Colonization

From thecrankyhermit

Colonization
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Companies MicroProse
First release date Sep 1994
Original platform(s) DOS
Current official platform(s) Steam, GOG
Optimization notes General MIDI

4x strategy

Colonization
Familiar territory to Civilization veterans, but no less engrossing. Beginning with nothing but a sailing vessel full of settlers near a small visible section of the coastline of an unexplored world, and meager material support from your mother country (whose demands for taxes inevitably get more unreasonable every year), you must find a suitable location to build a settlement that can not only support itself, but produce a surplus of goods to aid in future expansion, trade, conquest, or in just making loads of money. As you build a prospering multi-settlement colony, which grows as more colonists leave home to join you in search of wealth, adventure, or religious freedom, and a sense of national identity grows (measured abstractly as "liberty" units), your eventual goal is to declare independence and weather the storm as the king's army lands to quell the revolution. Combat and technology are de-emphasized in favor of more granular trade and industry systems; colonists can be assigned various roles, some of which require training and/or equipment, and their effectiveness depends on the individual colonist's level of experience in that role and degree of discipline. It's necessarily a bit heavy on micromanagement compared to Civ, but still shows Meier's panache for elegant design, and the New World historical setting is pleasing.
Key people Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs, Brian Reynolds