The most annoying thing about the game for me is how European powers, even when at peace with you, cluster their dragoons around your colonies. Right now England has a dozen dragoons just hanging out around my colonies, blocking my roads, and sitting on top of squares that I'd like to improve.

When I send a scout to their city to demand that they remove their forces from around my colonies, they ay that their forces protect valid interests, and will not be moved.

Any tips on getting them to move, short of declaring war? I really don't want to spend the horses and muskets it would take to kill them all.

Our solution, when we were kids and the french version of the game had the tendency of crashing the game when we met European powers, was to play on archipelago map, with small land masses, claim a smallish island and drop useless units like petty criminals on every shore square of the island to prevent anyone from landing and do that on every islands we claimed. But to the best of my knowledge, save for buying a couple cannons, horses and muskets, there's no easy way to fix your problem.

And this is why they stay. While at its heart Colonization is a economic game, the AI will try and win in its simple way. If you have no troops and they are more powerful they will try and bully you. In that particular game, I would say the way to remove them is hammer a few and send them on their way. Perhaps a few privateers to harass their shipping. Or you can get Ben Franklin as a founding father and it may push a more promising result to your scout negotiations.

If you find no fun in that kind of stuff Blueskirts idea would work. You could also use the Cheat Menu (alt W I N, I believe) to simply remove the troops if you are really in love with the map you are on. You could also use the old save/reload method and use a single dragoon to remove all his troops. Just remember the RNG needs to be reseeded after each failed attack otherwise you will get the same result over and over. So have a few guys to do something different here and there between attacks.

Build a road out of the colony when you set it up, and then station one/two soldier units outside on the road, and set them to fortify (or sentry). That way, you are always guaranteed a way in and out of the colony if annoying forces do start showing up.

If you are not at war with the other power, just having them sat outside your colony wont affect whether you can upgrade the area or not - only if you are at war with them and they decide to fortify on that tile. Annoyingly, sometimes the AI will go to war with you unexpectedly and fortify anyway, so you still need good colony defenses.

One surefire way of stopping the problem in the first place is to have an aggressive policy against nearby European powers from as early on as you can possibly manage - preferably before they stockade their first settlement. I always try to get a ship (preferably a privateer) with 2 dragoons ready to attack the nearest power by around 1510 or so. This can be done most games, even on Viceroy level. If you can draw first blood, you put them on the back heel from the start, and they are much less likely to bother you as the middle game progresses. It also gives you a much needed early population boost if you can capture their first settlement or two, and as long as it isn't stockaded, you can always ship all of the captured colonists back to your main colonies, and abandon it. If the European power starts a new settlement, simply rinse and repeat until they slow their empire building right down, which they eventually must do.

I tend to use a privateer for this mission, as with any luck, you might be able to sink their ship as well, slowing their progress down even further - especially the English who only start with a caravel.

Whatever your policy towards the other Europeans early on, one good tip is to have a scout right next to a colony of the annoying power. that is pestering your colonies. If you do need to attack one of their forces to get them away from your colony, attack it, and then have your scout negotiate peace BEFORE the end of your turn (this works 100% of the time if you have Benjamin Franklin as a Founding Father). This way, the AI wont attack you during their turn, so you always have a free hit on their forces, without giving them the chance to hit back :)

It doesn't help your particular problem in this case, but hopefully it will give some food for thought when planning a future strategy.

In case they are not fortified, the AI is normally moving them, so depending on the location, you can ´force´ the AI to move them off your territory by blocking the path by which they arrive.

What I have seen happening is like

XXDX
DAXX
XXBX

So the AI is moving between A and B. If you can prevent them from reaching A, but still being able to reach B, you will get rid of them on this field, like moving units on field D. All units have a ZOC, Zone of Control, which cannot be moved into, BUT OUT off unless war. But don´t make the mistake off blocking them completely, THEN they WILL fortify and can only be removed by war.

I hope this helps ;)

Declaration of war doesnt matter in the case of tile improvement. You cannot improve the tile if someone is on it, regardless of political state.

Hiya

Then this must be a difference between the GOG version, and the one I normally play through DOSbox. I bought the one from GOG, but haven't played it much yet (only as far as to tell at least the music is different from my trusty old version).

Even on the GOG version, as far as I have been able to tell, if you have a colonist collecting resources on a tile, if a foreign power lands on that tile, your colonist can keep working regardless of its presence. It is only when that enemy unit moves to Fortify (or perhaps sentry - will need to check the GOG version) that the colonist gets kicked back to the town as an unemployed unit.

I've only ever known foreign units to be a problem when they are hostile, not when they are justing loitering or passing through.

Cheers

Oh, but I see what you mean when I re-read.

Of course, you cannot IMPROVE a tile with a hostile unit on it - the pioneering unit would get owned by the enemy unit!

I see that I wrote my original statement incorrectly - insert "harvest" for "upgrade" in my original post :)

I guess what I was thinking at the time was, that you can still have a newbie farmer, and teach him farming to upgrade his harvest, and an enemy unit would not effect that

Cheers

Alternatively, you can simply stop the computer players from landing troops setting up colonies by setting the speed of caravels to 0. Pick Dutch, who start with a different ship type, the whole world is yours. Just make sure not to attack any of their caravels or they'll get combat ships (stupid cheating AI)

You can change the speed of units by editing NAMES.TXT