This is my favorite PC game of all time. I'm 31 years old and my father, being a software engineer, always had Sid Meier games in the household. Colonization brings back many great memories. A must have for any collection!

Colonization is a game I played back on a Windows 95 laptop. The steam version is 100% correct to the old version based on what I have seen. If you are able to get past the old graphics, this is a Sid Meier's game with a lot of fun to be had. I tried running this game on a Vista and a Windows 8 PC, both ran well.

You play the part of a explorer who has been given free reign by your King/Queen. You build colonies to gather trade goods to ship to the mother land for cash. There are also Three other Computer players competing with you. While building your Colony network, you slowly receive higher and higher taxes. After much work, you can build up the Rebels in your country and try to fight for your Independence!

Based on the game age, this is a Nine out of Ten!!

This is the classic game you all remember, unchanged in any way as far as I can tell. For those new to Colonization, you'll find this to be a solid Sid Meier strategy game that deviates from the strict formula of the Civilization series. If retro games aren't your thing, this game was also remade using the Civ 4 engine.

The gameplay focuses on building up an economic empire in the New World, with your primary source of income coming from shipping valuable goods back to Europe to sell. Your eventual goal is to create a self-sufficient nation and declare independence from from your parent country back in Europe. Along the way, you'll have to compete with other European powers settling the New World, as well as increasingly troublesome (but wealthy!) natives.

Starting off, the game is quite forgiving. The other European powers are generally more focused on building their own empires than on wiping you out, but can and will cause you trouble later. Similarly, the Native Americans all start off friendly toward you and even give you free stuff, but their attitude will gradually sour toward you, even if you just leave them alone. This will sound cold and heartless, but in the end, genocide is the best solution, as they will harass you without end otherwise. The huge amounts of treasure you'll get from looting Indian villages is just a bonus.

As I said above, the gameplay deviates quite a bit from the standard Civ fomula. There are a lot more resources, for one thing: 16 material goods, as well as a few immaterial resources, like liberty bells (increases rebel sentiment, which gives bonuses to production, and attracts Founding Fathers) and crosses (attracts immigrants). Of the material goods, most are meant solely for selling, but the rest are vital for running your colonies. I'll explain this a bit more indepth further down.

Another difference between this and Civ is that Population = Units. Aside from ships, wagons, and artillery, all your units are colonists that can be given different equipment to create different units. Each colonist can be trained in one profession, giving them a bonus to performing that job (usually, increasing resource yields). When asigning a colonist to work a tile around your colony, they can only gather one resource at a time, but you won't usually need more than one of any type of gatherer except for farmers. You can also asign colonists to work the buildings inside your colony. For example, the weaver's house converts cotton into cloth.

Colonists are also your units. Give them tools to turn them into a Pioneer so they can build roads, clear forests, and plow fields. Give them horses to turn them into a Scout, which moves faster, sees farther, can interact with native villages, and gets better results from lost cities. Give them muskets to turn them into Soldiers, your most basic and most common military unit, or equip a Soldier with horses to make them a stronger and faster Dragoon. Also of note is that any colonist can found a colony; there's no "settler" type unit like in Civ.

As far as ships go, most of them are used for hauling loot and trading. Of special mention, though, is the Privateer. A Privateer's ownership is invisible except to the player that owns it. This means that Privateers can attack other players even when you are at peace with them, but at the same time your Privateers are also fair game to any Frigates in the area. Hurray for piracy!

Another difference from Civ is that there is no research or tech tree. The closest analogue would be the Founding Fathers, which confer various bonuses, including things like unlocking buildings, and are earned with liberty bells. Since liberty bells also increase the desire for independence among your colonists (which will eventually net you bonuses to resource production), you'll want lots of them anyway.

If you want a strong and self-suficient colony, there are a few things you absolutely need:

OCEAN ACCESS: Since a large part of the game revolves around trade, you absolutely need a way to load a ship up with goods. Landlocked colonies aren't impossible, as you can use wagons to transport goods to a colony with a port, but I'd reccomend beginners stick with seaside colonies at first.

FOOD: Your colonists need to eat. Shipping food to a perpetually starving colony is no fun and better avoided altogether. Fortunately, food is pretty easy to get as long as you're not settling in the arctic. Food can also be converted into horses, which is important for a strong military. You need at least 2 horses in a colony and then they'll breed automatically.

LUMBER: Lumber is converted into hammers by a carpenter. This is how you build buildings in your colonies. You can buy buildings with gold, but that quickly gets expensive. You can also ship lumber in from another colony, but this can be a pain. Just make sure to keep one forest tile next to your colony, as you shouldn't need more than one lumberjack.

ORE: Ore is converted into tools, which are used by Pioneers for terraforming. 20 tools are consumed for every terraforming job. Also, all but the most basic buildings will also require tools to build. As such, you'll need to have a steady supply of tools. And once you're done terraforming and building buildings, tools can be turned into muskets.

Aside from the above, everything else is optional. You don't need sugar, or furs, or cotton, or tobacco. These will help you make some cash, but they're largely interchangeable with one another.

Some last tips: Remember, the natives are not your friends! Or, at least, they won't be for very long. Whatever you do, DO NOT give them horses or muskets. You can make a lot of quick cash by trading with the natives early on, but they'll quickly wise up that you're scamming them. You can prevent tax hikes by reenacting the Boston Tea Party, which will increase rebel sentiment in that colony, but also makes you unable to trade that resource in Europe anymore. Lastly, make sure you're ready for a war of apocalyptic proportions before declaring independence. I'm not kidding.

This game was perhaps my favorite growing up, and while it's aged a bit (really missing edge-scrolling and right-click-to-move), it's still a very solid game, and I'd heartily reccomend it to anyone interested in the genre.

It is exactly as you remember it. If you weren't fortunate enough to play it back when DOS was a thing, then prepare yourself for the the gaming glory that the mid-90s had to offer, right here in this game.

Sold guns to the Tupi then watched them murder my colonists. 11/10 would arm natives again.

I love Sid Meier's older games! Thumbs this post up if you wish Steam had a version of the original Sid Meier's Civilization for DOS!

One of my favorite games of all time is finally on Steam. Colonization isn't perfect, but it is damn near there. The soundtrack is great, the game mechanics are simple on the surface but have tons of depth, and its impossible not to contract One More Turn Syndrome.

The Steam version of this game is GREAT! I assumed that there would be problems with getting it to run, but it actually runs perfectly. It hasn't crashed once for me and the music is in sync. If you are interested in trying out oldschool turn-based strategy games where the emphasis is on trading rather than combat (although you can still focus on combat if you want to), then you should definitely check this game out. Also, if you are one of those people who used to play it in the past but aren't sure whether to buy it or not, trust me. It's worth it!

One of the greatest games of all time. You can pick it up for free as abandonware, and it would be amazing if the dev would release the source code so we could fix the few problems it does have, but this is seriously one of the most fun strategy games ever made.

Still to this day, Colonization classic remains one of the best games that I have ever played.

This game represents 90% of my gaming over 25 years. I have won it in all situations and played every variation possible. Even so, I have never gotten bored of this game.