Joystiq E3 eyes-on: Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization

by Alexander Sliwinski { Jul 20th 2008 at 5:30PM }

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is an interesting title in its marketing and presentation. The Civ IV tag is put on the game to give an idea of what to expect for those who don't remember the original Colonization, but the game is also clearly based on the Civilization IV engine and uses similar assets. Also, given some of the well-designed mods in Civ IV expansion, Beyond the Sword, we were wondering if Colonization would end up being a glorified mod or appear to be an actual new game? We still haven't come to a conclusion on that question, but there's a lot in this stand-alone product that certainly goes beyond what we'd call "a mod."

For starters, and it really bites that we can't show the UI or find videos, the interface and music are different from Civilization IV. Also, the graphics have been given a nice boost and, seeing them in person, it's certainly noticeable. Senior Producer Jesse Smith also walked us through several other things that make Colonization different from Civ IV.

Gallery: Civilization IV: Colonization

The main thing to grasp in Colonization is that the scope of the game is quite focused on establishing a colony in the New World of the Americas. Trade, diplomacy and warfare in the game's world are the focus, instead of Civ IV's macro concepts, like the tech race and pushing culture.

The city interface is also quite streamlined and appears intuitive, with players being able to take workers and easily move them to focus on things like trapping or other resource-gathering ventures for the city. Players can also build cities right next to Native American camps and we've been told that things will be fine until later in the game.

We also asked about slavery, a significant concept in American history that would be a glaring omission if it were completely ignored. We've been told that much like the introduction of religion in Civilization IV, Firaxis has gotten used to handling loaded concepts and taking the teeth out of them for the game. Slavery in Colonization civic accessible early in the game and players can choose whether or not to use it. Slavery was also a civic in Civilization IV that certainly had its pros and cons. We didn't have time to ask how Native Americans will be treated later in the game and if there'll be a Colonization version of The Trail of Tears.

From what we saw, Colonization looks like it could be a great focused strategy experience for fans of Civ IV, set in a specific point in history, and focused on management rather than the macro concepts of Sid Meier's more epic game. We currently think of Colonization as a Civ IV game with a magnifying glass held up to a certain portion of history.

To be clear, our time with the game was very limited as 2K seemed to want us focusing on titles like Borderlands or BioShock PS3. We got so little time, in fact, we'll be sending questions to the game's producer this week to fill in the significant gaps we didn't have time to ask about. If you've got questions about Colonization, please feel free to leave them below and we'll be sure to ask many of them when we speak with the game's producer this week.

Tags: colonization, e3-2008, eyes-on, joystiqfeatures, sid-meier

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gary Mckendry @ Jul 20th 2008 9:34PM

Will any of Colonisation's features be added to the original Civ 4?

deeznutz @ Jul 20th 2008 5:44PM

Awesome I cant wait to priate this on my pc!

Supino @ Jul 20th 2008 6:14PM

I just pirated Pirates from pirate bay.

BigD145 @ Jul 20th 2008 5:56PM

I'd better not have to pay for this mod.

WorMzy @ Jul 20th 2008 7:23PM

I personally hope that it's not a mod, so that I don't have to pay for Civ IV. :>

LaughingTarget @ Jul 20th 2008 6:18PM

As a long time fan of the original, I can say slavery and native affairs should be in there. The original utilized slavery units to handle production, they were cheaper but they had poor productivity. You can also go around slaughtering natives, biggies were the Inca and Maya because you could take their gold from their cities and get a huge boost in income, though they pretty much hate you at that point forward and God help you if they end up stealing some of your rifles. Native riflemen units get a major terrain bonus that pretty much makes them difficult to beat by any of your units.

Trickob @ Jul 20th 2008 7:14PM

That would certainly make the game more realistic. Rape, slaughter, and enslave the natives, just like Christopher Columbus!!

BigD145 @ Jul 20th 2008 7:15PM

Don't forget to build Wall Street on the same site as your slave pens.

WorMzy @ Jul 20th 2008 7:20PM

I always found it more profitable to sell the Aztecs tobacco, and cloth if I remember correctly.

MarMar @ Jul 20th 2008 7:23PM

just download freecol

BananaBoat @ Jul 21st 2008 12:11AM

There is no slave labour that I could find. When you take over a city, it's inhabitants become yours, and basically you have to "pay" them with culture (or they'll defect and leave you).

I've never played the other civ games, so I have a question if anyone knows; Are they all turn based? I went into it thinking it was a real time strategy game, and I was a bit dissapointed when I found out it was turn based (Civ Colonization that is). It's fine at the beginning, but it's incredibly annoying when you've got tens of cities, hundreds of soldiers, planes, and boats etc that you have to control. There is no autopilot mode for anything but the food and resource harvesting (which citizens do without you telling them to) so you literally have to babysit each unit on every turn. You can set units to move in a direction for multiple turns, but you still have to watch the animation of every single unit on every single turn. It's a bit frustrating when if it were real time, you wouldn't have to do that (if there is a speed up feature and I haven't found it, I take this criticism back).

All in all, it feels alot like a gimped, combined version of Sim City and a real time strategy game. There just isn't enough of the sim city aspect, or the RTS aspect, to blow my mind, and the cartoony graphics made the Sim City aspect even more watered down. If anyone out there thinks this combo sounds interesting, then I'd say you should absolutely check it out though. It's definitely a solid title.

Erluti @ Jul 21st 2008 10:14AM

@ bananaboat
"I was a bit dissapointed when I found out it was turn based"

That's the real beauty of these games. All the good things about a good board game, without all the tokens and charts.

JonFitt @ Jul 21st 2008 10:55AM

@ bananaboat
ROFL. Welcome to big boy games.

@ LaughingTarget
Slavery was not in the original. The closest thing were the indentured servants who were Europeans, and not quite slaves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servants

Paul @ Jul 20th 2008 6:23PM

Thats pretty cool I live where Fort Frontenac is, it's now Kingston but there are still some of the original walls from the fort still here.

todd @ Jul 20th 2008 6:52PM

Love Civ Rev for the 360 hopefully they do more.

Richard Holt @ Jul 20th 2008 7:05PM

Great news, Colonization is one of my favourite games of this type, I have fond memories of playing it on the Amiga back in the day. I've been waiting for an updated version for years now.

Unfortunately I don't have a PC, so my question is, will there be a Mac version?

Corey @ Jul 21st 2008 1:02AM

I hope there is. I know there is a Mac version of Civ 4 because that's what I have.

GenBanks @ Jul 20th 2008 7:11PM

I'm really looking forward to this, I just spent pretty much my entire weekend nonstop playing a game of Civ IV (my steam account puts me at 29.7 hours in the past 2 weeks!) so I dread what a brand new Civ-style game will do to the shreds that remain of my life. :)

And at the previous posters implying pirating the game... you're all sick.