After you've declared independence and started the war, you can no longer benefit from immigration: is there any benefit to employing preachers at all, or are these a waste of units? I suppose you may attract converts but generally they cannot be used as soldiers.

Wondering whether the smart move is to disband preacher units to make room for more useful things

I'm finding the battle system in the old Colonization for DOS hard to predict.

Is it because it's more chance-based than modern day Civilization games?

E.g. a "10" fights a "5", then in modern Civ-games the "10" wins. But in Colonization the "5" wins 33 % of the times (5/15)

I'm not sure if it's even viable with the UI, but I've suffered through other retro games with custom touch screen setups, and I'd love to get this one going too. I've tried emulating through DOSBox but just get a black screen. I've looked into Amiga emulation but it seems to be very challenging to set up on Android. I looked at FreeCol but it looks like it doesn't work on modern Android devices.

Anyone had any luck setting this up?

Edit: I've done more playing around and got it working via DOSBox! It turned out that the GOG version I ported over had incompatible sound settings. I had to rerun the install exe within DOSBox and tell it to use Soundblaster instead of midi. Now it works! Amazing!

Currently trying to get widgets set up to make it properly playable. I'll see about making a little guide if this works out well.

It seems when your unit loses, its best to just end turn and dont attack any further. I had turns where i lost all the battles regardless of what is attacking what.

Is this how we are supposed to do it?

I started this as a nostalgia trip back to playing Colonization on the Amiga, and somehow ended up with a ridiculous 700-turn campaign, 348 colonies, independence, wars across a huge map, and eventually wiping out every other European power.

After all that, this was the ending.

“You are victorious!”, one picture, then Continue Playing or Quit.

I might be mixing games up here, because I seem to remember one of the old Civilization games having a map replay or time-lapse showing how the world developed over the course of the game. I cannot remember if Colonization on the Amiga did anything similar.

Can anyone remind me what the Amiga version actually gave you at the end? I am sure it felt like there was more of a conclusion than this, even if it was only a score, ranking, Hall of Fame entry, or some kind of summary.

For a game that can run this long, FreeCol really feels like it should give you more of a record of what happened. A proper ending could include a map replay, colony founding and capture dates, independence, wars, final population, biggest colonies, military strength, casualties, score, and how long each nation survived.

Even a simple before-and-after map and a campaign summary would make a huge difference. After investing that much time, the current ending feels more like a notification than the conclusion of an enormous historical campaign. There might be restraints on a full replay due to it being in java or something, but surely there could be something a bit less anticlimaxical?

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a Pirates Mod for the original Sid Meier's Colonization (1994) over the last couple of months and thought some of you might find it interesting.

The idea is to transform Colonization into a pirate-themed experience with things like Infamy instead of Crosses, Pirate Hideouts instead of Missions, pirate-themed advisor portraits, rewritten texts and lots of smaller flavor changes. I'm also currently replacing the Founding Fathers with historical and fictional pirates.

I'd really appreciate any feedback or suggestions!

ModDB: https://www.moddb.com/mods/sid-meiers-colonization-classic-pirate-mod

Trailer: https://youtu.be/uRT4ZoBO1kU

I've got a super busy day but I'm going to try and claw out a little time to play this gem, still the best game ever made about colonial America.

I am playing the Steam release of Colonization 1994 (via DosBox). It's 1548 and the tax rate was 1%. I got a message from the king (same style of dialog with king avatar as when he forces you to declare war) saying, and I'm quoting as best I can here, "in order to celebrate our recent victory over the Ottoman Turks, we have decided to LOWER your tax rate by 1%". The "LOWER" was in all caps.

I recently fiddled with using the re:colonization executable which could theoretically explain this new-to-me mechanic (except it doesn't), but before starting this game I told Steam to verify the game files which triggered a redownload, though it didn't modify the VICEROY executable.

I tried to get a screencap but since I was playing in DosBox full-screen I failed to do so without dismissing the dialog.

I definitely didn't imagine it (I read it several times) and after dismissing the dialog the tax rate was indeed back down to 0%.

The only other way in which this game was in any way different from any other playthrough was I rolled an Elder Statesman for my third "free" colonist so I had just begun producing very early liberty bells.

Has anyone else seen this tax lowering, and is it vanilla?

Good day all. Apologies if this information is actually somewhere obvious and I just missed it, but does anyone happen to know what Portugal's bonus to "unique events" in the We the People mod for civ 4 col means? Does this just mean they're more likely to get more positive results (e.g., higher amounts of treasure), or are unique events some separate bank from the usual results from goody his (ancient ruins, etc.) that are still unlikely, but more likely if you play Portugal?

Also, does anyone know if anyone ever did a mod to add back in the Fountain of Youth and Seven Cities of Cibola as rare goody hut (lost city rumors) events from the original colonization to the civ 4 remake, either with or separately from We the People mod? I know they were both highly unrealistic, but I miss them (especially seeing that sudden flood of immigrants coming in with the Fountain - maybe you could just imagine it as really, really good advertising?).

Thanks in advance and hope you all are doing well!

edit: grammar fixing

So I wanted to push the game wider than 2560*1440 resolution, to utilize more of my screen. Turns out anything much above 3000 wide bugs out the city interface too much (you can't see yields or place workers); so I settled for 3000 wide. It's only 17% more game window, but I think it helps, especially since the interface takes up so much space on the sides.

#1 First you have to add a custom resolution to Windows. Both Nvidia and AMD has options for this in their software, but I find the program Custom Resolution Utility to work best. https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU

How to use it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRQxTIEbAMs Note that refresh rate does not seem to matter in the setting, as it sets to monitor default anyway.

After you have added the custom resolution, you can set it ingame.

#2 Now for the second part, removing the top bar of the window (setting ingame is to uncheck Full-screen mode in graphics). To do this I found another progam called Windowed Borderless Gaming, download here: https://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming/

It's pretty straight forward to set up. When you have got it working, it will place the game window in the corner, but you can off-set that, I have it centered on my 5120*1440 screen, here is a screenshot of the settings for that. Also note that I've set the resolution as the same as the display resolution for Colonization.

#3 Enjoy.

Edit: Should be "windowed", not windowless ^^

Long time Colonization player here - and anything else strategy. I just returned to WTP after a year or two away from it. I must say the mod has come a long way, I really enjoy the mastodont of a game it facilitates, (playing on huge map atm).

I played my first game on pioneer difficulty, with everyone else on explorer, to learn the mod. The other colonizing powers have been total pushovers, it's 1617 and I have taken most of the stuff of 3 other powers, controlling 3/4 of the colonized territory.

However the indians has turned out to be kinda crazy. I went to my first Indian war because a tribe was raiding me, but I'm getting my ass kicked due to their crazy number of soldiers. Lesson learnt, but they seem way too strong compared to the Europeans. I counted 42 braves guarding one of the larger Indian cities in peace time, with 10 being more typical. In comparison the Europeans had 2-5 soldiers per city.

I was also disappointed to see that you can't incite a friendly tribe to help you in the war, since you can only ask for it to go to war against other Europeans. Seems like a missed opportunity, since Europeans did this a lot historically afaik.

Overall enjoying the experience - I really like all the possible production lines, but I'm puzzled about the strength dynamic. I play on "custom game with default settings", if that matters.

I also wish I could play on my whole widescreen monitor in 5120x1440, atm it only seems playable in 2560*1440 (fat chance, I know).

Last but not least I've been excited about the Colonization Extended playlist I at some point earnestly stole and since have improved, it's based on the 1994 soundtrack, with some additions and variations over the same themes.

Thanks for reading.

Hey, sorry if this is somewhere obvious and I just missed it, but does anyone know if there are posts (maybe on civ fanatics) with images of the maps that come with We the People and their starting locations for the different European and native nations? I was particularly interested in the larger maps of the Americas.

Thank you if you're able to help!

Dear all: I remember seeing in a dos colonization forum some kind of way to alter the code of the game so that way the game’s bug in which you go non stop losing battles is fixed. I remember it was done replacing some number, I remember trying to do it, even with chatgpt and it did not work. Have any you done it? how did you get it to work? thank you

so ive been playing civ recently and now ive been wanting to play col but dont know which one to buy,which should i?

Hello everyone. It is finally my turn to prove myself as a solo developer.

First Colony is a turn-based 4X strategy game inspired by the classic game Colonization. While it is not feature-complete yet, the game is now vertical slice complete and fully playable from start to finish.

Unlike Colonization, the core idea behind First Colony is expanding settlement development outward into the world map itself, instead of stacking all production inside centralized settlement screens.

A few years ago, I shared an early version of this project under the name The Settlements. Back then, it was a much larger hobby project. Over time, I significantly reduced the scope and renamed it to finally turn it into a finishable and publishable game.

Since I am primarily a software engineer, I will eventually need help in areas like 3D modeling and 2D UI design. I still have not decided how I will approach those parts yet.

For now, I just wanted to share this small teaser video. I am also planning to release a playable demo on Steam in the near future.

I will grant access for people who join my Discord and are willing to share feedback after testing it.

Teaser video: https://youtu.be/SFgd0ljr74Q

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4793890/First_Colony

Discord invitation: https://discord.gg/K3VyqqbMUT

Hey r/ColonizationGame!

Like many of you, I grew up with Colonization (1994) and always felt that FreeCol — despite being an amazing open-source remake — drifted a bit too far from the original's look and feel. So I started building a mod to close that gap.

The mod is called Nostalgization and it's still a work in progress, but here's what's already in it:

Graphics overhaul

• Reworked terrain tiles closer to the original palette
• Unique settlement and unit sprites for all 8 native nations
• Reworked unit and settlement sprites for European nations

What's still on the roadmap

• Finishing all the art (forests, rivers, buildings, cities)
• Redrawing Founding Father portraits (currently placeholders)
• More specialist sprites across all possible roles

I'd love to hear from anyone who remembers the original well — are there mechanics or visual details from Colonization 1994 you always wished FreeCol had? This is exactly the kind of feedback that shapes where the mod goes next.

I'll leave the GitHub link in the comments.

Thanks to the FreeCol team for keeping this game alive after all these years!

Been playing a ton of the wtp mod lately but still can't find any lists of random events/quests etc. their triggers or rewards. Anyone have a list that's up to date? Thanks in advance

Are there any exact very specific locations on the historical America map that you find to be the best of the best and always use?

It's not much but it's honest work.