How to lose – in one easy lesson, by Henri A.

“As usual, I played the game after only a quick scanning of the readme and none of the manual. I got my ass kicked on the easy level. Here is how I did it.

First I chose a country (Holland in the default screen) with only two forest squares; this ensured that I would be short of lumber for a long time. Then I upgraded my workers as fast as I could, despite having none of the luxuries that advanced workers need, which ensured that more than half of my labor force would be refusing to work for most of the game.

Then I concentrated on developing advances for my resource tiles, unmindful of the fact that my primitive road network was unable to carry the additional resources created.

Being short of wood, I could not afford to build more ships, which ensured that after I had found some New World resources, I would not have enough cargo space to bring back the resources that became available. As early as I could, I built an army which I kept at home doing nothing, since I could not spare ships to take them abroad early in the game, which helped to keep my food supply low. I also paid little attention to diplomacy, which contributed to various shortages when I could not buy the resources that I needed. I sold paper and textiles as fast as I could produce them, so that when I needed to buy workers, I was usually missing something.I didn’t keep any food in reserve, so that some of my workers died regularly from starvation; this is a refined technique known as balancing the food and labor supplies…

Late in the game, when I was still struggling with a labor force most of which was on strike and a measly army of weak units, most major forces ganged up on Sweden, which was the most powerful power and my neighbor; I succeeded to temporarily take a couple of their territories, but sooon found myself defending against a much stronger army.

Finally everyone noticed that I was a pushover, so they all ganged up on me and soon it was curtains.

You too can lose on the easy level, if you make all the right moves… ;>)