Sid Meier's Colonization

The Good
If Civilization was the macro version, then Colonization was the micro version although to say the least, Colonization is a brilliant strategy game.

Colonization sets somewhere between the 1500's and the 1800's, from where the first Europeans set ground in South/Central America bringing disease and ultimate chaos to the natives until the independence of the newly found United States of America and beyond.

With that, historically you have 4 major "parasite" nations that you can choose from to plunder the new world (in no particular order):

The Good
There are many paths to victory, and plenty of opportunity to invent unique strategies. Initially, you are dependent on your mother country, and so make money by shuffling goods back and forth between your colonies, the natives, and Europe. Or you can ignore that, outfit some guys with guns and go treasure-hunting and wiping out Indians. Gradually, through the addition of taxes, you are forced out of your mother countries' market, at which point you end your game by declaring independence and (hopefully) winning the war. You can win "big" by developing into an industrial behemoth, or win "small" by quickly building up an army and trying to defend only one or two colonies.

The Bad
The price for the depth allowed is that in the later stages heavy micromanagement(more than Civ) of your trade and specialists becomes necessary for success. Since specialists are individual units and are attached to colonies, you often find that early on you don't have a use for some specialists, and then later when you do it's in a different location from where they went originally, so that you either shuffle them around constantly or sort of ignore it and miss out on their production bonuses. This is alleviated slightly since you can choose when to finish your game, but that only covers up the problem.

The Bottom Line
Fun historical strategy, loosely related to Civ but with a character all its own. You can learn a lot by playing this game, though it quietly steps around the issue of slavery. It moves relatively quickly - you might be able to finish a game in one evening.

The Good
This game looks and plays a lot like the designer's classic Civilization game. The difference is that while that game was won by expansion of your civilization and developing technology, this game is won by careful development of your cities and trade. This game is really more about economics than military conquest.

In Colonization you are given different types of prospective colonists with various skills (or lack of skills) and you decide whether to sail them from the Old World to the New. Then you have to get those colonists to where you can take full advantage of their skills. So you'd want to get the miners close to mountains and distillers close to sugar supplies, etc. You then want to arrange trade routes between your cities so you can get your raw materials shipped to cities that can then upgrade it to more refined and valuable goods. Ultimately you can ship your raw or manufactured goods back to the Old World for profit.

Eventually you will reach a point where you will declare independence and have to fight a revolutionary war. Your success in this war is heavily dependent upon how well you fortified your cities and built a strong, diverse economy prior to independence.

The Bad
To get your cities productive will require a lot of micro management of your cities. While I really enjoyed this at first. As I got better at the game it became a bit of a nuisance moving colonists around. I think if the computer could have managed some aspects for you it would have cut down on all the mouse clicking.

But the real sore point of the game is its frustrating combat system. In this game you don't really damage or destroy units, instead, when beaten, a unit downgrades. So after a battle a military unit would loose all its guns making it a normal colonist until you armed it again. While this fits the games focus on economics, it makes for fighting wars very frustrating. After a hard fought battle, unless you had extra troops to mop up the beaten armies they would retreat and return a few turns later rearmed with weapons. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that fighting the King's army is very difficult on the harder settings. I understand that it was made this way to stress the importance of developing your colony's manufacturing . But I think there could have been a better way to portray this in the game.

The Bottom Line
Despite its flawed combat system this game is quite addictive. You will have many late nights perfecting cities and trade routes as you prepare for independence.

The Good
Just about everything - it's as addictive as Civilization and not quite as elaborate, the graphics are very well drawn and fit the style of the game, the King with His Pinky Ring is really cool and the ingame music is of top quality.

The Bad
Hmm... I guess it gets kindof annoying after a while, but you always go back to it.

The Bottom Line
A really good Civilization-style game from God Himself.

The Good
A nicely woven trade context, you can harvest many different goods, process them to varying levels of refinement, ship intermediates between towns (like RRT) then trade them either back in Europe, with other Civs, or with the indians, to reap huge profits. It allows rapid expansion if that's your style. It allows temporary cities (build, then later dismantle) if that's your style again. You can fight others, or grow peacefully, relatively unhindered.

The Bad
It can get a little too peaceful, if you're not attacking anybody. You can go for 200 turns without a war, which is fine, if you like merchant/trade simulations. The military units never advance in technology, which is historically realistic, but a paradigm shift for seasoned CIV style gamers. The graphics are of course 1994 state-of-the-art, but that was amply sufficient for me, since the spreadsheet engine underlying the graphics is no worse than that of Civ 3. At least the AI doesnt cheat so much in Colonization.

The Bottom Line
DOS and Windows versions virtually identical, I play both (I find the interface more smooth in DOS. You settle and build cities like other Civ games. You can engage in trade and make money, or attack and rob the Indians and make money. You can get $100 for a good or $1000, depending who you go to trade with and what they need at that time. You can conduct shallow trade, with inexperienced workers right from the start and make a little money. Or you can go deep, develop the land, train workers to be specialists, and built industrial infrastructures, to make 5 to 10 times more money from trade. If you want to be peaceful, the AI pretty much can leave you alone to develop and grow peacefully, and build an economic powerhouse.

But there is ultimately a war you need to prepare for. The war of Independence, which you have to spend 200-300 turns preparing for, and to win it, you will need every cannon, every cavalry, and every fortification (and every dollar) you could possibly have built during those peace years.

The Good
Play as Spanish, English, Dutch or French. Each has a special advantage of their own. Most people play the Dutch because your ship can carry 4 commodities at the start instead of 2 for all other players. Also commodity prices are better. The French have better relations with the Indians meaning fewer attacks and have a trained pioneer which clears land quicker and gets more logs from cleared woods. The English get 50% more immigrants, but this makes it more difficult to train them all and stop big colonies losing efficiency. The Spanish have veteran Soldiers to attack the Indians or other Europeans.

The Bad
The fight mechanics don't work according to probabilities and you get too many foreign POW's - ie. you can attack a city with several Artillary all the time and lose them all, on other occasions attack all the time and win. This means either you lose every unit and keep every unit. Probably means you should only lose some, this really spoils the game as you can't guarantee a win although you have a massive arsenal. Also after you get 4 privateers they always lose. It would have been good if you could have captured ships as well as sink them.

The Bottom Line
Great. A real insite into how the New World was Colonized. Learn about historic figures of the time who join your Congress. New Congress members act like tech advances in Civilization eg. Adam Smith makes Factories, and Magellan increases ship movement. The game is a bit like Civilization only on a reduced time scale. Includes Dragoons, Soldiers, Scouts, Caravels, Mecantmans, Galleons, Man-O-War (during fight for Independence). Kings Soldiers and Continental army recruits act like Riflemen and Cavalry.

The Good
All the different things/ways you can play it. Each game is like a new game. Sound is not to bad.--Sid Meier classic. A game in my list of top 10 games ever played.

The Bad
The music, normal I like the music in games, but the music is the first thing I put of when I play this game.

The Bottom Line
I game you either love it with you whole heart or you had it.

The Good
I loved the music, and it was probably one of the best aspects of the game. The game was addicting because it resembled Civilization, and just building up the empire was fun too.

The Bad
Back when it played it in the mid-90's, I could'nt think of any flaws that it had. But now, I wish they made Colonization 2 or a game that plays identically to this one, but has better graphics and more features. I've tried quite a few games such as Conquest of the New World, and they just don't have the unique feel that Colonization had.

The Bottom Line
I would tell people that this game is similar to Civilization and that they can play it today for nostalgic relief or just sit back and listen to the tunes. This game also inspired me to take an Indian Studies course later in college.

The Good
Engaging turn-based strategic gameplay. Some reliance on luck, since you could choose to randomise maps, OR play the real America as translated into game squares. Very good summaries about historical figures of times past. Runs well on Windows 3.x or 9x - no soundcard worries here! Also, high-res images make it easier to tell units apart (640x480 versus the DOS versions' 320x240(I think?!).

The Bad
You couldn't make the natives continuously happy - then again, which colonist can? Also, after declaring sovereignty, the troops your motherland sends are quite powerful - then again, it's a STRATEGY game.

The Bottom Line
A masterpiece of Historical Simulation! Play this if you need to learn history, the extremely engaging way!