In 1746, three Spanish men-of-war are sighted off the coast on New Spain, bearing down on Southwatch, a fishing village built on a hill. Like all of my settlements, Southwatch is exceedingly well defended, with a fortress, at least three cannons, and a hefty defensive bonus for its 100% rebel sentiment. Furthermore, my Founding Fathers include plenty of military hard-hitters, such as Dom Pedro I, who gives all my defenders a minuteman bonus and veteran status. Two of the men-of-war unload troops adjacent to Southwatch, while the third attempts an amphibious invasion.

Read about the War of Independence after the jump.

I'm just going to go ahead and spoiler everything by telling you every single one of my settlements falls within a few turns of being attacked. It only takes 38 years from the appearance of the men-of-war off Southwatch to the fall of my last settlement. My defenses are little more than speed bumps for the attacking Spanish forces. What's the Spanish word for "steamroller"?

Sitting here in my Spanish prison, I have a lot of time to think about what went wrong.

1) Unlike Civilization IV, the defenses you build in Colonization get knocked down. In each of my settlements, I had built – and put great faith in – fortresses that give a 150% defensive bonus. If this was straight-up Civ IV, my defenders would always get that bonus, even if the enemy used ships or cannons to bombard the city. But that's not the case in Colonization, where bombardment whittles down the effectiveness of defensive structures. Since the king's forces showed up with plenty of artillery in tow, my fortresses were easily knocked over.

2) It's easy to get overconfident looking at the combat odds for a one-on-one engagement. Against any single Spanish attack, the odds heavily favored my defenders. At first. But whether I'm defending or attacking, I constantly fail to appreciate the efficacy of overwhelming numbers. A horde of less powerful attackers can easily damage a more powerful defender, making it less and less effective in successive fights and eventually killing it. The Spanish were able to knock down my fortresses and then repeatedly hit my defenders. They took plenty of losses, but they had plenty of units to lose. I didn't.

3) The really bone-headed move on my part was declaring independence too early. Furthermore, I'd suffered some serious setbacks to my economy, thanks to mismanaged wars with the Incas and the Tupi. I should have had more settlements making me more money for a longer period of time. I should have had a powerful enough military to be proactive as soon as Spanish troops landed, with a mobile force to weaken and harass them as they tried to get in position around my cities.

4) As the game progressed and I emphasized liberty bell production, I was easily able to buy Founding Fathers out from under the Dutch and French. By the game's end, I had a 20-member Continental Congress and 76,000 unused "liberty bell" points I would never be able to spend. My emphasis on producing liberty bells meant the king regularly increased the size of his army, since liberty bells represent "rebel sentiment". By the time I declared independence, there was no way I was going to hold out against a force that large. My only hope would have been to develop a massive navy to cut off the king's troops before they got to New Spain. But I didn't even bother with a navy. In fact, I didn't build a single ship, much less a drydock.

(As a corollary for #4, part of my emphasis on liberty bells was that I wanted to make sure each settlement had a 100% rebel sentiment. Simon Bolivar, my Spanish leader, gets a defensive bonus based on the town's rebel sentiment. Larger cities need more liberty bells to get the percentage up, so I went liberty bell crazy. What I failed to take into account is that by the time I'd armed colonists to serve as soldiers, the size of the settlement shrank dramatically, so that it easily had 100% rebel sentiment. I hugely botched this game with my gross overproduction of liberty bells.)

5) I actually didn't even have to declare independence. I was so far ahead of the Dutch and French that I could have won by riding the clock out and having the highest score at the time limit.

6) For the first time, I was playing a notch up from the middle difficulty level. Maybe I wasn't ready.

So there are my excuses. Basically, it comes down to this: I suck at Colonization. It's not an easy game. But I will say that it's a sure sign it's a great game when you suffer an utter and humiliating defeat ad immediately want to play again.

(Click here to read the previous Colonization game diary.)