Civilization IV: Colonization review

Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge

I love a shooter as much as the next red-blooded gamer, but some of the greatest satisfaction a person can get is from classic PC strategy. And for turn based strategy, you simply cannot beat Sid Meier’s legendary Civilization series.

As the name suggests, in this edition you travel from an empire to build a colony in the New World. You can play as the English, Dutch, Spanish or French. Although it looks a lot like CivIV and plays very similarly to start off with, the game mechanics are very different. Trade is extremely important to your success, and this and the exploration aspect make it like a cross between CivIV and another of Sid Meier’s games, Pirates!.

You need to be aware of what resources the land tiles produce around your settlements are and how to best utilize those resources with specialists. Then you need to carefully manage your trade network of those resources, which is difficult to get right. The sheer range of stuff you need to gather and create will intimidate more casual gamers.

If you’re the sort of gamer who only gets kicks in Civ by working your way up to building nukes and destroying everyone with them, this probably won’t be up your alley. While you can massacre the natives and engage in some warfare, how well you do really depends on managing your economy.

Eventually you become independent from the empire you came from which is very difficult to achieve but very satisfying when you do. At the end of the day it’s not as epic or addictive as Civilization IV but is a very nice, challenging accompaniment.