Civilization IV: Colonization

By Tristan Clark

Back in 1994, famed developer Sid Meier (heard of him?) made a game called Colonization. In the game, you picked one of four Old World powers to play as (such as the English or French) and sailed to the Americas in search of land, booty, power, and suitably pacified natives.

While this might sound like an extremely stripped down version of Civilization, it had a few key differences that actually made it a really enjoyable experience. Rather than focusing on developing new technologies and weapons all the time, you instead focused on your rivals, your relationship with native tribes, and the acquisition of exotic resources. And over time, your colony would start to feel the need for separating itself from the motherland, allowing you to declare independence and try to fend off a horde of angry Old World troops.

All in all, Colonization had enough differences to set it quite apart from the more famous Civilization – and now those who haven’t experienced the original will get to play the recently announced remake coming to PC.

The game is now going to be called Civilization IV: Colonization, both to cash in on the more famous brand and to show that it’s a total conversion of the Civ IV engine. This is fine by me – the engine is very flexible, user friendly and easy on the eyes, and should provide the perfect backdrop for you to try and wipe out those pesky Spanish.

Naturally, the new engine brings new graphics and an updated interface to the original, but there are also a number of gameplay enhancements being made. Diplomacy has been vastly improved, allowing a greater degree of options when dealing with friends and enemies. The interface is obviously much friendlier this time round, and a small amount of technology researching can be undertaken (so your better guns can defeat your enemy’s crappy guns). Your relationship with your home land has also been bumped up, and should provide benefits and responsibilities not unlike those found in the latest Age of Empires. The game will also allow online multiplayer for up to four players.

All in all, I’m pretty excited to see Colonization updated with the Civ IV engine. It was a good fun game back in the day, and a few tweaks should see it still work well in 2008. Keep it locked to NZGamer.com for more coverage on the title (you can be sure I’ll be pushing for it!) in the near future.

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Posted by Wozza on 17 July 2008, 04:27PM

I have never been able to get into this series as much as everyone else seems to love it. :(

Posted by McPhisto on 18 July 2008, 01:13PM

What, the Civ series? Forget about that, Colonization is very different! Definately worth checking it out if it's as good as the original. ;)