Retro Tuesday: Sid Meier’s Colonization
Just after Sid Meier released a little game called Civilization, there came Colonization. To tell the truth, I tend to prefer this game over any of the Civilization games, and I’m not sure why. It’s just as complex and still offers a very open game world for you to play in. When it really gets down to it, it might just be the nifty background music that plays as you discover The New World and ravage it for your country’s own particular benefit, at least until you revolt. Either that, or the fact that I just like to discover strange new lands and make lots of money doing it.
The game starts off with you leaving Europe and playing one of the four sea-faring nations of the time (English, Spanish, French and Dutch), intent upon traveling to lands of riches and treasures so that you can create a successful colony. To do this, you’ll need to explore the new land you’ve discovered and build towns, populating them with both the desirables and the undesirables from your homeland. As your towns grow and you start to interact with the natives more - and eventually members of the other nations - you’ll need to build your defenses up, garrison your troops and create supply lines between the towns. Eventually, taxation will eat at your coffers and you’ll get the chance to secede from your original country and start your own personal Revolution for independence from the monarchy that insists on taxing almost everything you do.
This game has it all: strategy, diplomacy, land combat, piracy and trading. Much of the game play really focuses on setting up trade routes between your individual towns and settlements as well creating and/or sending raw goods back home to your homeland. As your towns grow you’ll find that your citizens are looking for very particular items to allow them to stay happy and to grow in a community and you’ll either need to craft, trade or buy them for them. Building roads between your settlements will help you move trade items faster, but be warned that your enemies can use these roads to get around faster too.
Resource management is a major aspect of the game, and building your settlements requires looking at the lay of the land and seeing if it will give you at least the basic resources you need to grow, such as food, wood and ores. Some of this land is already occupied and protected by natives, and you’ll either have to try to buy the land from them (sometimes inciting them into violence) or fight them for it. As you travel around you’ll also find treasure that you can add to your coffers, and you can attack natives for their wealth, and even go so far as converting them to Christianity and having them join your settlements to help it grow.
One of the neat things about military units is that they have the freedom to move, but can also hunker down in either sentry mode or become garrisoned within the town. Being able to wield a good armed force is paramount to success in this game, but you also need to balance that out with protecting your weaker settlements, particularly as the game gets long and other countries decide that they like what you’ve got going and they want it. Lose a town to an enemy and it may either be taken over or completely destroyed.
It’s amazing how deep and complex this game is, considering that it was released 1994 and was originally released for the Amiga and DOS-based systems. There’s an incredible amount of replay value in the game, and it’s one of the few games that I’ve played on and off for years.
The game isn’t without its problems though. There are certain limits put upon the creation of a settlement, which can be worked around in the game play. The game, although trying to stay true to the real history of the time period, ignores a lot of the geopolitical, moral and social ramifications of the treatment of the natives of North America during the time period; the concept of true slavery is kept out of the game, but as a game design mechanic, that was probably a design decision and the game isn’t truly hampered by it.
Overall, this is an incredible game that you can give you many hours of fun if you let it.
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