Game:

Sid Meier's Colonization (1994)

Duration: 1:03:14

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We skip ahead a few years, because not much of interest happened. The other European powers are fading into irrelevance. It's clear who the winner is.
This is a slight problem with this sort of game - the big conflicts tend to happen in the middle of the game, and then one faction becomes overwhelmingly dominant. But Colonization gives you something to do in the endgame - win the war of independence.

This is also a fine example of "show, don't tell". The game doesn't really tell you to declare independence, it just makes the King really annoying. The King constantly raises taxes (or forces inconvenient "parties"), and each tax hike takes out a larger bite of what is left. Kissing that pinky ring becomes increasingly grating.

The Royal Expeditionary force is huge, but fortunately, only six units arrive per turn. If you have an army that is fast enough to get to them, and large enough to kill them before they start attacking colonies, you'll probably be fine. The ambush bonus is a particularly nice touch - it's the game's way of showing us that we are the natives now and we are being invaded.

The biggest victims of the war are the horses, which get massacred in huge numbers whenever dragoons lose a fight. I'm almost out of horses by the end of the war, resorting to fortifying my unmounted soldiers in colonies.

00:00 Hello Intertubers
01:30 Guns!
06:00 Independence!
11:00 Continental army musters!
15:00 Fighting starts
18:26 Man'o'war sunk!
20:50 Ganking artillery for promotions
25:05 Cheesing out an ambush bonus.
29:30 Get out of the way!
31:00 Man'o'war sunk!
33:25 French Intervention!
58:50 Victory!


Founding Fathers:

Thomas Paine: Liberty bell production increased by the current tax rate.

Nice, but Thomas Jefferson - who increases bell production by a flat 50% - is usually better.


Peter Stuyvesant: Lets you build a custom house.

The Custom House automatically sells goods, removing the need for trading ships, and also removing the need for a European master to trade with. It's very important during the war for independence, but not a huge deal before that.

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