A worthy sequel to a long-neglected classic.
Ah, Colonization. It has been too long, my friend. Too long since you held me prisoner in your intricate production chains. Too long since you stifled my economic growth with your spiteful tax hikes. Too long since you battered down my settlements with a seemingly infinite army of cannons and settlements. Too long since you and I have been together. And after years of waiting, you have finally reappeared in all your Vista-compatible glory and filled my days, my nights, and my late, late nights with hours of joyful frustration and aggravating delights.
The awkward title makes it seem like an expansion pack but Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is actually a remake of one of our favorite and most fondly remembered strategy games of the 1990s. And like Firaxis' remake of Sid Meier's classic Pirates! it manages to do what few remakes can: stylishly upgrading the overall presentation and interface without sacrificing the appeal of the original game's mechanics and character. If you were a fan of the original Colonization, you'll love the updated look and feel of this game. And if you never played Colonization before, you'll find a compelling design that has held up extremely well over the last fifteen years.
If your settlements are stocked with enough food, eventually you'll start to generate new colonists that can take on new jobs. Specialized workers can be hired back in the Old World, or even attracted to the religious climate you create in the colonies. Missions set up among the Natives can even encourage native workers to come live in your settlements. As your population grows, you'll send colonists out to establish new settlements and take advantage of nearby resources. Wagon trains and roads help you move goods around, so you can get the raw materials to the industries that need them, and the finished goods to your main trading cities.
Of course, it's not just about the assembly line. Not all the native tribes are friendly, and any of them might become hostile depending on your treatment of them and your attitude towards encroaching on their settlements. You'll also find that other European powers are establishing their own colonies here, and you'll have to compete with them for scare resources and land. So you'll need to assign some colonists as soldiers to protect your interests.
Where the Civilization games have a variety of victory conditions, Colonization all builds to this revolt as the player's sole objective. Fail to win your freedom in the time allotted and it doesn't matter how much cash you're generating or how much land you own or how much the natives love you. The good news is that the King is aggressive enough with demands for tribute and tax, not to mention his own intimidating military build up, that revolution becomes more than just a victory condition; it becomes a declaration of your independence that carries real emotional weight with the player. And because the game has this one winning condition, it should appeal to strategy gamers who are unhappy with the less structured victory paths in Civilization IV.
When you revolt, you'll have a chance to set your own constitution, which basically is a series of either/or choices you can make to determine what types of bonuses you want when waging the war against your home country. If your constitution supports slavery, for instance, you get a big boost to all your raw material production. If it abolishes slavery, you get a one-time population boost in each settlement. Each of the choices here has a compelling benefit and also offers you to make a sort of personal statement about the identity of your new country. Will you be a monarchy so you can keep trading with Europe? Will you run a theocratic state so you can translate religious freedom into additional production?
As attractive as it all is, this is all stuff we expected from a Colonization remake. But the designers at Firaxis have managed to incorporate a number of significant improvements that make the experience that much more enjoyable. Some, like the concept of colonial borders, are clearly borrowed from Civilization IV and serve basically the same purpose. The difference here is that rebel sentiment takes the place of culture, so you're encouraged to protest against the home country to ensure your access to important resources (and to deny them to your rivals). The strength of your borders will even sometimes flip enemy cities to your side and absorb native settlements.
Our favorite addition, by far, is the automation of trade. The original Colonization let players create discreet trade routes and assign a specific wagon train to run that route, picking up and dropping off goods as directed. While it was a workable system, everything had to be done by hand, with the player setting up each individual pick up and drop off and having dedicated wagons ready for each strand in the network. Needless to say, it was a management headache that involved lots of scratch paper and frequent revisions when goods ran out and the system broke down.
The new version lets players assign an import or export tag as well as stock limits to every single good in every single settlement. Then the player just has to set the wagon trains on automatic and they'll start redistributing goods on their own according to the tags and stock limits you've set. You just tell the game that you want to export cotton where it's produced and move it to your weaving centers and the wagon trains take care of it. Of course, you have to have enough wagon trains to meet your trading needs, and you'll still want a couple under your direct control for one-time transfers, but the new system frees up part of your brain from worrying about the smallest details of your logistic system and lets you focus instead on your actual strategies.
It's not all uphill for most players though. Since the game uses many of the same concepts and interface elements of Civilization IV, it's quite easy to pick it up and least get a sense of direction. The interface is very clean and presents the game in way that makes it very easy to maintain awareness of what's going on around you. Summary screens provide all the detail you need to manage the big picture, while simple yield displays let you see what each and every settlement needs at any given moment. There are a few downsides, unfortunately. It takes a lot of switching back and forth sometimes to get colonists in the right jobs and the roads between your settlements are nearly invisible.
Otherwise, the game's visual and audio elements are solid. Sure, the map can get a bit busy at times, and your pioneers are basically camouflaged against the terrain, but the animation and detail on each of your units makes it easy to stare at your monitor for four hours in a row. The sound is amazing, with the pleasant background music giving way to swelling national themes in as you zoom in and mouse over your settlements. As the view slides from your settlements to a native village, you'll even hear the music change to reflect the different character of the two societies. Battle effects and ambient sounds also add a bit of life to the game, but our favorite effect so far is the little kissy sound and subsequent chorus of disapproval that are made whenever you give in to your home country's requests.
Some critics feel that very idea of a game about the European colonization of the Americas is both embarrassing and insulting and that it celebrates a racist doctrine that led to the destruction of numerous native cultures. While it's true that the game does cover a period of history where European powers used their technological and logistical advantages to subjugate and exploit native people, players are encouraged to consider the benefits of peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. In fact, once you revolt from your mother country, a friendly native population becomes one of your greatest strengths. Other critics who fault the game for not being harsh enough to include smallpox or slave trading will merely have to be content with the game's abstraction of these concepts.
Closing Comments
Like Pirates! before it, Colonization is brilliant, not just for the way that it successfully captures the fun and feel of one of a classic PC game, but also for the way that it brings that design into a new era. The presentation here is very polished and the design is deeply captivating. To be sure, the sophisticated economic aspects of the game only appeals to a very specific type of gamer so, while it's an amazing game, it's definitely not for everyone. But any gamer who wasn't scared off by the complications and challenges of Civilization will feel right at home here.
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