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Civilization IV: Colonization is an interesting concept from one of the kings of interesting concepts, Sid Meier. Colonization is a remake of the decades old Colonization, also from Sid Meier. The new game uses the Civ IV engine and takes place in colonial times where you will oversee a colony in the New World. As those who paid attention in history know, setting up a colony wasn’t the easiest of endeavors; there are things like disease, farming and getting along with the Native Americans to consider.
Your ultimate goal in Colonization is to make your colony as strong as possible with the intent of gaining enough support from the colonists to not only declare independence, but defend your newly gained liberty. Since the game is set in colonial times, you won’t have the option of researching the Manhattan Project, enabling you to simply nuke your home country. Instead you’ll have to build up a thriving economy and even feed a little bad PR to your colonists.
True to the series, you’ll be able to choose from four countries, each with its own leaders and skills. The Dutch receive a mercantile bonus while the English get an immigration bonus. The Spanish receive a bonus when facing natives in battle and the French gain bonuses for working with the natives.
Careful relations with the natives play a pretty big part in developing a thriving colony – just ask any of the number of failed colonists. Okay, so maybe you can’t… after all, a failed colony was usually a dead one, but anyway. There are a number of tribes in the game, including the Cherokee, Apache and Aztecs. You can open trade relations with the groups to keep them happy, which in turn will reward you with all kinds of nifty bonuses. On the other hand, you can wipe them out or simply build Missions to convert them to your side.
Civilization IV: Colonization will ship with both single and multiplayer support, including a play-by-email mode and map editor later this year. |
