America's : As Spain how to deal with France/England

[razor1952]

America 1565 vh/vh 20 provinces as Spain ally with aztecs and apaches, mayans gone, not yet a Count.

My question is best strat to deal with France and England. ?

1. Is it possible to destroy either of these factions or do they keep sending armies ?

(I was able to take the only french province but they stayed there as a "people in flight" !)

2. I was also able to become allies with both countries at least for 10 turns and are now amiable with both. Do people think this is the way to go so you can concentrate on the Aztecs?

3.Or should I just blast them anyway?

Obviously I could do either but from an aesthetic viewpoint in particular I ask the question, what would you do, or have done in this campaign?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

There will be nine French stacks and eight English stacks appearing. The first few stacks are the stronger ones. I suggest you blast them away. It was a Spanish fleet that discovered this nice playground full of heathens. Blast them to smithereens.

[Old Geezer]

The English in my 2 campaigns always land in the southeast and eventually attacked me regardless of what I did. I don't know what they might do if you left a city down there for them to make a home. I recommed blasting them asap. The French you really don't need to bother with unless you want to wipe them out so that the Apaches can't get horses and fireams. The Apaches can become a real pain if they get teched up.

[NS-NightStalker]

For some reason the French did not fair well against the rebels in their initial attempts to capture settlements. As a result, when they finally captured a settlement they did not have much of an army to garrison the settlement. That along with the low percentage of Catholics in the settlement caused them to lose the settlement to revolts. They lost & recaptured the settlement several times. The French did not get another settlement until their 2nd set of reinforcements arrived. Even then the constant battle with public order kept their armies busy with the settlements so they could not conquer any other settlements.

I allied with the French as soon as they appeared. I was able to sustain Perfect relations with them until the Apache declared war on them. The Apache sent 12 huge armies and quickly took both French settlements. Currently, the French are people in flight and stuck between my settlement on Tequesta (tip of FL) and the 12 Apache armies. My curiosity caused me to attack the remaining French army. The victory caused the destruction of the French faction. So yes they can be destroyed.

[NS-NightStalker]

The English did not fair as well as the French. The English skipped the rebel cities near their initial landing point and went straight into Mayan territory. They lost most of the battles. They did manage to take Tikal, but lost it due to public order.

I allied with them as soon as they arrived as well. I also managed to get perfect relations with them as well. My alliance with the English was EXTREMELY helpful in my war against the Mayans. The English armies often blocked the path of Mayan armies. This saved my newly captured settlements from being retaken, and gave me time to repair the damage I caused by capturing them.

Currently I have 21 settlements. The French are 1 full stack strong (I saved the game before I destroyed them since I did not really want to kill my ally).
The English are also 1 stack strong. The Aztecs have been destroyed. The Tlaxcalan did most of the work about 97% of it. I did the other 3%. The Mayans are also destroyed. I did most of the work, but the English helped out a lot.

So you can either destroy them or ally with them. If you want to ally with them, you have to maintain relations every turn with gifts of money, map info, or assistance against rebels. If you have a common enemy then assistance against the enemy will go far!

[Lamanz]

They can be destroyed when in horde form, which is how I do it