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So I basically got started with this whole Civilization thing back in 1994 with the original Colonization. Played it to death until Civ 2 came out. And so on and so forth. Been praying for Colonization 2 ever since.
Day of days! Here's my first impressions after about eight hours of play (I'll get the *****in out of the way first):
But overall I'm quite pleased. It's very easy to get sucked into the gameplay. Much of the original Colonization has been copied verbatim, and much has been streamlined and tweaked to be made better or simpler. A lot of the cute touches of the original are missing, but the game doesn't really suffer them much. It's Colonization, it's fricken sweet. Like Pizza. Only with fewer calories.
Day of days! Here's my first impressions after about eight hours of play (I'll get the *****in out of the way first):
- Into video is pretty standard. I kind of miss my boat being attacked by dragons on a map. Ah well.
- The process for entering a game is almost criminal. The "Play Now!" requires at least four clicks to get started. Why on Earth would a new player need to customize their Civ's name as part of the startup process? That could feasibly be a one-off setup option attached to a button somewhere.
- The lack of mouseover hints on the world setup screen is ultra-bad. I have no way of knowing what Marathon speed does without experimenting, exitting, and coming back. In fact, there's a lot of problems on this screen. See here:
Here be Dragons - The leaders concept is fantastic. Allows spins on the four nations. I especially liked that the previously anemic European nations have been buffed *cough* France *cough*.
- I like that they borrowed the commissioning text from the original Colonization, that was a nice touch.
- It took me a minute to get reacquainted with the Civilization IV controls. Once I had figured it out, I was off and running.
- It was really strange that Indians made contact with me before my boat had visually reached the new world. It wasn't until I was done with diplomacy that I saw their settlement.
- The lack of visual fanfare is kind of sad. The original game had tons of congratulatory messages. For instance, discovering the new world, founding your first colony, meeting the natives, native attacks, the fountain of youth, first goods to europe, etc. TONS of congratulatory visual feedback for the player.
- The first screen I'm greeted with after founding my colony is basically build something or die. You can't escape it unless you select something. Even if you don't know anything about the game, buildings, or what your town is building yet.
- The reverse queue is kind of confusing. It seems like buildings I click on to build bump my current construction out of the way. Maybe I'm reading this wrong or haven't mastered it yet, but it seems to negate the purpose of a building queue... it's more like a stack where you have to figure out what you want to build last.
- I noticed pretty quick that a lot of the economy's been abstracted or combined in other ways. I think it's actually a really good move. Having to incessantly rearm my pioneers with tools did get kind of old.
- I'll retouch on the lacking visual fanfare. I really miss the graphically detailed backgrounds of the original Colonization's Europe, ports, and various adviser screens. In the original, when I was in Europe, it looked like a port. Now it looks like a shipping manifest. The dock is a box, the cargo holds have been swapped for rectangles, sailing to and from the colonies is now a big arrow. And I'll also point out that the old visually compelling European screen, with its bright happy colors have been replaced by brown, brown, and brown.
- I wasn't aware I was earning points towards my first founding father until I actually got him. Then I investigated more. It turns out the switch to the way the Continental Congress was handled is really, really cool. However, there's no way to know that it exists early on, and I'm still missing the connection between certain point types and how I earn them.
- The automated cargo routes are good, but it can be kind of confusing to find the route you want to assign something to if you have a lot of routes. Also, once you've assigned a route, good luck remembering which cart goes where. I had to resort to renaming the little buggies--something I believe the original Colonization did for you.
- Everything about the Natives that has changed has been for the better. You can train multiple times at a village, but it trains more slowly. Excellent. You can trade with a village very frequently, and their cash supply restores over time. Also great. You can peacefully vanquish cities if you overcome them with "culture."
- The only weird Native thing that I can now do is train converts at the village. This was forbidden in the original, perhaps for plausibility reasons, but seems like an OK addition to the game.
- I had natives with whom I was on very good terms up and declare war on me out of nowhere. That pretty much brought the end to a four hour session. Gosh I hate flipswitch diplomacy. Perhaps they were bought off, but I was given no indication that relations had soured or that they were going to war because of a foreign power. It seemed very random, and quite vexing.
- Taxes get out of hand extremely quickly. By turn 100 the king was blasting me with 30% tax. Perhaps it's easier to make money (and it seemed that way), but by comparison, even the most runaway king would only impose around 20% tax by the end of an original game. Tax could only increase by increments of 1% in that game. I haven't yet proven out if his increases have to do with your reputation level with him. I would be surprised if they are unrelated.
- If the king's army has anything to do with the amount of money he collects from you (as it did in the original), it seems like that army could get out of hand very quickly.
- I'm nostalgic for the old fife and drum style music of the original. Enough so to load it into the custom music directory...
- I'm intrigued by the concept of multiplayer. It's one of the features I wish the original had.
- Some of the entries in the Civilopedia are pretty barren.
But overall I'm quite pleased. It's very easy to get sucked into the gameplay. Much of the original Colonization has been copied verbatim, and much has been streamlined and tweaked to be made better or simpler. A lot of the cute touches of the original are missing, but the game doesn't really suffer them much. It's Colonization, it's fricken sweet. Like Pizza. Only with fewer calories.
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