Computer Graphics Memory Disk Space Minimum 386/sx16 320x200x256 565k conv. 4.5M Max/Rec. 386dx33 or higher Control: keyboard, mouse Sound: Adlib, Roland, Sound Blaster, Pro Audio Spectrum Reviewed version: v2.25. Version dated September 15, 1994. Reviewed version on: 486dx2/66, 8mb RAM, SoundBlaster Pro. Reviewer recommends: 386dx33 or higher, 1mb+ disk cache.
After the usual pre-game selections have been made, you will find yourself onboard a Caravel set to transport a unit of Soldiers and Pioneers to the New World. This is how each game begins.
In Civ the player generated income by taxing his empire. In Coloniz- ation it is you who is being taxed. As your settlements improve and advance in capability, your King will decide that the time has come to profit from your exploits (after all, he was the one that provided your initial backing). However, taxation is not as severe in Col- onization as it is in, say, Gold of the Americas. The player can even rebel against a tax hike ala Boston Tea Party. Doing so will result in a boycott in Europe of your product that was the target of the tax hike. In the early game this is significant, as your main source of income is through the selling of your goods back in Europe and you don't want to accidentally cut off your economic lifeline in a fit of anger. However, there is a way around this through a rather careless bug (simply hit the 'U' key when in Europe and all your goods, even those boycotted, will be sold as normal).
The citizens of your colony are from quite a varied "professional" background, from blacksmiths and miners to missionaries and statesmen. These would-be colonists seek to start a new life and wait for you to pick them up at the docks in Europe. In all there are a couple of dozen types of colonists that will eventually populate your many sett- lements. This is in contrast to the handful of specialists in Civ (the entertainer, etc.). Each type of colonist has an affect on the productiveness of the settlement he is located in. For instance, a Fur Trapper will be able to get more pelts from a square around your settlement than a regular colonist doing the same job, and the player will thus be able to transform more pelts into fur coats (providing you have someone working at the Fur Trader's House, and building the Fur Trading Post improvement will produce even more coats - get the idea?). Also, if a regular colonist does a job long enough, he'll become an expert at that job and thereby become more productive in the process. Matching your colonists' skills with the needed activities requires some dexterity to beat your competitors at the higher levels.
Accessing information pertaining to your settlements is performed in much the same way as in Civ. By clicking on a settlement, you are presented with a screen that shows the buildings in your colony, the number and type of colonists working in this colony, and what is being produced. From here you can decide what to build next, what resources your colonists should be developing, etc.
The native indians in Colonization are quite varied, from large and developed populations like the Aztecs and Incans to the smaller, agrarian societies of the Cherokee and Iroquois. The native tribes in Colonization are not different nationalities competing for dominance in the New World as the Europeans are. After all, this is their home that the Europeans are set to despoil, so the Amerindians play a somewhat different role.
The interaction between the player and the natives is similar to Seven Cities of Gold; outright hostility and domination can be attempted from the outset (the Spanish method) or a relationship based on mercantile trade, as the French did, can be followed. You can learn a lot about your surroundings from the local natives, and can also send your col- onists to native settlements to learn special skills that will aid in the development of your own settlements.
A native tribe will generally be on good terms with the player at the outset, as a player's initial forces are meagre at best. However, as the empire grows, so too does concern among the native population. Unless efforts are made to appease them, relations will eventually deteriorate as native settlements begin to feel more and more intruded upon.
Also as in Civ, your choice of action upon discovering a competing colonial force is to either attack immediately, or to establish an agreement of peace. Of course, any agreement will eventually break down, either through your doing or through theirs against you or your allies.
Armed conflict is, again, exactly as in Civ. Units can be sentried, fortified, seasoned veterans, etc. Rapid expansion, as always, is the name of the game here, especially in wartime. You will want to take the battles to your enemy's settlements, leaving yours unmolested by his forces.
In Civilization the player built up his tech until he was able to assemble the components of a spaceship. The same process exists in Colonization. Your settlements will gradually develop their own identity over the years and become more rebellious towards the crown. This is measured through Liberty Bells, the number of which indicate how advanced colonial government has become as well as the general sentiment of the colonies towards the King and his taxes.
Once this general sentiment has surpassed 50%, the player can decide to declare independence. At this point, you will be able to muster an army from all your settlements that will face off against the Royal Expeditionary Force (REF). Before deciding upon independence, confirm that you have enough favourable sentiment to muster a large enough force to defeat the REF. To get the highest score in Colonization, you have to successfully achieve independence (protecting all your settlements and defeating the REF). Doing so doubles your score, so long as you were the first European nation to achieve it.
These Founding Fathers affect trade, combat, religion, politics, and exploration and will have profound effects on the development of your empire. For instance, Adam Smith affects trade and having him as a citizen of your empire allows you to build factories, taking production in your settlements to a higher level. Magellan increases the range of all your vessels by one, and so on.
While not a bad game, I don't think too many will find this game as captivating as Civilization was, if only because Colonization is derived so much from Civ. The originality of many of the elements in Civ are absent in this, arguably the sequel. Colonization may become popular because of its predecessor more so than for its own merits. Colonization is a slow, plodding game that bogs down in drudgery as the number of settlements you build increases. In short, it isn't much fun.
One aspect of Colonization that certainly was not refined since Civ was released several years ago are the graphics! Functional is about all you can say about them. SVGA modes are pretty well the norm in the latest games today, and are even appearing in flight sims. Why then can I not be treated to the same in a game like Colonization that is a real lightweight in the technical demands department? The installation screen, oddly enough, is in SVGA mode. What makes this more aggravating is that this game ain't cheap at $60US. While game play is always key, I expect some eye candy when shelling out this kind of $$. At 4.5megs on my hard drive, Colonization falls far short in this department.
The AI, while adequate, is no marvel. In fact, the computer's behavior does not vary despite the difficulty level you have set. What does change is the speed at which the computer develops. Production bonuses, anybody? This method for increased difficulty doesn't make for very satisfying game play at the higher levels since players know exactly what to expect from having played at the lower levels. What worked at middle difficulty level will also succeed at a higher level of difficulty, just do it faster.
You will also find the computer setting up colonies too close together, and in altogether hostile terrain. Would YOU found a colony in the arctic? Chilling thought.
The most annoying aspect of the computer's AI routines is the tendency for every computer-controlled country to surround your settlements with dragoons and infantry units. Moving your units between your settlements becomes impossible when the other foreign powers have surrounded all possible routes into them. This type of behavior is reasonable in wartime, but in times of peace it is absurd.
Another shortcoming with Colonization, though not AI related, is that the computer players don't achieve victory under the same conditions that you have to. The REF is a concern limited only to the human player. A computer player, upon reaching a certain population and percentage of colonists favouring independence, will declare it is seeking independence. Gaining independence is only a matter of the computer increasing the number of its colonists favouring breaking ties with Europe, which is done within 20 years or so. Whether it does this through suddenly increasing its liberty bell production or by some other means is not known, but it is a cheap way for the computer player to achieve victory, as it can still commit its mil- itary units to harassing you, whereas you need to commit all of yours against the REF if you are to break away from the Crown.
Other grievances I have with Colonization are less significant, and are listed as follows:
1. The font is too hard to read. Blocky green text on a brown, wood-like background doesn't cut it.
2. You still cannot set patrols for your war vessels, one sim- ilarity to Civ I didn't care to see. While trade routes can be set for your merchant vessels, you still have to move by hand each of your frigates. Real annoying from the mid-game onwards.
3. The graphics of some notable figures (the King most of all) look quite comical, and thus seem out of place in a game like Colonization.
4. There is no map view from the Colony Display screen, as there was in Civ.
5. The background music is fairly good, but you can't adjust its volume. On or off are your only choices.
6. Game freezes at various points. Best to have the Autosave feature on. With a disk cache this is quite unobtrusive. From what I've seen so far, Colonization is fairly bug-free.
7. Some adviser reports (yet another similarity to Civ) are limited in their usefulness while others don't provide you with enough information.
8. Not being able to move units through units of another player or the native indians is very annoying in Colonization. In Civ rails were everywhere, but here one unit can serve to block an entire length of road you built from one settlement to another. The trade routes you carefully set up are thus rendered useless. This is extremely annoying when it appears that the computer is moving the piece in random dir- ections with no apparent purpose. Why units are not allowed to move through (not stop in) another player's unit so long as they are at peace is beyond me.
9. There is no indication that computer players choose Founding Fathers. Aside from a few obscure observations (seeing the "Drake bonus" with computer privateers), Colonization gives the impression that these individuals are waiting to join the human player's Congress exclusively.
To sum up, if you were rabid over Civ, you'll be almost as frothy for Colonization. You won't be as overwhelmed with this one as you were with Civ, for reasons already discussed, but you'll probably enjoy this title quite a bit. Others may want to look elsewhere for their strategy fix. I'd look for a price around $50 before buying it.
1. The "U"nload key working during a boycott.
2. The Cathedral now requires a population of 8 (as stated in the manual) instead of 16.
3. Problem with capturing a city and the outside territory being owned by another power.
4. Indian villages now accept the goods that scouts report.
5. Autosave fixed so computer players don't get an extra turn.
6. Break treaty with self message when fortifying a unit is now fixed.
7. Trade menu no longer crashes after a certain number of uses.
8. Escaping from the Founding Father's screen will no longer bring up different choices.
9. King's Last Man-O-War was sunk and the game won't end, this is fixed.
10. World map is now being created properly.
11. Damaged ships will now go to the closest drydock everytime they are damaged.
12. You should no longer receive messages stating that the King controls 90% of your colonies when he does not.
13. You may now "Join" a colony when the maximum # of colonies (48) are in use. You still cannot build a new colony though.
14. Your tax rate will no longer reset itself during the game.
15. The AI has been adjusted so that attacking units will not go on "Suicide runs" or attack you from a poor location.
16. You shouldn't have any problems using the "Colonizopedia".
The patch is also supposed to contain a utility that allows you to make your own maps, though it sure wasn't in the patch I downloaded from the MPS BBS. The patch now also has a cheat mode that allows you to fiddle with just about anything in a given game.
However, this patch really doesn't do much to improve the gameplay. Many user have requested that more information on an indian village be displayed, like what skill it offers and if you've already visited it. This wasn't implemented. Building a settlement over a tree resource icon still results in fur pelts being produced, not lumber. Cancelling an action still results in a turn being used up by that unit. And despite bug fix #15, above, the AI is still quite dense in this game. Computer players continue to surround your settlements and build settlements adjacent to indian villages.
If you're bored of Colonization (happened real fast for me), this patch won't change in any way how the game plays out.