Amazon.com: Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is the third offering in the Civilization IV series. A re-imagining of the classic Colonization strategy game Sid Meier created in 1994, Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is a total conversion of the Civilization IV engine into a game experience in which players will lead a European nation on their quest to colonize and thrive in the New World. Players will be challenged to guide their people from the oppressive motherland, discover a New World, negotiate, trade and fight as they acquire great power and battle for their freedom and independence. Features:
Classic Game Design: The strategy classic is rebuilt with improved visuals, while retaining the addictive gameplay and fun that are synonymous with Sid Meier games.
Establish a New Nation: Play as the English, Spanish, French or Dutch and journey to a brave new world in search of freedom from your oppressive homeland.
Detailed Tutorial: Enhanced tutorial helps both fans of Colonization and new players on their way to ruling the New World.
Multiplayer Offers Tons of Replay: Compete with friends from all over the world via the Internet and "Play by Email" modes or compete locally via the Hotseat and LAN modes, offering multiple ways to conquer the New World.
Improved Diplomacy: Sustain peace and support your followers as you engage in advanced negotiations with natives, other colonists and the hostile homeland. Trade resources, gold and land as you build the foundation for a self sufficient and powerful colony.
Historical Figures Provide Adaptive Gameplay: Acquire founding fathers such as John Smith, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams who will help guide your nation to freedom based on your gameplay style.
Mods and Community Tools: Players will have limitless options for modifying the game to suit their needs. Game includes modding tools including a map editor using XML and Python.
New Interface: Both Civilization IV fans and players new to the series will feel right at home with an interface that's been built to be accessible and easy to navigate.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Danger: securom Malware
It has the horrid SecuRom malware that cause MANY MANY computer problems and cannot be uninstalled.
Boycott all SecuRom software. No program is worth it.
Rating: - does run well
I have done Civilization IV and a couple of its expansion. I never had trouble on this computer running them. I got Colonization and all of a sudden I did--it ran slow, it was hard to do combat, etc. Also it was markedly not as fun. I suspect that they have run out of ideas for Civilization IV.
Rating: - Great Game!
This game is a good one and the utilization of the Civ 4 engine makes it even better.
Rating: - Not ready for prime time
This is a product that screams inadequate beta testing or lack of real thought into some design aspects. It may become a good game after several patches but probably not possible.
As a preface, I am a long-time Civ player, but never played the prior version of Civ3 Colonization, so I am essentially a Colonization 'virgin'.
Some aspects of poor design to me include the following:
1) Recruiting of new colonists from Europe. The random selection of volunteer colonists is poor. These units can be 'rushed' but often cost as much as 5 times what it would cost to simply purchase the unit. This seems silly at best.
2) Inability to recruit 'regular' colonists who are not specialists, the rarity and inability to recruit indentured servants, and the handling of petty criminals (the European govt should be paying me to take them off their hands...).
3) Inability to retrain specialist colonists whose specialties are not useful in my settlements.
4) The education system that takes progressively longer to educate each subsequent student even when you upgrade the school facility. At one point it was going to take 70 YEARS to university educate a single student.
5) Rebel sentiment (the idea of the game is to gain independence from your European mother country) which does not increase with every tax increase from the homeland. Historically this was THE reason for revolutions in the Americas.
6) The rate of increase of the home country's expeditionary force that will be sent to defeat you when you are able to declare independence. I have seen ridiculously large forces that could not possibly be defeated, more soldiers than I had people...
7) The almost exponential cost increase of recruiting each additional military unit of a given type in Europe makes a competitively strong military virtually impossible.
8) The inability to shut off the AI governor in colonial cities. Even with the tools available to emphasize and de-emphasize aspects of production, I still find the governor doing things I don't want done and don't anticipate.
The early game play is the most interesting part but it drags due to lack of resources or access to resources. Once the colony is set up, however, the mid-game becomes simply dull and repetitious with far too much micro-management. The end game or revolution might be fun if I ever had adequate military to succeed.
This is one of those games that if you are an old hand fanatic, you might enjoy. For new or first time players who don't want to spend hours reading fan sites and blogs in order to play, give this one a miss.
Rating: - Nice game - Sucky DRM (SecuRom)
You know, I have always enjoyed Sid games, all the way back to the C-64 days. Absolutely loved Pirates. Now comes Colonization, love the old version and tought I could get into this one. Prices are fixed, the indian know how much stuff sells for and what the purchace prices are in the empire and do not give you a fair shake at all. I don't see how a person could win at this game. Now for the really horrible part, SecuRom!!! It is a menace to computers and just about locked me out of my own computer because I loaded a map making program. What gives, a map program? Getting tired of not being told what form of copy protections are on a program and then find out the hard way that it is using a service more intrusive then MicroSoft.
My recomendation is not to buy it and not to buy ANYTHING with SecuRom on it. Sure you might have to wait and see, but your computer will love you for it. Get console versions instead.
- Danger: securom Malware
- Great Game!
- Not ready for prime time
