Sid Meier's Colonialization

[volfrahm]

After playing the game a few times, I've noticed that it was very annoying to constantly micromanage the ships to sail to Europe. I figured out how to automate the wagon trains, which saved lots of time, but the game still feels like a chore. And just how many inf units does one need to kill off the motherland units? I had about 5 in each city, which is nowhere near enough.

Overall, the game isn't worth the money. I could be missing something, perhaps some hidden feature in menu?

[Ssiissuu]

I love, LOVE, the original. This one is leaving me a little colder. Not just due to nostalgia, either. I’m giving it time to grow on me though as the transition from ‘Pirates! Gold’ to ‘Sid Meier’s Pirates’ also took some time, perhaps this’ll be the same sort of teething bit. Now to some of my observations.

The natives in this modernized version are extremely docile. They’re stupidly tolerant as compared with the old versions of Colonization, as in I hardly see a need for the French ‘special trait’, anymore. In the past the natives were an actual threat, and crowding them was something you did at your own peril, or plan. As the French you enjoyed a special relationship with the natives and you were often able to get away with quite a bit as concerns the native tribes.

I like the new way the Founding Fathers are handled, and the way you go about accruing points for nabbin’ the Founding Fathers. This is an improvement, in my opinion.

The graphics are all nice, pretty and such. Though I think I’ve got to turn them down a fair notch. The same performance issues that plague Civ4 after hours of play on a massive map with all gfx settings maxed seem to be coming on even faster in Colonization, even when there is little apparent cause. After a half hour there is a noticeable slowdown. Many of the gfx and sfx from Civ4 are reused in this game, lending a somewhat less than professional feel to the enterprise. As if you’re playing a really high quality mod, rather than a full fledged commercial title, but that’s a minor gripe considering how much more focused on game play I am, over any other factor. Not all of the music from the original has made a comeback, though I wasn’t honestly that bothered. I actually rather enjoyed the ‘amateurish’, as some have called it, revolutionary music, with sfx culled directly from re-enactments over music of the period.

The maps, despite what some people have been saying, seem truly massive. Much larger than any of the maps available in the previous version of Colonization. Though this also means that you’re expected to create about twice as many colonies as you did in the previous Colonization, something which I’m not so eager about. If I had five cities in the previous title, I considered myself to be near the straining point, micromanagement wise, and so I’d tend to limit myself. Here you should be expecting your numbers from the previous game at a minimum, I’d warrant. I’ll grant that the new automation features are handy and will actually alleviate a great deal of the micromanagement that one might fear, but I grew up on poor AI automation, so I’ve a natural distrust of the computer and always find myself looking over it’s shoulder, second guessing the AI and making a nuisance of myself in general. Those aspects I did turn over the AI were handled well enough. If there is a non-critical task which you might allow one of your idiot friends to handle in order to make him feel useful during your Colonization adventure in the New World, then it’s the sort of task you can likely pass off to the AI, just don’t expect miracles ‘cause you may still have to step in at some point and smooth matters over when your idiot friend manages to overturn a wagon load of rum and blames it on the natives. We all have friends like that.

Most of the features of the original are back, with some improvements. And in general, while updated, the game also makes a few minor enhancements. Trade routes are extremely easy to setup, and they work, though I’d love to be able to set a ‘cap’ on the amount of goods a colony will receive, rather than just retention. The gameplay, while not overtly changed, seems a tad fast to me, compared with the original. The time just flies by, much like in Civ4, where I’m stuck playing marathon or epic so as to feel that I am not playing a blitz game; where a newly discovered unit is rendered obsolete three or four turns after building it. Colonization is one of the few games in which micromanagement didn’t bother me, this modern game seems to hold true to this, I prefer the meta-game, but the micro in this title seems as well done as before.

Some of the combat decisions I do not fancy in the slightest. Naval combat seems to be much more dangerous than in the previous game. It is now quite likely to have a ship sunk, whereas before it was more common that a ship would escape, or at least escape with damage and return to a port in order to be repaired. The increased lethality is not something I favour as it creates a very cut and dried naval game with often one person dominating the waves, though perhaps my luck has merely been off. Also, while warships can bombard settlements, the old way of fortifying a lot of cannons in your forts so they’ll open fire and hopefully drive-off the enemy warships is gone, this saddens me. Also, I can’t seem to find where I sign up to have one of the big powers lend me a hand once my War of Independence starts, in the previous game I found this to be a vital strategy, generate enough Liberty Bells so that a big time Euro power will send it’s own Expeditionary Force to tangle with the Motherland’s Own. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place, I’ll keep looking.

The, now functional, wagon trains and trade route automation make specialist colonies much more viable and much less of a headache, micromanagement wise, as the original game did. In my first game I had one colony set as a primary fur trapping spot, another as a tobacco grower and yet another colony was setup with fur and tobacco processing as the mainstay, with the highest tier buildings for each. I had a glut of resources as a result and was producing so much that I required two merchantmen doing around the clock transport of the goods back to Europe for sale, from just the one colony. The money flowed, and the King took his bloody share of it all. I look forward to trying out a few different strategies with this new title. It hasn’t replaced the old, in my eyes, but it may yet unseat the classic, I’ve just got to spend a little bit more time with it.

[Rob Ross]

Oh bollocks I've got this on pre-order...

[Boeman]

I have some good memories of the old Colonization.

One exploit I would use was to select the Dutch, which provided me with the most powerful national ability, a stable market with better revenues in Amsterdam.

During the start of the game, I would purchase as many military units as I could and then locate Inca/Aztec native tribes. Once settled, I would allocate production to liberty bells to provide me with the founding father that would remove the 50% penalty revenue cut for sending treasure back to the motherland (shipping it was also done free of charge).

Once the military forces I needed were in place, I would then assault and ravage every Inca and Aztec city I could find thus, amassing an incredible amount of wealth. This garnered a huge advantage over my rivals. as I could now buy skilled tradesmen, frigates, privateers, and weaponry. More importantly, this allowed me to operate with near 100% revenue while trading with Amsterdam by refusing taxes (dumping goods into the water)

and then simply paying back taxes; a far cheaper option in the long run.

The old Colonization, like other Sid Meier games, made coin the central most important resource in the game. For everything else, you simply bought.

Will the aforementioned exploit work with the new Colonization?

Shame on them if it does

[volfrahm]

So you can automate the ships for trade in Europe? I didn't find that in the manual. And how many inf units do you need to fight off about 30 inf and 10 dragoons? Do any of you bother with purchasing ship of the lines? How can you when they cost 8000 each?