Customer Reviews

Civilization 4: Colonization

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been a huge, huge fan of Sid Meier's Civilization ever since the beginning. The original Colonization stills holds some good memories for me and this version just falls short because of the endplay.

Here are the good things about the game: Graphics look great (the engine and 3D graphics make the game much easier to enjoy compared to the original). It is still great to be producing specialized products (cigars, cloth, guns, tools) by using your specialists in the cities. Figuring out trade routes between your cities to keep raw materials flowing to your factories and then off to your port to be shipped to Europe is still as intriguing as before.

But here are the 2 downfalls of the game (one small and one huge). Unlike the other Civ games, you are almost always in your city screen. You spend almost no time outside moving units or improving tiles. One little pet peeve is that the music (which is great) does not play in the city screens. So sitting in the city screens was dull for me. I was finding myself with nothing to do for turns at a time while I was waiting for my ships to come back from Europe or waiting for something to be built/person to be trained.

All that said, I would give this expansion 4 or 5 stars if they hadn't totally messed up the play after your Revolution. One interesting thing added was writing your Constitution. You are allowed to select different improvements which allow you to for example continue selling goods in Europe or all slaves becoming freemen. But after that, the Revolution is totally impossible. The really hue gripe I have is: your King's forces are made to be impossible to defeat. And the second is that you are fighting him totally on your own (which of course with the American Revolution is totally inaccurate). In the first Colonization, you were fighting an overwhelming force, ambushing the King's men whenever you, and producing liberty bells to convince one of the other European powers to provide help. Well that doesn't happen anymore because all that historic tie in has been removed. Like Civ 4, all units have upgrades based on experience. Every single solider sent to invade will have a minimum of 3 upgrades. They also have a higher base attack than any person you can buy, produce or train (I believe the soldiers are 4 attack and the best you can get is a veteran soldier at 3). So suffice it to say, you be sending your soldiers to die time after time after time against 1 soldier. During my second try at my Revolution, I had 15(!!) consecutive attacks on the same solider. I attacked with cannons, dragoons, veteran soldiers one after the other. Every single one died and I didn't take that one solider down 1 hit point. I turned whole cities into nothing but soldiers and upgraded my defenses to fortresses (which are worthless because the King's 15 cannons he has sitting on one tile will destroy it in 2 turns) and MIGHT win 1 fight out of 10. And don't even bother to try to attack the King's navy. The Men O War are much stronger than anything you can build or buy so it's just a waste of resources to watch them get sunk one after another.

Save your money and skip this expansion. I am currently playing the Warlords expansion which gets rids of the bugs from Civ 4 Gold and give it 5 stars. I will also be trying out the Beyond the Sword expansion.

I wish there was a tutorial on how to set up automatic trading between settlements. The game gets tedious. I have only been able to finish one game to completion. I could spend the time to learn ... The game just doesn't pull me in.

I must have whittled away days playing the '94 version in college...the original was very addictive and fun.

The new one built on the Civ IV engine is good as well. They have made a few improvements to the basic game...added a few new units, colony improvements and things like the ability to have the colony generate military, exploration, and political points to help you get more founding fathers. Otherwise, it is basically the same as the 1994 version. And still just as addictive...

I don't seem to remember the "Turns Left to Declare Independence" countdown in the other one. It is a feature I wish they had left out.

Uses the Civilization 4 engine, but Civilization 4 is NOT required to play. In addition, lots of details are different from Civilization 4 (and also different from the original Colonization game), so a review of the rules is in order before jumping in. I had experience with both Civilization 4 and the old Colonization game; nevertheless, I failed to win the game my first time through, even on the easiest setting. The main problem was not having sufficient Rebel Sentiment to allow me to declare independence (and insufficient forces, even if I had been able to declare it). My second time through I was able to declare independence with 10 turns (out of 300!) to spare, and did eventually win the ensuing fight (although things did look bleak for a while).

I loved the original, so this remake actually does it justice. If you're a colonization fan, this game is a must!

This game is a lot of fun playing on the Mac the graffic is great and a the game is ust fun