Tips 'n Tactics

[delra]

Critical shots

Rather than taking defensive skills, you may want to choose to dictate the terms in battles yourself and pick offensive skills for your war fleet captains. If you give your captain all of Far Shot, Accuracy and Kill Shot skills, you can enable all three at once in combat and fire from your flag ship a really deadly salvo well outside of her cannons normal range. With a few broadsides like this opening a battle you can considerably improve your chances of winning even against the odds.

[Thorin Oakshiel]

When reading the handbook, I came across this tip:

Process same items in one place
Process same items in one place. Production buildings cost money to buy and you have to pay monthly upkeep as well. With higher level buildings the costs can build up very fast. It's often more cost effective to build the production facilities of a certain item into just one of your colonies. Then use, preferrably coastal, ships to transport the item in question from your other colonies that produce the same item.

And frankly speaking I'm a bit confused about it.

Reason for that is that if I concentrate the resources into my warehouse in a single city, the resources remain resources.

So instead I have to buy them, then sell them at a loss, and buy the finished goods again; hoping that selling the finished goods in my hometown brings in enough money to make a profit.

It sounds odd, but I hardly believe that's possible since you need:

1) A colony to gather the resource
2) A smithy to construct the resource gathering building.
3) A ship or squadron to transport it to another colony, where I also had to build a smith.
4) A building to turn the resource into processed items or finished goods; while another building is needed turn the processed items into finished goods.
5) a 2nd ship or squadron to transport the finished goods to the homefleet.

The tip would work if the items in the warehouse would be processed as well and after that return to the warehouse. Something that doesn't work at the moment.
Now it's just a money drainer.


Thorin

[Machismo]

When reading the handbook, I came across this tip:

And frankly speaking I'm a bit confused about it.

Reason for that is that if I concentrate the resources into my warehouse in a single city, the resources remain resources.

So instead I have to buy them, then sell them at a loss, and buy the finished goods again; hoping that selling the finished goods in my hometown brings in enough money to make a profit.

It sounds odd, but I hardly believe that's possible since you need:

1) A colony to gather the resource
2) A smithy to construct the resource gathering building.
3) A ship or squadron to transport it to another colony, where I also had to build a smith.
4) A building to turn the resource into processed items or finished goods; while another building is needed turn the processed items into finished goods.
5) a 2nd ship or squadron to transport the finished goods to the homefleet.

The tip would work if the items in the warehouse would be processed as well and after that return to the warehouse. Something that doesn't work at the moment.
Now it's just a money drainer.


Thorin

Maybe because the taxes you bring in are tied to the work done by a factory (I THINK). That between the reduced cost of the building, the taxes you bring in, and the sale of the refined goods, you make more than if you had to buildings in two different colonies.

Also, shouldn't the goods sold into the colony, bought from the other colony, be sold for zero profit, no loss? Consequently, your profits would be higher because they've been refined and sold at a much higher price in Europe?

[delra]

Fleets in being

In addition to having a woman in every port, you should consider having a squadron of war ships in each of them as well. It will be a really nasty surprise for an enemy invasion fleet when they arrive at your city and realize you have not only built a Fort and a Garrison there but also have a squadron of able ships protecting harbor's entrance and ready to blast some of their precious troop-carrying transports. You don't need many ships to aid your Fort in defending the city, a few Cutters will suffice early on, a pair of Galleons or Frigates will be more than enough at later dates and then even a single SOL in each city during final days of your game can ruin your enemy's whole day. Having that many war ships will also take the war advisor who is always demanding more firepower off your back.

[nyah]

It sounds odd, but I hardly believe that's possible since you need:

1) A colony to gather the resource
2) A smithy to construct the resource gathering building.
3) A ship or squadron to transport it to another colony, where I also had to build a smith.
4) A building to turn the resource into processed items or finished goods; while another building is needed turn the processed items into finished goods.
5) a 2nd ship or squadron to transport the finished goods to the homefleet.

Thorin

On 2: You don't need a building to gather the resource. They are raw materials gathered by the people even if you build no buildings at all.
On 3: Build a shipyard in your colonies, then use it to build sloops. They are much faster than the early trade-ships, and much cheaper, but can only sail in coastal waters.
On 4: Yes, some finished goods have 2 tiers, some 3. Tier 3 goods fetch much higher prices with lower transportation overheads (because they take up less room)


Using a central processing hub and then collecting all of your finished goods from her for transportation home is much more efficient, and therefore much more cost effective. You might lose a little bit buying and selling the raw materials but that will be more than made up for by the increased profit.

You might be able to reduce this loss by keeping a surplus of the raw material in the resource production colony (a surplus meaning that the price there will fall), and no surplus in the factory colony (meaning there is high demand and the price will rise). I haven't tried this, but if I understand the game mechanics correctly (and they adhere to the laws of the relationship between supply, demand and price) then it should reduce the cost of transporting these raw materials.

Of course, doing this would reduce the amount of raw materials available to process by your factories, which will reduce the amount of goods you can transport home, and affect your profit from these trips. But if your home-fleets are full and your factory has a surplus of raw materials then slowing down the transport of raw materials will reduce your costs.

[NG-Juho]

Hi all!

The Commander's Handbook has been updated with some tips from you guys! Check it out here:
http://www.cota-game.com/?page=handbook_strategic

[Thorin Oakshiel]

I stand corrected at my previous post of the "centralized production".
I've been testing this in one of my games (since I save at the first month, I can play 2 games with almost the same starting conditions) and I did notice a difference.

What I forgot in my previous post, was that the building maintainence has a large influence at your balance.
i.e. Buying Silver Ore in a city for 110 and selling it in your regional hub for 99 causes a profit.
Melting that ore into silver bars only cost the maintenaince of one building.
Bying the bars for 478 and selling them for 1308 gives a profit of 680 gold pieces and when the maintainence has been taken off of that, a netto profit around 250-375 gold.

Thorin

[Thorin Oakshiel]

Back to topic:


- When creating a trade-route, start by selecting 1000 units of goods in both the buying and selling screen.
When that's done, delete all goods from the buying screen and set the amount you really want to buy.

If you have multiple stops for your route, the last stop has to have the "unload 1000 units command".
By doing so, you're always making sure you unload all good at the last stop, thus avoiding your ships to stockpile goods or units aboard.

Following up to the above:

- When transporting colonists or soldiers, check the number of citizens and soldiers in a colony from time to time. There are some level caps in the colony to keep an eye at.
So far I've found the next caps:
* Hospital lvl 1 needed after 1,5K citizens
* Hospital lvl 2 needed after 4,5K citizens
* Townhall upgrade needed to get beyond 5K and 7.5K citizens
* Garrison upgrade needed to get beyond 500 and 1K soldiers.


Thorin

[agibaer]

When attacking, don't turn when the enemy coming towards you, but keep on going. They can't hit you well when you face them your front.
The advantage is, that you get closer and fire more precisely without exposing your broadside to early. If you're lucky, you sail between to enemy ships and can fire both broadsides at once.

[-MoRiDin-]

I stand corrected at my previous post of the "centralized production".
I've been testing this in one of my games (since I save at the first month, I can play 2 games with almost the same starting conditions) and I did notice a difference.

What I forgot in my previous post, was that the building maintainence has a large influence at your balance.
i.e. Buying Silver Ore in a city for 110 and selling it in your regional hub for 99 causes a profit.
Melting that ore into silver bars only cost the maintenaince of one building.
Bying the bars for 478 and selling them for 1308 gives a profit of 680 gold pieces and when the maintainence has been taken off of that, a netto profit around 250-375 gold.

Thorin

So the whole point is to reduce building maintance...

so the MOSt effiecent system would be a series of prodcution hubs;

Colony 1: has whales.... build all the whale production facilities here
Colony 2: has silve... build all silver production here...

Run the finished silver to colony 1 (your hub city)

you found colony 3 and 4..
colony 3 has whales... ship them to colony 1 to be processed..
colony 4 has silver.. ship it to colony 2 to be processed and shiped to the hub...

this reduces how many raw materials have to be bought and sold while being processed... and you still only have one production buildign for each type... also all your eggs are not in your first hub...

[cruizer]

So the whole point is to reduce building maintance...

so the MOSt effiecent system would be a series of prodcution hubs;

Colony 1: has whales.... build all the whale production facilities here
Colony 2: has silve... build all silver production here...

Run the finished silver to colony 1 (your hub city)

you found colony 3 and 4..
colony 3 has whales... ship them to colony 1 to be processed..
colony 4 has silver.. ship it to colony 2 to be processed and shiped to the hub...

this reduces how many raw materials have to be bought and sold while being processed... and you still only have one production buildign for each type... also all your eggs are not in your first hub...

I usually play having a couple centralized production cities (hubs). In your description colony 1 could be a hub for whales, while colony 2 could be the hub for Silver. If colony 2 and 4 both produce silver it gets a little tougher to limit supply and artifically drive prices higher. Alternately you could build the production facility in any city. Meaning city A has whaling. City B has furs & silver. City C has spices and coca. If you put the palace in City C then whale oil production, a silver smelter and furrier could be built there then the raw materials brought in and proccessed. However if you are running automatic trade routes and you begin to run negative there is no local collection of raw materials to support production. In this model you can make supply and demand work for you and try to maximize profit. If you go negative be prepared to start selling ships to get some cash to get the system running again. Also you have to be carefull not to have an over supply of transportation. There is a maintanence cost associated with every ship and fleet commander just as there is with production facilities. But they can not be taxed as a colony can.

Greg.