14 DAY TRIAL // So, I've finally got my hands on the remake of the 1994 Sid Meier classic, which still has a place on my hard drive and in my playtime schedule. The first piece of advice is to go for a Marathon or Epic game with a big map to fully get the Colonization experience right.
16:00. Whom to play as? The four sides from the original (English, French, Dutch and Spanish) are there, each augmented by a choice of two different leaders. Frankly, it would have been interesting to see the Portuguese, the Germans and maybe even a touch of Russians as choices. Modders, get to work!
16:03. I like the fact that the English get immigrants quicker and I pick John Adams because I like libertarians and his Liberty Bell bonus. Let's colonize the Americas!
16:04. What? No option to have an Americas like map to play on? Weird and disappointing design choice. I have to settle for a randomly generated continent or a string of islands. I go for the continent.
16:07. Three turns in, I’m still on my Mayflower and I've already encountered the Dutch. This continent (which I have not seen yet) is getting crowded.
16:14. I have two colonies up, one near cotton and the other near tobacco. The Dutch are right near me and I've already met a few tribes. So far, it seems pretty familiar.
16:25. This continent seems small; I don't see how you could fit the original 13 or 14 villages of the Tupi on it. I suspect that there are far less indigenous settlements and that there's going to be a serious dash for real estate going on between me, the Dutch and the newly met Spanish.
16:30. Money is in pretty short supply. One trick in the original game was to sell horses and guns en masse to the Indians. Let's see if it works.
16:35. Yup, it does, to a certain degree. Most tribes pay well for the aforementioned products, but only once and only if you get to them first. The Incas are already craving cloth and rum, but it will take some time till I have the money to get the specialists needed to produce them.
16:41. Cigars are on the way and I have set up another couple of towns. Good spots appear to be harder to come by than in the original game. Food seems in short supply and I wonder how I will be able to cram a lot of people into one settlement. Maybe the answer lies in creating more smaller towns.
16:50. I apparently annoyed the Aztecs when I founded a city without paying them the money to redeem the use of their land. And, weirdly, they seem to have native warriors posted right up next to almost all of my settlements. This is bad...
16:55. The Aztec War is going so bad, with four of my towns razed already, that I am contemplating restarting.
This is how my first hour with Civilization IV: Colonization ends. So far enjoyable, even if I got beaten...