Sid Meier's Colonization

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
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
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!