8/15/2008 - Mark the date :)

It looks like your flag doesn't change, as you still have an English flag, and I'm guessing the King's flag is the dark red one. The IGN preview had a yellow flag with crown, so that was probably the Spanish king. That's too bad, it was nice to get the American flag, hopefully this will be added before the game ships. You shouldn't declare indpendence and keep the same flag while having your home country adopt an imaginary one... that's kinda lame.

Also, "Israel Putnam dies in combat"? I guess some great people must be able to lead units?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Putnam

I'm most curious about how the shorter game length (300 turns) affects things.

Well, we can assume that Mystic got into colonial war with the French as he owns the town of Montréal. And then we see the Dutch that have established in the harsh and unhabitable region of northern Québec. I have a hard time to see the Spanish but I guess they are in the former Louisiana region.

On the other hand we see that the guy probably went the pacific way with the Indians as they are scattered around his territory.

Ha! An undercover beta tester!

The current IGN preview basically describes the original Colonization, with a few changes:

- Docks let you import and export more goods, as opposed to letting you work water tiles (which I assume you can now work without any special improvements).
- Your sovereign can make increasingly large demands of you. It's unknown whether or not he can also impose tax rates like in the original.
- There's Civ4-like borders, but instead of depending on city culture (which is apparently non-existent), they rely on the size of said cities.

Also, there are "treasure caches", which might be a different name for rumours, the goody huts of the original game. Unfortunately, there's no mention of a modifiable time scale, and TheMystic's screenshot doesn't shine more light into the matter. I'm used to Civ4's Epic and Marathon, and 300 turns is way too short for me. Hell, even Normal speed is 500 turns!

So, TheMystic, could you give us any information on this once you're able? If it's not changeable within the game, can it at least be modded through XML editing like in Civ4?

Even though IGN broke the embargo, I'm going to wait until Friday before answering questions. Hope you guys understand.

Hey guys, I have the game but I can't tell you anything about it.

So I'm just gonna post here so I can rub it in your faces.

Adding a smilie to the end of my lines takes all the malevolence out of them.

The point of the thread wasn't to reveal that I or anyone else had it, IGN had to ruin the surprise really. I'd love to talk about it, and I will be able to in two days. It's not that long.

I want the game now.

I want to know how diplomacy works now in regards to relations with other colonial empires, Indians and the Fatherland. It has been said it was improved a lot... And do we get leaderheads for the likes of Pieter Stuyvesant, Frontenac, Champlain and Bolivar ?

Let's try to keep this topic focused...currently it's degenerating into a "I have the game and know this ahead of time" type of posting.

That said, the screenshot is cool. But how are you allowed to legally post it?!

IGN released 5 new screenshots, so I figured I'd release one. Lots more available on Friday.

TheMystic said:

IGN released 5 new screenshots, so I figured I'd release one. Lots more available on Friday.

Click to expand...

Beijing time?

Technically that would be Friday, so I suppose that would work!

This should be interesting.
Can't wait until you tell us, though.

More information would make the wait less bearable, if you think about it.

What jumped out at me from the screenie was the map, Weren't people worried that there would not be an accurate map? looks pretty accurate to me.

It's Friday in Beijing.

Yes it's friday in Australia too so we want our Colonization fix !

Been 15th here for over 10 hours already, and nothing!

Ok I'm here now, and I'm going through screenshots right now. Stay tuned.

It's not Friday in the Western hemisphere yet, don't jump the gun.

My sarcasm unit seems to be malfunctioning, however.

Ok here's what I've got for you guys so far, this is only a small batch of my screenshots, and I picked and chose them quickly. I've got company here for the next several hours, but after that I'll try to put some more up.

If you'd like me to answer questions, feel free to make another thread and I'll start answering when I have some time.

Also, I uploaded a short video clip of me getting my butt handed to me the first time I declared independence. I had no idea the king would ramp up his forces so quickly, and I ended up going against horrible odds. I was underprepared, and I was trying to pre-emptively attack instead of trying to defend since all of the kings forces had major bonuses against attacking settlements. I figured I'd take their bonus away from them by striking out first. Stack attack is still in, but I didn't want to use it in my first couple of games.

I've figured out much better tactics to use now, but be ready, independence is brutal!

http://www.invisibledream.com/images/colonization/

The video should be done uploading 11 minutes after this post goes up. I apologize for the resolution and quality, I had to downsize the resolution twice, and the quality ended up suffering slightly. You can still make out almost everything though.