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''Sid Meier's Colonization'' is a
video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
by Brian Reynolds and
Sid Meier Sidney K. Meier ( ; born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian-American programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the ''Civilization'' series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with B ...
released by
MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and video game developer, developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization (series), Civilizatio ...
in 1994. It is a
turn-based In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of the two ways: real-time and turn-based. Real-time Real-time games have game time progress cont ...
strategy game A strategy game or strategic game is a game (e.g. a board game) in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decisio ...
themed on the early European
colonization Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
of the
New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
, starting in 1492 and lasting until 1850. It was originally released for
DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
, and later ported to
Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...
(1995), the
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
(1995), and
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(1995). American
video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ( ...
Tommo Tommo Inc. is an American video game publisher based in City of Industry, California. Founded in 1990, Tommo started out as a small independent distributor of imported video games. Since 2006, Tommo also operates a publishing subsidiary, UFO In ...
purchased the rights to this game in 2015 and digitally published it through their Retroism brand. ''Colonization'' is much like a more-developed version of Sid Meier's previous game ''
Civilization A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). Ci ...
'' (1991) in visual design and handling, but the two have marked differences in gameplay. Instead of forging a nation from nothing, the player manages the cross-Atlantic expansion of an established one in the service of the Crown. As the colonies become more self-sufficient, their relationship with the colonial power declines from being beneficial to harmful, and to win the player must ultimately declare independence and defeat the Royal Expeditionary Force in battle.


Gameplay

The game begins in 1492. The player controls the colonial forces of either England, France, The Netherlands, or Spain; the other powers are then played by the computer. Each nation has unique abilities that favor certain strategies. There is a choice between a historical map (America) or a randomly generated map (the New World), and players may also construct their own map with the included scenario editor. The journey begins with a ship and two units arriving at the new world; as the ship moves into the unknown, the map is revealed. Subsequently, the player makes landfall, explores the New World, meets the indigenous Indians, builds colonies and buildings, and improves and works the surrounding land. The ship can return to
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
to collect more colonists and sell and buy items. The colonists can work the immediate land around the colony. Different map squares can yield different resources; for instance, most squares can produce food, while only forests can yield lumber. Harvested resources from the land, such as cotton or tobacco, can be manufactured and converted into commodities, such as cloth and cigars, and either used or sold. The prices of commodities in Europe fluctuate depending upon supply and demand. With money, the player is able to buy goods, fund faster building construction, recruit new colonists, or buy ships and artillery. The king may at different times raise colonial taxes to pay for a war taking place in Europe or for some other reason. The player is also required to protect their colonies from potential invasion by equipping and stationing soldiers. Moreover, the player manages their citizens, educating them in various skills to increase their productivity in areas such as farming, gathering of resources, or manufacturing. Players may send missionaries into Indian villages to convert them to Christianity. The Indians may accept and convert, or they may refuse and burn the missionary at the stake. If another colonial power has already established a mission in a village, a missionary may attempt to denounce them as heretics with an equal 50/50 chance of success or failure. When waging war, the player has a basic colonial army consisting of militiamen, artillery, cavalry, and ships. Weapons and soldiers can be purchased from Europe; however, to win independence, the player will need to develop an indigenous armaments industry. Indians will initially only have braves and no horses or guns; over time they may obtain them via trade or defeating colonial forces in battle. Guns and horses must be available in a colony to equip citizens and turn them into soldiers. If a colonial power captures a colony, it will remain in their possession unless it is retaken by force. Indians will destroy a colony if they capture it. Colonies are most often built on the coast; although they can be built inland, the player must build wagons to transport goods between colonies. In addition, wagons are necessary to trade with inland Indian villages. Goods may be sold to rival colonial powers, sent back to Europe for sale, or sold to Indian villages. Colonists come in four types. The first is the basic free citizen, who has no particular skills but may be assigned to any job. If a citizen performs the same job for a certain length of time, the game may upgrade him to a specialist in that particular job. The second is the indentured servant. He is suitable for performing unskilled labor, but less productive at skilled trades. With enough time at a particular job, he may become a free citizen. The third is the petty criminal. Like the indentured servant, petty criminals are only useful for unskilled labor. Petty criminals can eventually become free citizens through military service. If they survive enough battles eventually they are promoted to indentured servant followed eventually by free citizen. All free citizens can become veterans by winning enough battles. Citizens may also travel to an Indian village and learn a skill from the natives such as tobacco farming. The Indians will not permit petty criminals to live among them, but will teach free citizens and indentured servants. In addition, missionaries may convert Indians to Christianity and convince them to live in the player's towns, where they are a little better than free citizens at working the land (and unlike specialists, are better at any type of it), but poor at industrial trades. Specialists are citizens who are trained and skilled at a specific profession. These can be free citizens, indentured servants, or petty criminals who learned the profession by doing the job, through education, or by visiting an Indian village (except criminals), or they can be pre-existing specialists (obtained via European immigration). Some professions, for example growing cotton, sugar and tobacco, can only be learned in Indian villages or in a colony, and are unknown in Europe. Eventually the player can build schoolhouses where they can teach their citizens to become specialists in specific professions. The player may at any time unassign a specialist and turn him back into an ordinary free citizen. Horses can be imported from Europe. If any colony has two or more horses, they will breed up to a maximum number. An unskilled colonist (including a petty criminal) who enters a neutral or friendly Indian village on horseback may (rarely) be killed, may be given a gift, or may be promoted to be a specialist scout. Seasoned scouts have a better chance to meet with a favorable reaction when entering a village, and an improved chance of discovering a fabled "
Fountain of Youth The Fountain of Youth is a mythical spring which allegedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted around the world for thousands of years, appearing in the writings of Herod ...
" when investigating ancient ruins—which will provoke a sudden influx of potential colonists of all types to the player's European port. Further, mounted soldiers are more effective and have a better survival rate than dismounted infantry. Each colonial power has certain bonuses that make them unique and different from each other. Aside from European colonial powers, the NPC powers include eight Native American tribes, in four main categories. Each Native American settlement can convert one regular colonist into a specialist. More advanced tribes (Incas and Aztecs) live in larger cities. Analogous to "Wonders of the World" in the ''Civilization'' series of games, social and industrial advances are achieved by the addition of "Founding Fathers" to the "Continental Congress", which are gained by generating a sufficient number of "
Liberty Bell The Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia. Originally placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now renamed Independence ...
s" through the colonial pride of settlers. These are all named after real historical figures, such as
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...
and
Pocahontas Pocahontas (, ; born Amonute, known as Matoaka, 1596 – March 1617) was a Native American woman, belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of ...
. One main driving impulse in ''Colonization'' is the harvesting of natural resources, such as lumber (for building), ore (for manufacturing), and food (for population growth). Squares on the map have basic values of resource output (depending on the type of terrain and if a river runs through it), but certain "prime" squares have double or higher output values, making them highly desirable. Pioneers can, at the cost of expending tools, create roads on tiles, increasing their yield and removing terrain movement penalties, or remove features such as forests to make room for agriculture. They can also "plow" flat terrain to increase agricultural yields. The ultimate goal of the game is winning independence from the mother country. When the player is producing sufficient Liberty Bells, he may choose to declare independence. He then has to defeat most of the King's army to win, which is not an easy task as the royal army and navy are individually more powerful and usually more numerous than the player's colonial forces, although the King's troops are unused to fighting in the New World and are more easily defeated in rough terrain. Other colonial powers may help with the enterprise, analogous to the French intervention in the American Revolutionary War. Of course, if the player has a large enough treasury, another foreign power may provide military aid in the form of mercenaries.


Development

''
Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
''s "The Rumor Bag" column reported in April 1994 that "MicroProse is working on a game like ''Sid Meier's Civilization'' that covers the Age of Colonization".
GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...
released an
emulated In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run so ...
version for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
in 2012.


Reception

Sales of ''Sid Meier's Colonization'' surpassed 350,000 copies by September 1997. In 1996, ''Colonization'' was ranked the fourth best game of all time by ''
Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. Philosophy ''Amiga Power'' had several principles which com ...
''. It was named the 52nd best computer game ever by ''
PC Gamer UK ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games mag ...
'' in 1997. '' Next Generation'' stated that "MPS Labs borrowed heavily from classic hits of the past to create a surprisingly addictive title with a flavor all its own."


Remakes

''
FreeCol ''FreeCol'' is a 4X video game, a clone of ''Sid Meier's Colonization''. ''FreeCol'' is free and open source software released under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. ''FreeCol'' is mostly programmed in Java and should thus be platform-independent. In ...
'' released in 2003, is an
open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
and
fan-made Fan labor, also called fan works, are the creative activities engaged in by fans, primarily those of various media properties or musical groups. These activities can include creation of written works (fiction, fan fiction and review literature), ...
remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...
of ''Colonization''.A Brief History Of Modern Retro
by Alec Meer on
Rock, Paper, Shotgun ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' (also rendered ''Rock, Paper, Shotgun''; short ''RPS'') is a UK-based website for reporting on video games, primarily for PC. Originally launched on 13 July 2007 as an independent site, ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' was acquir ...
''"You may be better off with the open source fan remake, FreeCol."'' (March 01, 2010)
It is under continued development. The 2008 release '' Civilization IV: Colonization'' is a
Firaxis Firaxis Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Sparks, Maryland. The company was founded in May 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse, Meier's earlier venture. They were ...
remake of the original ''Colonization'' for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. It uses the upgraded ''
Civilization IV ''Civilization IV'' (also known as ''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'') is a 4X turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the ''Civilization'' series, and designed by Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and his vid ...
'' engine and features the original gameplay (with some changes, particularly to colonist education),
3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the ...
, an updated AI, and
multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...
support.


References


External links

* {{Authority control 1994 video games 4X video games Age of Discovery video games Amiga games
Colonization Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
Classic Mac OS games Colonialism in popular culture DOS games Games commercially released with DOSBox Historical simulation games Linux games MicroProse games
Colonization Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
Single-player video games Tommo games Turn-based strategy video games Video games about the American Revolution Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Allister Brimble Video games scored by Jeff Briggs Video games set in the 18th century Windows games