I played and beat Imperialism II many, many years ago, but just started my first real many hours experience with Imperialism I a couple of weeks ago. And I've played through several games now, and I'm really having trouble beating the game on normal difficulty, which is not something I'm used to. On most games, I fare quite well on normal difficulty, even Civ games, which many find to be quite challenging.

I feel like I must be "missing" something, or not thinking of something, or there may be an "exploit" that most players take advantage of or something. I've read through this forum and have read many, many tips and pointers (and most are very, very good) but they're all stuff I pretty much figured out anyway.

I just wish I could WATCH a game of a complete, start to finish playthrough on normal (or higher) difficulties. But I've searched You Tube dozens of times and have only been able to find brief snippets of game play there.

Is anyone aware of any complete games being available anywhere else for viewing? I realize a complete game would likely be many hours, but I've watched complete playthroughs of other similar games on You Tube before and they were just broken down into about 30 parts.

I fear reading any more than I've already read isn't going to do the trick and this may be one of those I need to learn visually. I would pay someone go come over to my house and play on my machine and let me watch if I could afford such a thing, but I can't. I'd really like to SEE, with my own eyes, how others are beating the game on anything from normal and above. I'm thinking one "trick" may be to "reroll" your starting nation until you find just the right one, something I've never done as IMO a game should be beatable at normal difficulty on any setting the game generates. Is that one of the "tricks" to beating it????

Found this on Youtube. Hope it helps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j_0ZCoSN9s

Couple possibilities. The reason why the other Powers are constantly improving their wood, cloth and ingot production is that you get free goods from your Villages. With factories with four chair production, you will get wood planks for free from certain Village. More upgrades can lead to Chair production. Ditto Iron and Cloth.
The Village has to be one square away from a train station that is covering multiple units of trees. And (sometimes) the resources seem to have to be in the same province (white lines). And the Village production only kicks in with upgrades to train traffic. You may know all this. But if not, the additional resources mean money and ships that can make the difference.

Trade is more important than Imp2.

Watch the status bars. You can avoid putting much into the military until you hit the bottom third in military. Then you are in trouble. (Other great powers tend to build Armies on regular soldiers. Human players want Sharpshooters and mobile artillery. Since Army status is based on units, the status bar doesn't reflect that you could be a lot stronger than it appears. Sharpshooters make great fodder for the mobile artillery and mobile artillery is the king of the tactical war.) But if your status is too low, then everyone attacks.

Again you may know this, and hope the film helps.

Yes, 4 of a resource will get you 1 free product.

But were you can waste a lot of valuable resources is upgrading your resources.

Building the first resource is much cheaper than upgrading them all, or maybe better to say, first develop ALL your resources, before you start upgrading. This will get even worst for LVL 3 resources.

And yes some of the maps DO give certain nations a disadvantage, so in the worst case, certain maps are not beatable with a certain nation and certain decisions.

Disadvantage means for example, you don't have a lot of wood, hence you are severely hampered.
Or later on, no coal. I think you get my idea ;)

Sometimes you can still win those games, if you take the right decisions: No wood -> go for wood at all cost. This would mean, getting some friends let call it, start a war and take those specific regions you need, And if possible, back to peace.

Sometimes starting wars, will really help you, if you just stay outside and let them do their fighting ;)

Just for fun, you could post the number of the map and we could try it as well ;) (IIRC correctly Imp 1 has the same feature, or?)

IMP1 is very unforgiving and has a very steep learning curve. There are also a few important differences with IMP2
In IMP2, diplomacy with minor nations is rather unimportant. It's all about finding diamonds and gems in the new world to fuel your economy. In IMP1, undeveloped iron and coal deposits in minor nations generate 1 unit per turn which you can buy and unlike in IMP2 they need no connection to depots or anything. Getting your hands on them early in the game can be a huge advantage so diplomacy in IMP is mandatory..

If you want to try out some tactics, they playing one of the scenarios and pick England for an easy start.

I don't think it has a steep learning curve at all. It is very easy to learn and you can constantly improve.

I'd say the biggest thing is industrialisation, meaning the free products thing other people mentioned. Choose a starting country with multiple forests or cotton and wool in the same province and then the first thing you do is connect a depot near the province capital and build up your furniture or cloth factory. If you have 4 forest in a connected province then you are on for free stuff pretty soon. (there is a turn limit in the beginning to it, so even if you immediately build up the furniture factory to the industrialization bonus max of 20, you won't get it all right away.)

Use the profits to buy steel/coal/iron. It usually takes way to long to prospect your own for this. Also build a ship of the line as soon as the other powers start making alliances, if you don't have a ship of the line by the end of alliance building, they will perceive you as weak and all gang up on you. If they don't declare war on someone else soon, build a second one or you are at risk.

Do all this before you start to connect the actual resources and build up the labor force. There is no need to connect the resources themselves, but they can still be upgraded to count to the industry free stuff.
It is entirely possible to consistently win nigh-on impossible.

I know this is the popular opinion and I used to agree with it, but lately I've been ignoring the new world and have consistently been doing MUCH better.

1. Scrap your starting bowman ASAP

2. Ignore the New World entirely. Early on, maybe send a single ship to map the coastlines but that's it.

3. Do not pay a dime for tech. Wait until other powers start getting techs, then build a spy to steal it from the nation with the most vital techs (send the spy to his capitol, research the techs they have and set to $0).

4. Start by following the IMP1 strategy and build a trade consul in minor nations and subsidy to get most favored trade partner. Buy stuff you need (any wood/iron shortages, tin if you don't have a source). Since you're not spending any money on tech you can easily afford this.

5. Spend your resources on developing your infrastructure. Focus on getting just enough iron/wood to be making a road/improvement every turn. Then grab all the grain/cattle available in your nation. Build a port to grab fish if your cattle does not match your grain. Constantly build as many workers as your expanding food production can support. Your production should be shooting through the roof.

6. You're still not spending a dime on research, right? Good. Be sure to move your spy if a different nation becomes the tech leader. Instantly replace him if he gets caught.

7. You should have excesses of cloth/lumber/cast iron by now. Be selling those.

8. Set your goal at either getting horse artillery or galleons. Once you get enough horse artillery to capture a minor nation capital, start looking at conquering a neighbor or two. You want to develop their grain/cattle to keep increasing your worker/military count.

9. Unlike IMP1, it is almost never worth it to upgrade workers. You only get ONE extra labor per level (after subtracting labor cost to manufacture their luxury good) and they can easily starve during war. You only want the worker upgrade techs as prerequisites to other techs.

10. Are galleons available yet? Build as many as you can. The single most useful unit in the game. Great cargo, great naval power. Even more useful than ships of the line. As far as land forces go, heavy infantry are actually the most useful unit (a departure from IMP1) once you get musketeers. Get a couple mobile artillery, don't bother with anything else.

11. Once you've grabbed a minor nation neighbor or two and gotten galleons, there should be another weak major power everyone is ganging up on. NOW is the time to take a look at the new world. If you spot a juicy diamond/gem province owned by a major power who's already occupied with a war dec, go ahead and declare war on them to grab the precious stones. Fortify that spot and instantly declare peace. There's no other reason to bother with the new world other than juicy diamond/gem spots. Don't spread yourself thin grabbing anything else.

12. At this point, you're gearing yourself up for an old world grab to win. You have to be careful because at this point declaring war on any more minor nations will probably have them surrender to and be taken over by another strong major power. If you don't have any open borders with them, you might want to declare war on a major superpower just so you can cripple his merchant fleet with your superior galleon navy. Once his merchant fleet is in tatters, he'll plummet in the rankings (unlike IMP1 where powers somehow stayed powerhouses even with zero merchant fleet).

13. You should be making enough money now that you don't have to rely on leeching free tech. Start spending money to research: 2 capacity roads (don't bother with railroads), town improvements, steel production, light artillery, heavy infantry, and advanced ironclads. Assign a spy to one of your own cities to protect your tech from being stolen.

14. At some point, an endgame condition will be reached. Either you will grab enough of the old world to win, you will bite off more than you can chew when a major power declares on you, or you get advanced ironclads. Once you get advanced ironclads, you pretty much win.

I tried playing like this, it works

Although about upgrading workers,in normal games I do like the fur dudes, and also you are forgetting about the free products from province industrialization. Every province with 2 or more of the same is one or two free upgraded workers. I usually skip the sugarjunkies, because that product is an easy sale.

"town improvement" = free industrialization. And I think it's 4 of the same resource in the province to get the free manufactured good. Unlike IMP1, you don't get it automatically. You have to research town improvement then left click one of your improvement dudes on a village to upgrade it to a city. Only your capital gets this for free from the start.

If you're getting the luxury goods (sugar/tobacco/furs) that just happen to be in your diamond/gem provinces, fine go ahead and upgrade the worker. Otherwise I don't bother with them. I only bother getting the techs (gathering and worker improvement) because they're prerequisites for the more advanced army units.

I forgot to add, don't forget about stockpiling coal late game. It takes 24 raw coal to build each ironclad.

So I'm confused: what exactly does it take for industrialization to kick in for IMP1? I'm reading different things here. The depot has to be right next to the village? The depot itself has to be next to 4 resources or just 4 resources has to exist in the province? They do or don't have to be connected to the railroad? Your furniture/clothes/arms factories have to be a certain size?

I also can't nail down exactly what gets you a developer unit. I've been the most favored nation since turn 3, constantly buying and selling with the minor nation, embassy, pact, and I still never get one. Time passes and every AI has developers that have bought up the entire map and I still have yet to get a developer. I just don't get it.

The depot has to be on the village or next to it.
The province has to have 4 resource yield in it, the resources do not need to be connected. So two unconnected upgraded wood would be enough.
The end product factories have to be a certain size (up to 20 units). The lumber/fabric/steel resource plants don't matter.
And here's the hidden kicker: At the start of the game there is a turn limit for industrialization to kick in. So even if you have a 20 units furniture factory on turn 10 it won't yield the max industrialization. I do not know the exact turn times here.

I think you get a developer if you have green relations with a minor nation. The manual says you get it if your relations with one minor nation have "improved sufficiently".

I was not aware of the specific rules of industrialization before. Started new games planning for it and HOLY CRAP my game has improved.

Now onto minor nations. Does a minor nation continue participating in the market, buying and selling, when it is conquered by a major power? So if every minor nation is conquered, every major nation would eventually go broke because no one is buying up goods?

And does a minor nation go back to being an independent country if the conquering nation is eliminated?

In IMP1 you need 30 rail capacity to get industrial goods. You also need upgrade the corresponding factory type in your capitol

minor nations keep active in trading once they join as colonies. However, the controlling nation may restrict which other major nations they'll trade with.

Colonies to an eliminated major power revert to being neutral minor nations (although their military might be a lot different)

Where did you get that from? The manual does not mention this. Also I just tried a testgame without upgrading rail at all and I got industrial goods at the normal rate while rail capacity remained at 15.

ah ok, I could mistaken about rail. you definitely need to upgrade factories though