Civilization IV: Colonization Anticipation Thread

[Barkeep49]

I really enjoyed the original. Was this ever fixed enough to be worth playing? For $5 during the Steam Sale, two fun playthroughs would more than satisfy me.

[Ksyrup]

I thought I would dredge this thread back up from the dead after reading my comment on the previous page about how little I enjoyed this game back in 2009.

Fast-forward almost 10 years, and I'm playing this quite often - but using the TAC (The Authentic Colonization) mod. It really breathed new life into the game for me and allowed me to play it much more in the style of the original, while still maintaining some of what made the reboot a true upgrade. Anyone tried TAC?

The other reason for jump-starting this thread is that I just ran across another mod - Religion and Revolution - that massively changed the game, and I'm wondering if anyone has played it. The amount of work done to mod the original is impressive. There are all new game concepts, nations, units, specialists, resources (like, 50 resources - 2 row at the bottom of your screen), etc. I don't know how stable it is or if this is overkill, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Anyone still playing any version of this game? For whatever reason, Colonization is the one game that has stuck with me for over 20+ years.

[Ksyrup]

So I guess it doesn't surprise me that everyone has long since passed on this game, but I've spent the past week buried in the Religion and Revolution mod, and it is fantastic. It's quite literally a new game. And yeah, it's still got some bugs, but it's amazing to me that an unofficial modding group was able to make such huge changes to this game that is stable and playable. Everything from graphics, to key game play elements, to updates to the in-game Wiki.

I highly recommend downloading v2.7 and giving it a shot. You won't recognize Colonization. In fact, if Firaxis was smart, they'd take this mod over and release it for a few quick bucks.

Here's a link to the CivFanatics forum and the basic overview:

Civ4Col - Religion and Revolution | CivFanatics Forums

Religion and Revolution is a huge mod or one could say it is a complete overhaul for "Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization" developed by an international team of passionate modders.

At first it was a spin-off of the German Mod "The Authentic Colonization" (TAC) which has been finished some years ago. TAC is a mod developed by a German team of passionated modders. However, TAC has been finished a few years ago. Over the years Religion and Revolution has been clearly developed to a complete self-contained mod for the vanilla game with a lot of new features:

- New game interface
- New game events that make the game more interesting
- New game achievements that show the development of the player ingame
- Complete new good system with its own trade route system
- Micromanagement can be done (but this is not a must-do)
- Complete overhaul of existing unit and building graphics
- New unit structure, in particular of the military units
- New units and new professions
- A lot of additional native nations with its own behaviour and leaders
- New leader traits of all existing leaders to make them more different
- Overhaul of the existing leader traits
- New port (Port Royal) that can be used for smuggling in the New World
- New (historical correct) maps
- New European Nations (Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Russia)
- New city graphics and new map graphic
- New improvements on the map
- Wild animals on land and see
- New Founding Fathers
- Pirates which attack the player in middle and late game
- ...

The mod offers great opportunities for different player styles. You can of course settle in peace with the natives like the French did, you can conquer the New World with the Spaniards, you can built a new nation with the British or bring one of the smaller nations into the New World like Sweden or Denmark.

If you like micromanagement you can spent hours for supplying your colonies or you can do just the "classic" trade with Europe as in the vanilla game.

You can create your own colonial empire until the increase of the taxes requires the war of independence for indepence from the mother country.

The AI has been revised and works better than in vanilla. However, there is still room for improvement, since the vanilla AI is so bad.

[cuervo72]

I have to admit that I was stoked it was coming out, bought it, and...never played it.

[Ksyrup]

I was the same way. I started this thread, but my post on the last page was about how disappointed I was with the game. But the mods have really helped to make it fun.

The RnR mod does a couple of things that makes the game much more fun. One, the city radius is expanded to 5x5 instead of 3x3, so you have a number of additional tiles to work. And two, instead of just having to work with tobacco, sugar, cotton, furs, ore and a few other things like silver, cocoa, bananas, etc., they've greatly expanded the number of resources and what you can do with them. Indigo for dyeing cloth; coffee; premium furs, including seal; premium wood for furniture-making; stone; gold; hemp, which is required for rope/sailcloth and required for ship building. The list goes on and on. It's just a lot more fun to plan out cities and have so many different ways to make money and support your cities. They also added land and sea animals that act like barbarians from the Civ games.

Just a totally refreshed and fun game now, even with some bugs.