Joel Snyder

Lone Wolf is right, addding too many colonist too early lowers your SOL percentage and benefits. If you hover your mouse over the shield on the city display you will get a listing of how many turns until you can add a colonist at the current level, how many turns to 50% and how many turns to 100%. Keep watch of these numbers and you will be able to add colonists to your colony without suffering production drops. I have found that keeping the colony at 50% until I have maxed out the food supply gives...

When your food storage reaches 200 the food dissappears and you receive a free colonist instead.

I have found native alarms to be not a particular problem, with the help of trading, being French, and pocahantas. I usually place my colonies adjacent to the native tribes to maximize convert probability from missionaries ( I usually get five or six converts out of each missionary) , waiting with pocahantas until the alarm causes the indians to attack or not trade with me. Quite often the older tribes will disappear as the last indian converts and the tile becomes available to my colony.

I don't think this would work in freecol because, in my experience, the indians have never offered silver as an item for trade. Has anyone had a different experience? The general idea of trading with the natives for profit is sound, and will help any strategy.

To extend the play beyond independence, select defeat all european powers as the...

I also like large colonies, which require lots of bells and also, at some point,...

The river movement bonus only works if you move along the river, any deviation from...

While crosses you produce (through churches and preachers) speed the rate at which...