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The "Dune" map key for Imperialism 2 produces a peculiar map with very few grain farms, no horse ranches, and far fewer actually productive forest tiles than the map suggests.
It is possible to win on Normal difficulty setting choosing Sweden. You can give that country a different name.
No more horses[]
AI nations seem unaware that there are no horse ranches. You can buy most, maybe all, of the other GPs' existing 30 horse units early and save them up for creating matchless but irreplaceable field artillery.
Timber[]
Not a stick of usable timber in Sweden, so prepare to court the main timber producers among the minor nations, starting with Ireland and Germany.
Population and idleness[]
Expect one or two pairs of free immigrants each century. If you don't have enough grain to feed all, just ensure that there's more than enough meat and accept temporary idleness. At least one of every two new citizens is fit for work. Pursue the three-grain and four-grain technologies but remember that you need Early Steam Engine for anything above two except at a port. Once your Railroad Engineer is working, the three-iron tech will be usable too, along with triple gems, sugar, and whatever else you have accumulated overseas.
Game report highlights[]
Game played in mid-May 2012, naming our country "Dune"
- 1528 gems!! - not too far inland; probably made the game winnable
- 1670 (yes, what an age it takes when your resources are shoestrings!) Road Construction
- 1686 first apprentice
- 1696 discover tobacco - maybe the only such farm in the world; successive owners occasionally sell some to us
- 1701 military victories result in upgraded armory
- 1721 we discover gold but it's across a border in Portuguese territory
- 1736 16 horses; eventually got 3 more
- 1753 embassy with Italy, where there are two sheep farms (one already partly developed) and a coal deposit
- 1757 Merchant - off to Italy, where the sheep farm investments earned regular royalties of about $50 or $100 but the coal purchase and development probably didn't pay because few AIs reached the stage of needing to buy coal
- 1783 Early Steam Engine: grain (almost immediately) and gems (1800) being the early destinations
- 1789 we produce more grain on our five farms than chief rival Portugal does on its seven
- 1857 20 grain; just as well, because around that time we persuaded Germany to join the empire, so we had to feed its bowmen, causing a lot of malnutrition (up to 8 workers sick for a few successive turns). Invasion of neighbour Switzerland, with its three grain farms, was the main solution: Aargau $5,422; Bern $3,467; Basel $8,871; and Zurich $13,307, allowing faster research for a while.
- 1880 Italy becomes a vassal of Portugal; our purchase flags are ripped out, which wouldn't happen in the New World.
- 1895 field artillery start rolling out - three eventually; a single one (tried against London in 1896 accompanied by 2 musketeers, 3 bowmen, 1 culverin, and 1 Royal Artillery versus 1 skirmisher and 1 hussar) can't handle even a level 1 fort with a siege gun
- 1906 capture London, at the same time as we upgraded our emplaced artillery to the maximum; really the scent of victory is in the nostrils
- Portugal saw that we had England in the bag, so it declared war on neighbouring Scotland; we did too, of course, and moved smoothly in from the south of England to take Edinburg in 1918 with $3,812 and Highlands in 1919 with $25,439! Portugal got Ayr.
- 1919 DW on Denmark, the only unclaimed neutral state (as Spain had annexed Ireland centuries earlier): 1921 Copenhagen $2,358 (cutting off land access for Portugal from Italy), 1922 Schleswig $15,017, 1923 Jutland $22,527! Need just three more Old World provinces to become world ruler.
- 1924 step up bribes for France, which had once had a 100% relationship with us but then slipped back; as the other GPs had all declared war on it by now, we could have too, but we try the polite way first.
- 1925 invite France to join empire; they refuse; we declare war while massing troops in Aargau.
- 1926 Surely France saw the threat to Paris? Apparently not: their troops in the west gleefully took Schleswig (undefended and unfortified) while we marched into Paris. Our recent huge bribes to Holland then paid off surprisingly well: Holland's half-dozen home provinces and extensive overseas holdings joined the empire. End of story.
Well - we finished the turn, capturing Normandy with the sad loss of a Musketeer from an 18-strong army that included two FAs against an empty level 1 fort. Strong defenders, those siege guns.