Good news, everyone! There's a new version of Colonization out, using an updated version of the Civ IV engine that's even prettier. So if you never played the original awesome game, you've now got a chance at redemption.
It's not a direct port, as the mechanics have been tweaked along with the graphical facelift. Things like the diplomacy model and the interface are a lot like Civ IV. In fact, the entire game is a lot like Civ IV, but the gameplay is shifted towards resource management and city building and the combat is greatly simplified. So if you liked Civ IV but constantly found your empire building being interrupted by silly little wars, or that there wasn't enough opportunity for micromanagement, or if there were just too many Asian people, this might be the game for you!
This is where the game takes place: the New World. Don't mind those shirtless dudes, they'll be leaving shortly. Here, you'll pillage the resources and peoples of an entire continent relentlessly, while carrying over a load of old grudges from Europe! Look, there's beavers and everything!
Colonization is different from Civ IV in that any citizens can do pretty much any job. Give them a gun and they're a soldier. Put them to work in one of the squares surrounding your city and they'll produce resources. Give them some tools and they can build improvements and roads, like Civ workers. Put them into buildings and they'll turn raw materials into lucrative trade goods to ship back to Europe. Specialists will do a better job, of course, but in the New World, everyone can become what their all-powerful invisible overlord wills them to be!
While the new land is nice, it's swarming with Stone Age knuckleheads who think that it belongs to them, despite the fact that you put a flag
right on it. Depending on your approach, these folks are either noble savages who will give you presents, train your colonists in the skills they'll need to thrive in this new land, and serve as stalwart comrades in your inevitable wars, or irritating pinatas that you'll hit until gold comes out.
You're not the only new kids in town. There are three other colonial powers competing for the same land and resources, and if they declare independence before you, you lose. Also, going to war with them means an actual fair fight, and fuck that noise.
Since there aren't any reputable retailers in the desolate wasteland that is your new home, you'll have to drag all your shiny new crap all the way back to Europe to sell it. This is also where you pick up all the people who have decided that Europe sucks and America is the place to be. This is your only source of manpower other than natives you've gulled into worshiping your white man's God and slaving away in your cigar factories.
This is your king, whose shit you'll get steadily sick of for the next couple of centuries. He's good for nothing but asking you for cash he doesn't deserve and raising your taxes. You can see why the entire point of the game is building yourself up to the point where you can tell him to take his Viceroyship and shove it. Also, look at his stupid fat face. Fuck that guy, and fuck his fruity ring.
Instead of building wonders, you'll be trying to lure these happening fellows to your side. They'll assist your fledgling country with their useful skills and formidable facial hair. They're all potential Founding Fathers, and you get them to hang out with you by stirring up rebel sentiment, and by earning points in exploration, religion, trading, and punching people in the face. Just like high school.
Look, I've got a large wagon full of gold bars! I just found it laying around! I didn't have to fight anyone for it or anything! Jesus Christ, why aren't you playing this game yet?
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this could be disastrous to my productivity were i to buy this game
good thing I'm broke as fuck
If you're anything like me, that really isn't going to stop anything.
You'll just end up selling less necessary organs on the black market.
What? No. You play as the English, French, Spanish, or Dutch. Those Indians are just hanging out.
The game is as broken as fuck, seriously. The liberty bells production = king's army expansion. Even at the easiest level, it means the king ends up with a fuck balls huge army and it's a pain in the ass to fight it off.
Which means the viable strategy is to go for broke for liberty bells at the end of the game, meaning you miss heaps of fonding fathers.
It's also possible to pretty much ignore the entire trading part of the game, and just build up mans and guns etc, totally ignoring the King.
The combat is weird as hell, and there is pretty much no way that you are going to win if you want to hold onto your cities - the King's artillery get's a huuuuge bonus against your troops in a settlement.
It is also only half there - the original colonisation had more random encounters, had European intervention in the war, had you having to go to war against the other powers on his whim, but also gave you soldiers/frigates if you really needed them.
The enemey AI is weaksauce, seriously. You can rock up and stomp them into the ground without really raising a sweat, even on the harder difficulties.
You can game the revolution meter pretty hard as well - disband dudes who aren't loyal and watch it go up. This is another strategy to make sure the King's army is as small as possible to win.
The natives can be pretty imbalanced as well - instead of just killing one colonist, they can take a city that is in double digits in size and just raise it to the ground.
So yeah. Great concept, but a pretty goddamn pale imitation of the original game. It's half done and it's trading on it's earlier reputation rather than standing on its own merits.
so what price did you get for your dick anyway?
ohhh so I get to commit genocide on the Indians
hey this game sounds fun
It's at auction right now, so I'll get back to ya when the gavel drops.
On a scale from 1 to 100 (where 1 is nothing like it, and 100 is identical), how much like the original Colonization is this game?
If you say anything greater than 0, I'll probably be buying it.
man that should have happened when you were a baby