Colonization is much like a more-developed version of Sid Meier's previous game Civilization (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.[2]
Gameplay
The main map (DOS version)A colony producing furs, tobacco, coats, and cigars, among other things (DOS version)
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 distinct 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 create 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 to collect more colonists and buy and sell items.
The colonists can work the immediate land around the colony. Different map squares yield different resources; for instance, most squares can produce food, while only forests can yield lumber. Resources harvested from the land, such as cotton or tobacco, can be processed and converted into commodities, such as cloth and cigars, and sold at a greater profit. Commodity prices in Europe fluctuate depending upon supply and demand. With money, the player is able to buy goods, fund faster building construction, recruit new colonists, and 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, resource gathering and 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; this has a 50% chance of succeeding.
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 a home-grown arms industry. Indians will initially only have braves and no horses or guns; over time they may obtain them via trade or by 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 inland colonies. In addition, it is preferable to use wagons when trading with 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 performs any job adequately. If a citizen does the same job for a certain length of time, the game may upgrade him to a specialist in that particular job. The second type of colonist is the indentured servant. He is suitable at unskilled tasks, but less productive at skilled trades. If he is educated for enough time, 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 planting. 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 as they 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 produces food to excess and has two or more horses, the horses will breed. 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 when investigating ancient ruins. This causes a sudden influx of potential colonists 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 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 Bells" through the colonial pride of settlers. These are all named after real historical figures, such as Francisco Coronado and Pocahontas.
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 higher or double 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 has a sufficiently high percentage of "Sons of Liberty", 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'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".[3]
Sales of Sid Meier's Colonization surpassed 350,000 copies by September 1997.[8]
In 1996, Colonization was ranked the fourth best game of all time by Amiga Power.[9] It was named the 52nd best computer game ever by PC Gamer UK in 1997.[10]
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."[6]
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
Sid Meier's Civilization is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse. The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC, and it has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war.
The Colony of Virginia was a British, colonial settlement in North America between 1606 and 1776.
The institution of slavery in the European colonies in North America, which eventually became part of the United States of America, developed due to a combination of factors. Primarily, the labor demands for establishing and maintaining European colonies resulted in the Atlantic slave trade. Slavery existed in every European colony in the Americas during the early modern period, and both Africans and indigenous peoples were targets of enslavement by Europeans during the era.
The colonial history of the United States covers the period of European colonization of North America from the early 16th century until the incorporation of the Thirteen Colonies into the United States in 1776 during the Revolutionary War. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic launched major colonization expeditions in North America. The death rate was very high among early immigrants, and some early attempts disappeared altogether, such as the English Lost Colony of Roanoke. Nevertheless, successful colonies were established within several decades.
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or imposed involuntarily as a judicial punishment. The practice has been compared to the similar institution of slavery, although there are differences.
Civilization: Call to Power is a turn-based strategy game developed by Activision for Microsoft Windows as an attempt to capitalize on the success of the Civilization computer games by Sid Meier. It was ported to Linux by Loki Software, as well as BeOS by Wildcard Design, becoming one of the very few commercial games for that operating system.
Civilization IV is a 4X turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the Civilization series, and developed by Firaxis Games. It was designed by Soren Johnson. It was released in North America, Europe, and Australia, between October 25 and November 4, 2005, and followed by Civilization V.
A headright refers to a legal grant of land given to settlers during the period of European colonization in the Americas. A "headright" includes both the grant of land and the owner that claims the land. The person who has a right to the land is the one who paid to transport people to a colony. Headrights are most notable for their role in the expansion of the Thirteen Colonies; the Virginia Company gave headrights to settlers, and the Plymouth Company followed suit. The headright system was used in several colonies, including Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Most headrights were for 1 to 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of land, and were granted to those who were willing to cross the Atlantic and help populate the colonies. Headrights were granted to anyone who would pay for the transportation costs of an indentured laborer. These land grants consisted of 50 acres (0.20 km2) for someone newly moving to the area and 100 acres (0.40 km2) for people previously living in the area. By ensuring the landowning masters had legal ownership of all land acquired, the indentured laborers after their indenture period had passed had little opportunity to procure their own land. This kept a large portion of the citizens of the Thirteen Colonies poor and led to tensions between the laborers and the landowners.
The tobacco colonies were those that lined the sea-level coastal region of English North America known as Tidewater, extending from a small part of Delaware south through Maryland and Virginia into the Albemarle Sound region of North Carolina. During the seventeenth century, the European demand for tobacco increased more than tenfold. This increased demand called for a greater supply of tobacco, and as a result, tobacco became the staple crop of the Chesapeake Bay Region.
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games, first released in 1991. Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest, and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization VI. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series. The seventh installment in the series is slated for release on Feb 11, 2025. The series is considered a formative example of the 4X genre, in which players achieve victory through four routes: "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".
Conquest of the New World is a video game produced by Interplay Productions and released in 1996. It is a strategy game, involving one or more players either by hotseat, on LAN, modem, or even PBEM (play-by-email). The game starts in the year 1493 and deals with the discovery and conquest of the Americas.
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. In 2023, the FreeCol project reached its 1.0 release, after twenty years of development.
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is the second expansion pack of the turn-based strategy video game Civilization IV. The expansion focuses on adding content to the in-game time periods following the invention of gunpowder, and includes more general content such as 11 new scenarios, 10 new civilizations, and 16 new leaders.
Slavery was practiced in Massachusetts bay by Native Americans before European settlement, and continued until its abolition in the 1700s. Although slavery in the United States is typically associated with the Caribbean and the Antebellum American South, enslaved people existed to a lesser extent in New England: historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts enslaved population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns. Unlike in the American South, enslaved people in Massachusetts had legal rights, including the ability to file legal suits in court.
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is a remake of the 1994 turn-based strategy game Sid Meier's Colonization. Players control settlers from one of four European nations – Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands – that are trying to conquer/colonize the New World in the period 1492–1792. The victorious player is the first to build up his colonies and army, declare independence from the mother country, and defeat the military force that the king inevitably sends to crush the rebellion.
During the British colonization of North America, the Thirteen Colonies provided England with an outlet for surplus population as well as a new market. The colonies exported naval stores, fur, lumber and tobacco to Britain, and food for the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean. The culture of the Southern and Chesapeake Colonies was different from that of the Northern and Middle Colonies and from that of their common origin in the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Indentured servitude in Pennsylvania (1682-1820s): The institution of indentured servitude has a significant place in the history of labor in Pennsylvania. From the founding of the colony (1681/2) to the early post-revolution period (1820s), indentured servants contributed considerably to the development of agriculture and various industries in Pennsylvania. Moreover, Pennsylvania itself has a notable place in the broader history of indentured servitude in North America. As Cheesman Herrick stated, "This system of labor was more important to Pennsylvania than it was to any other colony or state; it continued longer in Pennsylvania than elsewhere."
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is a turn-based strategy, 4X video game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis Games, published by 2K Games and released for Microsoft Windows on October 24, 2014, the Mac App Store on November 27, 2014 and for Linux on December 18, 2014. The game's premise is that Earth became uninhabitable due to an undescribed disaster known as "the Great Mistake", forcing humanity to colonize space. As a spiritual successor to the 1999 game Alpha Centauri, Beyond Earth shares much of its development team and some concepts, most notably its setting on an exoplanet in the future.
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth – Rising Tide, is an official expansion pack for the turn-based strategy video game Civilization: Beyond Earth. It was released on October 9, 2015.
↑ Flynn, James; Owen, Steve; Pierce, Matthew; Davis, Jonathan; Longhurst, Richard (July 1997). "The PC Gamer Top 100". PC Gamer UK. No.45. pp.51–83.
↑ Get Ur FreeCol by Alec Meer on Rock, Paper, Shotgun"it’s an remarkable accomplishment, and I’m very glad it’s out there. [...] FreeCol, though, is here right now, it’s free, it’s stable, it’s pretty much feature-complete and unlike its parent it has multiplayer" (June 12, 2008)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
