System requirements: 386SX, 575KB conventional, VGA, DOS 5.0 Reviewer's system: 486 DX2/50, Sound Blaster 16, DOS 5.0
The game is one-player: the other nations are always computer controlled.
One of Sid's many strengths as a game designer is that his games tend to give you more than one 'path to glory', more than one area of development and concern. For example, in CIV there were three such paths - you had to worry about waging a military campaign, about waging an R&D research effort, and about building city infrastructure. These three paths were sometimes complementary, but sometimes contradictory, lending CIV a lot of its appeal. Similarly, RRT had two paths - you tried to build up your railroad, while also trying to make a killing in the stock market. In COL, there are no less than FIVE such paths. You try to build the economy of your cities and of your nation as a whole (#1) while also trying to explore and militarily conquer a hunk of the New World (#2), while dealing with other foreign powers (#3), while dealing with the local indigenous population (#4), while dealing with (and eventually declaring independence from) the mother country (#5).
I'd love to give a detailed description of every part of the game, with tips, but it would be far too long. Instead, in this review, I'll focus instead on giving you the flavor, and the decisions involved, in each of the five 'areas of concern' mentioned above.
Once you've founded a city, you decide how you wish that city to grow. You go to a city display, which, like many other parts of the game, at first glance is strongly reminiscent of CIV. The city square (called the "commons" in COL) is 'worked' for free, and your other colonists can work other squares on the board. At any time, the city can be devoted to building exactly one thing, whether a civic improvement (a church, a lumber mill) or a military unit.
At first glance, this appears simpler than CIV. In CIV, you could work any square within a two-square radius of your city, giving you a choice of 24 (5*5 - 1) squares for your citizen to work. In COL, the radius is only 1, giving you a choice of only 8 (3*3-1) such squares. However, it is actually much more complicated. In CIV, when you worked a square you worked a square - the output of that square was a given. In COL, there are no less than *seven* different ways a square can be 'worked' - you can farm it for food, or mine it for ore, or cut its timber, or trap it for furs, etc., etc. This decision is made more complex by two more factors. First, some squares, like in CIV, have special bonuses if used in certain ways - a square containing 'prime timber' is twice as productive when you work it for its lumber, for example. Second, all colonists are not created equal! There are no less than 18 different specialities a colonist can have. Some colonists might be experts at trapping furs, others at preaching, other at carpentry, etc.
The 'off the land' structure of a city is much more complex than in CIV, as well. In CIV, if a citizen wasn't working the land, there were only two other choices: entertainer or scientist. In COL, there are _fourteen_ such choices. Whew!
All told, there are 18 different jobs a colonist can have in a city - there are, therefore, 18 different types of specialists as well. If your city, contains, say, an expert preacher, but you really need somebody farming, will you have your preacher put down his bible? This becomes a quite intricate process, especially as you have to decide which specialists get sent to which city.
The 18 jobs fall into categories:
#1) food producer. Just as in CIV, colonists require 2 food units to survive, and excess food goes to (eventually) 'grow' a new colonist. However, this type of growth is much slower than in CIV - you need 200 excess food to grow a new citizen, as opposed to the 40 in CIV.
#2) Export crop producer. In COL there are 4 types of export crops - tobacco, sugar, cotton, and furs. Ship 'em back to Europe, and bring in the moolah. COL does a terrific job of representing the dilemma that export crop production represents. On the one hand, it can bring in badly needed income. On the other hand, the more you ship the less you get (ye olde supply/demand curve), and an export crop has no 'lasting value' - while the colonist is trapping furs, he's not helping to grow the city in any long- term way.
#3) Export processor. As in RRT, export crops can be processed into a more refined form - cigars, rum, cloth, and fur coats. On the plus side, these finished products tend to pay significantly better than the raw products mentioned above. On the minus side, you have now doubled your manpower investment. Careful!
#4) Builder. To construct a civic improvement (or, later in the game, a military unit), you need to employ carpenters and/or blacksmiths.
#5) Elvis. The COL equivalent of an 'unhappy citizen' is a 'Tory', and the COL equivalent of an 'Elvis' is an 'elder statesman'. Briefly, elder statesmen work over time to increase the number of patriots and decrease the number of Tories in a colony. The fewer Tories, the more productive your colony will be, and the more favorably disposed to secede from the Mother Country. Finally, the more 'elder statesmen' you have over time, the more 'Founding Fathers' you attract. Without going into too much detail, each 'Founding Father' brings a special talent to your nation: Pocahontas lets you get along better with the natives, Thomas Paine increases the percentage of patriots, etc.
#6) Preacher. I mentioned above that your cities grow much slower than in CIV. Instead, you get a lot of your growth by enticing immigration from Europe. The more preachers you have, the more religious freedom you are demonstrating, and hence the more immigrants you will attract.
#7) Schoolteacher. If you build a school, and then park a specialist in it, other un-specialized colonists can acquire the speciality. More sophisticated skills require colleges and universities to teach.
#8) Soldier. Unlike in CIV, you don't 'build' a soldier. Instead, you build the raw materials a soldier uses (muskets and horses). Take a colonist and 'snap on' some muskets, and he's a soldier. 'Snap on' some horses, and he's a "dragoon". This process is reversible.
Generally, I thought this whole system works very well, but it might be too complex. Reducing the number of export crops, for example, would speed things up without really reducing game play.
In general, I think this discussion shows the greatest weakness of this game, and a number of Sid's games - they don't scale well. By this I mean that when your nation gets ten times bigger, you have around ten times more work to do. Contrast this to a game like Masters of Orion, for example, which scaled quite well - when your empire was ten times bigger, you only had roughly twice as much work. I found that each turn of COL took me significantly longer than a turn of CIV, due to all the jobs and specialities, and this number goes _up_, not down, as the game progresses. Be warned that it can be quite a long slog to play an entire game. I could easily knock off a game of CIV in two evenings - in COL, it's tough to do it in five.
Combat is very roughly similar to CIV - units attack by moving onto an enemy unit, terrain is factored in, and the result is a simple "I win/you win". In general, combat is a smaller and simpler part of COL than it was in CIV - the focus is on the economic development. However, there are two ways in which COL's military simulation is quite different than CIVs.
First of all, as mentioned above the most plentiful land units, the 'soldier' and 'dragoon' are not built directly - they are converted colonists.
Second, the combat is not the all-or-nothing affair it was in CIV, but rather a step-loss system. A losing dragoon will lose its horses, and be downgraded to a soldier. A losing soldier will loses its muskets, and be downgraded to a colonist. A losing colonist is captured by the other side.
In a strange design decision, military units do _not_ need food or maintenance. Strangely, if you have more people than your colonies fragile economy can support, your best option is to turn them into soldiers!
Overall, though, I felt the combat system worked very well - fairly simple, but not too much so.
Such wars, when they happen, are perhaps even more high-stakes affairs than they were in CIV. On the plus side, when you capture a city you generally capture its colonists, and none of its civic improvements are lost. On the minus side, a war can be a _very_ expensive proposition, and if one of _ your_ cities gets conquered it really hurts.
You can also fight a 'covert' war by using privateers on the High Seas. This can be quite profitable, and you can always deny responsibility for your privateers, but you can push it too far.
At any time, each Indian village can be either happy, unhappy, or indifferent towards you. Clearing land, building roads, not sharing food, and moving military units near them makes them unhappy. Not doing those things, and trading with them, make them happy.
If you choose the path of friendly co-existence with the Indians, you can trade with them, and can even send your colonists to live among them and become trained in specialities. In a very nice touch, different tribes have different focii for their specialities: the Inca, for example, tend to emphasize farming and fishing skills while the Apacha emphasize scouting and hunting.
You can also increase friendship by turning colonists into missionaries (yet another specialty) and sending them to live permanently in an Indian village. This will also produce a chance that some of the Indians will convert to Christianity and "voluntarily" come to your colony to work in the fields.
If you choose to attack the Indians, well, then you fight them! If you play the Spanish, you get a special advantage at this. If you raze an Indian village to the ground, you get some booty - the more settled powers (Aztec, Inca, etc.) produce more treasure than the nomadic powers (Apache, etc.) but are better defended.
You can choose an intermediate path and 'squeeze' the Indians. If you attack an Indian village where you have a missionary, some number of the "frightened natives flock to your village", and again "voluntarily" come to work in your fields.
As many of you know, there's been a huge brou-ha-ha over the fact that COL doesn't represent slavery. I'm not going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole, but I will say that it seems strange that a game that doesn't include African slavery _does_ include Native American slavery, and whitewashes it by presenting it as 'voluntary'. Oh well.
Generally, I thought the game handles this interaction very well, except for the ridiculous portrayal of native forced labor as 'voluntary'.
There are two nice game tensions imposed by indepence. Temporally, if you declare independence too soon, your economy may not be strong enough to survive the severing of economic ties (let alone wage a war), and Tory sentiment may be too high. If you declare too late, other powers' colonies may declare independence first, which reduces your final score. Spatially, if your empire is too small you may not be able to generate the soldiers and armaments needed to defend yourself, while if it's too _big_ your overextended borders may be too difficult to defend.
In conclusion, if you're willing to immerse yourself in it for 30 or 40 hours (and not get discouraged at the start - it takes a while to get the hang of it), COL can be a very textured and involving experience. But if you're looking for a "son of CIV", where you can conquer the world in an evening or two, or where your palms are sweating between turns, you'll find COL too mild a game.