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[Blake00]

Originally Posted by MikeSol

I can't believe there is no advisor screen showing what the Indians I just visited can train me in and what they want to buy. I need this advisor screen more then all the ones that are already in the game put together!

Yes as someone who heavily trades with the natives this is one of my biggest annoyances! Having to constantly send scouts to find out whats going on.. arrghh!

Thankfully we're not alone as the FreeCol Project team fixed this in their Colonization remake so not only is there a dedicated Indian Adviser that shows all the villages, what they train and what they trade but you can also click on any village on the map at any time to get this information too. See my attached pics from a recent game I played.

[Blake00]

There's a new Sid Meier's Colonization style indie fan game out called 'Treasure Fleet'. I haven't tried it yet but it looks pretty cool.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...reasure_Fleet/

I'm thinking about hitting the button on it as it's currently on sale thanks to the steam autumn sales however there's next to no reviews on it. A presumably one man show making a game as complicated as Colonization is no easy task (eg the FreeCol project I mentioned above has been going for 20yrs haha) so it could be not so great lol. It sure as hell looks pretty cool though! The Col addict in me is super tempted to try it asap haha! I love the retro 90s Col & Civ2 feel in his pics..

[Japo]

Tempting indeed, and now discounted at 4 €... It looks really interesting, but there's not much information, like I could see in a let's play. From what I see, one weak spot is the sound and music. And the graphics are high-res versions of early 90s graphics, but that's good for us.

I wonder how this compares with FreeCol. For me the original Colonization was perfect, except that you could easily exceed the 640 kB memory when you expanded a lot and created many units, and the random combat resolution was too crazy.

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by Japo

Tempting indeed, and now discounted at 4 €... It looks really interesting, but there's not much information, like I could see in a let's play. From what I see, one weak spot is the sound and music. And the graphics are high-res versions of early 90s graphics, but that's good for us.

I wonder how this compares with FreeCol. For me the original Colonization was perfect, except that you could easily exceed the 640 kB memory when you expanded a lot and created many units, and the random combat resolution was too crazy.

I decided to buy it but haven't tried it yet. Yeah I tried to find let's plays too but had no luck. I might do a video review of it on my youtube channel once I've tried it. I think I saw someone post on reddit that it had good music, but yeah nothing can beat Jeff Briggs's original Colonization soundtrack, it's easily one of the best video game soundtracks ever made, I love it so much.

I played FreeCol a year ago (using their latest nightly release betas instead of the old 11.6) and loved it. The vanilla game plus some of its mods add a lot of quality of life improvements to the gameplay and there some great bonus features I enjoyed (8 nations, huge custom maps, forest planting, better combat calcs, train indian converts to colonists, more advisors, better indian trading & village info, and more I'm forgetting). I doubt this 1 man project can rival them for that but ya never know. A talented modder recently posted a new mod for freecol on their sourceforge forums that adds 4 more European nations to the existing 8 meaning you can now have 12 player Colonization games on huge maps with extra indians. Dream come true for Col fans like me that like super sized games!

[Japo]

If you do a video review please post it here

I tried Freecol long ago and didn't finish the game, but I think I just dropped it for no reason. I've always found annoying software that requires Java, although I guess it was a handy way to support any OS.

What I want is a clone of the classic that fixes those two only flaws, allows me to expand as in Civilization,, and confronts me with AI players that know how to expand in the same way.

EDIT It had been so long that I played Freecol, that I didn't remember I reviewed it for Reloaded

http://www.reloaded.org/download/FreeCol/368/

[peyre]

Originally Posted by Blake00

Yes as someone who heavily trades with the natives this is one of my biggest annoyances! Having to constantly send scouts to find out whats going on.. arrghh!

Thankfully we're not alone as the FreeCol Project team fixed this in their Colonization remake so not only is there a dedicated Indian Adviser that shows all the villages, what they train and what they trade but you can also click on any village on the map at any time to get this information too..

True, FreeCol has done that really well. The Indian villages even have names now, and they show you all the information you need. FreeCol even allows several new colonial powers, some of which should have been there in the beginning: Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Russia (well, Russia shouldn't be there IMO, since it didn't reach the New World until about the time the game ends).

However, I've never really enjoyed playing FreeCol. I'm not a fan of the isometric projection, it's lacking the music, and important game mechanics are different: the price of tools and muskets doesn't rise in the same way, the War of Independence is much tougher, etc. And the developers weren't too friendly when you pointed out things like that. Also its development seems to have petered out.

Most of all though, it just overall lacks the look and feel and the gameplay I've come to love in old Col. I want to play Colonization for DOS with a few improvements, not a different but related game. And FreeCol (or Civ IV Col with fan mods) is a different game.

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by Japo

If you do a video review please post it here

I tried Freecol long ago and didn't finish the game, but I think I just dropped it for no reason. I've always found annoying software that requires Java, although I guess it was a handy way to support any OS.

What I want is a clone of the classic that fixes those two only flaws, allows me to expand as in Civilization,, and confronts me with AI players that know how to expand in the same way.

EDIT It had been so long that I played Freecol, that I didn't remember I reviewed it for Reloaded

http://www.reloaded.org/download/FreeCol/368/

Originally Posted by peyre

True, FreeCol has done that really well. The Indian villages even have names now, and they show you all the information you need. FreeCol even allows several new colonial powers, some of which should have been there in the beginning: Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Russia.

However, I've never really enjoyed playing FreeCol. I'm not a fan of the isometric projection, it's lacking the music, and important game mechanics are different: the price of tools and muskets doesn't rise in the same way, the War of Independence is much tougher, etc. And the developers weren't too friendly when you pointed out things like that. Also its development seems to have petered out.

Most of all though, it just overall lacks the look and feel and the gameplay I've come to love in old Col. I want to play Colonization for DOS with a few improvements, not a different but related game. And FreeCol (or Civ IV Col with fan mods) is a different game.

Sure thing, will post the video when I get it done haha.

Yeah when I played FreeCol I loaded a Colonization soundtrack youtube video and just put that on repeat.. problem solved haha.

I didn't try the game for many years until recently due to being put off by the graphics, however I found that while the graphics don't look all that great with a randomly generated map (the patchwork quilt effect is very obvious with their graphics style), they do actually work quite well with pre-made maps.. eg I love how the big Americas map looks, the South American jungles and rivers are gorgeous! But yeah its sort of a shame that it doesn't support different view points and tilesets like FreeCiv does eg you can easily switch your FreeCiv game between different classic Civ1 style, hexagon style and Civ2 style. Maybe I'll ask the devs about if that's in the engine since I believe FreeCol originally branched out of the FreeCiv engine a very very long time ago.

FreeCiv is actually alive and well! They're just doing a terrible job in the presentation department. After a while I got so annoyed I started pestering them endlessly about updating their website and updating their sourceforge page with details on their beta releases on Github that almost no one knows about! I talked them into letting me create a new sticky WELCOME & INFO thread that gives this vital info to new comers.

https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/di...ad/2d0063a3bc/

I also got them to update their downloads page on their website to mention these beta downloads as they are way newer than the last stable release back in 2015 lol!

Thankfully my endless pestering has also got them building a brand new website. I'm going to give them some HD pictures and videos form the big game I played a year or so ago to use on the new site once it's done.

Oh and there's a still a bit of a healthy modding scene too as this talented fellow has created my dream mod which adds another 4 nations to the game which as you pointed out already had an extra 4 meaning you can now TWELVE PLAYER Colonization games.
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/di...ad/658935e76f/

He also created a cool map pack that contains a ginormous full Earth map which added to his other mod would indeed allow you to play a almost Civilization like game racing against 12 other players to colonize the world. With so much land space the Indian nations are super powerful too!
https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/di...read/9eb4fbdf/

[Blake00]

Oh and while I'm here...

Does anyone here know if there is a way to take control of one or all of the Indian nations? In Civ1 you could take control of the Barbarian/Pirate red slot by using a Hex editor or save game editor so I'm wondering about Colonization.

When activating cheat mode in Colonization the 'set human player' option predictably only allows selecting the 4 European nations so that's no good. I could swear that around 18 or so years ago I saw someone talking in a forum about being able to do it via a hex editor but I can't seem to find anything now as any search seems to bring up conversations on various forums about playing as indians with the Civ 4 Col remake and not the original game.

I've managed to find an old thread at CivFantics and also a website that appear to be referring to what I saw all those years ago. Someone called 'EdBigHead' was able to hack the game and play as the Sioux. Wish I could find how he did it.

Guessing it would be glitchy as hell but would be interesting to check out and see how much I can get away with.

[Blake00]

I still haven't tried Treasure Fleet yet despite buying it sorry haha.

However as for the Indian issue looks like I've finally got my answer!

This fellow was able to take control of the Indians via a hex editor however it was sadly unplayable! This must have been what 'EdBigHead' did way back in the day. I'll have to follow his guide and have my own play around.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threa...#post-15635536


Got a new problem though lol...

Does anyone here have experience with extracting graphics from the original Colonization? I've been discussing this over at CivFinatics here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threa...#post-15649815

I'd love to get my hands on both the ColDOS graphics and also the enhanced (often higher resolution) ColWin graphics assets as I and some others have been thinking about trying to make a classic Col style Graphics mod for the excellent FreeCol project (since it's graphics aren't always everyone's cup of tea lol).

Over at CivFinatics it's looking like the Dos version situation is under control and we can extract everything, however no one has had any luck getting into the 16bit dll files that ColWin uses to store its assets in.

If anyone thinks they can help with this please let me know!

[Blake00]

If it's of interest to any Colonization fans here I've created some social media groups over the last few months as it annoyed me that such a great old game had no presence on any of them!

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/




Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ColonizationGame/




Discord:
https://discord.gg/CHcH75s