If I had to choose one game outside the RPG genre that captures my youth so fully it would be Colonization. My friends and I would spend days at a time playing this gem. Summers would be spent getting together in the early morning and playing "Col" until about 10pm or so, often not even finishing the game of the day.
After playing this game Sid Meier went from great game creator (Civilization) to God Absolute. In this turned based simulation you play one of the four major European powers: English, French, Dutch, or Spanish and send a ship to the "new world" to expand your empire.
If I had to choose one game outside the RPG genre that captures my youth so fully it would be Colonization. My friends and I would spend days at a time playing this gem. Summers would be spent getting together in the early morning and playing "Col" until about 10pm or so, often not even finishing the game of the day.
After playing this game Sid Meier went from great game creator (Civilization) to God Absolute. In this turned based simulation you play one of the four major European powers: English, French, Dutch, or Spanish and send a ship to the "new world" to expand your empire. You can play in a predetermined map of North America, you can create a new
map randomly, or you can customize what type of map you would like to play on. You can choose from 5 different difficulty levels for a wide range of playability. All European powers have their own strengths, England has more immigration, Dutch have better trade abilities, French make friends easier, and Spanish have more fire power against the natives.
Once you find a suitable place to erect your first colony a world of options open up to you. How do you want to play? Befriend the natives and trade with them or destroy them and take their gold? Ally with fellow European nations or declare all out war? Do you want to focus on mining resources and trading or raiding and pillaging? The end goal of every game is the same though. You want to have enough support in your colonies to declare independence from your homeland and defeat them in a revolution. You must also do this before any of your rivals; this is often a challenge even on the simplest difficulty levels.
Many fans of Col say the windows version runs better and has nicer graphics but I have never found that to be true. What sets this version apart from the Windows version is ease of cheating and hacking the game. You can simply open an associated text file and change your strength, movement rates default labels titles etc. The only limitation is how childish your imagination can be. To access the cheat menu all you have to do is open the menu.txt file, go down to the heading CUP and make sure there's @ in front of it. When playing the game, simply hold alt and type WIN and the cheat menu will open up.
The main option not available in most windows versions is a secret multiplayer mode! This appears to glitches beyond belief and is probably why it was never introduced as an actual option. When starting a new game and selecting your European power move your mouse to the very bottom of the screen below Spain and click. A new power is down there called “Spring.” When my friends and I first discovered this (and I did find this on my own years before I ever saw it posted online) we were blown away and a whole new element was opened up to us. We were in heaven. You'll quickly find out this is not an average game of Col.
The colors will be extremely distorted when you arrive in the new world. To fix this simply save the game, exit, and reload it. This will fix the color problem. Other glitches are you have to watch all Inca moves every turn, all meetings with the natives show them in their hostile state, and when you meet fellow Europeans your buddy has no control in how his/her nation reacts to you, i.e.; you demand money from France, the computer will make that decision as to whether or not France will hand over money, not your friend who's playing France, and vice versa. As well, all retirement scores are out the window. No matter what you do or don't do in the game you'll always retire with a score of 34%.
In my opinion no one can ever be sorry for playing Colonization. Get it.
