Colonization is about the 16th century, when European explorers began to settle in the New World, aka America. The four European countries to choose from are France, England, the Netherlands and Spain. The Netherlands shouldn't be among the 4 though, because they didn't actually begin to send their guys till much later and the country was known as the Dutch Republic back then.
I always play as the Dutch, because their specialty is in trade. The Dutch's bonus is that their prices are much more stable than the rest, ie, if you sell/buy something in large amounts, the prices won't go up or down as much. Very useful if you like using money to solve your problems.
The English get people from their country to join their colonies more frequently (more immigrants). This is very useful for fast expansions. And this reflected what really happened back in the 16th century. But to me, this bonus isn't that useful because expanding too fast will inevitably annoy the American natives and probably piss them off very soon when you expand into their sacred burial grounds. Then it's war.
But if you like war, then the Spanish is for you. The Spanish have 25% attack bonus against natives, ie, to play as Spain is to make war all the time. Making war isn't always losing money. Pillaging and looting conquered native settlements will gain large amounts of loot that will require galleons (to the layman, let's just say they're really big ships) to carry them to your homeland for some huge profits. This also somewhat reflects what the Spanish conquistadors did to the American natives. The Mayans, Aztecs, etc...
Lastly is France. As the French, you are the opposite of the Spanish. Natives are more tolerant to your deeds, so accidentally stepping into their sacred lands isn't as much of a big deal as what the others get. Also, sending one of your colonists to live with them to learn their skills takes half as much time. This is useful because half the time you get colonists with no specialties and many native villages can train Expert Farmers, Miners and etc. If you want peace more than anything, France is your country.
The graphics are not important in this game but they're decent enough. Most of my irritation stems from the fact that most of the lands in the New World are already settled by natives. It's like every alternate step brings you somewhere near a village. Kinda hard to find good lands to set up my colonies.
But it's interesting because unlike Civilization 4 (CV4), your goal is to declare independence and then protect yourself against the invading hordes of your own country's military forces. When I declare independence, this will obviously piss my king greatly and he will send his men to retake his colonies. Thus the defense.
But this game is also quite different from the original Colonization in that it's more complex now. Taxes rise like mad when I make big money and the damned king extorts money from me every time I have some cash on hand. He even asked me for 10 gold when all I had was 80. Fuck! Of course I paid then, since it was still quite early into the game. But later, just when I had 2.4k, he asked me for 1.9k. Fuck! I told the king to screw himself (well, there wasn't this choice available, but what was available was that I refuse because I'm already paying him taxes) and he got a little annoyed. I think each time I annoy him, something happens. Maybe raise some gauges or make the taxes go up faster.
And when I begin to get ready to become independent, I can send my colonists to the Town Hall, where they talk about politics and generate "Liberty Bells". When I generate Bells, something will happen. I forgot what, and I haven't played this remake long enough to know. I think more people will support the idea of being independent and when there is enough people, I can declare independence.
It took me many months back then to figure out how to win the old version. This is because when the armies arrive, they come in a flood of men and ships. And not just normal soldiers and ships, but veteran soldiers and Man-o-War, which have higher attack powers. And the more Bells you generate, the warier the King gets and the more soldiers he will buy.
And in the remake version, you will also need to compete against the other 4 countries to gain independence first. In the old version, no one declares independence but the player. So, speed is necessary now. Need some getting used to.
Watching Boxer's 1st 2 games in the 2nd season of Avertec-Intel Classic, I see that he doesn't play to win exactly. Winning doesn't seem to be his main objective.
In fact, it seems like he was either playing for fun, or he wants to humiliate his opponents and win at the same time. Why? Because he uses unorthodox strats every single game.
In the 1st game, he actually made use of Valkyries, units that no one uses in tournaments because they suck compared to their costs. Yet he used them to a certain degree of effectiveness, until his opponent started building Scourges to counter them. But Boxer won.
In the 2nd game, he used a very early Wraith (Terran flying unit with anti-air and anti-land weapons but stronger in anti-air) to kill off his opponent's Overlords, limiting his supplies and unit counts. Later, after he lost it, he used Valkyries (again) instead. And while he stuck to old school tactics mainly, using Marine/Medic combos in large numbers with a few Firebats, he used mad tactics to harass and confuse his opponents. For example, in the end of the game, he used Nukes to wipe out an enemy expansion.
Nukes. No one, absolutely no one has ever used Nukes successfully in an actual tournament game before. No one, until Boxer in this game.
And when he sent his Ghost to aim a 2nd nuke at another expansion, the unit was spotted and killed just when his main army arrived along with some Science Vessels (for Irradiate, a very anti-Zerg ability). So his opponent surrendered with the most polite way of saying,"GG" a Korean player can use (according to the Korean commentator).
And I actually chuckled when I saw the nuke drop onto the expansion and everyone in the studio were screaming. Even the commentators were shouting," OHHHH!!!"
Ultimate humiliation tactic, to use a tactic that no one thinks can possibly work and win the game.
But as I've said before, he lost against his next opponent, so he's just flashy, but not as good as he was in his prime anymore. In the old days, he was nicknamed the "Emperor" for a very good reason: he could always win with strats that make everyone go "WTF??" because everyone knew they didn't work.
And I watch TossGirl's games against Keke too. TossGirl's HOT! And not only that, she's the best female SC player in Korea. Unfortunately, she's merely "good" compared to Keke "fantastic". Her control sucked, her strats were average.
In both games, she lost for good reasons. The games were quite normal, nothing fanciful happened. TossGirl got beaten quite thoroughly but without any humiliation. She made some bad moves here and there, attacking when she shouldn't have, missed things that she should have seen and etc.
I'm not sexist, but I may have been spoilt by myself by watching too many good games before watching this. No one recommended her games, but I was curious how the only female player in the tournament played.
In short, she sucked. Enough said.
Found the chocolate I was looking for in JP's NTUC. Only 1 brand was available, Hershey's Baking Bars. 100% pure chocolate, with no sugar and milk. A tiny chip of it placed in my mouth gives the best fragrance ever without any sweetness.
Tried to make a small portion of melted chocolate dip and it took quite some time to figure out what to do to make it edible. Adding sugar was a bad move - they don't dissolve easily in the chocolate. Instead, I had to add milk to make it smooth again. So next time, I'll just add sweetened condensed milk.
$3 for 8.5oz, which is one bar of 8 portions. Better than using Cadbury's milk chocolate for a dip. Always found that too sweet, and worse than too sweet when it is coating banana, which is already bloody sweet as it is.
More trouble though, since I need to sweeten it.
Next time I do it, I'll use half a bar and a cup of sweetened milk or slightly less. 6 portions and about half cup of sugar gives a bitter mixture. Also, 20s in a 800W microwave oven will burn it. So, I'll have to keep that in mind too...
Nub cook :P
Made lava cakes too. Not successful. I added 6 portions of the chocolate with an extra quarter cup of sugar (they asked for semi-sweet chocolate) but it was still too bitter. Will try adding an extra 1 cup of sugar next time. And add slightly less flour than this time. It was hard to gauge 1/3 cup when I didn't have that line on my measuring cup. Had to assume it's about 1mm below the 1/2 cup mark. And it was too much, made it too thick.
Couldn't resist taking this photo because one look at them made me think of the phrase," Butter batter beater."
Part of the cake got stuck to the insides of the container and I had to scrape it out with the fork.
Too thick. Too much flour. And not enough sugar.
Btw I still have 6 portions in my hall so that I can make more molten chocolate. Have a can of condensed milk too, but no fruits.
