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Kiss a Pinky Ring? Never! [Let's Play] Sid Meier's Colonization
enlightenedbum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Yeah, I'm playing another Sid Meier game. I was contemplating one of the Paradox games next and I might still do that, but Mr. Povondra beat me to the punch. This time it will be:
Specifically, the old version published in 1994. Which I wasn't allowed to play when we bought it until I finished a stupid leaf collection project for school. I was not Susie Derkins.
Mostly, I think my dad just wanted to play it.
There is also a new version, using the Civ4 engine. There are a few changes to how things work, but not too many significant ones and the old version has a lot of charm to it. I will be playing on an average difficulty level because I don't want to think too hard and it's been a little while since I played it. Updates will be whenever I feel like it but probably every couple days.
Viewer participation!
I'm not going overboard like last time, but I'll give you guys some input. War declarations, general style, emphasis, when to declare independence, that kind of thing. Maybe some of the founding father choices I'll leave up to you.
Specifically, here's your first choice (please use the color suggested so I can count more easily!). Who should we be?
France - More likely to be able to get the natives to like them. Probably the hardest to play as, though that power can be useful.
England - More immigrants at the docks for free in Europe. This is an awesome power, arguably the strongest.
Spain - Every native village you kill gives you a treasure train. Useful if you like war mongering. I don't, so usually don't play as Spain.
The Netherlands - Starts the game with a Merchantman instead of a Caravel (thus: 4 cargo spaces instead of 2) and Amsterdam is a less volatile market than London, La Rochelle, or Seville. An awesome power for a game that is largely about economics.
To guide you a little bit. This game is like Civilization in that it's an empire builder. However, instead of just food/hammers/commerce there is a much larger variety of goods which you can buy and sell in order to make money which in turn expands your empire. Your goal in the end game is to increase rebel sentiment and found a new nation, and then defeat the King's expeditionary force. I'll explain in more detail once one nation has five votes, at which point I will play for a little bit, found a colony, and do some other stuff so you have a better idea of what's going on.
So with that: PICK A NATION!
Founding Fathers!
Trade types:
Jakob Fugger - Forgives all current boycotts if we ever have a tea party or equivalent
Peter Minuit - Natives give us land for free
Adam Smith - Allows factory buildings, which make extra processed goods but don't consume extra raw materials
Peter Stuyvesant - Allows the Customs House, which allows us to trade with Europe without sailing there, including during the revolution
Jan de Witt - Allows trade with foreign colonies and gives us a more detailed foreign affairs report
Exploration:
Francisco Coronado - Makes all existing colonies visible
Henry Hudson - Doubles the effectiveness of all fur trappers (cumulative with any expert bonuses)
Sieur de la Salle - every colony over size 3 gets a free stockade
Ferdinand Magellan - All ships get +1 movement, sailing time from the Pacific -> Europe reduced
Hernando de Soto - All land units see 2 spaces further, makes all goody huts positive
Military:
Hernan Cortes - Conquering native villages always gives treasure
Francis Drake - +50% to privateer strength
John Paul Jones - free frigate (strongest ship available to us, 4 cargo spaces and decent speed)
Paul Revere - if there are guns in an undefended colony when it's attacked, the defender gets a bonus
George Washington - any free colonists who win a battle are automatically promoted to veteran soldiers, petty criminals to indentured servants, and indentured servants to free colonists
Political:
Benjamin Franklin - other colonial powers always have to offer peace, negotiations with them are more favorable, and they don't declare war on you in the colonies merely because there are European wars going on off screen
Thomas Jefferson - +50% to liberty bell production
Thomas Paine - Rebel sentiment is increased by the currenty tax rate in all colonies
Pochahantas - resets all native tension, gives you the French bonus
Simon Bolivar - +20% rebel sentiment in all colonies
Religious:
Jean de Brebeuf - All missionaries function as experts
William Brewster - petty criminals and indentured servants no longer show up at the docks, when we get a free guy from religious strife, we get to pick which one we want
Bartolome de la Casas - all converted natives become free colonists
William Penn - +50% cross production
Juan Gines de Sepulveda - when we attack native villages, we'll get "converts" to join us
Pick 5 and rank them!
Specifically, the old version published in 1994. Which I wasn't allowed to play when we bought it until I finished a stupid leaf collection project for school. I was not Susie Derkins.
Mostly, I think my dad just wanted to play it.
There is also a new version, using the Civ4 engine. There are a few changes to how things work, but not too many significant ones and the old version has a lot of charm to it. I will be playing on an average difficulty level because I don't want to think too hard and it's been a little while since I played it. Updates will be whenever I feel like it but probably every couple days.
Viewer participation!
I'm not going overboard like last time, but I'll give you guys some input. War declarations, general style, emphasis, when to declare independence, that kind of thing. Maybe some of the founding father choices I'll leave up to you.
Specifically, here's your first choice (please use the color suggested so I can count more easily!). Who should we be?
France - More likely to be able to get the natives to like them. Probably the hardest to play as, though that power can be useful.
England - More immigrants at the docks for free in Europe. This is an awesome power, arguably the strongest.
Spain - Every native village you kill gives you a treasure train. Useful if you like war mongering. I don't, so usually don't play as Spain.
The Netherlands - Starts the game with a Merchantman instead of a Caravel (thus: 4 cargo spaces instead of 2) and Amsterdam is a less volatile market than London, La Rochelle, or Seville. An awesome power for a game that is largely about economics.
To guide you a little bit. This game is like Civilization in that it's an empire builder. However, instead of just food/hammers/commerce there is a much larger variety of goods which you can buy and sell in order to make money which in turn expands your empire. Your goal in the end game is to increase rebel sentiment and found a new nation, and then defeat the King's expeditionary force. I'll explain in more detail once one nation has five votes, at which point I will play for a little bit, found a colony, and do some other stuff so you have a better idea of what's going on.
So with that: PICK A NATION!
Founding Fathers!
Trade types:
Jakob Fugger - Forgives all current boycotts if we ever have a tea party or equivalent
Peter Minuit - Natives give us land for free
Adam Smith - Allows factory buildings, which make extra processed goods but don't consume extra raw materials
Peter Stuyvesant - Allows the Customs House, which allows us to trade with Europe without sailing there, including during the revolution
Jan de Witt - Allows trade with foreign colonies and gives us a more detailed foreign affairs report
Exploration:
Francisco Coronado - Makes all existing colonies visible
Henry Hudson - Doubles the effectiveness of all fur trappers (cumulative with any expert bonuses)
Sieur de la Salle - every colony over size 3 gets a free stockade
Ferdinand Magellan - All ships get +1 movement, sailing time from the Pacific -> Europe reduced
Hernando de Soto - All land units see 2 spaces further, makes all goody huts positive
Military:
Hernan Cortes - Conquering native villages always gives treasure
Francis Drake - +50% to privateer strength
John Paul Jones - free frigate (strongest ship available to us, 4 cargo spaces and decent speed)
Paul Revere - if there are guns in an undefended colony when it's attacked, the defender gets a bonus
George Washington - any free colonists who win a battle are automatically promoted to veteran soldiers, petty criminals to indentured servants, and indentured servants to free colonists
Political:
Benjamin Franklin - other colonial powers always have to offer peace, negotiations with them are more favorable, and they don't declare war on you in the colonies merely because there are European wars going on off screen
Thomas Jefferson - +50% to liberty bell production
Thomas Paine - Rebel sentiment is increased by the currenty tax rate in all colonies
Pochahantas - resets all native tension, gives you the French bonus
Simon Bolivar - +20% rebel sentiment in all colonies
Religious:
Jean de Brebeuf - All missionaries function as experts
William Brewster - petty criminals and indentured servants no longer show up at the docks, when we get a free guy from religious strife, we get to pick which one we want
Bartolome de la Casas - all converted natives become free colonists
William Penn - +50% cross production
Juan Gines de Sepulveda - when we attack native villages, we'll get "converts" to join us
Pick 5 and rank them!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
enlightenedbum on
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And create a vast empire in opposition to histories rather small one.
Long Live New Amsterdam!
and Colonization is one of the top 5 games ever made in my opinion; it's still one of the first things I install on a new PC
I just want to see you suffer.
Did you know that they came to America?
Peter Minuit (Indians no longer demand payment for land)
Sieur de la Salle (free stockade in each colony when it hits 3 population)
Francis Drake (privateers get +50% strength)
Pochahantas (same as the French bonus, improvement to native relations)
Jean de Brebeuf (all missionaries function as experts)
Good job on the Dutch. England's thing is very good early on, but having stable markets late in the game is a godsend.
Hey look at that old school menu. And old school graphics. Mmmm. (DOSBOX emulated, if you're wondering)
Historically, this guy. Should probably be Minuit, but whatever.
Stupid Dutch asshole. We'll grow to hate this guy. But for now, he gives us a charter. Yay!
Loading screen/opening narration. Basically, we set sail. It's the equivalent to Civilization's "In the beginning..."
And we're here! So along the top we've got some menus (currently useless, we may investigate some of the advisor screens later on). We've got a mini map in the upper right corner. Down the right side we have some key information. The date, our current treasury, the tax rate, and our current units. We have a Merchantman carrying a soldier and a pioneer. Neither are experts, which is sad. Experts do work twice as well, or in the case of soldiers, 50% better.
Sailing to the west a little bit I forget to grab the "land discovered" image, but get this one when we land. There's one of these for various milestones, we'll be through most of them after this update.
Specifically, we've met the Arawaks. They're a small native tribe. You can't play as the natives in this game, they're just there as obstacles/resources. Because we're modeling European colonization of the New World in almost every aspect except two key ones: there's no slavery and no Portuguese.
After some brief exploration, I build a colony near a prime timber and a mountain. We'll see more of what this means when I enter the city screen.
And we get a neat little image to commemorate it!
So here's the city screen. It's very different than in Civilization. So the dominant feature in the top left is the colony itself. This has a bunch of buildings where we can assign workers to various task like preaching, carpentry, pushing for independence, making rum, and what not. Right now this isn't a big deal as we don't have a large population, but it will soon. In the top right, you can see the land this colony can work. It's got a prime timber location so it can make a lot of lumber, which is used by carpenters to construct buildings. It's also got a mountain for decent ore production so we can make tools. Doesn't have a major cash crop (yet), but we can build other colonies/plow the land for that. Currently, we have the colony itself making two food and two furs, and our former pioneer turned free colonist mining ore. You'll note that in Colonization there is not a big fat cross and cities can only work tiles in the first ring.
Below that we have a summary of what the colony is making. The buttons on the right can switch to see what's defending the colony and what it is building (nothing and nothing, at the moment). In the bottom middle, there's a place for any cargo vessel to dock and load goods (ships or wagon trains go here), and to the left of that we get a summary of our population. Here you can also see the rebel sentiment (the percentages at the top). Right now we're loyal to the Dutch crown, that will change as we create liberty bells. We can also see our food, cross, and liberty bell production here. Each colonist consumes 2 food per turn, each colony makes a cross and a liberty bell every turn automatically. I'll explain their purposes in a moment. Then finally at the bottom, we can see what goods are in the colony. At the moment, there are 100 tools here as our pioneer founded New Amsterdam.
::Breathes:: Whoa.
OK, so here's the other thing liberty bells are for. In addition to persuading your colonists that independence would be totally awesome, they get you founding fathers to join your Continental Congress. You get to pick which of five you'd like to pursue and Bulwark picked Peter Minuit for us this time. They cost x liberty bells, and x increases throughout the game.
I send our soldier down to New Amsterdam as he is more useful to us plowing the land and turning it into something useful. He leaves his muskets in the city and grabs the tools. It takes 50 guns to make a soldier, and any colonist can become one. Add 50 horses and he becomes a dragoon. 50 horses alone makes a scout.
Crosses are for increasing religious unrest in... Europe. No, this doesn't make sense really, but the more crosses you make, the more emigrants show up in the docks back in Europe, wanting to come make a new life for them. In this case, we got some Indentured Servants who are not terribly useful, but we'll make do.
If the natives don't hate you, from time to time they'll come with some stuff. In this case, they gave us 14 sugar, which at current prices is worth 84 gold. Not bad!
After doing some further exploring, our Merchantman comes back with some of the ore and furs that New Amsterdam has made. I should have waited a turn to get one extra round of cargos so we could recruit a guy (more on that in a second) but I forgot to micromanage. Anyway, he grabs the indentured servant already waiting and goes back to America. At this point I should explain that for each cargo space on a ship, it can carry up to 100 of one kind of good or one colonist/artillery.
And having discovered a silver deposit just a little ways to our north and an English caravel in the area, our Merchantman rushes our indentured servant to found Fort Orange and start mining silver. Silver is by far the most valuable raw material in the game, and while it is HIGHLY volatile if you start selling it in large quantities, it makes an excellent early resource to get yourself established. There's another source just south of New Amsterdam, actually.
From time to time, the prices of various goods change in New Amsterdam. This is the one I screen capped for no particularly good reason. Of note: the price of muskets dropped to 1. Remind me to buy some in update 2.
While in Europe, you can do three things. First, you can recruit guys. There are three options they cost a variable amount, starting pretty low, and rising based on how many you've recruited lately. On this trip we pick up another Indentured Servant, a Carpenter, and a Seasoned Scout, most importantly. Obviously to pay for this I sold some more stuff, mostly things which the Arawaks gave us.
We have at this point chopped down and plowed the square that New Amsterdam was built on. Each tile improvement takes 20 tools. You can chop down forests, plow grasslands, and build roads. Roads increase mining and logging operations, plows increase farming/plantations. Things tend to make sense. Anyway, with the new terrain features, New Amsterdam makes 4 food and 3 sugar, and has 20 lumber from the chopping. Our new Master Carpenter goes to work building things. He converts 6 lumber into hammers each turn. He's building a wagon train for reasons which will become clear.
Scouts can enter native villages and interact with them. The most valuable of your options is speaking with the chief. He will tell you what kind of specialist you can get by being taught at that village, what goods the village is interested in trading for, and usually a bonus of some kind.
This village will teach us how to plant sugar well. How this works is once during the game you can take a free colonist or indentured servant and ask them to teach him their specialty. He will then become an expert whatever. This village didn't have a special bonus for us. Sometimes they'll give us cash, sometimes they'll share maps, or a few other things, I think.
We send that second indentured servant to become a sugar planter, as there's a nice river site with some savannah (which is good for sugar planting) nearby.
Unfortunately, it is inland and requires a wagon train to bring the goods to a port, or we can't sell it. Fortunately, we have our carpenter building us one. It'll be done two turns after this update ends.
We have at this point produced enough liberty bells to get Peter Minuit to join us. Normally, if your colony is next to a native village, you cannot use the land until you either pay the natives or seize the land, angering the natives. Minuit gives them some beads and they just give up the land for free and with no diplomatic penalty. There are still penalties for excess chopping/plowing/road construction though. This may force us to destroy the Arawaks at some date in the future. Also note on the left the guy on horse? That's our scout. To his southwest, there is a sort of Mesoamerican symbol thingy? That is the equivalent of Civilization's goody huts. Seasoned Scouts' rarely have bad things happen to them and are more likely to get the motherload of these and discover the Fountain of Youth (that's also much less common on not a joke difficulty levels). Let's see what this one is!
It's a free colonist. We can teach him to plant sugar as well, go send him on some kind of normal task, or found a new colony south of New Amsterdam to mine more silver at the location you can see in the Minuit screen shot.
You'll also note we've found Jamestown. It's in kind of a crappy place, since it's on the west coast and they have to sail all the way around the northern peninsula to return to Europe. It also should be a square to the left to take advantage of the special tobacco square up there.
For reference, the best colony sites are ones which have at least one high food square (corn square, fish, or anything on a river, really), one good lumber square, one good ore square, and ideally a cash crop. New Amsterdam is a bit lacking in some ways, but I wanted to get under way quickly.
Future updates won't be as long, but there's some explaining to do early here, for people who aren't familiar with the game system.
So two questions for the peanut gallery:
1) We have a random dude, he can:
a) start farming in New Amsterdam to help the soon to be growing population there.
b) become another sugar planter, New Amsterdam will probably need one in the soonish future
c) wait for another kind of expertise from a native village (preferably farmer or fisherman)
d) found a second silver mining colony to the south of New Amsterdam
2) What's our general aim? (choose one of a/b and one of c/d)
a) peace with the Arawaks
b) eliminate the Arawaks
c) take Jamestown, possibly move it either to the Atlantic coast or to that tobacco farming location
d) focus on building our economy only
I don't see the point of (indian) war if you went minuit. On the other hand, those British with their petticoats are just asking for it
Destroy the Arawaks, but in the long term. Get your economy running in the meantime and crush them only after they've given you plenty of free goodies and training.
To this (and above) - there was a Win95 version released at that time that works (with a patch that should still be available online, but it fixes like one sound file) perfectly well in XP and I believe 7 as well, and both looks a lot nicer, and obviously is easier to deal with (because it came on a CD)
Zero idea where you could find it now, though (it's one of the few game CDs I have backed up because of this)
That's kind of weird. I mean, yeah, he's something of a national hero, but that's because he kicked English ass in several naval wars. Don't think he had anything to do with founding and running colonies.
Over here the WIC tends to be overshadowed by the VOC.
It is a game about the colonization about the Americas, which makes the Portuguese absence in favor of the Dutch kind of more bizarre. I guess North American centric views would include the Dutch instead of the Portuguese? Silly MPS.
Do i need to host my version i play on DosBox?
Long-term goals? convert the heathen arawaks, and build up the economy. Jamestown isn't going anywhere (unless it is blocking off your expansion routes).
Jan de Witt allows trade with foreign colonies and gives us a better foreign affairs report.
Sieur de la Salle still gives us a free stockade when colonies reach the size of three
Hernan Cortes increases treasure from villages we burn
Thomas Jefferson gives us a 50% bonus to liberty bell production
Jean de Brebuff still makes all our missionaries function as Jesuit Missionaries
Next post can choose.
In any case, I absolutely adore Colonization, and playing it as a Let's Play is probably pretty safe, since you wont suddenly look at the time and realize it's been eighteen hours.
And yeah, that's true about the Caribbean, but the Dutch also didn't have nearly as much territory as the French or the English.
The Dutch started attracting the interest of a renowned trader Jan de Witt and asking him to join their Continental Congress as soon as possible. Sadly, liberty bell production was not high enough to get him before the end of the update.
Then we met Walter Raleigh and the English colonies. Jamestown was in a poor place in terms of access to the Atlantic and a quick return to the Atlantic. It's also right between Fort Orange and the rest of the New Netherlands, so it had to go.
Upon being threatened by the fearsome Dutch Gunsmiths armed with muskets, the English offered to pay 100... pounds? Pieces of eight? Simoleons? Units of currency.
The Dutch Gunsmiths refused. Death to the English!
Meanwhile, a missionary who was on that same boat approached the Arawak capital and established a mission.
So how this works is now there's a Dutch mission working in this native village. Depending how well you're getting along with that tribe and how good the missionary was (this one was a Jesuit), you will improve relations and sometimes get converts. I'll explain that when we get one (later in this update!).
When you commit to a battle, this screen appears. It's kind of meaningless without the base strengths, but still. We lost this one. Stupid Gunsmiths are apparently only good at making guns, not using them. How combat works in this game is like so: If a soldier beats a colonist, he captures that colonist. If a soldier loses, he loses his guns and becomes a colonist of whatever type he normally is. If a dragoon loses, he becomes a soldier, losing his horses.
That free colonist went off and founded New Holland as suggested near the silver mine. Sadly, haven't found any natives skilled in silver mining do double the effectiveness at either location.
The Sioux are off to our north. There have fairly constant messages that I haven't screen capped about a rather nasty Sioux/Spanish war. So the Spanish are somewhere up there, and frankly, the Sioux are kicking their ass for the most part it sounds like.
Hey look, it's the reason for the thread title! From time to time, the asshole (King) will attempt to raise your taxes. You can either kiss his pinky ring, in which case the tax goes up by that amount, or you can have a ____ party in protest of the new taxes. When you do that, you can no longer buy or sell that good in Europe until you accept that tax hike and pay back taxes. Also, in whichever city this happens, support for rebellion will increase by the amount of the tax increase. A food party is actually basically the best you can get, but I don't do it just because I don't need the King angry and added to the Continental Army this early in the game.
To our south is Jacques Cartier and the French. They have two colonies, each size three. Nothing threatening yet. They're not far away though.
There's a petty criminal on our dock (for free!) and we have some cash. Horses and Guns are currently still cheap, so I turn the criminal (the worst guy in the game, he's 1/3 as useful in town as free colonists, and takes much longer to educate) into a Dragoon and buy an artillery. Artillery increase in cost by 100 each time you purchase one and are very strong units in city defense and attack and have two hit points.
Our artillery attacks Jamestown. This should be a foregone conclusion.
And it is. If you win a battle against a non-soldier when attacking a town, you capture it. We also get a lot of money for our efforts. Sweet!
Here's Jamestown. It kind of sucks. Three free colonists. A will in a moment realize it is built on a prime timber, because the AI is stupid.
Because I don't want to sail all the way around the continent to get to Jamestown, I set up a trade route. With these, you can set a ship or wagon train to go between two or more locations loading and unloading goods and do it automatically. This is invaluable. We have one going between the new colony Jamestown is about to become and New Amsterdam and another between Fort Nassau and New Amsterdam.
By two turns later, I have noticed that Jamestown is sitting on a prime timber when I went to plow the land to make some more food. Realizing it would be a far better site one square to the left, we leave the colony. Coincidentally, this is why I don't like Sieur de la Salle, you can't abandon a colony with a stockade. We do make sure to load as much stuff onto a wagon train and take the 100 horses (score!) with us. Right now we can only store 100 goods of one kind in any of our colonies, but with warehouses and expansions we can increase that number. Horses grow automatically with any excess food a colony has. Stables speed up this process. In the Civ4 version, there are Rancher specialists to do this, but not here.
We meet the Apache fairly far to the south. The French are between them and us, and since they are a pretty aggressive tribe, that's a good thing. The Arawaks are one of the better groups to have right in the middle of your territory. The Sioux are probably the worst.
Here's most of our little colonial empire. You'll note Jamestown has become Vlissingen which has a prime timber, prime tobacco, and prime sugar. As well as a hill for ore. And with its location not on the Atlantic seaboard, it may become a prime future military base. Also, there's a little green ! on one of the Sioux villages near it, which means we're alarming them a little bit. More !s and the more scary a color they are, the more alarmed they are. Not too much to worry about right now.
There's also two colonists headed south, where I found villages that teach Expert Farming and Expert Fishing. And I got it at when it was flashing off, but we have here an Indian Convert. These guys are bad at jobs inside colonies, but anything in the field (farming, mining, fur trapping) they get a +1 bonus.
We send him to fix the food problem of New Amsterdam. Normally I'd build a lumber mill first to double our hammers, but with so much sugar flowing in (and an expert is coming to Vlissengen from another lost colonist in need of supplies goody hut) we need the warehouse ASAP. With our new farmer, New Amsterdam is +1 food and makes a ton of hammers and some ore. Getting a blacksmith in there so we can continue building roads/clearing land is a high priority.
So between our conquest of Jamestown, various beads and what not given to us by natives our two scouts have spoken to the chiefs of, and selling a bunch of silver and sugar, we all of a sudden have a lot of money. 4596 whatevers, to be exact. And our Merchantman is currently in Europe waiting to bring guys back. There is, I believe, a petty missionary hanging out on the dock.
We could hire some experts! With prices listed. Hardy Pioneers would be maybe the most useful possible guy. Silver miners would probably pay off in the long run. We could start making more food. Lots of options here.
We could purchase more boats! Caravels are slow and small, but cheap. We've already got ourselves a Merchantman, they're pretty cool. Privateers are obscenely fast and can attack other nation's boats without a declaration of war. When you win a battle against another boat, you can take any cargo they're hauling.
We could recruit some more guys. This is getting a little pricey, and there aren't any great options. When we get around to a church the preacher would be nice for getting more free dudes, but we have a warehouse and a lumber mill to build first.
We can do stuff with the criminal on the docks. Give him tools, guns, horses, or bless him as a missionary.
And lastly, we can buy cargo. The stuff most likely to be useful are guns, tools, horses, and trade goods, which we can sell to the natives and hopefully make a decent profit.
What should we do with all this cash?
Edit: Only because violence is always the answer!