Jamestown, Let's Not Starve to Death: An English Colonization AAR

[sbr]

I'm posting this elsewhere but as long as I am making the effort of doing it I might as well post it here too.
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I bought the original Colonization on GOG.com earlier today.  I have played FreeCol (and had some technical problems), but never the original version until today.

I am playing as Sir Walter Raleigh of the the English on the Conquistador (Moderate) level.  I have played a lot of Civ but I am not very good at them, as far as power-gaming goes.  I have a vague idea of how to play the game but have not opened the manual.  I don't have any interest in win-button strategies or power-gaming through this AAR, I am going to play as I want and to have fun.  If you want to give advice feel free but don't be offended if I ignore it in game.

On the extremely slim chance that there is someone else who hasn't played this game, it is a Sid Meier game and a very close relative of Civilization.  At the start of the game I will be in control of 1 caravel, 1 Pioneer Colonist (basic unit + tools) and 1 soldier (basic unit + muskets).  I will be sailing to a randomly generated New World and will be joined there by French, Spanish and Dutch settlers, along with the native Americans.  Each country has their own advantage:  Spain is really good at raping and pillaging the Natives, the French are really good at getting along with the Natives, the Dutch are better traders and the English have more people wanting to leave that silly island and go ANYWHERE else, even across the Atlantic and into completely unknown territory.

The goal is to build up the colonial settlements until they are self-sufficient then declare independence from the home land and win a war of independence against the home country.

Our story starts in 1492 (sorry about the cursor in the screenshots, I will try to do better in the future).







And with that Sir Walter Raleigh sets off for the Americas in 1492, and in Spring of that year his small rag-tag band reaches the New World.

[sbr]

The maps we were given are very good and we approach land in a very nice looking spot.  In honor of the country we hated so much we left certain we would die, we name the new land New England.



And make landfall.



It looks like we were right and found an very nice area to start.



We are able to establish our first colony right at the spot we land and name it after a King that will rule in 70-some years.





We got lucky and landed in an area abundant with game which we can use for food and their furs.



This colony only produces 2 food so we are going to need to focus on food production pretty quickly.  Each citizen working in the colony needs 2 food and I really want the fur production, so any additional workers will need to produce more than 2 food to make them worth having.

Each Colonist also produces at least one Liberty Bell and one Cross.  Liberty Bells represent the colonists desire for independence and the Crosses represent the religious freedom of the colonies.  As we saw in the Intro, free immigration is controlled by Crosses.  We can pay for immigrants anytime, but we need the free ones, especially early.

Once we have a colony producing Liberty Bells we start building towards a Continental Congress and as it expands we can choose the Founding Fathers we want to show up.



My intention is to play very nicely with the Natives.  I won't be bullied, but I also won't be an instigator.  I can't control the Indians' opinion of us, but I have no immediate intention of starting hostilities with the natives.

That being said, they are savages and we need to be careful.  We choose Sieur De La Salle for his ability to provide a free stockade to every colony when they hit size 3.



Shortly after inviting De La Salle to the Continental Congress we make our first contact with the Natives.

[The Brain]

Is this the game that completely ignores the African slave trade?

[Richard Hakluyt]

Indeed it does. Good game though.

[Zanza]

You should always plow the area before you build a city. You can't do it later anymore. Also for England, I would have chosen Penn as the first founding father.

[Tamas]

You should always plow the area before you build a city. You can't do it later anymore.

waddaya mean? I used to found the first city with the soldier, and plow the lands around it with the pioneer

[Solmyr]

Nice one, will follow this.

[Zanza]

You should always plow the area before you build a city. You can't do it later anymore.

waddaya mean? I used to found the first city with the soldier, and plow the lands around it with the pioneer

If you plow the square the city is built on, it produces more food so that you can have 2 (or in the lowest difficulty 3) people in the city without a farmer.

[KRonn]

Great game, original Colonization!       

[Habbaku]

Is this game out yet?

[sbr]

Oh, you can plow tiles?  I will have to try that sometime.

And yes, I should have gone with Penn but I always seem to have more specialists early on than I know what do do with so immigration is rarely a problem.  AS you will see in a bit it will be the same in this game.

[sbr]

In the Spring of 1496 we meet the Arawak tribe and greet them as friends.





Religious unrest at home has made a Master Carpenter available.  Outside of a Farmer or Fisherperson (though the Fisher needs the docks the Carpenter builds) that seems to be one of the best early specialists to get.  It should help get things moving quicker.  I'm not sure which buildings are the best early on.



Time for the Caravel to stop exploring the coastlines and head back home.  Our soldier has also been exploring the interior of the land.  The little village with the yellow star is the capital of the Arawak tribe.  The wooden nickel looking thing is an unexplored ruins, hoping to find some goodies there.



The soldier explored a ruins that are not visible on that picture and found a free colonist.  He will head off to Jamestown and starting cutting timber for the Master Carpenter to use when he gets here.



The caravel is back in Jamestown and will load the 30 furs we have stockpiled and take them back to sell in London.



And our caravel is off, back home to sell some of our furs and bring back our Master Carpenter.  We are now stuck here until it gets back.



The soldier is moving towards the other ruins and uncovering more of the surrounding terrain as he goes.



When he arrives he finds something we had only dreamed about, the fabled Fountain of Youth.

[grumbler]

Great game.

One thing you can do to get some help early on is sent bog-standard colonists to live with the natives by sending them to a village.  A year (I think) later, they re-appear as farming or fishing experts.  If you go to war with the natives in the meantime, though, they are lost.

You will also get friendly natives to occasionally show up and join your colony.  They are better farmers and fishermen than your colonists, but cannot be trained (until much later, when a FF choice converts them to regular settlers).

[KRonn]

Grumbler brings up good points. When you visit a village they give you gifts, maps, etc and you also find out what they specialize in. Some professions can only be learned from the Natives, sugar, tobacco, cotton planter, fur trapper. Also, if you put colonists without trades to farming those items they might become experts, but that doesn't happen very often.  I always trained colonists or indentured servants with the Natives to get those four profs/trades.

[CountDeMoney]

Hilarious.  This crowd can't stick together to play modern MMORPG for 2 weeks before getting bored, but you're all dick deep into 8-bit SNES bullshit.