Did you play the original Colonization?

[Nikolai]

I played it a lot back in the days.

[Supr49er]

I still play it on an old underpowered laptop.

[iamakka]

I run PocketDos on my pda/phone, and have the original Colonization on that.

My current project is exploiting the Brazilian Rainforest, one port, automated produce movement using caravans, barely need to put a single road in and fill the river netwok with small 2-3 population towns....

[snoopy369]

Gone back to playing the original again (second game now, as the dutch), and doing fine, except... WHY DO MY PRIVATEERS SUCK SO MUCH!!!!! [/rant] I've lost the last 6 privateer battles I've had on offense, all against weaker ships - 2 against CARAVELS, four against merchantmen, the last two a LOADED merchantman. Sigh. Only battle I've won was when my privateer evaded a frigate attacking it...

[Verrucosus]

Sounds familiar. In one game, I had so much bad luck that I built a Curacao-like colony close to the main English ports. Equipped with a drydock, it reduced the downtime for my damaged privateers quite a bit. Unfortunately, it was too far away from my main colonies to defend it properly against the Royal Expeditionary Force. Maybe I should have allowed the English to capture it before declaring independence ...

[Apocalypto]

Been playing it since it came out. Was still playing it after Civ2, Civ3, Civ4, and even after BtS. I just love the theme and game concepts.. I like the micromanagement: training colonist to grow raw materials, refine them to commodities, ship to Europe.. it makes for a pretty complex game. It's interesting to find strategies on how to best specialize colonies and get the most out of every turn..

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Well, but in Col, in order to play MP (hotseat of course), all you have to do is change a byte for each player in a save game.

You can also play MP via the cheat menu in the DOS 3.0 version. The bad thing about tweaking the SAV file is that only one player gets alerted when buildings are finished, warehouses are full/empty etc. You avoid that by playing hot-seat through the cheat menu.

[Daftpanzer]

I dug out my Colonization CD after reading about this new version coming out. My copy is a budget re-publishing from about 1999. I played it a couple of times and never really got into it, then moved to OS’s that wouldn’t run it. I’ve since found out about DOSbox, and today I’ve been able to run and install this game using that. It actually works within Vista

After a bit of effort, I was actually able to get into this game for the first time, and the hours began to fly by. I think it helped that I have fond memories of both the original Civilization on an early PC, and Pirates: Gold on my friend’s Amiga CD32 console. In fact, I’ve already had more fun playing Colonization than I did playing Spore’s later stages – a disappointment that has also inspired me to revisit a load of older games recently. No visual thrills of course, but the old-school nostalgia value makes up for that.

I’m still learning this game, but seems like there’s lots of depth, and no single ‘winning strategy’ that could work for all games, which is good of course.

Oh yeah, and my privateer stole about 100 horses from a spanish ship when I didn't have any, which I think was quite lucky

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
BTW, did any of you guys use a hex-editor to play multiplayer-games ? Those lastet forever, since the ´unofficial´ players would get no reports (like ´building finished in colony X´, ´Ship arrives in Europe´ and so on), thus they were forced to check every couple of turns. Or maybe i didnt edit right... Anyways, just to be able to MP when it was not in the game really kicked ass...

I used to get together with two friends, play as 'spring' and disband the nation none of the three wanted to use (usually France), and then stay up until late playing... It was fun, not having AIs to take advantage of, and having to compete for the inca and aztec cities and lost city rumours...

[N35t0r]

I usually play as Spain now, disembark my pioneer and head to snatch other powers' colonists with my veteran soldier. My first buy with the plunder is of course some horses. I find it's a very effective strategy, if risky.

[Boracks]

Originally posted by Harovan
I played it throughout the 90s and loved it. After several moves I can't find my copy anymore, though.

Same here.

Hopefully there's at least one copy in the local store on Friday (payday).