Large shipyards, and to provide a solid
tax base with which to fund your military. Your initial colonies are far from
this position - you have the land, but not the development or tax base. I
recommend developing at least one colony to the point where it has 500+
Merchants before attempting to defeat the opponent. This gives access to large
war ships and all military units (without which invading will be tough), and
will tend to give enough tax revenue to support a modest military.
You start with 4 colonies that contain housing. Trying to develop all of those
up to Merchant status is not recommended: You lack the space needed on most
islands to build large settlements without reducing crop production, and small
colonies will not generate enough taxation to support some of the high-end
buildings needed to create Merchants. Instead focus on developing one or two
of your colonies as population centres, and keep the others for production.
Settling further islands is optional - you will probably not need any
additional land, and depending on the strategy you adopt below, your opponent
is unlikely to settle new land.
SandMonkey writes: "I would use the largest southwest island and/or the
northeastern most island, as they provide the largest base population to
start, and the most room to expand. All of the other islands are either out of
land, or are better used for purely production needs." Budgie adds: "You
should concentrate your efforts on one city - and yes, wipe out the others in
good time."
This strategy involves doing as much damage as possible to your enemy at the
start of the game, by denying them a navy. If your opponent has no navy it
will be impossible for them to invade you. You can build up your empire in
relative peace, prior to attacking their island. Rapidly gather up all (or
almost all) of your ships and destroy all of their shipping - they won't have
many ships initially. Then move some of your fleet to near the enemy's
shipyard. One can wait for new ships to be produced, and attack them as they
leave the shipyard - they are very vulnerable if you attack them before they
have a chance to load additional Cannon. Alternatively destroy the shipyard
itself. The other player will keep on trying to produce whatever they lost, so
you will need to keep watch. However, since they only produce one shipyard or
ship at a time, you will not need to keep your entire fleet engaged in this
activity. Gradually their resources will be depleted, and they will be less
able to repel land forces when you attack them later in the game.
Maddoc writes: "If I destroy his shipyard, he will soon build another one as
soon as he can. Most of the times he will choose another place for the new
shipyard. That way, I kind of have to chase his shipyards around until he does
not build any more. So what I do is, I don't destroy them. Instead I put a
large battle ship with 14 cannons right in front of his shipyard, just out of
reach of his cannon towers, if he has any around the shipyard. Then from time
to time I get a message 'Your opponent has built a new ship'. Followed
immediately by 'Your opponent attacks one of your ships' (or the like). That's
ok, my guarding ship will sink him with ease, as he has only few or no
cannons. This is totally automatic, I don't have to bother with his ships, I
have total control over his fleet, I get points for sinking ships permanently,
and he thinks everything is fine. One thing that may happen, though, is that
he builds cannon towers near the shipyard after I posted my ship. This can be
dangerous, so keep your ship at a safe distance, but close enough to intercept
his ships. Someone noticed that the computer's ships start with a few cannons
right from the shipyard. Normally they then turn towards the warehouse to load
more cannons. Get them before they arrive there."
From Zomby Woof: "First clear the ocean, try to pick the opponent ships one
after another with 3 of your ships that minimizes your losses. Don't forget to
repair. Next destroy the shipyard and take care that your opponent isn't
building a new one. Then destroy as much as you on the coastline with your
warships especially the towers, marketplaces and the warehouse. Next are the
enemy soldiers, try to lure them to the coast so you can destroy them safely
with your ships. This works if you land one of your own soldiers on the enemy
coast, one soldier will arrive to fight him. Take your soldier quickly back
into a ship and kill the enemy with your ships. You can repeat this until the
opponent runs out of soldiers. Now you can start the invasion with the
complete army."
This strategy involves supplying your opponent with enough of what they need
to remain peaceful, and using the profits to build up your army. Sir Henry
writes: "In this scenario you could as well keep your opponent peaceful by
trading with him. Deliver what he needs. You may pay him some tribute from
time to time as well. Just observe his thumb in the diplomacy menu and keep it
horizontal. When you are strong enough to build big war ships and cannons you
may take revenge."
From Gunter: "Don't raise your own population too quickly but wait for your
neighbor first, even if your people are crying for goods. Trade them rather
with him as much as you can, even at the risk that your own supplies are
short, and return him your trading profit as tribute." Kopeister suggests
constructing a Gold mine early in the game, and profiting from the sale of
Gold and Jewellery.
FrankB comments: "Try to trade with Blue as long as you are weak - you can get
a nice profit from that. However, that's not easy, and Blue will probably
declare war early in the game. You may then try to suggest a new trade and
peace treaty to get some time - but I think you cannot give him all he wants
(your own economy has a higher priority). ... It's impossible to satisfy his
demands completely; sooner or later he will declare war on you."
- Coins: 20,000 coins.
- Ships: 2x Large warship (one with 7 Cannon, 100t Cloth, 30t Wool, 100t
Tobacco products, 100t Liquor; the other with 9 Cannon, 110t Food), 2x Small
trading ship (one with 6 Cannon, one with 4 Cannon).
- Army: 2x Cavalry (1 at Kythera, 1 at Martytown), 9x Cannoneer (1 at Kythera,
3 at Port Tobacco, 5 at Martytown).
- Competitors: 3, 1 already settled.
You start with a well developed empire. Like everything you inherit, it will
benefit from some changes and automatic trade routes. Most importantly, you
start with a couple of war ships and troops. Use them immediately to defeat
the two AI players that start settlements at the beginning. Frieden writes:
"In the beginning two opponents' ships appear on the left top of the map. Try
to defeat both. Sometimes one of them is able to built a warehouse and
marketplace. Shoot down the warehouse again and again. Then send some troops
overseas to talk with him."
With two competitors defeated, turn your attention to the last competitor, who
is already well developed on two islands. This is a tougher opponent, and you
will need to build up you military first, specifically your navy. From
DemetriosX: "Smashing the computer's ships first is usually the best strategy.
It keeps him from harassing you while you wipe out his watchtowers and from
counter-invading one of your islands. After that wipe out his wharfs, and keep
an eye on his other island(s) too. Once he figures out you're destroying any
wharf he builds on his main island he'll put one elsewhere. After that, I
usually wipe out anything my ships can reach, starting with shore based
watchtowers and his warehouse." Arcturis_mengsk adds: "I usually take out his
main island because that is his source of tax revenue then he will be left
with his expensive-to-upkeep supply island."
Neferankh writes: "Taking all his ships out first is almost a necessity. What
I did was build the maximum amount of ships I could and loaded them with 10
cannons each. Then I split my fleet into 2 forces. I sent one in fairly close
to where the computer's ships were circling. Left the other a little out of
the way. Started attacking his ships with my first fleet. As his other, more
remote, ships started to come towards the battle, I moved my second fleet in
and intercepted them. By splitting your fleet, you effectively split the
computer's fleet. Oh, I assigned CTRL numbers to the two fleets and toggled
between them during the battle to make sure all were fighting. Ships have a
tendency to sit around doing nothing even if the one next to it is under
attack. Net result, no ships lost. ... Sometimes, when you attack an
Opponent's island, it is tempting to try to replace all his Markets as well as
his Warehouse in order to keep all his Plantations and Production Workshops.
If you really need the Products fast, then it is a good idea. But the computer
does build sloppy and, if you don't need the Product, it may be more efficient
to tear down the Plantations/Workshops and rebuild in the best way possible."
This map is random. There will about 20 islands, but only 4-6 will be large.
Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton
and Spices towards the south. Chance of Ore ~50%. Chance of Gold ~15%. Chance
of natives ~20%.
Settling all the islands that grow Cocoa or Tobacco at 100% would be easy >:)
. The catch here is that you must trade. You can only sell effectively when
there is one or more AI player remaining, so you cannot destroy all the
opposition. Resources are randomly generated each time you play, so the number
of islands you need to settle may not be consistent - expect to settle at
least 3-4 of each type (6-8 in total). Similarly, the number of AI player
colonies you have to 'displace' will not be consistent. You do not need to
sell specific cargo, and you only need to achieve a 400 coin trade balance,
not sustain it. This means that one can delay trading, and then try and trade
as much as possible in a short space of time, which will temporarily increase
the trade balance.
Trade balance is cost of sales minus purchases. Trade includes trade with AI
players, and trade with Free Traders. FrankB comments: "The trade balance will
not be shown directly in your game screen (there you will only see the overall
balance); you have to calculate it manually." Trade balance does not have to
be sustained, just met.
No. You must be the only player on each of the 100% Cocoa and Tobacco islands.
BigTiny, quoting the US manual: "A monopoly on a particular product is classed
as having been reached when a player has erected a warehouse on all of the
isles where the product has a 100% yield rate, and is the sole inhabitant
thereof (excluding natives)."
Dukem writes: "The key to winning is to capture the island with the gold on it
as soon as possible and then provide a CONTINUOUS supply of either gold or
jewellery to BOTH your island and the yellow island. I provided gold to my
island until I had 1000 aristocrats, and then started to supply yellow. After
I ran out of jewellery and the aristocrats didn't devolve I figured I was
alright, that's when I got deposed. If you just provide jewellery to your
island and not yellow you get the failed message."
You start with all of the southern (Spice/Cocoa/Cotton) islands, and none of
the northern (Tobacco/Liquor) islands. You also start with all the gold >:) .
A few small northern islands are available to be colonized, but not enough to
supply 2000 people. Your colonies are not well developed. In order for you to
develop at all, you will need access to Liquor. In order for the other players
to develop beyond Citizen level, they will need access to Spices, and later
Cocoa and Gold. If you refuse to trade they are likely to try and take land
from you. Although, a trade based outcome was probably envisaged in the
scenario's design, I suspect it can be completed using almost any mix limited
expansion, trade, and combat. Note the general lack of Ore on the map -
consider buying it from Free Traders (start mining it first, to trigger Free
Trader sales). Do not under-estimate the amount of space you will need for
your population, both in terms of housing and facilities: As a minimum you
will need 50 houses (more if some of your population remain as Merchants),
plus almost every public building that can be built. You should be able to
position all these houses around one set of public buildings. If you get
offered a Palace in the later stage of the game, don't feel obligued to build
it - it wastes a lot of space.
Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton
and Spices towards the south. Chance of Ore ~65%. Chance of Gold ~25%. Chance
of natives ~15%. Pirates.
This scenario has a similar premise to Good Neigbors, but transpires to be
somewhat harder to complete, as Dread Pirate Terry writes: "This scenario
would better be titled PATIENCE. I almost gave up a couple times. Sell
EVERYTHING yellow needs to him, AND make sure that he always has enough money
to always buy everything he needs. First you need to have a powerful economy
to make sure you can provide yellow with everything. Remember, he has no
ships: pretend that about six of your ships are actually his and fulfil all
his needs. As he progresses ever so slowly his needs will be changing so keep
checking and anticipating what will be next. The most important thing in the
beginning especially are ore, iron, tools, whatever he is asking for. When
yellow is in the mood to advance keep pushing him."
From prosecutryx: "It wasn't hard once I kept a ship fully stocked with tools,
tobacco, alcohol, wood, cocoa, and spices at their dock, and anytime the
yellow ran out of one of these items, I immediately sold them more. That way
their population was able to grow, evolve, and build without interruption."
From fantasyangel: "I just continued to donate them money and supplies and it
didn't take too long for them to reach 1000." Neferankh adds: "Give them lots
of Gold. Not small amounts but 10,000 gold at a time."
Zomby Woof writes: "In this scenario it is important to leave enough space for
your neighbour so he can expand. You also can check his city layout. Sometimes
the AI is building in a way which doesn't make much sense. Especially the
service buildings, like churches and bathhouses, are often built outside the
range of the houses which they should serve. If this is the case, you can
start a little war and destroy parts of his town then supply him again with
all needed goods." From Robbie47 adds: "What may help: when he stagnates, fire
some shots at his warehouse, that'll wake him up. If he built his church in
some odd corner of his island you could land some troops and destroy it. That
will make him think twice about building it on the outskirts again. Now
retreat your forces and offer him a peace and trade treaty. Pay him some
money. He'll usually accept the treaties and rebuild his city. And the
scenario will finish." Sir Henry adds: "Just declaring war to your friend may
be enough to trigger him starting to grow." Neferankh writes: "Your goal is to
make your Ally grow to the point where he will build a shipyard and ships.
There are times when you have to kill your Competitors to allow your Ally to
grow. You have to totally clean the island of all buildings, though, and get
off as quickly as you can."
Your main starting colony, Metropolis, already meets the population
requirement for winning. Unfortunately all those people need a lot of things,
most of which need to be shipped in from elsewhere. Those trade routes not
only need to be set up quickly to maintain supply, but you also need to pacify
the huge number of pirates. Survive the first 15 minutes with your empire in
tact, and the final defeat of the pirates will seem easy.
Neferankh writes: "As soon as the game started, I sailed one of my ships that
doesn't have cannons to the Pirate base and bribed them. That kept the Pirate
ships away for a while. It's important to pick a ship without cannons so they
don't fire on you as you sail up to their dock." Budgie adds: "...and in the
meantime you should unload your other ships as soon/far as possible, then let
them band together beneath the watchtowers to defeat the pirates who will go
on attacking you until your peacemaker reaches them. Moreover, the pirates
will stop their first attack when you sink about 6 or 7 of their ships." From
Brian: "I always build an extra ship and put it at the pirates nest and just
pay them every so often so they would leave me alone for awhile."
Robitoby writes: "Unload your ships as far as you can quite at the beginning.
Raise white flags on all ships. Go to ship-yard, build another Big Battle-
ship. Build second cannon-foundry. Move those ships that have goods aboard
close to your warehouse and unload them constantly while the other ships are
out and 'block' the way for the pirates (the pirates will look for goods at
those ships first). Now just wait until you always catch 1 single pirate-ship
on it's own. After that, take 3 undamaged ships and get food, alcohol and
cloth to your main-island. Build another wood-cutter. Repair your ships, start
to sort this city. And arm your ships, build more Big Battleships. Sink the
pirates. Go for their nest. Train troops. Destroy the nest."
Zomby Woof writes: "Another way: I think the problem is that the whole pirate
fleet is advancing concentrated to your fleet's starting point. I tried to win
the sea battle several times but no way. So after starting I immediately took
my fleet and moved it to the northern part of the map. The pirates arrived at
my starting point and found - nothing. The pirate fleet split and they were
crossing the ocean each by his own to find me. So I had the chance to pick
them out single (or in the worst case two or three at one point). The other
pirates moved rapidly to the battlefield so I tried to keep my fleet in move.
In this way I destroyed the complete pirate fleet and I only lost 9 ships and
kept about 15, enough to destroy the pirate nests. I didn't need the two ships
filled with resources, I just needed the shipyard and the resources to repair
my ships. Perhaps not very elegant but it worked." Eric Lorah adds: "Arm your
ships if you are going to fight the pirates. There are some cannons in the
warehouse. The ships have only a fraction of their full complement of guns.
Transfer the guns to get a few fully armed ships. Put up the white flag on the
unarmed ones. Get cannon production going. Build some watchtowers by the main
island warehouse to help protect the ships."
From Neferankh: "The key is food and, of course, keeping the Pirates bribed.
Also, let your people devolve from Aristocrats to Merchants. Then stabilize
supply of all goods. Shut down Tailor's and Goldsmiths, Cannon Foundry, etc.
Remember, when you remove a product, the people still want it unless you lower
taxes. Make sure your taxes are at a level where the man is smiling."
Eric Lorah writes: "Before you run out of money to build things, build the #IV
warehouses on some of the production islands. Most if not all of the
production islands have only the #I warehouse which can't possibly handle all
of the produce on those islands. And since you don't need so much production,
if your people regressed like mine, shut down most of it and maybe even
demolish some of it if need be. Sell at least some of the abundant surplus on
the production islands."
Worker72 writes: "For the record the pirates nest is located on a 100% tobacco
island but you can get along without it just reduce the tax rate. You do not
even need aristocrats let them slide back into Merchants by destroying the
theatres." Budgie comments: "Worker is right, to avoid immediate bankruptcy
you have to shut down many productions (like cocoa) and to crush many
buildings like theatres and colleges, maybe even bath houses and big churches.
You fall back to merchant or (even better) citizen level, then kill the
pirates, then rebuild your city. At the start there are two ways: the easy
Worker way, or the hard way. The latter means: fight the pirates right from
the start, but save 3 or 4 of your ships."
The population objective does not seem particularly onerous considering this
is a four-star scenario, even given the relatively small amount of land
available for settlement. The main problem is the other players are highly
aggressive, and tend to attack you before you have developed sufficiently to
repel them.
Joe Cool writes: "He [the enemy] has a set envy level. When you get citizens
he will start to attack. Make sure your city is surrounded by towwers right
after he starts attacking. But before that try making good peace with him. It
will slow his rampage down." From tanner_85: "You could always try paying a
tribute, and offering peace and trade agreements. That should hold the
attackers at bay until you build your own army. However, I've come to notice
that when I train soldiers, as soon as I send them out of the castle, some of
the players take it as an insult, and initiate (foolish) attacks on me."
Ches writes: "Try to build a wall around your island as Al always does. If he
try to attack you, first he'll try to destroy part of the wall which is easy
to fix." Manfred notes: "You can also plant some trees and fields along the
coast if you have space, that will slow the competitors down and is cheaper.
Remember that only the watchtower can shot over trees and buildings, the
soldiers cannot. They have to destroy the trees in front of a target first.
Quite useful to secure certain buildings like the markets. As soon as I can
build cannons, I ship 4-6 cannons and building material on my otherwise
undefended islands. If the competitor lands his troops on one of my islands I
immediately drop some trees between those soldiers and my buildings and right
behind them I build a watchtower."
Robitoby writes: "Red declares war on me once I reach 600 inhabitants. I've
only 1 small trading-ship, armed with 4 cannons (still no cannon-foundry).
Well, he comes along with a big battle-ship, I sail my ship to my ship-yard
and start repairing it while he's fighting me. Well, his ship sinks, and at
the same moment a second one appears, a big trading-ship this time. Well, that
way I sank 5 of his ships and what happened? His population decreased as he
couldn't supply it anymore."
\,--------------------------./
|| [?] [A] ||
|| [B] [ ] [ ] ||
|| ||
|| [?] [C] ||
|| [D] [ ] ||
|| [?] ||
|| [ ] [!] ||
|| [E] ||
|| [ ] ||
/'--------------------------'\
* ! = Probably large enough to sustain primary colony.
* ? = Probably large enough for secondary colonies or resource gathering
colonies.
A = Barn. Your colony. Tobacco 100%, Vines 50%, Sugarcane 50%, Stone, Ore.
B = Basford. Player B town. Tobacco 100%, Vines 100%, Sugarcane 50%, Stone.
C = Quartertown. Player C city. Tobacco 50%, Vines 50%, Sugarcane 100%, Stone,
Ore.
D = Port Tobacco. Player C colony. Tobacco 100%, Vines 50%, Sugarcane 50%,
Stone.
E = Cotton Point. Player C colony. Cocoa 50%, Cotton 100%, Spices 100%, Stone,
Gold.
Islands suitable for Tobacco, Vines and Sugarcane towards north; Cocoa, Cotton
and Spices towards the south. Chance of Ore ~40%. Chance of Gold ~5%. Chance
of natives ~25%. Pirates.
This is a deceptively easy looking map, but one on which the other players
expand aggressively. It can rapidly turn into a blood-bath.
Destroy one AI player early in the game, either before or shortly after they
settle an island. Gunter writes: "It's actually not necessary to prevent Red
from settling that southern island immediately: First, I settled a northern
island for alcohol production, and let him build his first houses on the
southern one. Then I fully armed my ship, healed my lonesome cannoneer and
went down to take possession of what it was due to me."
Gunter continues: "I developed slowly to merchants and aristocrats, by growing
alcohol and cotton on 2 other islands which I needed as well for ore
production. But during all this time, I completely forgot to look what Blue
and White were selling. And it was only when my third ore mine run out that I
saw that they were both offering a lot ore and iron, besides many other
products I had needed. But in the meantime, Yellow had broken his treaties and
tried to settle on my spice/cocoa island. Well, I took this for an 'insult'
and sent over a battleship with my lonesome soldier who persuaded him very
quickly that this was MY LAND. But then I had to pay him some tribute to buy
his iron which I needed urgently, now, cause the only ore mine left on the map
was owned by the natives and I didn't like to fight them."
From mamayourpeoplearehungry: "I began my attack with about 14 ships and a
handy little island with a shipbuilder, woodcutter and a weaver and 2 sheep
farms. It took a while but it worked. I lost more ships to the pirates than to
the white island (I play blue)."
From Mircea: "After dealing with Yellow player, I have seen the White making a
lot of big warships (their number was bigger than mine). So, I've sacrificed
three warships for the destruction of AI's shipyard and after that he wasn't
able to rebuid it."
Dietl comments: "For me, White AI is definitely stronger, richer, and holds
more territory. Yellow AI is small, and only claims one island in the north
(upper left corner). ... Every time I'd take out White AI's supply island, I'd
have to begin to supply Yellow AI, or he would attack. Trade and peace
agreements were taken back several times by him. I had to heavily tribute
pirates and Yellow."
4.18 NINA Campaigns and Scenarios
______________________________________________________________________________
The original game ended after The Fortress. I do not own the NINA expansion,
so you will not find a full walkthrough for it here. This section contains
commonly asked questions and problems, that may be of use if you are trying to
complete the expansion campaigns. I suspect that most players will have learnt
enough about the game from the initial scenarios to find their own way through
most of the NINA campaigns. If you start with the NINA campaigns and find them
tough, try playing through the original scenarios first.
4.18.1 What is the order of the NINA campaigns and scenarios?
Dietl writes:
"Campaign 1: New Horizons = Halfway There, To each his own island, Appearances
can be deceiving, Hard times.
Campaign 2: Trust No one = Humility is a virtue, The Blinding, The Thief.
Campaign 3: The Magnate = Gold rush, Spice Monopoly, Dangerous waters.
Campaign 4: Pirata = Revenge is sweet, The saviour, Quest for peace.
Campaign 5: Unfriendly Neighbors = Break the Monopoly, The new Empire,
Imperial Proclamation.
Campaign 6: On His Majesty's Service = Veni, vidi, veci, At all costs, The
Deluge, Close Quarters.
Additional Scenarios: Atoll, Delusions of Grandeur, Exile, Fireland, Pirates!,
The Continent, The search for gold, Three are two too many, To each his own."
4.18.2 New Horizons: Halfway There: How do I get started?
QueenoHearts writes: "Find an island where you can have a monopoly on a good,
try to keep your ships safe to go buy goods, and be very careful with your
money and how quickly you build up." Dread Pirate Terry suggests: "Go directly
to the AI's main island, buy 35 tons of his cheap tools. Settle the 100% Vines
island North of him. That's all you need to get the economy going. Shortly add
the 100% tobacco island next door. Since the AI already has a mine going you
don't ever need one, you just buy ore from him or the free traders. You only
need 400 citizens for the cannon foundry (to take care of the pirates). 100
aristocrats is only three houses so you'll only need a ton or two of gold to
complete the mission."
4.18.3 New Horizons: To Each His Own Island: Why can't I build an Iron mine?
Why can't I get tools?
FrankB writes: "There are no Free Traders in this scenario, and you have to
use the tools you started with to build up your own tool production. So, don't
waste your tools and build only the most necessary things." From Falke: "You
must build your own tool production. This is minimum needed: Warehouse, 1
Market-Place, 1 Chapel, 1-2 Fisher's huts, 1 Sheep farm, 1 Weaver, 1 Quarry, 1
Stonecutter, 20 Houses. Now make sure that 120 Settlers live on your Island.
Then you can build an ore-Mine, a smelter and a toolmaker. Now you can produce
your own tools an the Scenario is now problem." Robitoby writes: "As usual,
the ore mine runs out after it has produced 80t of ore. After that you have to
build a deep ore-mine. This one is unlimited in this scenario. Once you have
built the deep ore-mine you have full and free access to tools by your own
production."
In un-patched (original NINA) games, this scenario was impossible, as Zomby
Woof comments: "Without the patch you started with 50t of tools and with this
number it's impossible to raise up you own tool production." Gunter writes:
"The tools are so limited and you can't buy any since there are no free
traders, that in my first 2 approaches with the usual tactics I ran out of
tools each time before I could reach 120 settlers and build an ore mine. So I
tried a third approach without supplying them with all that stuff, and it
worked. I built just the forester, the chapel, a market place, 1 sheep farm
and a weaver, and 20 houses, but no alcohol, no tobacco, no tavern and no
school, and still they upgraded. Okay, they were not very happy and I had to
lower taxes, but it was just sufficient for a positive balance, and I managed
to have my 120 settlers with exactly 50t of tools. ... 50t *before* I built
the ore mine."
4.18.4 New Horizons: To Each His Own Island: Why does the game not finish?
There may be a bug here that prevents the game finishing, even when the
objective (three 500 Aristocrat population cities for each companion) is met.
This issue only effects a small number of people; it is not clear why.
Sonshine comments: "You need to destroy all the AI players off your islands.
In the last sentence of the assignment, it says to destroy all other
settlements. So, you need to destroy the white, blue and yellow players
totally."
4.18.5 New Horizons: Appearance can be Deceiving: How do I finish?
FrankB writes: "You must have on each island 1500 inhabitants, out of them
1000 should be aristocrats. White should have 1300 inhabitants, out of them
1000 should be merchants. If one condition is not fulfilled, the scenario will
not end. So, if you have all necessary inhabitants, try to sell White as much
goods as possible, or let him take over an island with 100% of a crop White
does not have at present." QueenoHearts notes that you must also defeat the
blue player. Robbie47 adds: "When I played the scenario, the problem was a
very passive white AI-Player, who simply did not expand. I shot the warehouse
at his main port to pieces in order to wake him up. Then I offered a peace
treaty and paid him a tribute. After a while he accepted the treaty, traded,
expanded and reached 1300 inhabitants including 1000 merchants." Zomby Woof
adds: "The cause of your problem may be that there is no island left which is
big enough to establish a city on it. The AI wants a mid-sized island for
minimum with enough clear land on it (less mountains or rivers)."
4.18.6 Trust No One: Humility Is a Virtue: How do I keep the other players
friendly?
From Neferankh: "Tributing alone won't do it. You have to also trade with him
by buying from him as well as selling to him. The easiest way, I found, was to
buy a product (such as Cocoa) from him at one of his islands and then sell it
back to him at his main island. Until you can build a small fleet of ships to
do that, watch the Diplomacy indicator and Tribute so that his hand is always
horizontal. Buy from the Pirates, too. You can pick up a good supply of Tools,
cheap. In the meantime, build up your settlement. Slowly."
4.18.7 Trust No One: Humility Is a Virtue: How do I find the Gold needed to
create 1200 Aristocrats?
From Budgie: "There's gold on the big island in the middle of the map." From
mamayourpeoplearehungry: "I start a settlement in the northwest large island
and one of the first things I do is to set the warehouse to buy gold (about 10
tons). This solves the aristocrat problem later in the game." From Falke:
"Free Traders sell Gold only, when one Player (AI or Human) produce it."
FrankB writes: "I think you have to conquer the gold island. Yellow will not
start to mine gold."
4.18.8 Trust No One: The Thief: How to get started?
Neferankh writes: "First you have to take over the centre string of islands.
Do not destroy any more than you have to so you save building them back up.
Then build your population and power up to the point where you are strong
enough to attack and defeat Yellow. If I remember correctly, you should build
up to 500 Merchants on one of the islands so that you can get the Large
Shipyard. You will need the big ships to take out Yellow's Towers. Check the
islands for an Iron Ore mountain. I think there is one. Also buy Iron Ore and
process yourself. Another point, you will have to keep Yellow happy until you
are strong enough to invade. Probably will have to tribute him to keep him
from attacking you. Make sure you maintain both the Peace Treaty and the Trade
Agreement until you are ready."
From Dread Pirate Terry: "There is nothing in the requirements for this scene
that say you have to interact with the pirates at all." CharlieM writes: "The
trick was NOT selling the jewellery, just letting it accumulate." Neferankh
writes: "In the extreme lower left hand corner (southwest) of the map is an
island with two native tribes which will trade gold with you overland. One of
the other players also occupies this island. The idea is to build a Warehouse
on the island located so that you can use your trading cart overland to trade
with the natives. The other player, however, will not allow you to settle the
island. To overcome this you have to trade with him and tribute him until he
allows you to build your Warehouse without declaring war on you. Once you get
to that point, you have to ship trade goods from one of your other islands to
that island and trade with the natives for gold. Build up a good economy
first, though, because it will take a long time to trade for 50 tons of gold."
Eric Lorah comments: "I was able to build a warehouse on the native island
with no problem. 'White' did not object. There are two possible locations on
that island for a warehouse but one is no good because of trees blocking the
path. If you use weapons to remove the trees, the natives will consider that
as an attack and you will not get any gold or anything else from them."
4.18.12 At His Majesty's Service: Veni, vidi, veci: My trade balance is above
500. Why does the game not end?
From Manfred: "Make sure you really have a 'trade balance' of 500. Trade
balance = difference between selling and buying." Neferankh adds: "To get the
positive trade surplus of 500 gold, you will have to trade manually. The Free
Traders do not buy enough. The northeast island has gold. Once you get to 150
Citizens, build a gold mine. Once you get to your 300 Citizens, load a ship
with gold and go sell it. This will produce your 500 gold trade surplus very
easily. This is another reason why you should leave your Opponents' major
islands alone. They are at, or go to, Merchant level and will demand gold."
Eric Lorah writes: "When I have met all other scenario goal requirements, I
quickly go to all of my warehouses and stop buying so my purchases drop to 0
and I start selling as much as I can of my stored-up goods and at a lower than
normal price that the Freetraders can not resist."
4.18.13 At His Majesty's Service: At all Costs: How to get started?
FrankB writes: "First, I closed trade agreements with all AI players, and
moved my fleet to the north, while one ship was directed to an island near the
pirates nest. There I disembarked the soldiers, disarmed the ship and had it
bribing the pirates. Then, I took over the north-east island. The big
battleships of the AI were destroyed completely (they came one after another,
so they had no chance), and I lost only one or two (empty) ships." From Dread
Pirate Terry: "I took over the pirate island, retired all my soldiers,
unloaded the cannons from all my ships and sold them to the free traders, took
over all the central islands and with the gold mines of the pirate island
built a stable economy and traded with the AI's."
From rivnut: "I went for the North East island. The AI really stormed my
ships. All my soldiers got killed on land as the AI kept brnging more troops
and my ships were getting weaker. I was down to 1 ship left and it was only
1/4 health. Luckily it was 1 that had supplies. So I carefully sailed it to
volcano island and got set up there. After hours of building up, I managed to
get cannons and large battle ships built from the small volcano island. ...
What seemed to be doom from the start is turning out to be victory now as I
finally got soldiers and I took that North East island. So now I have plenty
of room for 800 Merchants with plenty of firepower."
4.18.14 Delusions of Grandeur: How to get enough Aristocrats?
From Dread Pirate Terry: "Keep in mind that you can lower taxes. Aristocrats
need jewellery to advance but they will stay without it if the taxes are
lowered. ... Food will be your biggest problem so every island should have
fishers on them to minimize the land area needed to produce food. This
scenario is probably the biggest test of transporting goods efficiently."
FrankB adds: "You may use relay islands for establishing a continous supply of
your city: establish auto-routes from distant islands to an island near your
main city, and let other ships bring the goods from there to your main
island." Dread Pirate Terry continues: "One thing to keep in mind is the goal
is to *reach* 2 x 10,000 [population cities], not necessary to *sustain*."
FrankB writes: "I'd suggest to start with building up one city only. ... After
creating a stable economy for your first 10000 inhabitants, you may start with
your second island. I upgraded to merchants only, and waited with the upgrade
to aristocrats: If you have 6250 merchants (or more) you may increase your
production facilities, get as much tools and bricks as possible (store them in
ships if possible), and upgrade fast."
Budgie hints: "As soon as you build a second warehouse, the free traders will
appear. Guess what they will sell to you? ... With [just] 50t tools you won't
ever reach 120 settlers, don't matter how hard you try."
5.1 Colony Planning and Building
______________________________________________________________________________
5.1.1 Initial colony building
Budgie writes: "Your optimal first island should have northern climate with
100% tobacco and wine/sugarcane. It should have an ore deposit, mountains for
a quarry and trees (or another island with trees nearby). All of these are
essential things you need in the early stage of your game. The island should
be a big one." BigTiny writes: "I will always try for the largest isle that
supports booze at 100% ...a little rum or wine sure keeps my people happy."
The size of the island your main colony is built upon becomes critical in the
later stages of a continuous game, when one is trying to house a large
population. From draculitch: "I like to head towards the closest large island.
I will take a 100% spice/cocoa in a heartbeat. I don't mind importing the
alcohol (and the cloth). I really don't see much difference. You either have
to import booze, or spice." Ron The Wrath of God writes: "I always try to
colonize the largest island near the center of the map for two reasons: (1) It
is logistically easier to move goods to the center of the map from surrounding
production colonies, (2) It often supports 100% cotton or one other product
like sugar."
Charlie suggests not placing the Warehouse in a bay, because ships may later
have difficulty reaching it. Shark_Dus writes: "It is very important to build
your warehouse at the right location. Bays are easy to defend, but bad for
high ship traffic. If an island is to be home for thousands of inhabitants,
your warehouse should be placed on an even coastline or on a peninsula. This
assures the maximum influence area and therefore best reach for a high number
of ships loading and unloading parallel."
From raincat: "Start with 1 woodcutter, 1 fisher's hut, 1 market place, chapel
+ 20 houses only - all built in the bright area of chapel. Raise the tax to
maximum immediately. Add 1 sheep farm [and a weaver to make Cloth] and 20 more
houses. After you've got settlers, raise the tax again. Try to serve them with
alcohol and tobacco... the more satisfied they are the higher tax they'll will
be ready to pay. Add a school and tavern, and problems should not arise.
Always try to give your people all the things they request (food and drugs),
but only if your balance is green. Otherwise you should wait: Sell overstock
production to free traders or cancel some production to save costs. Buildings
are not so essential for development, except school and tavern in the
beginning. ... After a lot of bankruptcies I've learned only to provide the
inhabitants with required buildings or goods when my trading balance is green.
There's no any danger to let them wait for a while (except for food)."
Frieden suggests an order in which buildings should be added to avoid early
financial problems:
"- (1a) Warehouse, (1b) Fisher hut, (1c) Two or three wood-cutters, (1d) 1 or
2 marketplaces, (1e) Chapel - should have a big circle of influence.
- (2a) Some houses around the chapel, depending on the wood you have, (2b)
Taxes from pioneers at maximum, (2c) Sheep-farm (later on a 2nd one) and one
weaving-mill.
- (3a) More houses (not more than 20), (3b) See first settlers coming, (3c)
Taxes from settlers a little bit higher (keep them laughing).
- (4a) Wait for 15 settlers, (4b) Stone-mason and quarry, (4c) Firehouse.
- (5a) Wait for 40 settlers, (5b) Create alcohol, (5c) After alcohol is
available... set taxes for settlers much higher... and welcome in the real
life.
- (6a) Do not build tavern and school, and resist other options (tobacco,
spice, meat), (6b) 2nd fisher hut, (6c) Wait until you 120 settlers, (6d) See
the money-button slowly turning from red to green. Your money problem should
be solved.
- (7) Tool production..."
Robbie47 suggests: "Call a market wagon immediately, load 30 tons of tools on
the market car. Now you have space for more cheap tools, even after taking all
the tools from your ship. You can safely raise the white flag in case pirates
come by, and you have space to buy tools at the lowest price. Build only 1
sheep farm. As soon as the question mark disappears, build a weaver, he'll
pick up the wool. Now after a while the wool supplies will be insufficient as
the weaver can weave the wool of 2 sheep farms. So send him on a holiday
(inactive) and build a road to the sheep farm. Check your stock of cloth every
now and then, as soon as it starts running low, reactivate the weaver, who now
will have a lot of wool to work his way through. Build only 1 wineyard (if you
have a rum island, do as with the weaver). As soon as you have alcohol,
increase the tax for the settlers. Do not grow tobacco if your balance is
still in the red. Look for natives who'll be happy to trade. That is much
cheaper as they give you 18-20 tons of tobacco or spice for about 5 tons of
cloth plus 5 tons of alcohol. As long as you are not ready to promote your
settlers to build bigger houses and become citizens, they need only tobacco or
spices, not both. Do not build a tavern as long as you are still writing red
figures. ... When starting off a new settlement, it pays to start of with only
one cattle farm - just like only one sheep farm will do nicely for a while -
and put the butcher and weaver to sleep every now and then. Saves lots of
money."
From FrankB: "20 houses is good for the very beginning, but I'd recommend to
build another 10-15 houses as soon as you have enough wood and tools for doing
that - it will give you a more comfortable tax income basis. And upgrade to
settlers as fast as possible (i.e. build the chapel, a market place, a sheep
farm and a weaver very soon - plus 2-3 fishing huts); they will generate more
taxes. To feed your people, you can use fishing huts (my favourite - they do
not take much space and feed approx. 70 people each) or cattle combines (2
cattle farms, one butcher; feeds approx. 210 people). ... I always try to
build 20 houses in the beginning, with 3 woodcutters if possible - wood is
essential. ... I buy the tools from the Free Traders at $70 per ton." Falke
writes: "I think 20 is the magic number of Houses (20*25 Merchants=500=large
Shipyard)." Budgie adds: "20 houses is also the magic number for having 120
settlers." Raincat adds: "I would be carefully with building too many houses
as the demand of food, tobacco and alcohol might rise faster than you can
satisfy."
From Ryan H: "Operating costs vs taxes. Remember that. It's really easy and
very instinctive to try to get to the highest level too fast. Slow down and
just concentrate on getting the population higher and satisfying their needs.
Make sure your taxes are higher than operating costs."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "Don't give them everything they want. The biggest
mistake that newbies make (and I used to make it too) is to build a tavern or
a school or a public bath or whatever just because it says your people want
it. If you're ready for your settlers to advance to citizen then you decide to
give them a tavern and a school, not before."
Zomby Woof writes: "Building too slowly doesn't matter. The AI advances a
little and stops if you are doing nothing."
From Lord Khang: "Once I find my second island, I go ahead and drop a
warehouse on it, and head back home. I have found that this will keep the
computer opponents away from it for quite a while, not a 100% guarantee, but
close."
FrankB writes: "I look for a big island with some hills and if possible
without rivers. I build two or three foresters near the warehouse. As my city
must have approximately 30 houses (otherwise, my balance could be negative), I
look for enough space to build them. Build one sheep farm and a weaver hut,
then the chapel (in its influence area, you can build your first houses - and
leave one field free, then you can replace the chapel by a house when you got
the church), then some houses. Get settlers as soon as possible - there are up
to 6 of them in one house, which means that you get more taxes. Build 20
houses (if necessary, don't allow your people to get building material for
that time), get some tools from the Free traders - and start to explore the
other islands. After you got alcohol, you can relax, build up your tool
industry, earn money and expand to upgrade your people."
Zomby Woof comments: "I do not plan my city completely from the first to the
last building. After building the warehouse I place the first market place
then two foresters near the warehouse. Next I place the chapel, taking care
that the influence area of the chapel is completely clear. Then I'm doing the
road layout, usually I build in 3x2 blocks of houses surrounded by streets.
And now I place the first 20 houses, taking care to leave the room for the
tavern, school and a doctor. Then, away from the housing area, I build the
first sheep farm and the weavers hut to upgrade the subjects to settlers. Next
I'm looking for alcohol supply so I can raise the taxes, then establishing the
tool production. Next I'm adding 10 more houses, so later I get 450 citizens
(30 houses x 15 subjects), needed for the deep ore mine."
Robbie47 writes: "Usually I just build ahead, but always leave some space for
tavern, doctors and school. But sometimes I plan to make a real nice and big
city, in those cases I plan it carefully, away from the harbour. I leave
spaces for a big church, by putting the little chapel in a 3x4 block, the
university by putting the school in a 3x3 block, and leave another 3x3 block
for the theatre. I like to build the bathhouse somewhat at the edge of a big
city, same for the university, so that I can have a nice mix of aristocrats,
merchants and citizens. Baker, a tobacconist, a weaver, tailor and goldsmith
are permitted within the city. Heavy industry like ore smelters, toolmakers
and cannon foundries and are on the outskirts. Close to the harbour I build
one more market and the shipyard. This is also the place where the original
settlers live. In my capital city I like to leave some space for a nice avenue
with those flowerpots in the middle, or a park, where I can put some statues.
And some room for my 'Arche de Triomphe', in case I plan to defeat an
opponent."
From Robitoby: "I plan my city with a centre containing the most far reaching
official buildings, and 4 centres of the not so far reaching official
buildings. After I've filled up those, I do the same again on the same island,
if the space is there. Most times this leads me to 3 churches, 4 bathing-
houses, 1 cathedral, 4 theatres and the other required official buildings. I
am able to support at least 30 houses with each main-centre."
Helen writes: "I place the houses 2x2. This way the fire-fighters can reach
all houses, not like the AI, building 3x3 so they can't reach the middle one."
Robitoby adds: "I've good experiences with placing houses 4x2, so the fire-
fighters still can reach everyone, but using less space. With this tactic you
can have 8 more houses for each of the smaller official buildings."
From Immelman: "I like to start in the middle of the island with a 8x11 square
left empty and build houses all around it. Later on as I progress up the 'tech
tree' I have all the room I need for everything. Tavern, church, bathhouse,
college, theatre... Everything fits inside the 8x11 square." Zach82 comments:
"I never plan my cities' layouts. I just cluster a few houses and necessary
services around the harbor. Just outside of that would be the vital sheep
farms and tree parks for use of the forester. By the time the need for larger
building rolls around, the area around the harbor is so cramped that the city
has jumped the farming area. I then move the farms further away and use the
freed up land for churches, bath houses and all that."
Most ultimate city designs are base on clustering all public buildings needed
to support Aristocrats, tightly together. At higher levels, these are: Tavern,
Doctor, Gallows, College, Theatre, Church, Public baths, Fire departments and
Market places. Fire departments and Market places are normally spaced away
from the main cluster - Fire departments, because they have much smaller
service areas, Market places because they are relatively cheap to maintain,
and so can be built around the edges. All the others are placed together. The
main limitation is the Tavern, which has the smallest service area of the
remaining buildings. Below is an example by Charlie of a simple ultimate city
plan. Each character represents one square. Certain individual buildings
occupy several squares - for example one Church occupies 3x4 squares, so is
shown in plan form as four lines of three identical characters. These will
hopefully make more sense when you try to recreate them, than they do at first
glance in ASCII 'art' :-) :
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H r C C C B B B r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r C C C B B B r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r C C C B B B r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r C C C B B B r H H H H H H r
r r r r r r r r T T T E E E r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H r T T T E E E r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r T T T E E E r H H H H H H r
r H H F F H H r G D D V V V r H H F F H H r
r H H F F H H r r D D V V V r H H F F H H r
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
Square key:
* B = Public baths * G = Gallows
* C = Church * H = House
* D = Doctor * r = Road or square
* E = College * T = Theatre
* F = Fire department * V = Tavern
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H H H r
F F r H H H H H H H H r H H H H H H H H r F F
F F r H H H H H H H H r H H H H H H H H r F F
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H r B B B C C C H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r B B B C C C H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r B B B C C C H H r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r B B B C C C H H r H H H H H H H H r
r r r r r r r r r r T T T E E E r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H H H r T T T E E E H H r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H H H r T T T E E E H H r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H H H r G D D V V V F F r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H H H r r D D V V V F F r H H H H H H H H r
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H H H r
r H H H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H H H r
r r r r r r r r r r H H H H r H H H H r r r r r r r r r r
r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r
r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r
r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r
r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r H H H H r
r r r r r r H H H H r H H H H r r r r r r
F F r H H H H r H H H H r F F
F F r H H H H r H H H H r F F
r r r r r r r r r r r
Square key:
* B = Public baths * G = Gallows
* C = Church * H = House
* D = Doctor * r = Road or square
* E = College * T = Theatre
* F = Fire department * V = Tavern
None of these designs can be built immediately - one needs to have developed
sufficiently to have a population of more than 300 Merchants before all the
required buildings become available. In the interim it is necessary to build
structures like Chapels and Schools, and only remove those when structures
like Churches and Colleges become available.
5.2 Industry Planning and Building
______________________________________________________________________________
5.2.1 Limited island resources
From Mircea: "If you really need something bad enough, those 50% islands can
be helpful. There are also some 100% islands that don't even look big enough
to spit on, but you would be surprised how productive you can make them."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "If you need it bad enough, make the investment and
plant 100 squares of a 50% crop. When it begins to grow 50 of your plantings
will grow, find a pattern among the healthy plants and you should find a
pattern that will produce at least 60% when harvested."
From Manfred: "I got away once with planting spice on a northern island.
You'll get only 4 useable fields per plantation. I had a bunch of sheep using
the areas in between."
Neferankh writes: "I totally ignore searching for Gold. If I find an island
great but other Goods are more important. If you build a good solid city, by
the time you get them to Merchants (to get the Goldsmith), you have more than
enough money coming in to fund an army. I'd rather spend my money on a Cannon
Foundry and Iron Ore for cannons."
From Rendell: "If you don't have enough of a luxury item, one trick I found is
to save up a large supply of it and then deliver it all at once. The reason
for this is that if you are short of something like tobacco and keep
delivering a little at a time, part of your population will advance, but then
the ones who have advanced will constantly use up the supply. If you deliver a
larger amount all at once, more will advance. Just make sure there is plenty
of wood and bricks in the settlement at the time. You won't have a big enough
supply to keep them happy then, but they won't go back down as long as you can
feed them. I found this especially useful when creating aristocrats since it
is often hard to have enough jewellery."
Do trees on north and south islands grow at different speeds? Zomby Woof
answers: "I tested it and there is no difference. If you have a forester with
absolutely no trees in the service area and you plant all the trees it takes
13 minutes (with speed F5) till the forester starts to work. And no matter if
south or north, both get up to 90-100%."
Slacky writes: "On production Islands, I think its better to keep my market
places close, within reason, to reduce the distance and increase the speed of
my production." Robitoby comments: "I always try to get as much area as
possible with the smallest number market-places. If I find that the transport
of my production is too slow, so the resources get stuck in the production-
building, while the warehouse is almost empty. *Then* I build another market
place to increase the transport-rate, but this happens very seldom."
Warren1954 writes: "Whenever I settle an island I first clear everything
except the area of infulence for the Foresters Hut. This uncovers the shape of
the soil: lush green to a crummy brown. I try if possible to build city in
brown, but always put my plantations on the richest green area. I find a 100%
island then grows full fields always at 99%-100% efficiency." Dread Pirate
Terry adds: "The sickly looking land is a good place to build your city, the
dark green is, marginally (10-15%), more fertile." Well, it works for some
players.
From Zomby Woof: "Set plants [fields] without building the vinery, they grow
without the building. Wait a few minutes and then place the vinery so it will
start to work immediately." Dread Pirate Terry adds: "The great thing about
that system is that if you have the time you can plan your production areas
very efficiently with a minimum of cost."
Neferankh writes: "When you are building Plantations on an island, you almost
always end up with pieces of land that aren't big enough for a Plantation.
Build a Farm. Connect it to a Market and build the Mill and Bakery on other
small areas. More Food."
Most ultimate industry designs work on one or more of three principles: (1)
Providing two producers for every processor - for example, 4 Grain farms,
feeding 2 Windmills, feeding 1 Bakery - this tends to create efficient
industries (there are some exceptions to these, for example, two Stonemasons
can work one Quarry). (2) Placing processor next to producers, so that the
time spent moving things about is minimised. (3) Extending the logic in 2,
placing processors within one square of producers where possible, to remove
the need for a road link to the producer. Below are some examples, most of
which can be found as graphics on Charlie's excellent site, http://www.anno-
zone.de/Charlie/index.html (the text is in German). Each character represents
one square. Certain individual buildings occupy several squares - for example
one Windmill occupies 2x2 squares, so is shown in plan form as two lines of
two identical characters. These will hopefully make more sense when you try to
recreate them, than they do at first glance in ASCII 'art' :-) :
- GRAIN/BREAD PRODUCTION (by Charlie) --------------------
g g g g g g g g g g
g F F g F F g F F g Square key:
g F F g F F g F F g * B = Bakery
g g W W g r W W g g * F = Grain farm
g g W W B B W W g g * g = Grain field
g F F g B B g F F g * r = Road
g F F g r g F F g * W = Windmill
g g g g r g g g g
r
A more basic version (the Bakery is placed elsewhere):
g g g g g g g g
g F F g g F F g
g F F W W F F g
g g g W W g g g
r r
O O M M M O O
O O M M M O O Square key:
S S M M M S S * C = Cannon foundry
S S M M M S S * M = Market place
r r r r r r r * O = Ore refinery
C C C * r = Road
C C C * S = Tool smithy
C C C
g g g g g g g g
g g g g g g g g g g Square key:
g g F F g g F F g g * B = Butcher
g g F F g g F F g g * F = Cattle farm
g g g g B B g g g g * g = Grassland
g g g B B g g g * r = Road
r r
- ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO FARMING (by Charlie) ---------------
f f f f f f f f
f f f f f f f f f f Square key:
f f P P f f P P f f * A = Processing (Distillery, etc)
f f P P A A P P f f * f = Field
f f f f A A f f f f * P = Plantation
f f f f r f f f * r = Road
r
From Dread Pirate Terry: "I've used that set-up before where you jam the
production building between two plantations (sugar, wool, or tobacco), but the
problem with that is you don't end up with any raw material, (tobacco leaf,
sugarcane, or wool). I like to keep my warehouses stocked in these items. It
comes in handy some times in times of war or especially drought." Dietl adds:
"I just plant an extra plantation somewhere else that will serve to fill my
warehouse with raw goods. One extra each of sugar cane, tobacco, and cotton is
usually sufficient for my purposes. By the time I get this far, the extra
expense is not usually a problem, and the raw goods do serve to give some
peace of mind in times of drought."
Rendell writes: "I almost never bother with ore mines. I find it much better
to simply tell every island to buy all the iron ore they can. At first I set
the price to max and then start lowering it as the supply builds."
Raynutt notes: "You can put two [or more] ore mines for one deposit." This
strategy is particularly useful for Gold deposits, which under normal
conditions do not run out. From Mac.Stef: "If you have a big mountain with 4
straight rock faces, you can even put 2 gold mines on every side, all together
8." If an Ore deposit is not endless, multiple Iron mines will simply deplete
the deposit quicker.
Stefanus Franzosus writes: "I always wait with iron ore mining until the
citizens have discovered how to build the deep iron mine. Especially if you're
low on cash, this is a good way to pass that period [when Iron mines become
available, but cash is short]."
From robbie47: "To access a mine on the coastline you can build docks, which
can be used as roads."
Budgie suspects there may be an indication of unlimited ore deposits when you
first explore: "Sometimes the narrator says there is ore on the island, and
some times the island is rich in ore. Dunno if this makes a difference..."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "Three mines will produce enough ore to keep two
smelters operating at 100%. If you have one mine and one smelter, both running
continuously, the smelter will only be working about 80% efficient. For each
100% efficient ore smelter you can run two workshops (tool maker, cannon
foundry, armorer, musket maker): Any two."
From FrankB: "I build a second smelter very seldom - usually, it will cost
only additional money without any additional effect. A second mine (or the
additional iron ore you have to buy from the Free Traders) costs money I need
for my cannon production and the soldiers. ... The only exception is when I
have to build up big cities: Then, I need of course a second tool production
line (but as you already know, I would not mine the iron ore - I'd buy it from
the Free Traders)."
Robitoby writes: "The iron-smelter: If built close enough to an ore-mine and a
wood-cutter, he will get the needed goods directly from the mine/cutter, which
will fasten up production, though it still is good to have the possibility to
get both goods with a cart-driver and having the iron-smelter getting them as
well from a market place. Same with the tool-maker: If positioned close
enough, he will get the iron directly from the smelter, as well alternatively
from the market-place (or also your warehouse). 1 mine, 1 smelter, 2 tool-
makers do a good productivity-rate. If you later on have other buildings that
need iron, e.g. the almost essential cannon-foundry the same ratio is good: 1
mine, 1 smelter and 1 tool-maker+1 cannon-foundry."
On Stonemasons and Quarries, BigTiny writes: "I will usually build a road
under the quarry and put the masons across the street. 2 masons can work the
same quarry at once. 3 masons rotate (but there will always be 2 active)." I
prefer backing two Stonemasons directly onto one Quarry - only they can use
the Quarry, but walk times are minimised and extra Quarries have minimal cost,
as tanner_85 writes: "Four Masons [to one Quarry] does work, but if you can
afford four masons WITH running costs, why not just stick up another quarry,
with no running cost?"
From billyreeves: "Food is the most important commodity. Your inhabitants will
tolerate 50% of all others without leaving your island a long time. When food
is short they go quick."
Zomby Woof, quoting Charlie: "Grain combine: costs 11.7 $ per ton food,
production 3 tons per cycle. Cattle combine: costs 6.5 $ per ton food,
production 2.3 tons per cycle. So the grain combine is not very much better
than cattle and cattle are not affected by droughts." Robitoby adds: "Actually
the grain-combine is more effective and you will need it no matter what later
on. (Ok, cattle-combine doesn't need that much more, actually only 5 fields,
yet, this is already space for 1 more house...)"
Bjoern writes: "The grain farms together with mills and bakery are not only
more expensive: they need much more space compared to cattle farms (76 against
56 squares). Though the 4-2-1-grain-combine is more effective (3t compared to
2,3t) than the 2-1 cattle combine, calculated to an average of 100 squares,
both methods produce exactly 4t of food. From this point of view (using the
given space most effective) both methods are equal. But the expenses are
important, too: 625 for cattle and 986 for grain, calculated for an average of
100 squares. So cattle is much cheaper as food source. And it is not affected
by the dry periods and even available earlier. The operating costs for the
grain combine (7x5) to produce 3t of food are much higher than in the cattle
combine (3x5) to produce 2,3t of food. So you pay 6,5 to produce a ton of food
in form of meat, but 11,7 to produce a ton of food in form of bread." Robbie47
comments: "Early in the game, space is widely available and cost management is
very important. Later on the usage of available space is a crucial aspect,
where as money stops being a problem..."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "Grain farms need roads, cattle and sheep farms do
not. If you put roads to cattle or sheep farms market carts will pick up there
only when they are full, the weavers or butchers will pick up when they need
supplies." Falke notes: "When you build roads to cattle (and sheep) farms, you
will have, after a time, a small reserve for hard times."
Lord Khang writes: "A cattle farm spits out two cows, each of which graze for
3 separate squares before coming back to be slaughtered. Not that the grazing
area needs to 'reactivate' so a given cow will not eat from the same square
for a while. Efficiency 100%. With maximum grazing ground available, this baby
will stay pegged at 100% as long as the butcher is fairly close by. Now here
is the kicker. Efficiency. I happened to think that there are a total number
of 28 available grazing squares to the cows around the cattle farm. This
doesn't divide by 3 (3 squares grazed before cow comes back) and I noticed
that the cows did not graze certain squares. So I analyzed it. Truth is that
you can maintain around 92% efficiency to a cattle farm with only 20 available
squares for its cows to graze in, a savings of 8 squares of land. (I put road
in the other 8 squares for this test to block them from being grazed.) Now if
maximum yield of whatever is 10 (completely arbitrary, but any number will
do), then 100% efficiency gets you 10, 90% efficiency gets you 9, etc... I
happened to think that 100% efficiency is not necessarily a good thing."
FrankB writes: "I don't like grain combines very much - they are nice, but
they need a lot of space. Better build fishing huts along your shore (if
necessary, you can also build them on your production islands and ship the
food to your main island). For additional food supply use cattle combines."
From Neferankh: "Fishing should still be the number one source of food. You
can fish on every island without using much production space and they are not
susceptible to droughts." Robitoby writes: "Forget about the fishing-hut in
the beginning, those 5 gold-coins in your balance are better spend for later.
A fishing-hut is relatively productive, yes. But if you start with 30 houses
in the beginning like I, you're directly able to build 2 ranches and a
butchers shop." Raincat comments: "I think fisher huts are very effective as
you can provide round about 70 inhabitants with out any problem." FrankB adds:
"I also prefer fishing huts. They have a big advantage: they don't need space
as they are built at the cost where only docks (or walls/towers) can be
built." From Lord Khang: "Fisher's hut efficiency is 75% - 100%. 100% when he
comes back, down to 75% waiting for him to come back. Note, to maintain these
efficiencies, the hut in question has to have a minimum of 9 fishing squares
available to be fished, otherwise the guy will sit in his hut and wait for the
fishing grounds to respawn or he will go out and over fish a square and come
back and produce nothing. ... 2 fisher huts cost a total of 6 tools to build
with, a butcher shop and 2 cattle farms cost 5 tools. Also, the butcher will
feed my first 250 people or so, the two fisher huts won't feed that many. It
therefore appears that for COST efficiency, the butcher is the best option for
the first source of food supply. Of course, fisher huts are the most SPACE
efficient method, since they can be set up along the coastline."
There is a general perception that hunter's lodges are a very space-
inefficient way to produce food, and that wild animals disappear very quickly
once hunting starts. Dread Pirate Terry notes: "Deer reproduce like rabbits
under ideal circumstances. I took a 50-50-50 island, built a hunter's
building, planted trees all around it just out of the area of influence, put a
marketplace just behind the trees put a road to the hunter and then forgot all
about it for an hour or so. When I came back later to check I had almost 200
tons of food in the warehouse and discovered the hunter working his butt off
at 100%. I thought that's cool but it sure takes a lot of space, what can I do
to improve the situation? Inside the open space, inside of the tree line, I
built two cattle farms and two sheep farms, a butcher and a weavers hut.
Amazingly enough the sheep, cattle, butcher and weaver all worked at 95/100%
and the hunter still produced at 80/90% even with all the other buildings in
his space."
Lord Khang writes: "(1) It appears that deer respawn from a forest square (or
forested area) and leave it to graze in an open square. (2) It appears that
deer will constantly respawn in that same forest square (or forested area).
(3) Just building a forest square does NOT guarantee that it will become a
deer respawn square or contribute to a respawn area. I have two current
theories about respawn. (A) There is a 'grid' of potential deer respawn
squares on a given island, and as long as this sq. contains forest, and open
land squares connected to it, it will then generate a deer. (B) A deer respawn
area must contain a certain amount of forest/open land for it to generate
deer, and as long as this ratio is maintained, the area will generate a deer.
(4) Deer will pass 'through' more than 1 square of forest. (5) It is a real
pain in the neck to find this darn deer respawn square. (6) It appears that it
is possible to place a lodge in such a fashion that its yield area will
contain 4 such deer respawn squares (or respawn areas). Note that as stated
above, in the test, I only had 2 available to my lodge. So this yield rate can
double up to a whopping 92 tons of food if all 4 respawn squares are
contained. (7) It also appears that deer graze in a similar fashion to the
cows and sheep, thus a certain amount of open squares will need to be
available in the vicinity of this respawn area for the deer to arrive
regularly."
Guardian writes: "If you can afford it, place a hunting lodge at the start,
but... it needs what I call a 'deer breeder' (a tree that 'produces' deer) and
enough space for the deer to wander around."
Jumpster comments: "I use hunting lodges religiously. I place them right NEXT
to my woodsmen: Just outside their cutting area (usually across the road).
Deer are always coming out of the trees there, I can usually survive until
some 1,000 people population with 2-fisherman and 3-hunters and still sell
food. My hunters rarely have any space (probably about 20% of their area - if
that) but work at 90% to 100% constantly." Here is Jumpster's plan:
S r r r r r r r S
W W W
W W W
H r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r H
x x x x r x x x x Square key:
x x x x x x r x x x x x x * F = Forester's hut
x x F F x x r x x F F x x * H = Hunter
x x F F r r r r r r r F F x x * r = Road/Dock
x x x x x x r x x x x x x * S = Fisher's hut
x x x x r x x x x * W = Warehouse
r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r * x = Forest
From Robitoby: "If you have a wood-island (e.g. on a 50%-50%-50%-Island) which
you will keep until the end of the game, you may put a hunter on it. If there
is enough mixture of woods and free fields the deer will get replaced and the
hunter will get near to 100% for the whole time."
Red Ruler comments: "The cane fields 'seem' like they produce more, but I only
use them when I can not produce wine." From mamayourpeoplearehungry: "I prefer
the sugarcane because I usually keep extra cane in the warehouses. This way in
case of drought or a contest rule about number of islands and running for ten
minutes without your people needing anything a full warehouse and a distillery
works great. ... Also you can use the freetraders to ship it and others will
not be buying cane as they want the finished product." FrankB writes: "If I
have the choice, I try to produce rum instead of wine. The building and
production costs do not differ very much, but the rum combine [two plantations
and a distillery] needs a bit less space than two vineyards. ... The sugarcane
plantation does not need as many fields as a vineyard to be productive. ...
According to Charlie, 1t of rum costs $28.3 per ton, while 1t of wine costs
$30.4."
Neferankh writes: "1 Winery will support 167 people from 24-25 fields. Costs
35 gold for maintenance. 2 Cane Plantations + 1 distillery will support 334
people with each Cane Plantation needing only 21 fields. Costs 35+35+15=85
gold for maintenance. Based on 25 fields, a Winery costs 1.4 Gold per field.
Efficiency 6.68 people per field. Distillery combo costs 1.85 Gold per field.
Efficiency 7.26 people per field. Distillery Combo is a better utilization of
space if you can build them efficiently. Wineries are good if you have lots of
space. My choice, Distilleries."
5.2.7 Sheep farms or Cotton plantations for Cloth?
FrankB writes: "In the beginning you don't have the choice but can only get
cloth from sheep. But considering the land needed, it's always better to
change to cotton farms later on, which are supposed to have a greater output
anyway." Zach82 adds: "No question about it, cotton is better. However, I
consider other things besides efficiency. Even on the most crowded of islands,
I maintain a couple sheep farms to recall the early days of the colony. What's
more relaxing than having a couple sheep meadows near your house?" Zomby Woof,
quoting Charlie: "Sheep combine: costs 10.3 $ per ton cloth, production 1.95
tons per cycle. Cotton combine: costs 22.6 $ per ton cloth, production 3.1
tons per cycle. The cotton combine, compared with the sheep combine, seems to
be expensive and you need less space for it." Prince Eric of the Lorah Clan
writes: "If an island is 100% cotton, go with the cotton plantations. If it is
a 50% cotton island, I would go with the sheep farms."
Frieden writes: "In the beginning of the game you usually loose money. There
are many ways to reach the 'green zone'. Here are some hints: (1) Try to get
120 settlers (here you can produce ore, tools), (2) search for a big island,
mountain on it, ore would be good, alcohol available, (3) buy tools not for
105, but for 70-75 in the beginning, (4) do not build school or tavern, (5)
two fisher-huts produce enough food for round about 140 people, (6) offer
alcohol to your settlers - afterwards demand more taxes from them: they like
to pay (keep their face only smiling)."
From wargamerit: "Tax rate depends on level of satisfaction of your people and
people's level too. I set the tax rate at highest level, until the peoples'
faces in tax screen do not become angry. Check the peoples' level of
satisfaction often so you can keep the correct tax rate every time. I remember
that the highest tax rate for citizen, and merchant is 32%-36%. To set
different tax rate for different people level, click on an house for different
people status and set the tax rate for the current selected... in this way you
set the tax rate for pioneers, settlers, etc."
Robitoby writes: "Maximum tax rates if your people are full supplied: Pioneers
48% (not much money though), Settlers: 45%, Citizens: 38%, Merchants: 36%,
Aristocrats: 35%. If you move the tax-button carefully with the mouse instead
on clicking on +/- you even can get some more money in the percentage-levels.
But always make sure that your people still smile."
Zomby Woof, quoting Charlie: "The calculation period is 1 minute:
- Pioneers: Demand: nothing (except food of course). Max. tax rate: 48%.
Income/subject: 1,95. Income/house: 3,9.
- Settlers: Demand: 2 goods. Max tax rate, supplied with 1 good (clothes):
33%. Max tax rate, fully supplied: 45%. Income/subject: 2.11. Income/house:
12.66.
- Citizens: Demand: 4 goods. Max. tax rate, supplied with 2 of 4: 20%. Max.
tax rate, supplied with 3 of 4: 33%. Max. tax rate, fully supplied: 38%.
Income/subject: 2.44. Income/house: 36.6.
- Merchants: Demand: 5 goods. Max. tax rate, supplied with 3 of 5: 24%. Max.
tax rate, supplied with 4 of 5: 32%. Max. tax rate, fully supplied: 36%.
Income/subject: 2.53. Income/house: 63.25.
- Aristocrats: Demand: 6 goods. Max. tax rate, supplied with 4 of 6: 26%. Max.
tax rate, supplied with 5 of 6: 31%. Max. tax rate, fully supplied: 35%.
Income/subject: 2.65. Income/house: 106."
Kolonel Chet suggests: "Get as fast as you can to Citizens; when you have,
then you'll come in with money." BigTiny states an obvious, but important
factor: "More houses means more people to tax."
From Eric Lorah: "I try to keep my tax revenue greater than my operating
costs. If my operating costs are greater than my tax rev, I know I need more
tax payers, so I build more houses somewhere, anywhere there is unused space."
Teamsters with market wagon are only needed for trading with other players or
natives on the same island. Since the majority of islands have neither, these
wagons seem to have no use. Not true. Budgie writes: "You can use the wagon as
an additional storage room with a capacity of 30 tons. And it can't be
destroyed by enemies either." From draculitch: "I like to use the market
wagons for insurance. If I want to insure I have enough tools, I load the
wagon with tools. When not using it as a tool vault, I load it with food. When
I get the message 'your people are starving', I unload the wagon so they don't
starve while I deal with the inadequate production problem. I always get a
market wagon for every warehouse." From sb4x4: "If you park him [the market
wagon] in the way of the AI player the AI cant build anything there."
Robitoby writes: "If you've got aristocrats, merchants or citizens your houses
won't be set on fire that often." Helen comments: "Fires can occur for many
reasons, but as far as I know, houses seem to catch fire when upgrading goes
to slow." As houses develop, the chance of fire is reduced, however no house
is immune to fire, as Frieden notes: "If the merchant-houses are placed near
the burning settlers, they will take fire, too." Domdom comments: "I
personally just knock down buildings which catch fire... can't be arsed with
the fire-fighters, especially since they need roads to get to houses and that
uses up space. Once building is down just erect new one.... if it's a pioneer
only costs wood anyway." FrankB replies: "A citizen house needs 3t tools to be
built up (merchants - 6t, aristocrats - 9t). Plus the taxes generated by the
inhabitants... I think the firefighter is effective as long as you have
pioneers/settlers around - or volcanoes."
5.4 Trade and Diplomacy
______________________________________________________________________________
5.4.1 Trade
From Waywardsoul: "If free traders don't seem to be trading with me, I make
sure I have got a few items like booze, smokes or spices for sale. I set the
sell amount to just under the amount I have."
Eric Lorah writes: "Selling more than you buy is good. Instead of shutting
down industries, keep them going as long as you can sell the excess product. I
almost always have more food and cloth than I need (unless I have a very
large, hungry city). I build fisher huts wherever I can. Don't forget to
adjust the price of the items you are selling if it seems no one is buying."
Shark_Dus writes: "Try to possess the monopoly for alcohol and gold. These
goods can be sold for really good prices and alcohol is necessary for the
inhabitants of all stages above pioneers"
Ron The Wrath of God writes: "I don't sell any strategic material to anyone,
including gold, ore, iron, weapons, or luxury goods. I want the other powers
to be poor and weak. I could care less if they trade with me - they never buy
enough or often enough, and very rarely have anything I want." Robbie47
comments: "So I sell my opponent gold. Or jewellery. Or clothing. He pays me.
I have more money. And then I attack him, if I want. And since AI indeed is
more artificial then intelligent, I beat him. ... Sometimes it even pays, to
buy, for example, spices at yellow's supply island and sell it at yellow's
main island." From sb4x4: "[The AI] is always demanding to buy everything
under the sun. I sometimes use this fact to make some quick cash in a crunch."
When trading with natives, try trading single units (you can set up an
automatic trade route to make this less onerous). From Manny: "The reason for
trading only 1 ton is simple: The natives trade with a ratio of 1:1.5. This
means, for 10 tons of cloth or alcohol they will give you 15 tons of their
goods. For 1 ton loads though you receive a rounded up quantity of 2 tons, so
you get for 1 ton loads of your goods 25% more of their goods." Ggcourt
writes: "For maximum trade with natives - offer 1 ton and ask for 5. This will
often yield 2 from natives for 1 of your goods. Takes time but is worth the
investment." Robbie47 comments: "When the native villages are on 50% islands,
they will need the same amount of cloth and firewater, but have less goods on
offer."
Dietl writes: "Generally, if you sell directly to the AI, you will sell at a
higher price than the free traders will pay. Likewise, if you buy directly
from the pirates or the AI, you will buy at a much lover cost than the free
traders will sell to you."
Robbie47's experience: "It's a matter of supply-and-demand. Tools are cheap
initially since the AI-Players apparently do not buy them before they have
used most of their initial tools. You are the only customer, so you can buy
cheap. When everyone is buying ore, the free-traders will sell to the highest
bidder first. I've noticed too that I can sell a large quantity of goods to
free traders, when the AI's production islands seem to sell less at a higher
price, but only as long as they are in demand somewhere else on the map."
Gunter notes: "There's at least one case where I'm sure that it's important to
watch the prices: when you're buying tools. In the beginning you can often
lower the price for them down to about 70-75 which will save you a lot of your
still precious money. Later on, you will often have to raise it up to 105
which everybody pays then. More than 105 for tools doesn't seem to make any
difference. Prices for other products don't seem to be very important. ... If
I'm short of money in the beginning I sometimes even resell some of the tools
to the AI which I buy from the free traders - for a higher price, of course."
Budgie notes: "Sometimes AI puts up something for sale, let's say spice for 30
coins - and when you buy it AI immediately wants to have it back for 45
coins."
Zomby Woof writes: "Usually I use one ship for each supply island. This ship
carries all from the supply island to the main island. If the distance between
supply and main island is very big I use other islands on the way as a kind of
intermediate depot, so I keep the ways as short as possible. You can't fetch
more than 100t of a good from one island, so sometimes if the production rate
is very high on an island it may be necessary to use a second ship." FrankB
adds: "Due to the loading problem Zomby Woof mentioned (i.e. even if you set
your trading route to load 100t of goods from one island and 100t of the same
goods from another island, your ship would load max. 100t of these goods), I
often use one ship to load different goods from different islands. But if you
have to supply large cities, it might be useful to use a 'hub' island Zomby
also mentioned: unload goods from far islands on an island located on 2/3 of
the distance, and send a second vessel to deliver them to your main island.
That way, you also have a sort of 'buffer' for draughts and you can ensure a
more continuous supply of your main island."
Stormbringer (translated by Manny) suggests: "Start with the most distant
islands and have small vessels transport the goods to an island, which
produces the same product but is located closer to your main island. There,
large battleships (more cargo holds and faster) pick up the accumulated goods
and ship them to their final destination. Your main island is located in the
center of the map, in the north east you produce alcohol as well as on an
island in the east. A small ship transports the alcohol from the island in the
north east to the island in the east where the alcohol is stockpiled until a
large ship picks it up and brings it to your main island. You avoid the heavy
traffic in front of your warehouse and the transport is faster since these
ships do not have to sail the whole distance each time."
Sometimes automated trade routes will take your ships past the enemy. FrankB
suggests: "You can set the trading route via a friendly (or own) harbour that
is away from the enemy island. It is not necessary to load/unload goods there,
just let the cargo fields empty. You might also think about unarming your
trading ships - if they have no cannons, they would not stop to fight." Rayser
writes: "I would suggest setting up a relay of what ever goods you are
shipping since the opponent is directly in your path of islands. Have one or
two ships deliver to an island out of the path and another one or two ships
pickup at that point." Sir Henry comments: "Why don't you simply destroy the
disturbing towers? As you are on war with him you don't have anything to
lose... and it's very unlikely that he will rebuild them at the same
location."
A word of warning from Zomby Woof: "I was running a trading route with a small
warship transporting three different goods. Then I wanted to add a fourth good
and corrected the trading route setup. When doing this I overlooked for a
moment that a small warship has only three cargo holds. The strange thing is
that the fourth good disappeared from the warehouse but was not to found in
the ship."
From vipris: "If you can win a fight, you should ALWAYS start it. It can only
make your territory bigger." From Robitoby: "Sometimes it's smarter to keep
the AI alive and earning you a golden nose by selling him the goods he needs."
From FrankB: "I think the best time to start war is when you have about 700-
800 merchants: they are easy to satisfy, and you don't need too many ships for
trading purposes. If your economy is stable, you can attack. Sometimes, it
might be necessary to call your trading ships to your home harbour until the
AI navy is sunk."
Helen writes: "When I give too much money, the white breaks their peace treaty
and trade agreement with me I pay them enough to keep the peace and trade
agreement of course." Dread Pirate Terry adds: "I decided $100,000 should give
him a good push [with development]. Every time I tried he was 'insulted' at
$70,000. As it turned out I could give him 60,000, sell him more goods, them
give him another 60,000. He was fine with that."
Also from Dread Pirate Terry: "The natives and the other AI's can never be
true allies because even if the thumb is straight up, if someone else attacks
you they just watch. Trading partners is all they can be." FrankB comments:
"AI players do not have any diplomatic relations between each other. IMHO they
do not have trade nor peace treaties, and they would never fight each other.
The only exception are the pirates: they can fight against the other AI
players including the natives."
5.5 Pirates and Natives
______________________________________________________________________________
5.5.1 Dealing with natives
Robbie47 writes: "I never fight the natives. It is not a very good idea
because: (1) After the war, no native will ever trade with you again. (2) When
you destroy their village and kill them all, the medicine-man will curse you.
This leads to draughts and volcanic eruptions. (3) The headman's curse will
also destroy the goldmine on their island. Never again will it produce gold.
... From an economic point of view it is very favourable to trade with the
natives. Remember, they give you double the quantity of cigars or spices as
compared to the amount of cloth or alcohol you give them." CGAD1 comments: "I
some times destroy a native village if I really don't need to trade with them.
They can get in the way. But they can be useful in the beginning."
Arcturis_mengsk writes: "I have found 2 ways of dealing with pirates: (1)
Build a large navy and protect your trade routes fiercely. Or, if the pirates
have an island, park an un-armed ship at the pirates warehouse so you can pay
tribute to him. When the tribute wears out, the pirates will attack the ship,
meaning its time to shell out more cash. (2) Or... you can completely wipe
them out... destroy their home base and ruthlessly enforce your iron hand over
the island chain. Although it depends on the scenario settings, pirates will
come back if they are set to do so. Which I personally find a pain in the neck
to constantly have to keep on my toes to defend my traders from the marauding
1 ship bandits."
From rayser: "The only problem with [destroying pirate bases] is that you have
to constantly watch for the pirate attacks. That diverts your attention from
growing you own city and land areas. It's different when you have the large
battleships and multiple ship making buildings to repair damage. I think its
better to find the pirates hide out as soon as you have the basic city
established and going and then bribe them. I've used them to attack AI's and
works good. It's an excellent way to keep the AI's busy building new ships."
From robbie47: "You sink a ship, the next one comes up. You destroy their
settlement, but they keep coming back. So it's more comfortable to pay them an
affordable amount of money to be left alone."
FrankB writes: "Bribing the pirates worked always fine for me. In the
beginning or when I have something else to do (for example, wiping out the AI
or establishing my economy) I rather bribe than fight the pirates. If
possible, I build something before doing that - the sum you have to pay
depends on the money you have. ... If you are settling on the pirate island
(or if you have soldiers there), you can pay as much as you want, they will
always shoot at you."
From Dread Pirate Terry: "After you bribe the pirates the other three AI's can
sail right over there and pay the pirates to attack you. A deal with pirates
only lasts until someone else makes them a better offer. ... I found out if I
sailed a small formation of empty ships to a far corner of the map, with white
flags hoisted, it drove the pirates crazy. They just kept nosing around the
decoys and for the most part left me alone."
Neferankh writes: "I always haul small loads of cargo in my ships on auto-
trade. They travel faster and out distance most of the pirates. A full ship
will be overtaken and sunk. If you have to make a big haul, do it manually and
watch your ship."
From Anno Online: "If you have much trouble with pirates, or you have only a
few warships, you regularly should buy food from the pirates (with a ship
without weapons). You will not be attacked anymore. This is much cheaper than
to pay money to the pirates."
From mamayourpeoplearehungry: "Besides buying from them or bribing them, I
sometimes make sure they can take some of my cargo. I usually over produce
alcohol in the beginning and they like that but a little spices or bricks also
works. I have placed a ship with a small amount of extra supplies in front of
my harbor with the white flag up and they leave my other ships alone. It also
lasts a while like a bribe." Manfred writes: "Just run an automatic trade
route to the pirates and buy a few tons of food every time." FrankB notes:
"That will work only if the pirates have at least one fishing hut."
FrankB writes: "For the pirates, the success counts. You could even let them
steal some bricks... After the pirates have stolen one ton of alcohol [or any
other item], you could buy the double amount back from them a bit later. This
will appease the pirates once more..." (And yes, in desperate circumstances
this method can be used to gain extra items that could not otherwise exist.)
Helen writes: "The pirates are useful sometimes... when they sell the stuff
the've taken for cheaper prize than AI."
More from FrankB: "If you get the video of the pirate attack, quickly end it
by clicking, and hit the space bar to go to the place of attack (remember that
during the time the video runs the attack will continue). Then, press 'W' to
rise the white flag or try to escape. I always disarm my ships in the
beginning - with cannons, they would start a senseless fight with the pirates,
but if they are not armed, they will continue their routes."
BBDevo writes: "I've come to the realization that it is impossible for a ship
with 4 cannons to go toe to toe with a pirate and survive. I've had my ass
kicked more than once when I've been surprisied by pirates. I just play hide
and seek with them till I can get more fire power."
Robbie47 comments: "When I fight them, I try to heavily damage their ships
without sinking them. That way they're very slow and any normal trader can
sail away easily." Manfred adds: "If you sink them, they just build a new ship
and come after you again. If you leave them barely alive, they run around in
slow-motion and you can just ignore them for a while." Eric Lorah adds: "And
pirates don't repair their ships ;-) ."
Mircea writes: "When I 'm increasing the warship's number (planning a fight
with AI or pirates) I put the white flag on every new ship that came out from
the shipyard. So I have a fleet that can await for the war without any fear
from pirates, till the moment is right." FrankB notes: "The white flag will
not be saved, so if you restart the game, you will need to check that."
From sb4x4: "I found that if I raised the white flag before the pirate ship
got to my ship, there was no fight, no cargo was taken and after a little bit
the pirate ship simply went away." FrankB comments: "That depends on the
scenario. If the pirates don't have an island where they can take the stolen
cargo to, they will only fire on your ship, but will not take anything away."
5.6 Military Units
______________________________________________________________________________
5.6.1 Ship choice
FrankB writes: "I don't know what the trading vessels are good for. I only
build small or (after I can do that) big battleships - they are faster than
the big trading ships and can hold more cannons." The pirate of the 5 seas
comments: "Try to build large battle ships for such reasons: (1) they hold the
most, (2) they are the fastest, (3) they can out shoot any other type of ship,
(4) pirates really hate you if you have better ships." From Waywardsoul: "I
try not to make any more ships then I have to until I can build a large ship
yard. Then I only make the large battleships because if you load 200t in any
thing smaller it slows them to a crawl, but the large battle ships do not seem
to slow that much." Robitoby adds: "If you load 200t on a big trading-ship it
is slower than a big battle-ship loaded with 200t." Guardian writes: "I
recommend you always use the small warships in the beginning and the large
ones as soon as you can build and afford them. Although the small ones can
only carry 150t, they are fast and can carry 8 cannons."
From Eric Lorah: "I think the large trading ship is the slowest of the four
types. Since they are so slow but they do hold a good amount of supplies, I
like to sometimes use them as 'floating warehouses'. I just anchor them by a
warehouse and use them to store/stockpile supplies when I anticipate future
shortages."
Frieden writes: "I organize by giving names to the ships, for example: 'Cocoa
+ spice' or 'w' for a warship."
FrankB writes: "I never train cavalry men. The swordsmith would cost you
additional money, and the fighting qualities of the cavalry are rather poor -
especially if you have to defeat towers." To which King Z-ster replied: "You
need cannons AND infantrymen. Why? Infantrymen will keep your cannons from
getting killed." FrankB commented: "The tower will shoot at your cannonneers
as soon as they are in range - and will disregard any infantry or cavalry.
These tactics are necessary if you have to keep your losses very low. The
easier way is to have approximately 10 cannonneers attacking a tower. In that
case, you will have one or two wounded cannonneers, but (normally) no losses.
With 8 cannonneers, you will often loose one of them while attacking a tower."
From night hawk: "Mostly have horses [cavalry] and cannon guys. They are more
effective in a fight. Use about 20: ten horses, five cannon guys, and five
foot soldiers. Keep them near the shore so your ships can help out because
they will shoot the guys your fighting."
From robbie47: "When you attack the AI in an early stage, while he still does
not have any troops, some infantrymen are enough."
FrankB writes: "I never train musketeers (with a few exceptions in one or two
scenarios). Better use cannonneers only - and you can save the costs for the
musket maker." Dread Pirate Terry comments: "But you can have more of them for
the same military budget and they move much faster. Their popguns just don't
sound as impressive as 'artillery'." Robitoby writes: "I usually train 1
musketeer to get the hits from the tower. He can take 2 more hits and at that
time the cannoneers often have already killed a tower so you can go heal your
musketeer. If you use cannoneers only it most times happens to me that I loose
1 to each tower."
5.7 Military Tactics
______________________________________________________________________________
5.7.1 Economic warfare
From Gunter: "Some people reported that they managed to blockade the AI's
harbour, but you need a real big fleet for it. I'm afraid that the maximum of
33 ships isn't even enough, since the free traders seem to find every tiny gap
to pass through." Zach83 comments: "Blockading a port is kind of tricky and
takes an inordinate amount of ships that could better be used elswhere. The
only time it has ever been worth it for me was when the AI had built his port
in a very narrow harbour and it only took one ship to blockade him. You're
better off just firebombing the whole island so the AI can't afford anything
anyway."
FrankB writes: "I do not destroy his shipyard. I rather put two ships in front
of it, and they will destroy every new ship easily. This way, the AI will
quickly run out of wood. That's also the reason why I like to destroy the big
warehouses and markets: if the big warehouse is replaced by a small one, the
maximum storage available will be lowered by 70t, and a new market place costs
10t of wood."
From ggcourt: "Bankruptcy of an AI is slow. Cut off new supply of ships as
indicated [place a pair of your ships in front of their shipyard], forget the
warehouse." Zomby Woof writes: "The AI never goes [completely] bankrupt. The
only thing I noticed was, that the AI may have difficulties to pay the goods
you sell to it."
If an AI player has no land they become pirates. Sir Henry writes: "This only
happens when they can't find a place to settle. So what you have to do is
destroy and take over all his settlements but be careful to leave at least one
ship - and if you are patient you may observe his ship turning into a
pirate's. ... Once they turn into pirates, they never change back."
From FrankB: "You need only some cannons in your warehouse plus a few building
materials to stop a whole invading army: build a wall or trees around them,
place one or two towers (not hundreds) near them, and that's all. ... Towers
are not very efficient against ships. Their range is too short, the enemy can
take them out easily, and they are often useless if your own ships are
attacked. ... If you can wipe out the AI navy very fast (that should be no
problem if you have enough big battleships), the AI cannot transport its
troops to you."
Zomby Woof writes: "A tower cost you 5$, an artillery man 14$, so with one
artillery man you can't push back an enemy army but with two or three towers
you can. A disadvantage may be that the enemy invades at different points so
you have to build more towers but if you like you can destroy them when they
are not needed anymore."
MWHC writes: "I've been keeping the cavalrymen at home for defence as they can
really mess up the cannon ground units. As the cannon units take time to
reload, the cavalrymen are beating on them. I've found that a 2 to 1 ratio
(cavalrymen against cannon), the cavalrymen will win." John Edward adds:
"Cavalry can rush to the scene and take out enemy invasion."
Muke09 proposes an 'ultimate' defensive battle line-up (perhaps best for
multiplayer games, where watchtowers cannot be used to such good effect). "I
use cavalry as flank guards. They have less defence, but 0.8 more attack than
swordmen.":
Dread Pirate Terry has a trick for 'storing' soldiers: "Park them on a pier
anywhere on your island and then delete the pier. Soldiers can't be shot at by
passing pirates and when you want them back just re-build the pier."
Charlie suggests building towers in the square behind walls. The towers will
be able to fire over the walls, but attackers will need to destroy the walls
before they can fire back at the towers.
Arcturis_mengsk writes: "A great walled multi-towered metropolis in my opinion
is the best defence against any human player. A massive city with huge walls
and towers is just too intimidating too attack. Although you really do not
need that many towers... I think that the towers are more for the purpose of
intimidating than for actual use."
From tanner_85: "When one of your small battleships is being attacked at your
shipyard by a pirate ship, return fire, and click the ship to repair it as you
fight."
Falke writes: "In one scenario I built fishing huts around the whole island.
My opponent don't attack this island."
From Worker72: "If a scenario requires that you destroy all opponents I will
usually go from weakest to strongest, unless the AI keeps getting angry and
trade-tribute wont help then I go for the AI who is angry. I never attack
until I am prepared for war."
FrankB writes: "War is expensive. That's why I think you need at least 700
merchants, maybe more (I don't have aristocrats at this point, they need too
many luxury goods). That shouldn't be a real big problem, as you need 500
merchants to build big battleships." Zomby Woof writes: "I never start war
before I get 750 merchants, so I have enough money and the big shipyard.
Sometimes you may have no choice, if the AI reacts very aggressive. Then
perhaps you have to go to war at citizen level with small warships."
From blacstorm: "I would recomend slowly phasing in the required military
industry a step at a time. Build a swords smith then a cannon foundry, then
when you have enough of the weapons, build the castles and train the train the
troops. This way, you budget is never over-stretched and you can produce the
other stuff you need as well and not run out of money."
From ggcourt: "[Before invading have] all islands producing surpluses; a
bigger fleet than them; your fleet can stock new island with ALL basic
war/building materials; sink the enemy fleet; land on unoccupied territory and
create warehouse/kill zone or land cannoneers, and begin blasting; hit
warehouses, wood, bricks, tools. If you can't stay away from supplying your
islands for 10-15 minutes rethink your need to attack; this a game of
economics with an a bit of violence." Ron The Wrath of God writes: "When I am
about to attack my opponent's island, I first set up a military base on a
small adjacent island. On this small island next to my opponent, I build: a
castle (large if possible), doctor, large shipyard, warehouse with plenty of
wood, cloth, tools, bricks and food, plus a fisherman, woodcutter and 2 sheep
farms with a weaver."
Ggcourt writes: "A fleet of five ships will quickly destroy coastal
watchtowers and any marketplaces, houses, production facilities within cannon
range of the coast. Backup ships can stand offshore to replace damaged ones
while you send them for repair. More than five ships tend to get in each
others' way but produce enough firepower to quickly demolish walls and
targets."
From Gunter: "By unloading your soldiers on the island, they [the AI's troops]
will run against you and can be easily shot with your ship's cannons."
Fife119 writes: "When you have a ship anchored in their main harbor, land one
unit onto their island. Then he should send one or two units to attack it.
Quickly load the soldier back onto the ship and watch your enemies hapless
soldiers fall to your ships guns." Ron The Wrath of God writes: "I only land 1
cavalry in one place, and 1 cavalry in another distant place on the same enemy
island. This is to create distractions for the enemy cavalry and infantry to
attack them. When the enemy attack, retreat the cavalry onto the ships, and
blast them."
Rayser writes: "I land a couple cannoneers to draw in any AI's military and
let the ships blast them until they're all gone. Then I land cannoneers to
take out all stone cutters and wood cutters and blast away big chunks of the
walls. Take out the castles and military buildings. That forces the AI to
rebuild walls and waste stone. After they waste the stone and the stone
cutters are gone, take out all land towers. After the AI's supplies are gone
(stone especially) place 6 to 8 cannoneers at each marketplace but have a ship
sitting at the warehouse full of building materials (wood, stone, etc.). Blast
all of the marketplaces and when there dead kill the warehouse. Build a
warehouse over the AI's and stock it with wood. Rebuild each marketplace
quickly that the AI had. You'll gain a lot of buildings possibly even gold and
iron mines without paying for them."
The pirate of the 5 seas writes: "If there are any castles or forts destroy
them all too or else they could be coming back even faster." Mircea adds:
"Don't forget to destroy all the stone and wood productions, so the AI will be
able to rebuild only with the help of free traders." FrankB finishes: "...and
don't sell any building material - that way, the Free Traders would not be
able to sell your bricks to your enemy."
Dread Pirate Terry writes: "I like to find that little corner that the AI
always seems to leave open, build a warehouse 4, and load it with tools, wood,
bricks and cannons. Plant trees all along the perimeter of the beachhead. Land
a few cannoneers and one cavalry. Put up 4-8 watchtowers right on the edge of
your area of influence, clustered together focusing on the AI's nearest road
or a gap in the trees on his side of the border. Leave just enough room in the
center of the cluster of watchtowers for your cannoneers to clean a path to AI
territory. As soon as you have his attention retreat to your own side of the
border. Sit back and watch as the AI throws every single soldier he has or can
train into the 'killing zone'."
From hiking: "I quickly setup a warehouse and build a doctor next to it. If I
need to heal them, I don't have far to go. Depending on where I was able to
build the warehouse, I may even be able to just march the wounded to the
doctor."
On building a new Warehouse over the site of your opponent's destroyed
Warehouse, Mircea comments: "You can be surprised by the goodies you can
discover in the AI's warehouse." Ron The Wrath of God writes: "Don't be duped
by other players that you will be able to keep most of the enemy's buildings
and production facilities. I find they; (1) often aren't worth keeping,
especially the farms and plantations which are badly designed and located, (2)
they often are in your way and cause much delay and troops losses trying to
move your troops into fighting position. Just blast them down and keep
moving." Guardian writes: "I check where the computer built his warehouse? Is
it in a strategically smart place for the future? I mean, if the island in
question is in the upper right corner (northeast), and his warehouse is on the
upper right corner too, to take this warehouse would mean long ways for my
ships later on."
Zach82 comments: "Invading and island has its own nuances. The other guys
mentioned destroying the things that produce the materials needed to build
towers. I always take this strategy to its fullest extent. For example,
without a tax base, the AI loses money and cannot construct ~anything~. So I
destroy the AI's tax base. First, destroy the warehouse, and destroy the docks
as well. Try to blockade the port. Second, occupy or destroy from the sea the
areas of the island that have the food production. If something produces food,
lay waste to it. The gruesome results is that you watch the entire island
starve to death without risking your own expensive soldiers. When the AI's
entire tax-base has starved, mopping up the rest of the island become much
easier."
Tatiana writes: "I have experienced counterattacks more than once - when the
AI has an advanced city, with merchants or aristocrats. The AI never tried to
counterattack my main island, but on more than one occasion, completely wiped
out my rum island."
From MWHC; "Bottom line... the AI sucks, as soon as you get a system down it's
pretty much routine after that." Shark_Dus writes: "Mass invasion is easy -
that's no challenge. Try to invade with as few troops as possible (keeps your
financial balance healthy). The real challenge is to start an invasion with
only 8 infantry and finish your conquering without losing a single one.
Perhaps you try this the next time?"
Sir Henry writes: "I attack the towers with 8-10 (better more) cannoneers,
nicely arranged in a row. The tower will always attack the closest one, so it
is easy to send the poor guy back after one or two hits (I always press F4
before such fights). Repeat this at most once more, and the tower is gone. If
you attack with too many cannoneers, sometimes the wounded one cannot get back
through the crowd, that's why I take 8-10 in a row. This way I normally don't
lose one single soldier."
Neferankh writes: "When attacking Towers on your Opponent's island, make sure
you have a clear path to the Tower. If you send one or two Artillery down a
road to the Tower, they will be destroyed. You will still get the Tower
eventually but loose a lot of men. I have found 16 Artillery will take down a
Tower without losing any men. ... If the Tower gets off 3 blasts, then you
have lost an Artillery unless you take the man, wounded with the first shot,
away from battle. An Artillery has 12 Hit Points, an Attack of 7, an attack
interval of 4.5 secs, and a range of 7. A Tower has 55 Hit Points, an Attack
of 4, an attack interval of 3.0 secs, and a range of 8. 8 Artillery will take
down a Tower with one shot as long as all of them get to take a shot. Thus, it
is important to have an open field between your Artillery and the Tower. If 1
Artillery is blocked by tress or some other barrier, he will not get to take a
shot but can be hit by the Tower. Because of the range difference, the Tower
gets one shot off before your Artillery come within range. If you don't take
the Tower out in one shot, the Tower gets 2 more shots in before you can
reload. If you don't retreat the first man hit by the Tower, he will be gone
by the time the second Artillery shot is taken. Personally, I like using a
minimum of 10 Artillery. You still should retreat the first wounded man but it
gives you a little more leeway."
From FrankB: "6-8 cannonneers per tower is a good number. Try to keep them
together (form a line with the formation buttons) and start the attack with
all of them. You may try to withdraw the cannonneer that gets wounded first,
otherwise that one will be killed before the tower is destroyed."
From Dread Pirate Terry: "There are several different strategies, the simplest
being a mass attack by cannoneers but as you've found out that can be very
hard on the cannoneers. You have probably taken care of all the AI's soldiers
on the island so you have the time to use a little planning in your assault.
First you want to clear a wide path from your troops to the tower you are
attacking, houses, shops even trees because remember the tower is firing down
on your men meanwhile if there is an obstruction in your way your guys have to
go around to get a clear shot at the tower. Next, the method I prefer to use
is find a spot just out of range of the tower (pretend to build a tower
directly on top of his tower and note the area of influence or range it has),
line up seven cannoneers just out of range. Behind them put one or more
cavalry soldiers. Indicate the cavalry to attack the tower and as soon as they
pass through the cannoneers indicate the cannons to attack. The tower will
fire on the first enemy within his range, that being the cavalry and the
cannoneers will level the tower before you lose a single soldier. Two or more
towers with overlapping fields of fire can be a little trickier but you get
the idea. Destroy cannon foundries, stonemasons and quarries to cut down on
the number of towers the AI can build. Also never leave your soldiers
unattended in enemy territory as the AI has a nasty habit of building a new
watchtower in their midst, a good lesson to learn for when the AI lands troops
on your island."
Robbie47 writes: "The towers shoots OVER other things, your cannoneers can't
do that. So you should first clear the ground around the tower. Shoot all the
houses, farms and other buildings around the tower. Shoot the bushes, clear
the ground. Then send in 1 or 2 cavalrymen. They will attack the tower and
distract the guards inside. Now attack with 4-6 cannoneers."
From Ron The Wrath of God: "For naval battles, I found the melee less
effective than the 18th century 'line-ahead.' The line-ahead tactic basically
means forming a line of battle of 5-6 ships, bow-to-stern, so each ship can
bear her guns against the opponents, instead of all of them sailing around in
a mass being pulverized but sometimes not bearing. I place any small ships I
have in the middle of the line of battle, so they fire away effectively, but
also get pounded and hopefully sunk, so I can replace them with large
battleships later."
Initiate attacks with healthy ships: Damaged ships sail more slowly, even when
empty, and fully repaired ships can sustain more damage. Engage ships away
from enemy coastal defenses where possible.
From Maddoc (archived by Manny): "Set an automatic trading route for each of
your battleships with the nearest island, on which you have a shipyard, as the
only destination (you don't have to select any products). If one of your ships
gets damaged, activate it's trading route and it will sail slowly back towards
your shipyard, while you can continue with your battle."
Stefanus Franzosus writes: "It's smarter to put only 10 cannons on 1 ship. The
cannons will fire much faster, about as fast as a pirate ship." [Not sure...]
Shane uses an element of surprise: "I usually begin by assembling a large
fleet of big battleships (leaving a reseve force behind), then, instead of
declaring war on him, I simply attack one of their larger ships, and soon
their battleships begin arriving as the war begins."
From Dread Pirate Terry: "Before I start a large sea battle I take the time to
study the AI's trade and patrol routes. That way I can find the best spot for
an ambush. The best tactic I've found is to come up behind a long line of
enemy ships and just 'roll them up'. It also works well if you have an attack
and a backup group as well. After the attack group has sustained about 50%
damage you can pull them back for repair and cover their retreat with your
reserve battle group."
It can be tempting to try and destroy another player at the very start of the
game, before they have had chance to build a colony. Immelman notes: "The
disadvantages of having a crippled ship far outweigh the advantages of taking
out a player. With a crippled ship how can you explore all the islands fast?
How can you get your commerce going? How can you ferry materials from other
islands? How can you create or support new settlements?"
There is some confusion surrounding what the cheat codes are, how they
function, and which apply to what version. You may not be able to get every
cheat to work in every version. This section is based on various cheat sites
and forum posts.
To enable cheats: Hold [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Alt] + W. An underscore (prompt)
will appear in the bottom left of the screen. Type 2061 and press enter. Now
press A (alternatively maybe Q, German lowercase sharps, or "ss" - your
mileage may vary). Do not bring up the prompt again to input this character.
Shift based cheats: Once in cheat mode, select the warehouse on the island you
wish to cheat on (or the ship). Ensure the cursor is above the warehouse (or
ship). Then press Shift plus a character. Make sure the caps lock is off.
Codes are (ignore the leading asterisk):
* [Shift] + H = +5 wood.
* [Shift] + K = +5 cannons.
* [Shift] + M = +500 money to treasury.
* [Shift] + T = +5 tools.
* [Shift] + Z = +5 bricks.
Number based cheats: Double click the warehouse (or ship). Ensure the cursor
is above the warehouse (or ship). Bring up the prompt again by pressing [Ctrl]
+ [Shift] + [Alt] + W, then type the number code and enter, than press A
(alternatively maybe Q, German lowercase sharps ("á"), or "ss" - again your
mileage may vary) to add 5 units of the item per key press. Codes are (ignore
the leading asterisk). Some versions may subtract 1 to each of these numbers,
so Iron ore is 01, not 02:
The "fastgame" cheat is often mentioned. It is supposed to give access to all
buildings in the game, but nobody has ever described how one inputs it, or got
it to work, and it is widely regarded as a hoax. This slightly intriguing post
is from Jochen Bauer, one-time Sunflowers' board moderator: "Please don't use
the 'fastgame cheat' - you would irritate the AI and the rest of the system,
the result: crashes and so on..." Stefanus Franzosus then writes: "I can get
fastgame to work. Then the word 'Edit' appears under my gold coins counter.
But further nothing happens. Why is this cheat in the game, since you can't
really use it?" To which Jochen replies: "See my post above..." Irony or fact?
I don't know... have fun trying to input this cheat ;-) .
Other text based cheats have been reported, which seem to be hoaxes: "gold"
(more Gold), "JOURNEYMAN" (access level 2), "SILHOUETTE" (level 3), and
"REMUNERATE" (level 4). I have no idea what levels 2, 3 and 4 are supposed to
refer to. It is often reported that if you name yourself "Columbus" and give
yourself a yellow flag you will start with $10,000. What is not reported is
that if you start any Demanding or Difficult setting continuous game under
*any* flag and name, you will get 10,000 coins, and that in many scenarios you
start with 20,000 coins. The "Columbus" cheat is no cheat at all ;-) . A
similar 'cheat' relating to reloading a game and getting money back from a
recent purchase, probably has more to do with the way the game averages out
your balance over several minutes, than any genuine calculation error.
For the original game scenarios, manually edit the line in the file game.dat
(found in the main install directory) from "Volume: -750, 0, -5??" (where ??
are numbers, probably "95" if you do this without playing any scenarios first)
to read "Volume: -750, 0, -580". Make a backup before you start in case it
goes wrong. The precise number may vary by version, as Gunter comments: "The
German fanpages give always -579 while I vaguely remember that Manny, too, had
-580 as well as somebody else who mentioned it recently on the board. And
originally there's "-596" which seems to mean that 596 - 16 (scenarios) =
580."
These are game features which can be exploited to make the game easier under
certain circumstances. Whether these are cheats or legitimate tactics is
rather in the eye of the beholder:
At the start of a game, immediately save, explore the map fully and pick the
'best' island to settle, then reload the earlier save game, and settle your
chosen island immediately. Saving and reloading can also help when attempting
to meet a trade balance objective, as FrankB comments, "the balances start
with zero if you open a new or saved game."
From Anno Online: "To get products very cheap, push up the price. The
merchants will come more frequently to your warehouse. If the ships are
nearby, drop down the price about the half. Nevertheless the merchants will
sell you what you want to get."
Zomby Woof has that 'gold' cheat you were looking for earlier ;-) : "Place a
sheep or cattle farm and wait till the animals come out to graze. Then destroy
the farm and place exactly on the same spot a goldsmith. Now, if the sheep or
cattle return to the building they are turned to gold." Joe Cool notes that
this trick works for other similar buildings, including Foresters' Huts,
Hunting Lodges, and workshops. The method is useful for producing small
amounts of gold on maps that have none, but it is not profitable.
Frieden's suggestion for dealing with pirate attacks: "(1) Press F5, (2) press
F2, (3) fire on a pirate's ship, (4) quickly set the white flag, (5) let the
pirate approach, (6) let the pirate turn ahead, (7) repeat 3-6 about 10 or 15
times and pirate's ship will disappear into the sea." A variation from
Wolfgangkrauser: "(1) Move two battleships and attack the pirate at same time.
(2) Which ever ship the pirate attacks first wave white flag. (3) Select the
other ship and put in battle mode. (4) You will have to continually target the
pirate but you will get free hits in."
FrankB adds: "In one scenario, docks were built inside the island over rubbish
ground. When the AI soldier invaded my territory, I deleted the docks where
the soldiers stood - and they disappeared." Budgie adds: "They also reappear
when you rebuild the dock."
From Robitoby: "If the plague appears and you haven't got a doctor: save and
reload, the plague will be gone. Same with fires."
In earlier versions, trees can be planted around your island, or around
invading soldiers. The AI does not know how to destroy them, so it's units
either cannot invade, or become trapped. Manfred comments: "The US version
lets the AI shot down those trees." However, as muke09 comments, one can: "Use
trees as a delay to rally the men." Immelman writes: "To defend your islands,
instead of walls put trees. Behind one layer of trees build your towers.
Unlike a wall, the computer doesn't shoot at your trees and on top of that
your towers can shoot from behind the trees without getting shot at."
Sea Trader has a method to create unlimited units: "All I did was load a
soldier which was all red [almost dead] but still alive (they don't take up
any room in the ship). I just kept clicking the empty space and soldiers just
kept appearing (didn't cost cannons), but it did cost to maintain them."
Worker72 adds: "This trick works with all soldier types." Manfred adds: "It
seems, this bug, we called it phantom soldier bug, appears only in the US
version."
MWHC writes: "I had a road going to a weaver. As the wagon was heading to the
weaver I destroyed the square right next to the weaver. The cart continues to
the weaver (right over the grass, no road). But, as soon as the cart reached
the weaver the amount of cloth in the warehouse increased by the amount the
weaver had ready, and the cart starts again - from the warehouse."
From RobinBanks: "[In The Magnate] you can actually delete shoreline on the
small island with x2 gold veins and native villages. You build a warehouse on
an unoccupied portion on the island, as well as a marketplace. After blasting
the current landshark's warehouse, you have a weaver's hut as well as a sheep
farm. When you go to delete any tree/rubble, you can delete part of the
shoreline, giving yourself a bigger island."
FrankB writes: "To build big battleships with a small shipyard, you need a big
shipyard, too. Select the big battleship from the build menu, but do not click
on the build button. Then, go to the small shipyard, select it, and click on
the build button - the big battleship will be built there. It takes a bit
longer than on the big shipyard..."
Joe Cool has a method of exceeding the limit on total army size: "If you have
all 100 soldiers for war and you want more, than just send about the amount of
soldiers your castle holds to a hospital for healing (even if they don't need
it). When they are in there, click your castle and recruit soldiers. When the
come out of, say the medium castle, you'll be 5 soldiers up."
Yes. Trainers have been written by Fernsehzerhacker and Class (available here,
http://www.actiontrip.com/cheats/anno1602.phtml?results=1 ), and Aerosmith
(available here, http://www.gamewinners.com/trainer.php?file=1602adtrn.zip ).
A UGE editor file is available here,
http://www.avault.com/cheats/getcheat.asp?game=dl_1602uge . A wide selection
can be found here: http://dlh.net/cheats/pc/english/1602+a.d./ .
Yes, but only with NINA (see "Anno 1602" or "1602 AD"? What are NINA, the Gold
Edition and Konigsedition? How many different versions are there? above). The
installation will include the file 1602Edit.exe (from FrankB). The scenario
editor included in the expansion has several limitations, including an
inability to set precise resources or edit islands. However, custom islands
can be created using third party utilities - see Can I create custom islands?
below.
Yes. Use Sir Henry's Island Editor, available here: http://www.zur-
borg.de/Anno1602/english/ . That site includes links to downloads of pre-
edited custom islands, as does this: http://www.sscweb.de/_anno/ (in German),
http://sh-home.de/~hj.bomanns/ANNOTools/ (in German with some entertaining
designs) and http://www.annopool.de/ . From Sir Henry: "Ore and gold deposits
are a property of a scenario, which can't be set in the IslandEditor." Budgie
adds: "For those fellows who consider that it's too time-consuming to create
islands piece by little piece: notice that it's possible with Sir Henry's to
load and recast the plain islands coming along with the game (.scp files - but
only those without extensions), or to copy parts of these islands and form new
ones with the fragments."
6.7 Where can I get custom scenarios and maps? How do I play them?
A large collection is available here, http://www.annopool.de/ . Two
compendiums of maps (adventsszenarien.exe and adventsszenarien99.exe) may also
be found, but scenario text tends to be in German. Installation instructions
from Frieden: "(1) Unzip it. (2) Move into the folder 'own scenarios' or
'eigene szenarien'. (3) Start 1602. (4) Click on singleplayer ...and then
start your game." Sir Henry gives details of file extensions: ".szm stands for
multi player scenarios, .szs stands for single player scenario, .hss stands
for high score list." Others (in German) are available from
http://www.sscweb.de/_anno/ , http://home.t-
online.de/home/st.gerner/mission.htm and
http://www.bigell.de/anno1602/anno1602.htm .
No, you must have a version of the game that includes NINA - see "Anno 1602"
or "1602 AD"? What are NINA and the Gold Edition? How many different versions
are there? above. FrankB writes: "There should be a folder named 'own
scenarios' or 'Eigene Szenarien'. That's where the new scenarios have to be
put into. If you don't have such a folder, sorry, you will not be able to play
new scenarios."
Sir Henry wrote a utility to do this, but it is only available in German. From
Gunter: "This 'campaign installer' seems to have been developed by Sir Henry
just for the installation of those 'Thirsty Fish' scenarios as new campaigns
of the German version. I'm afraid it won't help a lot for other custom
campaigns." See http://www.zur-borg.de/Anno1602/ .
Codes are entered in the format:
[ CTRL ALT SHIFT w ] [ variable name ] [ ENTER ] [ CTRL ALT SHIFT w ] [ value
] [ ENTER ] A
or:
W [ variable name ] [ ENTER ] W [ value ] [ ENTER ] A
Variables and values are:
- videonr = Set final video. Possible values: 986, 988, 992, 2000, 2010, 2030,
2040, 2050, 2060, 2070, 2080, 2100, 2110, 2120, 2990.
- shipmax = Set maximum number of player ships. 1-33.
- ranking = Set number of stars for scenario. 0-3.
- nohandler = Toggles Free Traders on/off. 0 or 1.
- novulkan = Toggles Volcanoes on/off. 0 or 1.
- nokampf = Toggles weapons production on/off (disables military buildings). 0
or 1.
- wareminA or wareminB = Sets the volume of goods needed to complete scenario.
Usage: [Item index (2-24)] * 1,000 + [number needed]. (Sir Henry comments:
"The number to enter here is calculated as (Product index)*1000 + amount,
where the product index ranges from 2 for iron ore to 24 for bricks, and can
be derived from the product menu that appears by clicking twice on your
warehouse or market.")
Sir Henry adds: "If you hear a sound sample [after setting a value] you're
fine. The editor has accepted your input."
A "Scenario Goal Editor" is available which allows goals to be set and checked
without using special codes. It can be downloaded at http://www.annopool.de/ .
Yes. Robbie47 writes: "Copy the file Gamename.gam from the folder Savegames
into the folder Own Scenarios. Rename it Gamename.szs and you can open it with
the editor." FrankB adds: "You can also open savegames in the editor. Press
shift+L to browse to your savegame directory, and select the correct file
type. Then, open your savegame." Sir Henry notes: "It is not possible to save
the game in savegame format (*.gam), only in scenario format (*.szs).
Therefore, be sure to create a new (empty) scenario before loading your
savegame, because otherwise you do not have a free slot to save it to."
BigTiny comments (on the US version): "You can put in your favourite CD and
listen while you play." Wargamerit adds: "You can put your music files in wav
format in Anno1602/MUSIC8 directory. Then you can choose your background music
with the standard game options (Options - Musics and Effects). The music8
folder is on the CD [by default]. You will have to put the CD [music8 folder]
on your hard drive first for this to work."
Yes and no. Sir Henry writes: "The editor does not provide any way to hide
treasure except the random distribution. [There is no way the editor can be
used to assign specific treasure to specific islands.] However, I found a way
to do this with a hex editor ... Every island has got three 'slots' for either
gold/iron ore deposits or treasures. If you know the coordinates of the spot
you want to hide the treasure you can do so by putting the values into an
unoccupied slot. But it's not easy and error prone..."
6.14 Can damaged ships or buildings be set in the editor?
No. Sir Henry writes: "In order to build destroyed houses and roads [or ships
or anything else] into a scenario you have to load your scenario into the game
and really shoot at them with cannoneers or a ship. Then save the game and
reload it into the editor using Shift+L."
6.15 How do the editor's passivity and activity settings work?
Sir Henry, on passivity settings: "You control the AI's tolerance threshold
towards the human player. The AI will tolerate the development of the human
player up to that level, where 5.0 stands for aristocrats, and 1.0 for
pioneers. The AI will slowly get angry if the human player develops above that
level. It is also interesting to play with intermediate values, as you can
fine tune the AI's reaction, and cause trouble for the player if he exceeds a
certain population level. ... [The Activity] setting controls the AI's temper
with regard to his own development. The AI will remain peaceful if his own
development does not drop below that level, where again 5.0 stands for
aristocrats, and 1.0 stands for pioneers. For example, if you put it to 5.0,
the AI will become angry if he drops below aristocrats. This setting can be
used to produce sudden twists if the AI regresses due to a shortage of goods."
Disclaimer - The information in this section is based on what I have read, and
may not work in all circumstances. Some procedures, like registry edits, can
damage your computer's operating system if done incorrectly, so if you don't
feel confident, don't make changes: I cannot be held responsible for system
reinstalls caused by reading this section.
7.1 Why does installation under Windows XP/2000 fail with file name too long
or similar error messages?
From Uwe Mathon: "[If you have this problem] you have to do the following: (1)
Before you copy anything from the CD, download this registry file: (see
below). (2) No 'classical' installation process is needed if you install Anno
1602 by following these instructions. All you have to do is copy the files as
explained below and enter the data in the Windows Registry. (3) Create a
folder called [Anno 1602] on your hard drive in the main directory. (4) Open
the folder [Anno 1602] on the Anno 1602 CD-ROM. Copy all of the files except
[MUSIC8] and [VIDEOSMK]. Paste the files you just copied into your [Anno 1602]
folder on your hard drive. Remove the write protection on these files. To do
so, right-click on the files, click 'properties', and remove the tick in the
box 'write protection' at the 'file attributes'. (5) Double click on the
Registry file you downloaded. The data will be entered automatically into the
Windows Registry. (6) Open the Windows Registry. Click on Start/Run and enter
'regedit' into the text field. After you have clicked 'ok', the Windows
Registry will open up. (7) Search for the entry 'Anno 1602' in the Registry.
To do so, click on Edit/Search and enter 'Anno 1602' into the text field. (8)
Click on the key CDROM_DIR. Enter the value (the letter of the drive, e.g.
'E') of the CD-ROM, which is intended for playing. (9) Click on the key
INSTALL_DIR. Enter the value (e.g. 'C') of the hard drive where your [Anno
1602] folder is located. (10) Close the registry and create a symbolic link
from the 1602.exe in the [Anno 1602] folder, and start. The Anno 1602 CD has
to be in the CD-ROM drive.
Installing Anno 1602 'New Islands, New Adventures' with Windows 2000: (1) Do
not try to install the Add-On in the 'conventional' way in any case, because
it will completely destroy the Anno 1602 installation. (2) Copy all of the
files from the [Anno 1602] folder of the NINA CD-ROM into the directory [Anno
1602] on your hard drive. Remove the writing protection. (3) Follow the above
steps 5 to 10."
This is the content of the anno1602_win2000.reg file posted - you may need to
edit directory/drive paths slightly to suit your machine:
FrankB notes: "If you installed the game from another drive, the game might
not find the game CD. In that case, you have to change the settings for the
relevant drive in the registry (at my PC, it is the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Anno1602, entry to amend: CDROM_DIR)."
This problem should not occur with 1602 A.D., Gold, or Kings editions. There
is a specific patch to fix this for the German version. From Anika Flock: "The
Windows 2000/XP Patch you can download on the German Website is - (a) ONLY
there to ensure the installation of Anno 1602 works smoothly; it does not fix
any problems you may encounter when running the game. (b) ONLY for the German
classic version and expansion set of the game. The English [Gold and 1602
A.D.] versions already have an installer integrated which works fine with Win
2000/XP." Also see Where can I get demos and patches? above.
7.2 Does the game run under Windows XP/2000? Why does it crash during battles
or after an hour of play? Got any troubleshooting tips?
Anika Flock writes: "Anno 1602 will run under Windows 2000/XP as soon as: (1)
your graphics and soundcard drivers have received an update (make sure you
choose Win 2000/XP drivers); (2) the most recent version of DirectX is
installed; (3) Windows Updates have been made.
It is also VERY important that you are logged in as 'Administrator' when
installing and playing Anno 1602 under Windows 2000/XP. You will receive a
message like 'Please insert the 1602 A.D. CD' if you try to install the game
without Administrator rights. You will also receive this message if you
install the game using one account and try to play it using a different
account. Therefore, the account you are using to install and play 1602 A.D.
must belong to the group of 'Administrators'. You should switch off the
compatibility mode when playing Anno 1602 on Windows XP. In case the above
tips don't help, try switching off the music and/or videos in the
configuration menu [this works for many people]. If this does not help, there
is one more solution: Lower the sound card's hardware acceleration until the
problem does not occur any more."
From Uranium235: "What I did to solve my problem was to turn off the sound
acceleration. Simply go to 'Start' on the Windows taskbar, then 'Run', then
type 'dxdiag.exe'. Click on the 'Sound' tab, and under 'DirectX Features' set
the slider to 'no acceleration'."
Uwe Mathon further suggests: "Turn off all your 'energy saving' settings,
especially for the hard drive."
Symanteco writes: "Windows XP uses a different type of enhanced graphics theme
on it's desktop than other versions of windows. If I turn off the windows xp
graphics theme and select Standard Windows theme (you know the old, not so
flashy theme), turn off any other third party mouse pointers and use the
standard windows (with no shadow effects) mouse pointers the problem should go
away. I would suggest to anyone having a problem with 1602 and XP to turn off
all the graphical Bells and Windows within the XP desktop and especially turn
off all those third party windows enhancements like CursorXP, WindowBlinds
etc."
7.3 How do I backup the game prior to reinstalling? How do I move savegames
between machines?
From Manfred: "Copy your savegames [folder] and the game.dat file and move
them back into the correct locations after reinstall." From Budgie: "(1)
Complete contents of the folders 'Savegame' and 'Own Scenarios'. (2) All
'.hss' and '.hsm' files. (3) The file 'game.dat'. (4) Any other folders you
created in the 1602 directory, for example 'Islands' or 'Island Editor'."
On copying saves between machines, FrankB writes: "Open your Windows Explorer,
go to your Anno\SAVEGAME folder, copy the savegame you need (I think
lastgame.gam would be the best) and paste it to your A:\ folder. On the other
machine do the same procedure vice versa. It might be a good idea to rename
the lastgame.gam before doing that - just to be on the safe side. If you are
playing the first scenarios ('Original scenarios'), you should also copy the
game.dat file; otherwise you could have problems viewing the played
scenarios."
Gunter answers: "These ones you can find in the subfolder 'Savegame' under the
file names 'game00' through 'game11'. Now if you want to save another game but
don't want to lose any of these ones, just copy them to another folder. I
rename my archived savegames, for example to 'Good neighborhood.gam'. The day
I want to replay this special savegame I just have to recopy it into the
Savegame folder and rename it into 'game00.gam' or similar."
In later versions (specifically 1602 A.D.): Press [shift] + P - the image is
stored as a .pcx file which can be opened in most graphics packages, including
Window Imaging. In older versions: Download 'DirectX Draw Treiber um
Bildschirminhalte drucken zu konnen' from the Downloads section of
http://www.sscweb.de/_anno/ (from Budgie). This enables Print Screen, and you
can then paste the screenshot into Paint or similar.
Budgie writes: "Try to change the 1602 settings with the 1602 config.exe.
Start the little program and change the setting named 'use hardware mouse
pointer'." Wandring Knight notes: "Also, try setting the screen resolution to
1024x768 (if your screen allows). This immediately fixed the 'missing' mouse."
7.7 Have you got any suggestions for dealing with CD-ROM problems?
Uwe Mathon notes that one can: "Turn off the music and the movies to prevent
the game from reading from the CD." On changing/using multiple CD-ROM drives,
Budgie writes: "Open your registry. Follow the path
HKEY_CURRENT_USER//Software//Anno 1602. Change the key 'CDROM_DIR' from E to F
[or whatever drive is required]." The US version can be run without the CD -
one simply loses music and videos. Sir Henry writes: "To run the German
version without a CD you need a virtual CD-ROM drive."
Open TCP/IP ports 2300 and 47624. Sir Henry notes: "This is not only important
for firewalls but also if you have a router and run the PC on a private subnet
(168.192.x.y or 10.x.y.z). It is also important that the two ports are enabled
on the server and on all clients."
7.9 Why do online multiplayer games crash frequently?
Marc Huppke writes: "The problem is Anno 1602 was not programmed to be played
via Internet, it was programmed to be played on local area networks, only.
Although it is possible to play on the internet via TCP/IP, we unfortunately
can not guarantee that playing online will work without any problems. We can
only give you the following hints to minimize the chance that errors occur
during Internet gaming. To play via Internet check out the following points:
- make sure that ping time is below 200 ms,
- make sure that packet loss is below 5%,
- do NOT use the PAUSE key,
- do NOT accelerate the game by pressing F6 or F7,
- switch off cutscenes (movies).
We apologize for not being able to provide a bug fix for this problem because
this is a result of the basic structure of the game. If you follow the points
mentioned above it should minimize the problems."
My favourites, from a long-running forum topic started by BigTiny:
- "'Your people want a college' so you demolish the school only to realize you
don't have enough of something." - BigTiny.
- "Delete that tree next to the market. Click. Oops, where is my market?" -
Manfred.
- "Build a plantation and wonder why my stock is not going up... humm no
road..." - Peta.
- "I hate it when I am manoeuvring a ship to trade at an AI dock, and there
are so many ships jamming up the port that you click on a ship by accident and
start a war when you don't want to. The enemy promptly sinks your ship at the
dock..." - Worker72.
- "Don't you hate it when you take your ship back and forward the warehouse
and wondering, why doesn't the 'repair ship tool', appear... only to discover
that you didn't build a shipyard..." - Helen.
- "You see a long red bar right above your ship and shout: 'Gaaahh! She will
be sinking in a moment!' You're scared silly - and then you realize that it's
only your red flag waving..." - Budgie.
- "I often load some extra cargo on a ship that's on automatic trade route.
Then when I try to unload the cargo into the next harbour. Just when I want to
click the up-arrow, the ship resumes his trade route and it's bye bye ship and
cargo..." - Zambak.
- "When you find you are producing way too much food so you get a bit over-
zealous and demolish a load of cattle farms and turn them into tobacco
plantations instead and then about 20 minutes later your people are starving
and you're packed up to the rafters with cigars..." - Pmyraje.
- "You settle a very small volcano-island where there is space for nothing
other than a warehouse, because it's the only island with gold on it. The
volcano erupts and destroys your warehouse..." - Robitoby.
From Mar-cho-pol: "When I loaded a saved game, the computer switched my blue
flagged set of islands for the computers red flag and its single island. The
screen was the exactly same, having all the building layouts, fields, and
streets the exact place I put them, but the computer now controlled my
kingdom, and I had the computer's lame establishment. It liked what I had done
better so it switched."
Bobbel comments: "When I had (I think) 19,000 aristocrats, the enemies had
negative populations (-1706), and other strange things happened: There where
pioneers living in aristocrats' houses, and even I had -1000 pioneers, paying
-2000 taxes."
From wreaking_havoc: "I noticed that the AI built it's houses in 3x3 rows,
leaving one in the middle that could not be reached by the doctor or fire
brigade. Later on I notice that the house in the middle is on fire, so I
decided to sit and watch and see if the house collapsed. The house must have
burned for 10 minutes..." Zomby Woof adds: "Once I watched this too. The house
burned and burned and burned... but finally it crashed and was rebuilt
immediately."
Tylerme notes: "Sheep are about half the size of pioneer homes, but seeing as
the sheep are half a ton of wool (that's 1000 lbs.), I guess that they would
have to be awfully big. This also applies to cattle." Helen adds: "The deer
seem to be bigger then the trees, but yet, they can hide behind them and
disappear." Budgie adds: "The guy who works at the ore smelter carries tons of
wood in a sack."
Matey writes: "What about the cows? Those are milking cows, not beef cattle.
Where does all that milk get processed or does it get processed at all? Where
are the bulls?" "How does a water mill work when the wheel goes backwards? The
water comes down and the wheel goes backwards." MWHC adds: "When using the
watermill, if you want the wheel to spin the right way, you have the place the
mill on the correct side of the river."
From Guilder: "Where in the world are the trade ships coming from; and why
can't we go there?"
From Sir Henry: "The marketplace does not need to be connected with the rest
of the city. So how are the goods transported to the warehouse? There were
several answers: Either there is an underground transportation system that
allows goods to be sent across, or they somehow beam them over..."
From muke09: "Notice that musketeers have bayonets, but never use them? ...
When you build a wall over where the rivers empty to the sea, the river flows
under the wall. ... If you click on a moving native, the symbol for 'stop'
appears at the bottom of the status screen." Budgie adds: "...and his name is
visible too: 'Unused'."
From tanner_85: "Where the hell do the horses come from for cavalry?"
Budgie writes: "In some rivers the water flows into both directions. ... There
are islands where you can see rivers without a spring, but with two mouths.
... We have no night, no seasons, and always wind strength 4."
From Dread Pirate Terry: "Which ever direction you look at the gallows from,
the corpse is always facing towards you."
8.3 Ways you can tell that you play 1602 too much...
My favourites, from a long-running forum topic started by Sea Trader:
- "You're sitting in the bar and telling the waitress 'alcohol is getting
short'." - Zomby Woof.
- "You ask the teacher or boss 'how do you load soldiers into a boat?'" - Sea
Trader.
- "I'm out with my wife, standing by a jewellery store. I look strangely at
her and I see her mouthing the words: 'Your people demand more jewellery." -
Captain Chi.
- "You're driving down the interstate and you think, 'What a great place for a
quarry that outcrop of rock would make.'" - Xela.
- "You wonder how long it took the farm across the street to build up a city
to be able to plant corn and soy beans." - SandMonkey.
- "You find yourself playing the game with a bag of spices, some tobacco, a
bottle of liquor and all that stuff by you side ...just in case." - E|3cTr|c.
- "When your children have given up on asking you to make lunch or dinner, but
resort to telling you 'mama your people are hungry'." -
Mamayourpeoplearehungry.
- "You have started to play 2 missions and are proud to finally get the 1000
aristocrats requested, when you suddenly notice that they were necessary in
the *other* mission..." - Gunter.
- "When you pass a giant windmill and say to yourself, 'A watermill would have
more efficient'." - Supernovadark.
- "Cops stop you on the highway and you are looking for a white flag to
raise..." - Zomby Woof.
- "You are on your holidays at a beach, watch the blue water and think about
where to place the fishing huts." - FrankB.
A. Building and Industry Data
______________________________________________________________________________
This table shows the requirements to construct and operate buildings, what
buildings produce, and what stock level of produced items they can hold. It is
based on data found at http://www.anno1602.de/ , with a few changes and
additions. Thanks to Mark Watson for alerting me to an earlier error.
Operating costs are expressed as Active/Passive, except where both values are
the same, where only one figure is given. Population requirements can be
exceeded (for example, 100 Citizens will meet any requirement that states 100
Settlers; but 100 Pioneers will not meet this requirement) and the required
population must be on at least one island (if you need 200 Citizens, 100 on
one island and 100 on another is not sufficient).
The final list in this appendix shows what new buildings can be constructed at
different population levels (this repeats information contained in the first
table):
B. Production Links
______________________________________________________________________________
The diagram below shows essential production links. It excludes links via
Market place and Warehouses, which may be used in most cases to hold over-
stocked product. The diagram is based on that found in the manual.
C. Population per Industry
______________________________________________________________________________
Average consumption by 80 inhabitants per minute (specifically per cycle, but
one cycle is about one minute on most machines), from Charlie (
http://www.anno-zone.de/Charlie/index.html ). Values do not vary according to
tax level:
The next list is often attributed to Shark_Dus, although seems to be based on
Charlie's lists (the one above and a later appendices). It shows the maximum
number of inhabitants each single industry can supply. 'Combine' values are
for 2 farms and 1 processing building, except for the Grain Combine, which is
4 farms, 2 Windmills, and a Bakery.
D. Production Efficiency
______________________________________________________________________________
The first table, prepared by Charlie ( http://www.anno-
zone.de/Charlie/index.html ), shows the productivity of industries. 'Combine'
values are for 2 farms and 1 processing building, except for the Grain
Combine, which is 4 farms, 2 Windmills, and a Bakery. The table is included
here for the benefit of non-German speakers (like me). Min (minute) values are
for one cycle - one cycle is about one minute on most machines. "Op. Cost" is
the operating cost.
Lord Khang cites the following yields from food production:
- Hunting Lodge - 1 Killed Deer = 1 ton of Food.
- Fishing Hut - 3 squares fished = 1 ton of Food.
- Cattle Farm - 3 squares grazed = 1 ton of Beef.
- Butcher's Shop - 2 tons of Beef = 1 ton of Food.
- Grain Farm - 1 square reaped = 1 ton of Grain.
- Flour Mill - 2 tons of Grain = 1 ton of Flour.
- Bakery - 2 tons of Flour = 1 ton of Food.
- Sheep Farm - 4 squares grazed = 1 ton of wool.
- Weaving Hut - 2 tons of wool = 1 ton of cloth.
- Cotton Plantation - 1 square picked = 1 ton of wool.
- Weaving Mill - 2 tons of wool = 1 ton of cloth.
- Tailor's Shop - 1 ton of cloth = 1 ton of clothes.
- Tobacco Plantation - 2 squares picked = 1 ton of tobacco.
- Tobacco Products - 2 tons of tobacco = 1 ton of cigars.
- Winery - 4 squares picked = 1 ton of Alcohol.
- Sugar Plantation - 2 squares picked = 1 ton of Cane.
- Distillery - 2 tons of Cane = 1 ton of Alcohol.
- Cocoa Plantation - 4 squares picked = 1 ton of Cocoa.
- Spice Plantation - 4 squares picked = 1 ton of Spice.
Lord Khang conducted a further test: "Test was run for 10 minutes at Quadruple
speed after the packages had a chance to gear up. In each package a single
marketplace was dedicated for final product haulage. In all cases this
marketplace was placed directly next to the end producer for zero travel time:
- Fishing Package - 1 Fisher's Hut. No gear up for this guy, just dropped the
hut and started the timer. Total space utilized: 1 Coastline hex + 9 squares
fishing ground. Total yield after time elapsed: 27 tons of food.
- Cattle Package - 1 Butcher's Shop, 2 Cattle Farms. Utilized optimal 24
squares cattle farms as described above. Total space utilized was 52 squares
for the package. (40 yield square, 12 building squares) No road necessary.
Gear up time was allowing each of the cattle farms 2 cows to get 1 full cycle
of grazing producing a total of 2 tons of beef at each farm when the timer was
then started. Total yield after time elapsed: 88 tons of food.
- Grain Package - 1 Bakery, 2 Flour Mill, 4 Grain Farm. Utilized a new grain
combine layout I have been working on that fits in 72 squares broken down as
follows: 42 square yield land (2 farms at 10 square, 2 farms at 11 square), 28
squares for the 7 buildings, 2 squares road. Gear up time was allowing for the
full maturation of the grain fields, followed by allowing each of the grain
farms to harvest 2 square of grain (producing 2 tons of grain) when the timer
was started. Total yield after time elapsed: 108 tons of food.
- Hunting Package - 1 Hunting Lodge. No gear up for this guy, just drop the
lodge and start the timer. Space required 1 square + a crap load of yield
squares. Total yield after time elapsed: 46 TONS OF FOOD.
- Cloth Package A: 1 Weaver's Hut, 2 Sheep Farms. Farm spits out 3 sheep, each
of which graze for 4 squares before returning to be sheared. Note that the
grazing area has to reactivate, so the sheep will not graze from a given
square for a while. Efficiency: 85-100%. Total yield after time elapsed: 73
tons cloth.
- Cloth Package B: 1 Weaving Mill, 2 Cotton Plantations. The field hands don't
even touch 10 yield squares, and 3 additional yield squares are touched only
once every 3rd 16 square picking cycle. We can shave this sucker down to a 6 x
4, and still get max efficiency from it. Total yield after time elapsed: 116
tons of cloth.
- Clothing Package: 1 Tailor's Shop. Total yield after time elapsed: 76 tons
of clothes.
- Cigar Package: 1 Tobacco Products, 2 Tobacco Plantations. 5 untouched
squares of yield land [out of 28]. Shave this sucker down to 24 square as well
for 28% greater yield. Total yield after time elapsed: 70 tons of cigars.
- Alcohol Package A: 1 Winery. All 26 yield squares required to maintain fluid
production cycles. Grapes grow slow I guess. Total yield after time elapsed:
42 tons of Alcohol.
- Alcohol Package B: 1 Distillery, 2 Sugarcane Plantations. Land usage as for
Tobacco. Total yield after time elapsed: 70 tons of Alcohol.
- Cocoa Package: 1 Cocoa Plantation. 5 untouched squares of yield land [out of
28]. I can actually chop off 8 squares to make a 24 sq total farm (6 x 4) and
still obtain greater than 75% efficiency with the available 18 yield squares
remaining (after farm and road). Total yield after time elapsed: 44 tons of
Cocoa.
- Spice Package: 1 Spice Plantation. Land usage as for Cocoa. Total yield
after time elapsed: 44 tons of Spice."
Lord Khang also compares different methods of alcohol production directly:
"- Alcohol Package A - 5 Winery. Build Cost: 1500 gold, 10 tools, 15 wood, 40
bricks; maintenance cost is 175 gold/cycle. Space taken - 160 squares. Total
Yield after time elapsed: 210 tons alcohol.
- Alcohol Package B - 3 Distillery, 6 Sugar Plantations. Build Cost: 2400
gold, 21 tools, 24 wood, 63 bricks; maintenance cost is 195 gold/cycle. Space
taken - 156 squares. (Remember, using optimal 24 square plantations.) Total
Yield after time elapsed: 211 tons alcohol."
E. Military Data
______________________________________________________________________________
The data in the tables below comes from Manny, Charlie ( http://www.anno-
zone.de/Charlie/index.html ), Gamestar July 1998, and http://www.anno1602.de/
. The first table shows the requirements and costs of military units:
F. Final Score
______________________________________________________________________________
This section is based on Charlie's ( http://www.anno-
zone.de/Charlie/index.html ) calculations and observations of what determines
the final score. It has been included here for the benefit of non-German
speakers.
This score is not fully understood. Known factors are:
- Small value for each public building, plantation, production building and
similar. For example, 0.75 for a plantation, 0.55 for a Market place.
- Housing represents the bulk of the score value. Aristocrat houses give
proportionately more score than other types.
- Building score is related to island size. The larger the island, the higher
the score - for example, 10 Aristocrat houses on a small island gives about
110 points, ten on a huge island gives about 185. Each island is calculated
separately.
Charlie's experiments on a 12,000 population Aristocrat city, on a huge
island, reveal the nature of the relationship between score and population.
Below around 10,000 people, every additional house adds more to the score than
the house before. After around 10,000 people, every additional house starts to
add less to the score.
The satisfaction score is based on the number of statues one has, shown for
the first seven statues below. Each additional statue raises the score but the
amount shown. Charlie notes that after 48 statues, when the additional score
per statue is almost zero, subsequent statues start to be awarded based on the
original pattern (that in the table below).
Dread Pirate Terry's account (presumably based on the US version) differs from
this: "The value of each of your monuments (satisfaction points) errodes very
slowly as the game goes on but never all the way to zero. I think the game
designers use this as a way to reward you if you solve a scenario quickly.
Early in the game your first monument might be worth 500 satisfaction points.
If you never get another you'll notice your satisfaction points after a while
will be 499, 498, 497 and so on."
Neferankh writes: "There is a limit on the amount of gold for which you get
points. I think that it is 10,000,000 gold. After that point, you do not get
any additional points for it."
Each unit you destroy of your opponent gives you score. Each unit they destroy
of your forces counts against that score. The maximum score possible is
10,000. The approximate relationship between units destroyed and score is
thus:
G. AI Trade Prices
______________________________________________________________________________
Another useful table by Charlie ( http://www.anno-zone.de/Charlie/index.html
), again included here for the benefit of non-German speakers. This shows the
prices at which AI players (except Free Traders) will buy and sell goods.
Charlie also includes production prices, shown in the Production Efficiency
appendix.
Menus:
- O = Options
- D = Diplomacy
- G = Save/Load
- B = Construction
- K = Combat
- I = Information
- F = Film and speech
- S = Ship list
- C = City list
Map:
- F2 = Zoom detailed
- F3 = Zoom normal
- F4 = Zoom bird's eye
- Z = Rotate left
- X = Rotate right
- J = Jump to active object
- H = Jump between cities
- Space = Jump to location of last message
Units:
- W = Surrender (ship)
- F8 = Select wounded units
- F9 = Select infantry
- F10 = Select musketeers
- F11 = Select cavalry
- F12 = Select artillery
- Crtl + 1-9 = Assign selected units to group
- 1-9 = Select assigned group
- M = Show unit ownership
Multiplayer:
- Alt + 1 = Chat to red player
- Alt + 2 = Chat to blue player
- Alt + 3 = Chat to yellow player
- Alt + 4 = Chat to white player
- Alt + 5 = Chat to all players
Debug:
- Shift + F = Framerate
- Shift + V = Version number
- Shift + ? = Show coordinates**
