Colonization is a turn-based strategy game from Sid Meier, Bryan Reynolds and Jeff Briggs. It was first released by Microprose in 1994, then as a DOS version, and then later for Windows, Mac and Amiga in 1995. The goal of the game is to colonize the New World and ultimately achieve Independence from Europe. When Colonization was released, it introduced some new game concepts, harvesting and manufacturing goods for trade being the most important one, but also the new concept of interacting with the native tribes in addition to the other European Powers.
One of Sid Meier's great works that went unnoticed by people in his day. It is game based on shifts and micro-management, where you can choose 4 different nations, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands, all have different abilities. You can play on the original map of America, or you can choose one that is made at random, with each country you'll have to play the game differently to get the most out of it. The four European powers compete with each other to attain dominance in the newly discovered territories and to be the first to achieve Independence.
It all began in 1492. Each player starts with a ship and two units, a soldier and a pioneer. Once you have discovered new lands, your units can land and find your first colony. Now we must start agriculture for food production and the extraction of other raw materials such as wood, tobacco, cotton and iron ore. Some colonists will possess special skills which will help us to obtain a bonus on the extraction of the previous ones, and if they do not have these skills they will be able to obtain them by training in the indigenous tribes of the new world, working in something specific or easily being trained in the European universities.
The first response one gives to the natives will have a significant impact in the early years of the colony. Each native settlement offers opportunities for trade and vocational training to make their cities more productive. In those terms, maintaining a positive relationship seems obvious, but colonization does not make it easy. As the colony expands, tensions with these tribes will grow quite a lot, which can lead to not accepting your products or simply attacking you, to better manage relationships you can buy the land of the tribes or if you do not want to pay you will have to attack it to leave you alone.
Although this game went unnoticed as one of the best in the field of micro-management and resource management, apart from the fact that the topic of colonization is very interesting and has a lot of data on some historical characters from both the colonization and independence era, and currently there is a version of the most recent game which was released in 2008 called Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization, both games have some very interesting features and deserve to be tested.
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