Civilization IV Colonization

Review from Starks - Monday, 27 October 2008 @ 7:53am

Mel Gibson helped make a movie a few years back in preparation for my review of Civilisation IV: Colonisation. Brilliant stuff and I must thank him for dedicating it to me:

Whilst I find his movie quite amusing from the point of view that a story about patriotism and the American War of Independence has an Aussie and a Kiwi as its two main characters, the film adequately relates to the viewer the nature of why the Yanks decided to split from the Motherland – They kept getting overly taxed.

Freeeeeeedommmmm!!! ... Wait, that's Braveheart, right?

Of course, I also like Michael Moore’s take on why they split from England.

Ultimately, I just really like that movie and only the first 30 seconds has any relevance to the review, but hey – If Brett’s allowed to go off topic then I’m going to push the envelope too.

Anyways…

As a kid growing up, I was raised playing games that have gone on to be classed as classics. Two of those were Sid Meier’s Civilisation and his spin off, Colonisation. I remember reading in one of those crappy print magazines by a clever journalist that computer games had taught him most of the knowledge he had today; Civilisation taught him about history, Colonisation and Day of the Tentacle taught him about the American War of Independence and the history behind it, Sim City taught him about economics and town planning, and Monkey Island had… well, taught him how to fence.

Colonisation for me was the ‘other’ Civ; The one that I always enjoyed but never really got. I always liked building wonders of the world and making lots of different units like the catapult and the musketeer. I also liked it when my Battleship was also killed by a fortified Greek Phalanx in some freak of gaming nature.

Paint that wagon orange giant man!

In any case, the original Colonisation, as I grew older, was a very fine example of economy building, and as I matured I found that the game was much like a fine wine; Instead it got better as I aged.

Civilisation IV: Colonisation is a remake of this title by Firaxis, and I must say that they’ve made an excellent version of it for new gamers to enjoy. Whilst utilising the Civlisiation IV engine and interface, the game plays remarkably unique and harks back to the original quite well.

To give a basic overview of the game, it is made up of several elements:

· You begin by landing in ‘The New World’, surrounded by natives and with an entire land mass to colonise. Your first job is to carve out a patch of dirt that you can build a nation off.

· As time passes by, you build new colonies and, utilising the resources around you, begin to establish an economy. As you grow, you begin to realise the necessity of specialised units and their incredible benefit to the colony.

· Utilisation of resources is dependent on specific unit types. For instance, if you want to build your lumber reserves, then a ‘Free Colonist’ can successfully do this for you. However, a trained ‘Lumberjack’ will by nature produce more lumber, and therefore the impetus is to build an efficient and effective economy with the resources around you. (Note – There is nothing more satisfying than developing a well oiled supply chain that delivers you impressive income off the back of distilling rum.)

· With this economy, you can develop your new settlement by constructing new buildings, educating our populace, increasing religious influence (Matt will just lurv that aspect), instilling patriotic feelings among the citizens and making the good ole Motherland increasingly nervous at your growing size.

· As you increase in size, your military might accompanies and inevitably the desire for independence from Monachal tax reaches a point where you can declare your independence and take on the Royal army.

· Once this is the case, your final goal is to fight of the invasion and permanently erase your reliance on the Motherland; Thereby winning the game.

70's 'Brown' style decor for the city screen

That is essentially the basic premise of the game. Thrown into the mix is the exploration of ‘A whole new world’ with many dangers but realistically a plethora of opportunities.

The natives themselves are an interesting mix. The original title didn’t have as many tribes in and each was distinctive in nature. Whilst each race of natives is now more defined, each specific tribe holds its own specialities. For instance, the Sioux village next to the ocean are expert fishermen, so they often donate to your colony free food.

However the interesting aspect is that Firaxis has made many, many more tribes within the game to the point where it’s almost impossible to found additional colonies and expand your mini empire. Indeed, I began to feel more and more like Andrew Jackson as I removed the Cherokee and Apache from their domain and replaced them with Jamestown, Charlestown, Plymoth and Yorktown.

Still, I’ll admit I got a little greedy as I went Pizarro on the Inca’s. Seriously though, when plundering a town and pillaging $5k a pop, it’s a little hard to refuse.

Where's Captain Jack Sparrow when you need him?

Of course, politics is one of the main features of the game due to the Civ4 engine. Essentially, you're free to forge friendships, alliances or just plain war with whomever you wish whenever you want. Probably one of the more historically liberal aspects of the game realistically as despire cultural dislike, I managed to get the French to align with me as the English. Although this was technically the case in the instance of the American War of Independence.

Probably one of the more disappointing aspects is the reluctance of Firaxis to include Portugal in the mix. Considering the Portuguese founded Brazil, one of the largest South America nations, it does ring a bit strange that the opportunity to expand the races was not taken.

Some of the other bugs that have been found by various fans include weak AI, terrible spawning points and various other bugs that have cropped up. Firaxis have already put out a few patches, and they're currently out to v1.03, which is steadily fixing the problems. However I didn't notice any of these issue itself so I guess I'm not a hard core enough fan.

In my opinion, I'm not a real big fan of the multiplayer. Simply put I find more enjoyment in the single player, but my brief experience of it seems to be fairly positive. Except when your opposition goes to the toilet like mine did. He was gone for 15 fricken minutes. What'd he have, constipation or something?

The map builder is also interesting, and the inclusion of the Caribbean as a scenario is also interesting and well thought through.

I honeslty can't see any real issues with the game depite the fact that, yes - It is simply a remake with better graphics, better engine and works with Vista. Frankly, it's not new so that in itself meant I got bored after a weeks worth of playing. No doubt I'll return for some stints, but I seriously am beginning to wonder whether there are developers out there that are thinking 'original' because this title isn't.

Pros

Fantastic engine, True to the original, Lots of depth and replayability.

Cons

Simply the original repackaged, Some bugs in the game, More scenarios would be nice i.e. Colonisation of Inda or something.