I am about to try the original Sid Meier's Colonization, what are your thoughts on it? and other older strategy games you like? My absolutely favorite is Master of Orion 2
>>12230395I used to play Castles 2, but I can't remember if I ever win even once. You get overwheldmed pretty fast, IIRC.
>>12230395A worthy delight for a traveling man.
Top 5 game for me, my best friend and I both played it non stop, he had the Mac one so it was cleaner and with tunes.It's super fun for what it is, the Dutch are by far the strongest, be nice to the injuns they pay really well and gift a lot.Get Jefferson and Franklin ASAP.
>>12230467I played the fuck out of Castles 2. Early to mid game is mostly luck-based. If you can't get a military up fast enough and enough resources, you just get overpowered by your neighbors. Mid game is where you can start having a real effect with strategy. It's all about getting good dual-layer castles on your outer ring, and getting as many knights and archers as you can, then taking enough of the map to have the resources to keep it going. End game is just building castles everywhere to max out your resources and overwhelm the AI that remains.Once for fun I kept one AI alive so I could attack and take the lands away from the Pope. I had to bribe my way back into speaking terms with the Pope after every invasion, but in the end the Pope only had one territory left. Then I had him crown me king. Suck it your holiness.
>>12230395AAA-tier midi music, decent if horribly unbalanced gameplay.Dutch are OP, English are 2nd with their flood of people, Spanish are barely useful while indians are still alive, French are worthless.Get the Founding Father who gives you only good results from unexplored ruins, and then get scouts out there working overtime, and get those ruins for the fountains of youth. 2-3 fountains of youth will supply you with tons of colonists, many with skills already.Talk to each indian village once. Every village can train a single colonist in a skill, and they are a free source of expert farmers, fishers, and crop growers. Early game you should be sending all your untrained colonists out to find an indian village to get trained at. Indians are nothing but a detriment later on, so get the training and then wipe them out if they are too close to you. Converts are worthless compared to expert farmers and fishermen, so don't waste your time on missionaries.Once your people make landfall, send your boat back to Europe. Buy 2 horses to bring along with anything else you are getting. Two horses + more food being grown than being eaten = more horses for free. Everytime you make a new colony, you should send 2 horses for their stockpile. If you start early and keep food surpluses up, you'll have all the horses you need for scouts and dragoons all game long, as well as having an excess to sell.Start mining iron ore and making your own tools early. Prices go up quickly on tools, and you will need them all game long.When you revolt, your EU home country will attack all of your colonies that have ports. Every square outside those colonies will be overrun with warships and dragoons, and any units will be captured. So pull everyone inside water-touching colonies before you declare.
>>12230610This dude colonizes.
>>12230395Holy shit I just started playing this again myself and was thinking of making a thread. So thanks OP.So Colonization is 31 years old now and the UI is just BARELY on the side of being functional to people in 2025, but I still find the underlying gameplay loop pretty interesting. (Reynolds stole parts of it from Dan Bunten, RIP.)The game bogs down when the AI players are being annoying early game (camping your areas even when you're at peace) and later on (the build-up to revolution seems to take forever). I don't remember if there was any consensus to this at the time but the Dutch seemed head and shoulders above every other power, almost like playing the game at a lower difficulty level.
At this point it should be mentioned that Freeciv and Freecol preserve these old games extremely well and they can be played on modern computers, over the Internet as well. It's worth checking them both out and they both came around in the '90s so they are 100% retro. We should have a nice thread about Free and Open retro games, there are a butt load of great ones out there.
>>12231713I've never tried freecol, thanks for reminding me that's a thing.I like the idea about that thread.
>>12231912There are tons of retro Free games. Battle for Wesnoth is a great one if you like it. If not? Heck they don't care lol.
>>12231713Can't speak for FreeCiv, but last time I tried FreeCol about 8 years ago it was a pale shadow of the real thing. Didn't even have the America's map to play on.
>>12231993It's got a few options. I just started playing it since I love this game and didn't know freecol.
>>12232052I bought civ4 colo asap... I just don't like it as much am i wrong? I'm old I think civ4 didn't handle combat as well.
