I think you’re doing something wrong. I get a fisherman option.
You have a fisherman working a water square in your city limits? And you have a colonist/servant/criminal in the schoolhouse?
I thought I did, but I could have been mistaken. Maybe I didn’t have enough money? I’ll test it out again later.
I don’t think you need to pay to make a student into a fisherman. I’m pretty sure I’ve trained fishermen this way.
Be warned: The number of education points each successive student needs to graduate ramps up quite quickly. Fishermen are cheap to “buy” at the docks for the flat rate. You may want to stick to training statesmen and preachers.
As with all great games, there’s more than one way to win.
I have won all five of my games so far, without losing a single town.
I put my first settler straight onto Liberty Bells, which gives me early Founding Fathers, plus a bonus to production. My first building is Docks (if I have a sea resource), but then Printing Press (more Liberty Bells!).
This first Settlement heads for rebel sentiment, and builds almost all the buildings I need.
My other (inland) settlements generate political / religious / trade / military points as required for the next Founding Father. (They only get Statesmen when war is imminent.)
I like early on:
Pedro (Exploration) -50% time to sail to Europe
Vasco (Exploration) +25% to all settlement defence
Juan (Religious) + 2 natives
Thomas (Religious) +3 Expert Missionaries
Roger (Religious) +25% conversions / better native relations
William (Religious) +3 crosses per Town Hall / better native relations
Hernan (Military) Stockade in every settlement
Diego (Military) +3 Servants
John (Politics) +3 crosses per Town Hall
Pocohontas better native relations
and of course the star…
Peter (Trade) -25% cost of buying Specialists
See my answer above - one more benefit to having some rebel sentiment early is that when you’re ready to declare Independence it’s quicker to reach the 50% that you need.
I figure a ratio of about 3-1 between the King’s troops (not counting Warships) and my troops is enough to win, e.g… if I have a total of 20 Dragoons and Cannons and they have a total of 60 Dragoons, Soldiers and Artillery.
I always equip Dragoons, because they are tougher and can retreat.
When I get a Great General, I give all it’s xp to one unit and get Surgeon 1,2 + 3. This provides healing (very important).
Note that your advantages are:
- they come in waves; all your forces are already on the battlefield
- you can heal up quickly
- you can attack first (as soon as they land)
- you can choose which unit to send in each time
I usually win about 1650, with a comfortable number of troops left…
Well they are not likely to be a threat to you once they’ve lost all their original colonies.
Given the win comes from defeating the King, you simply don’t need to wipe out the Europeans.
P.S. Cannons are great at wiping out Settlements (and cheaper than Dragoons or Soldiers) 
Just checked in my current game:
Lumberjack, Fishermen, Farmers and Tobacco Planter* were all free upon graduation.
*I assume that if I’d had a Sugar / Cotton Planter, an Ore Miner or a Fur Trapper in town to provide tuition that they would all be free too.
Well certainly they’re not a threat, but they can’t be defeated. I finally made peace after I had eight(!) ships-of-the-line cranked up to 26 points each. 208 wins, and as soon as I made peace, they founded a colony! I just don’t get it.
If I’m in a custom game with the Europe win option checked, I expect to be able to defeat the Europeans. Dadgummit.
I don’t think that Europe option means anything, i.e. it’s not a victory condition.
In the original Colonisation, the Royal Expeditionary Force got a combat bonus in the form of whatever Tory Sentiment was in the Colonies as a whole.
ie, if you had 75% Rebel Sentiment and 25% Tory Sentiment, then your troops got a 75% bonus and the REF got a 25% bonus. If you kept producing Liberty Bells then your bonus went up; if you lost cities (and thus Rebels) it went down.
Anyone know if this is true this time around?
In this game you get a bonus of (Rebel Sentiment - 50) % ; i.e. if your Rebel Sentiment is 83%, all your units get a 33% bonus to fight.
I think there’s a bug with Simon Bolivar (who’s supposed to increase this bonus, but doesn’t.)
So I won my first game last night (first try), but it was a squeaker. As I didn’t know what the heck I was doing with my armies, it didn’t go well at first and I lost a settlement. However, as they went inland I just hedgehogged behind my fortresses and let them beat themselves up while knocking out weak REF troops with a dragoon. What it took me a while to realize was that after a while, they figured this out and retreated behind the walls of the colony they captured. So I was preparing for more defense, I needed to go on offense. So after a few cannon were created, I was able to defeat the remnants of the REF who were holed up in one of my old cities. The war lasted 50 years. :eek: But like I said, mainly that had to do with me not knowing the strengths and weakness of units and overpreparing for defense, when I needed to hit the field.
Congratulations!
I find that attacking the King’s troops works well, especially if I have the Rebel Sentiment combat bonus (see two posts earlier).
I can add that Simon Bolivar is a Gorilla (as well as a guerilla ), because he does double this bonus. :eek:
I just won a game with Simon where I lost no towns and finished with over double the troops I started with. 
I had Rebel Sentiment of about 72%, which translated into a combat bonus of (72-50)*2 = 44%.
Is there ever a case where you wouldn’t want a founding father to join you?
Yes. You have to spend those points to earn him, and if you “buy” him, you’re that much farther from getting the next guy. Your opponents don’t spend points on him, and they get the next guy before you can.
If you turn him down, you save your points to get the next guy sooner. Furthermore, one of your opponents will blow all their points on Mr. One-Free-Caravel and won’t snap up one of the good founding fathers before you can.
Max is absolutely right.
The more I play, the longer I spend keeping an eye on which Founding Father category (Religion, Trade etc) to put points into next.
Peter Minuit (25% cheaper European Specialists) is probably the best, but getting a couple of extra natives or missionaries is very useful too.
Thanks for the heads up.
I did get Minuit on the current game. He has made life easier. However the map just sucks with not enough good farmland. I doubt I win this one.
If food is an issue, found colonies with three or even four coastal tiles in their radius. Once you have a docks, expert fishermen can support a decent-sized settlement even with only non-bonus squares. Since you have Minuit, buying them should be relatively cheap.
I have seen a lot of bad mixes on terrain on random maps, though. I prefer to have three tiles around a colony that produce the same cash crop, but you can work around that. You have a hub colony with just farmers, fishermen, lumberjacks, and ore miners; this hub concentrates on high production, and builds a lumber mill and all the shops and factories and so forth (as well as wagon trains). Then you have smaller spoke colonies that just gather resources and don’t build much of anything (at least nothing with the prerequisite of a costly lumber mill). You then set up trade routes so that the tobacco, cotton, sugar, and furs from the spokes get transported to the hub for processing. That way it doesn’t matter if a spoke has one tile for tobacco, one for sugar, and one for cotton; you’re not building a distillery there anyway regardless of whether you have three sugar planters or just one.
I wanted to try to stay inland with most colonies, because the REF navy blasted the crap out of the defenses. As bad luck had it, I only have one point of ocean access from my only coastal colony. I’ve been doing a lot of the raw material “spokes” that you’re talking about. We’ll see if I can salvage this, or if bad planning early on ruined me. I suspect it will be iffy, but it’ll be fun.
The first colony placement is very important.
Sometimes I drop off my Pioneer at one likely spot and sail around nearby looking for an alternative.