This is not a game...

[Andvare]

You can beat the game without using cannons.
You can beat the game playing like you would the original, it's just a lot harder.
And it is a game, just not a very good one, but, hey, it's better than Railroads!

 

[Elras]

Got to agree with most of the negative comments with Col2. It just isn't finished.

The music is 'lacking', the world generation page has 2 t-w-o options, the standard
map is too small which you can explore real easy, the Natives seem 'scattered'
around the map with no tribe areas, the Natives are also non belligerent, the other
Europeans are non belligerent, the treasures you find in burial grounds *always* get
to one of colonies without the need of guards.

Playing the whole package is just dull.

The biggest let down is that I expect quality from a Sid Meier game. The original Civ4
had a wow factor, it might have had stuff to fix but the basic game was sound, the
music was awesome and you had a sense of achievement when you won.

Col2 is just not fun to play

*holds up hands*.

There, nothing more I can say.

 

[Daedal]

And it is a game, just not a very good one, but, hey, it's better than beating yourself with a stick.

Fixed. Why are you playing a game that you don't enjoy? Uninstall the stupid thing and go do something fun. Chalk up the $30 or whatever you spent on it to experience and wait before you buy next time.

 

[Falk]

Why are you playing a game that you don't enjoy?

Who says I'm still playing it? Obviously I dont. Started playing BtS again.

Chalk up the $30 or whatever you spent on it to experience and wait before you buy next time.

What makes you think I did not already come to that conclusion?

 

[morchuflex]

While I agree with most of the negative comments above, I still enjoy playing Col2, but I guess this is because I don't play to win! I do like watching my little colonies grow and prosper, and just forget about the rest.
Overall, Col2 isn't unfun. It's just not what we could expect... But there's still room for patches and mods.
As for the original being "almost perfect", you have to be kidding. How can you so easily forget the bugs (such as the infamous "integer divide by zero" crash), the non-existent diplomacy, the other powers invading you without declaring war since there were no borders - as in Civ1 -, the beyond-ugly graphics, the clumsy interface, the borderline exploitive custom houses, etc. Not to mention I can't even make it work on my state-of-the-art PC.
Also, keep in mind that each time a sequel game is released, we all start whining over again: Civ3 was "so much worse" than Civ2, Civ4 "so much worse" than Civ3, etc. We all seem to focus on the negative part, like spoilt children.
Bottom line: Col2 needs a lot of improvment, but I'm glad it's here and I don't regret my 30€.

 

[Rockstone]

While I agree with most of the negative comments above, I still enjoy playing Col2, but I guess this is because I don't play to win! I do like watching my little colonies grow and prosper, and just forget about the rest.
Overall, Col2 isn't unfun. It's just not what we could expect... But there's still room for patches and mods.
As for the original being "almost perfect", you have to be kidding. How can you so easily forget the bugs (such as the infamous "integer divide by zero" crash), the non-existent diplomacy, the other powers invading you without declaring war since there were no borders - as in Civ1 -, the beyond-ugly graphics, the clumsy interface, the borderline exploitive custom houses, etc. Not to mention I can't even make it work on my state-of-the-art PC.
Also, keep in mind that each time a sequel game is released, we all start whining over again: Civ3 was "so much worse" than Civ2, Civ4 "so much worse" than Civ3, etc. We all seem to focus on the negative part, like spoilt children.
Bottom line: Col2 needs a lot of improvment, but I'm glad it's here and I don't regret my 30€.

Well spoken! Agree with you 100 %
(on a different forum this would be +rep)

 

[trafficlight]

Frankly, this Colonization just isn't fun.

I was excited at first. It looked like it could be an in depth game where you only focus on 300 years instead of 6000. But, in reality the depth is all superficial. There are tons of things you can do, but none of them are necessary. As the German post reference said, you don't even have to play the colonization part of Colonization. That's just poor game design. This should be a game of balance in that all of the little aspects of the game need to be in balance to even think about winning.

I know a lot of you are waiting for patches, but I don't think that's going to fix anything. The underlying mechanics of the game are flawed and no amount of patching will fix that.

Colonization is going on the shelf to collect dust.

 

[obsolete]

I feel certain that this will be changed in the next expansion. Unfortunately this will not happen until next year (I suspect).

One other issue I have been thinking about, what if you fail to kill all the REF's ships in a naval confrontation? If they end up with a ship or two left, you may be stuck in a non-winnable situation where there is no way the AI can unload ALL its other units in time for turn 300 because of this.

So even though you may have it outnumbered 10 to 1 in land forces you would still lose haha!

 

[TechnoMule]

The underlying mechanics of the game are flawed and no amount of patching will fix that.

The underlying mechanics are the same as what made the original awesome. It's the balancing of those mechanics that's wacked out.

Besides, a patch can fix ANYTHING. Just ask Microsoft.

 

[Shylock]

This is sparta?

 

[trafficlight]

Besides, a patch can fix ANYTHING. Just ask Microsoft.

That's not a very good example.

 

[Comraddict]

When Civ IV came out there were same claims, so serious patching (1.74 last version?!) finally made it 'ok'.

Unfortunately, I expected that released version will be full of exploits and things that developers didn't see but somebody of thousands buyers will see and point at.

 

[Becephalus]

@mastrude

Unfortunately you're wrong. You only need silver - this is enough to win the game. If there's no silver go for fur - there's plenty on all maps. Make clothes and sell them to Europe. You only need some random workers for that, one or two expert fur trader(s) and an expert fishermen. Sell your tools/weapons/horses (if you happen to get any) to the natives, visit their villages and the ruins. That will be absolutely enough, no need to produce anything else. That's not what I call an economy.

Last game I won without producing a single hammer. I simply bought everything, the few buildings I wanted as well as cannons and additional settlers. I got all that gold almost entirely by selling clothes. Also got Peter Minuit (the only important Founding Father).

On a German forum someone took this approach to the extreme. He easily won on revolutionary and
- built exactly 0 buildings
- bought 0 settlers/specialists (except for statesmen) and trained none in native villages
- got 0 new ships
- didnt use the pioneer once
- only bought cannons and goods to trade with natives
- built only 3 cities and gifted 2 of them to his neighbours before declaring independence
- deleted most of his men before the WoI

Won in 58 minutes in 1607.

Now of course you dont have to play it like that. But the point I'm trying to get at is that every variation to this basic plan is bad for you, is a disadvantage. The "game" doesnt reward sandboxing, doesnt reward expansion, doesnt reward building an economy, doesnt reward diplomacy, hell, it doesnt even reward colonization!

exactly. They way the game currently stands once you figure it out the game holds no interest, a bad feature in a game if ever there was one. It is currently about as complicated as a rubix cube.

 

[~Bamboo~]

I agree, this game has fundamental design issues. This is the worst designed game I have ever played from firaxis. There are some cool parts to it though. I love the colonist management system. I'm hoping someone will have enough interest to make a cool mod out of it.

 

[philippe]

oh bugger, i already hesitated to buy the game with the recent trend of crappy games, and it seems this one is not diferent.

 

[Barns]

I feel certain that this will be changed in the next expansion. Unfortunately this will not happen until next year (I suspect).

One other issue I have been thinking about, what if you fail to kill all the REF's ships in a naval confrontation? If they end up with a ship or two left, you may be stuck in a non-winnable situation where there is no way the AI can unload ALL its other units in time for turn 300 because of this.

So even though you may have it outnumbered 10 to 1 in land forces you would still lose haha!

This almost happened to me. The king only had four MoWs by the time I declared independence and by parking weak ships around my port and thereby getting him to attack and destroy them I managed to kill three of his then-weakened MoWs with my two SotLs hiding in my port. However, I then realised he would only be able to transport four soldiers etc at a time and he then even hung around just bombarding my defences instead of going back to Europe to get more soldiers!

Luckily I had enough time left and won with 8 turns to go...

 

[Mundungu]

I basically agree that there is something severely broken - but could easilly be fixed.
Hopefully there will be patch soon that actually rewards building a colony.

I actually still enjoy playing the game, but always end up paying the first 200 turns only ...

But instead of discussing how bad the game is, why not try to be constructive and pinpoint some features which should be in the game ?

Apart from what has been mentionned ther is one feature I would love to see in the game, which existed as far back as the original railroad Tycoon (which was fun even on a 086 with 4 color graphic ..) : the possibility to handle trade by controlling the wagons / ships instead of the citys output.

What I mean is that is should be possible to dedicate each wagon to a specific trade route going to city # 1 then #2 then ... with the "wait to be full" option.

Another nice thing would be some sub quests like in Civ IV (or original railraod tycoon) would be great such as "City X is in emergency need of good Y".

Eventually my "ultimate Civilization" would be all that what BTS is but adding the trading mechanism of CoL and original Railroad tycoon (maybe with the option to switch this off or having it automated for the people afraid that the game would be too heavy).

Money slider would still exist, but the actual cash creation would really come from inside and outside trading on a micro management level. The type of goods to trade would also evolve over time.... Would have much more meaning to me as the actual trading system and corporations mechanics...

maybe in CIV IX ??

 

[Refar]

You can assign wagons to trade routes. Set one City to Export, other to Import, choose the roote from the list when you automate the wagon. Did not tried it on ships yet.

-----

I didn't paly Col1 so i don't have any nostalgic sentiments.
But with some Civ4 Experience, i expecting the game to be of similar Caliber as Civ4 was - it has "Civilization 4" on the Box after all.
And i am quite disappointed as it clearly missed the standard.

The most disappointing thing to my taste is Diplomacy - or rather the lack of it.

-----

In the end the whole premise of the game feels somewhat weird - it's completely single minded towards indipendance...

I kind of expecting that building up a big, nice colony would be the main focus. Not just win DoI by some cheesy exploit.

Starting the game thinking about DoI from the first turn is "just wrong". People did not came there back in 1492 to Generate Liberty Bells and DoI.
They came there to build up wealth - for them self - and for the land they came from.
Only with growing wealth, and growing colonies they became more and more self-confident (and selfisch) and started developing into indipendant nations.

In the game building up a big strong colony is actually contra-productive for the win and makes achieving independance harder.... this is plain wrong.

 

[Mundungu]

You can assgn Wagons to some routes that the game proposes you, so it is still city driven. You can not ask a wagon to make more complicated schedules / routes and ask him to wait until full to load and go forward ...

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I love SMs Railroads.
I love colonization.
I love it all.

You guys are way to hard on this game. It's pretty awesome for what it is, and stop biting the hand the feeds you. NOBODY else is making games like these; so shut up and let them keep making them. Or you stop buying them yourselves.

You've got it the wrong way around. WE are the hand that feeeds THEM. And I won't be buying many more Firaxis products if this is to be their normal performance in the future. First there was the shambolic patching of BtS (which still isn't properly balanced, by the way) and now this complete mismanagement of the chance to update a great game.