Very Proud...

[George_Washington]

I just won an independence victory for the first time tonight. It was my sixth game ever on Pilgrim (I know). I thought this game would just be another Civ4 expansion but it's a completely different game.

It's well worth the $29.99 imo. Takes a few games to really learn but after that it's all strategy. Thx Sid for a great game.

:)

[schlub]

Yey, I just won after 3 attempts... I think this game is okay, but I don't see much longevity to it. I find it to require tactics the opposite of Civilisation... in Civ you try to expand as much as you can to gain control of all the resources, research as hard as you can, build, expand etc. In Colonisation (correct spelling) it is a bad thing to have more than 6 or so settlements, and you really need to make specialist cities instead of having everything built in all of them.
You only need a couple of cities cranking out ore / tools / guns and another couple cranking out horses to build up your army. Of course earlier in the game you concentrate on producing trade items to purchase as many specialists as you can afford.
It is essential to have fortifications around all of east-coast cities (as they seem to get attacked exclusively) but curiously you don't need even a single defender in each city until independence is declared. I didn't get attacked by anyone (in any of my games), and I don't really know what the point of the other nations is except to trade with them (if they even have any money). Maybe that will change on higher difficulty.
So far I haven't seen a single reason to build up a war-ship fleet... by the time I was able to build a couple of Ship-of-the-Line (8 str) the King had 35 Man-o-war (12 str) so my ships didn't last very long. Luckily you can win by defeating all the ground troops and ignoring the ships altogether.

[George_Washington]

What I noticed was the Man O War ships only bombard, well transport also. But after they land their ships they can't do much but bombard your defenses down.

What I did was take all my citizens into my main city that had a fort and just cranked out weapons and cannons once I let the Motherland take my cities. Then I went one by one to each Motherland city and wiped out the invading force. Once the regulars, artillery and dragoons are done then that's it. Man O Wars are just pesky.

Thx for replying!