2K Games Reveals Plans for Colonization Remake

[Jason T]

I hope that they do not make Britain the best or most powerful in this Game. France and Spain were always either a little below Britain in terms of Power or above it sometimes. Most of the time they were equal. Most Americain games overpower Britain and I dont like that. Maybe because there the only country in this game who speaks English

It's hard to say that one nation was more powerful than another in the game. The different "powers" of the countries allowed different players to play to their different strategies.

With that said, I liked playing as the English the most because I liked being able to build many, well-populated colonies.

More colonies = more production = more money = bigger army.

The capacity to project my power all over the Western Hemisphere more than made up for the innate ability that the game had to cheat.

 

[Ekmek]

This page puts the release date at October 15th, 2008, though I'm not sure how accurate that is. It certainly could change...

Well that explains why the BTS patch is taking so long. they are probably adding a few features for us to test out

I like that colonization is using the same civ4 engine. hopefully it will be easy to migrate our current mods to it.

Besides that maybe they have been looing at jdog's revolution modack and made a lot of its features standard


@FIRAXIS
PLEASE GET RID OF GAMEFONT.TGA
ITS A PAIN FOR MODDERS! DDS ONLY

 

[Edgecrusher]

I love teh fact that they are re-releasing colonization.

I do wish it was treated as an "add-on" for Civ4. i.e. another minor expansion. Maybe incorporate the goods system that colonization had into a more elaborate system in Civ.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

From the screenshots it is obvious that now, the map informs you of what kind of expert each Indian village trains. That means one doesn't have to make extensive notes in order to know where to go to train a colonist to become, for example, a tobacco planter. Excellent news.

With the new engine, there won't be the very annoying low maximum limit for the number of cities and units in the game. I hope they have also done something about the ending; one major bug (or omission due to laziness) in the original game was that after you had won, enemy troops still landed and fought you, and in addition to that, trade with Europe was still impossible, as well as founding new cities and receiving immigrants. I trust they have revamped all that.

In the original game, each turn was one year until the year 1600, when each year contained two turns (spring and autumn). It was in the spring that the Indians might feel hungry and come and ask for food, or alternatively, offer to share their abundance with you.

I also hope the King (the Stadtholder in the case of the Dutch) no longer looks precisely the same irrespective of which nation one plays as. Furthermore, I think that the King should not look fat and stupid to begin with. Let him look smart and on his toes at the beginning of the game and do helpful things, and then gradually become fat, stupid, greedy and unreasonable.

 

[Jason T]

From the screenshots it is obvious that now, the map informs you of what kind of expert each Indian village trains. That means one doesn't have to make extensive notes in order to know where to go to train a colonist to become, for example, a tobacco planter. Excellent news.

With the new engine, there won't be the very annoying low maximum limit for the number of cities and units in the game. I hope they have also done something about the ending; one major bug (or omission due to laziness) in the original game was that after you had won, enemy troops still landed and fought you, and in addition to that, trade with Europe was still impossible, as well as founding new cities and receiving immigrants. I trust they have revamped all that.

In the original game, each turn was one year until the year 1600, when each year contained two turns (spring and autumn). It was in the spring that the Indians might feel hungry and come and ask for food, or alternatively, offer to share their abundance with you.

I also hope the King (the Stadtholder in the case of the Dutch) no longer looks precisely the same irrespective of which nation one plays as. Furthermore, I think that the King should not look fat and stupid to begin with. Let him look smart and on his toes at the beginning of the game and do helpful things, and then gradually become fat, stupid, greedy and unreasonable.

Whoops! My bad. It is 1600 when Spring/Fall turns begin, and not 1700. Just goes to show that it's been too long since I played last.

As for most of the other details, I agree wholeheartedly. I have run up against the colony limit in the old game, been frustrated by my general inability to continue the game after winning the War of Independence, and annoyed by the Mother Country's harrassment after the same.

Continuing trade with Europe through the war and afterwards was a good reason to build Custom Houses, and being something of a detail freak myself, I built them in all of my colonies. Money was seldom an issue, as long as prices didn't collapse...

 

[Tullaris]

Oh man what a historical inaccuries I have read in this thread here. I'm a history student so everything I mention here I have read in literature and important studies from the period.

If you would like i can provide references.

Yes Portugal was important from the late 1400s to the mid 1550s. But that is not the time covered in the game (1600-1800). All they achieved in that period was settling on the coast of Brazil.

In the 1500s the king of Spain became king of Portugal and this lasted till 1640.
When Portugal became independent in 1640, Portugal was broke, had no fleet and was in no shape to be a colonizing power of any sort.
Only with luck they managed to hold on to their colony Brazil.

The Dutch however were the most important factor in the downfall of the Spanish hegemony in Europe.The Dutch Republic was the richest country in the world and the trading centre of whole of Europe.

I hope they incorporate that the Dutch used a trading company, the West India Company to colonize.
The Dutch occupied half of Brazil 1630-1654, the Dutch had New Netherlands (present New York and surroundings), slave stations on the west coast of africa. Settlements on the carribeans.

Yes Portugal could be included. It would be historically unlikely that they would become a great colonizing power (such a poor and scarcely populated country).

I would even argue the Dutch were more important then the French and English for the greatest part of the 17th century as a colonizing power.

 

[Jason T]

Oh man what a historical inaccuries I have read in this thread here. I'm a history student so everything I mention here I have read in literature and important studies from the period.

If you would like i can provide references.

Yes Portugal was important from the late 1400s to the mid 1550s. But that is not the time covered in the game (1600-1800). All they achieved in that period was settling on the coast of Brazil.

In the 1500s the king of Spain became king of Portugal and this lasted till 1640.
When Portugal became independent in 1640, Portugal was broke, had no fleet and was in no shape to be a colonizing power of any sort.
Only with luck they managed to hold on to their colony Brazil.

The Dutch however were the most important factor in the downfall of the Spanish hegemony in Europe.The Dutch Republic was the richest country in the world and the trading centre of whole of Europe.

I hope they incorporate that the Dutch used a trading company, the West India Company to colonize.
The Dutch occupied half of Brazil 1630-1654, the Dutch had New Netherlands (present New York and surroundings), slave stations on the west coast of africa. Settlements on the carribeans.

Yes Portugal could be included. It would be historically unlikely that they would become a great colonizing power (such a poor and scarcely populated country).

I would even argue the Dutch were more important then the French and English for the greatest part of the 17th century as a colonizing power.

I'm sure that people who know better won't dispute what you're saying. I'm not. With that said, people have pointed out in discussions on the main game that it isn't about making a historical simulator, but a game. For my money, the same thing applies here.

Originally, the game advantage that the Dutch were given was meant to relate to their power as a trading nation - they started with a merchantman instead of the caravel that the other three nations got, and commodity prices in Amsterdam didn't fall as quickly in the face of high supply, and recovered faster when they did collapse under the aforementioned circumstance.

What remains to be seen is how the reimagining will affect the "unique abilities" of the four nations. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was usually able to game the game using the English UA to make lots of big colonies. But as always, YMMV.

 

[Mad Hab]

Yes Portugal was important from the late 1400s to the mid 1550s. But that is not the time covered in the game (1600-1800). All they achieved in that period was settling on the coast of Brazil.

In the 1500s the king of Spain became king of Portugal and this lasted till 1640.
When Portugal became independent in 1640, Portugal was broke, had no fleet and was in no shape to be a colonizing power of any sort.
Only with luck they managed to hold on to their colony Brazil.

Sorry, but you cannot say the portuguese role in the colonization of the Americas was small - even in the period you mention (1600-1800).

From 1600 until 1689, the portuguese explored deep into South America, mapping huge land extensions in Mato Grosso, Goiás and even deep into the Amazon forest. That's why Brazil got so much bigger after they got independent from Spain (compare that to what was left to Portugal by the Tordesillas treaty).

(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandeirantes)

After that (1700's), Portugal discovered gold in Minas Gerais, and if the Portuguese crown only could manage better their riches, the kingdom would stay a world power for yet another century, maybe more. But instead they made very unfavorable treaties with the british, and that (along with some other factors) accelerated the fall of the portuguese empire.

Still, the only portuguese in the original Colonization was Ferdinand Magellan, who served the crown of... Spain!

Time to redeem yourselves, Firaxis!

Cheers,

Mad Hab

 

[Ekmek]

Come on people - you know the portugese will be in the Colonization Expansion Pack! Thats where Firaxis always introduces them.

Besides they'll be easy to add since it uses Civ4 already.

 

[uat2d]

Come on people - you know the portugese will be in the Colonization Expansion Pack! Thats where Firaxis always introduces them.

Besides they'll be easy to add since it uses Civ4 already.

that's the problem!

i'm tired of having to wait for expansions to play with the Portuguese!



@Firaxis: if Civ5 doesn't have Portugal in the Vannila version, i won't buy it!!! the same applies with paratroopers! i really won't buy it, even with mods and expansions with Portugal!
so much marketing and business strategies to make people buy expansions, you start annoying me by always keeping out a Civilization like Portugal!
be wise: add scenarios, more detailed units and weaker Civs in the expansions; but don't keep Portugal out!

@CFC members: sorry for using so many bolded words in my complaint to Firaxis, but it really annoys me! i just want Firaxis to know that what i said above is nothing else but the true

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Oh man what a historical inaccuries I have read in this thread here. I'm a history student so everything I mention here I have read in literature and important studies from the period.

If you would like i can provide references.

Yes Portugal was important from the late 1400s to the mid 1550s. But that is not the time covered in the game (1600-1800). All they achieved in that period was settling on the coast of Brazil.

In the 1500s the king of Spain became king of Portugal and this lasted till 1640.
When Portugal became independent in 1640, Portugal was broke, had no fleet and was in no shape to be a colonizing power of any sort.
Only with luck they managed to hold on to their colony Brazil.

The Dutch however were the most important factor in the downfall of the Spanish hegemony in Europe.The Dutch Republic was the richest country in the world and the trading centre of whole of Europe.

I hope they incorporate that the Dutch used a trading company, the West India Company to colonize.
The Dutch occupied half of Brazil 1630-1654, the Dutch had New Netherlands (present New York and surroundings), slave stations on the west coast of africa. Settlements on the carribeans.

Yes Portugal could be included. It would be historically unlikely that they would become a great colonizing power (such a poor and scarcely populated country).

I would even argue the Dutch were more important then the French and English for the greatest part of the 17th century as a colonizing power.

Just to note, the game starts on 1492, not 1600. In any case, I think you misunderstand History; it is not that Portugal was too weak to colonize, it's exactly because Portugal was so weak that it had to colonize, the Portuguese colony in South America was a major, if the not the most important one, source of income for the country. And as such, Portugal was heavily dependent on it: colonizing and exploiting it's resources became central to the matters of the Portuguese State - after all, it was Brazilian gold that financed not only the construction of lavish constructions in Portugal, but also it's very essential imports from Great Britain.

 

[Ace of Gold]

that's the problem!

i'm tired of having to wait for expansions to play with the Portuguese!



@Firaxis: if Civ5 doesn't have Portugal in the Vannila version, i won't buy it!!! the same applies with paratroopers! i really won't buy it, even with mods and expansions with Portugal!
so much marketing and business strategies to make people buy expansions, you start annoying me by always keeping out a Civilization like Portugal!
be wise: add scenarios, more detailed units and weaker Civs in the expansions; but don't keep Portugal out!

@CFC members: sorry for using so many bolded words in my complaint to Firaxis, but it really annoys me! i just want Firaxis to know that what i said above is nothing else but the true

no offense, but their not going to care about a couple of people who plan to boycott. The vanilla version can only contain the important, basic civs. The expansion pack is for adding all the other, "minor" civs. If they added all the civs in the vanilla version there would not be much of an expansion later.

 

[Greybriar]

Thanks for the suggestion. I found out hard that it wasn't about the CD. It's because Ubuntu doesn't support sound blaster and general midi at all by default. Bumper.

So, I pretty much gave up on running Colonization on Ubuntu.

Btw, I don't own the Win version. It's DOS.

You're welcome. I wish I were more knowledgeable so I could have been more help. I own both the DOS and Windows 95 version of Colonization and between the two I actually like the DOS version best. There are a few bugs in the Windows 95 version that are annoying.

From the screenshots it is obvious that now, the map informs you of what kind of expert each Indian village trains.

Yes, that is an improvement. I wonder if the type of expert changes over time. I remember on more than one occasion trekking a colonist or indentured servant clear across the map to get to a native village to train for a hard-to-find expert class only to learn that there was a different course of instruction and it wasn't one of the skills I needed. Or maybe it was a bug.

The advantages of the different countries varied. As someone mentioned, the Dutch had an advantage as a merchant class. And here I will quote from the game manual: "Accordingly, the Dutch economy is more stable than the other European powers. This is reflected by the consistency of prices in Amsterdam. Also, the Dutch start the game with a trading vessel."

"...the English produce a greater number of immigrants than do the other nations...." (it only took 2/3 the number of crosses to generate a new immigrant).

"The French have the ability to live among the natives more peacefully than other nations." Their colonies and units only cause 50% as much alarm among the Indians as other European countries. They start the game with an expert pioneer.

"...the Spaniards receive a 50% attack bonus when attacking Indian villages...." They start the game with an expert soldier.

I preferred playing as the French, although the Indians seemed to get upset with me as quickly as they did with the other Europeans.

 

[uat2d]

no offense, but their not going to care about a couple of people who plan to boycott. The vanilla version can only contain the important, basic civs. The expansion pack is for adding all the other, "minor" civs. If they added all the civs in the vanilla version there would not be much of an expansion later.

i don't care! it's so easy to them to add Portugal and they don't... what's this? I'm just tired of it and i'll have no problem to move to other games

is it that hard to have Portugal in the first expansion?

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Yes Portugal was important from the late 1400s to the mid 1550s. But that is not the time covered in the game (1600-1800). All they achieved in that period was settling on the coast of Brazil.

Yes Portugal could be included. It would be historically unlikely that they would become a great colonizing power (such a poor and scarcely populated country).

They did become a great colonizing power. There was Angola, Moçambique, Guinea-Bissau... but never mind that. The pertinent fact is that they founded Brazil, which means that they had a much greater impact on the New World than the Netherlands.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

You're welcome. I wish I were more knowledgeable so I could have been more help. I own both the DOS and Windows 95 version of Colonization and between the two I actually like the DOS version best. There are a few bugs in the Windows 95 version that are annoying.



Yes, that is an improvement. I wonder if the type of expert changes over time. I remember on more than one occasion trekking a colonist or indentured servant clear across the map to get to a native village to train for a hard-to-find expert class only to learn that there was a different course of instruction and it wasn't one of the skills I needed. Or maybe it was a bug.

Yes, I remember that one.

 

[Jason T]

no offense, but their not going to care about a couple of people who plan to boycott. The vanilla version can only contain the important, basic civs. The expansion pack is for adding all the other, "minor" civs. If they added all the civs in the vanilla version there would not be much of an expansion later.

The counterpoint to this is that if they went ahead and put all the civs into the basic game, they could spend more time making the expansions about adding more scenarios and correcting bugs...

 

[Mad Hab]

no offense, but their not going to care about a couple of people who plan to boycott. The vanilla version can only contain the important, basic civs. The expansion pack is for adding all the other, "minor" civs. If they added all the civs in the vanilla version there would not be much of an expansion later.

You can't be serious, right? An expansion pack for... a mod? It is bold enough to sell a mod (and a mod that's not complete enough, by the way) in a box - I am pretty sure Firaxis won't embarass themselves selling an expansion pack for this Colonization mod...

By the way, nothing against the French (I usually play with them in both Colonization and Civilization), but do you know that the native Portuguese-speaking persons in the world today outnumber both the French-speakers and the Dutch-speakers, added together? There are 170 million native Portuguese-speakers, against 80 million French-speakers (and not that many Dutch-speakers). And most of the native Portuguese-speakers live in the Americas, while most of the native French and Dutch-speakers live elsewhere...

Cheers!

Mad Hab

 

[Luckystrike77]

God damn! I didn't get these wonderful news before now. Havent visited the site for a while, was abit tired about the CivRev coverage, a game I'm not at all interested in.

Colonization 2! It sounds like a dream! The world is perfect. A definite buy!

Edit: Hmmm, it's not Colonization 2, but a mod/exp for Civ4? Well, hopefully this expansion brings some new stuff to the vanilla game as well then.....

 

[uat2d]

You can't be serious, right? An expansion pack for... a mod? It is bold enough to sell a mod (and a mod that's not complete enough, by the way) in a box - I am pretty sure Firaxis won't embarass themselves selling an expansion pack for this Colonization mod...

By the way, nothing against the French (I usually play with them in both Colonization and Civilization), but do you know that the native Portuguese-speaking persons in the world today outnumber both the French-speakers and the Dutch-speakers, added together? There are 170 million native Portuguese-speakers, against 80 million French-speakers (and not that many Dutch-speakers). And most of the native Portuguese-speakers live in the Americas, while most of the native French and Dutch-speakers live elsewhere...

Cheers!

Mad Hab

absolutely true, and even though i've found many different graphics on the web with very big differences (some say portuguese is the 5th most spoken language and others say it's the 9th and also in numbers there are huge differences in terms of speakers, even with huge differences in the own wiki) they all conclude that there are much more portuguese speaking people than french or dutch

Portugal has left is mark and Firaxis still doesn't put them in their games... it sure annoys almost every portuguese around, and you guys now know that we're too many to be ignored... we want Portugal in!!!