Civilization IV: Colonization

To build their cities, players must balance negotiations with several groups: the natives of the Americas, colonists from the player's home country and other colonists from the old world. Players may also recruit founding fathers to join their cause, each with a specific bonus that helps throughout the game. The player influences the direction of his colony through choices in diplomacy, recruitment and city management. Additional colonists from Europe or converted natives can result in population increases after food surpluses exceed a preset level.

Economics and trade come into play when the player makes finished goods and sells them in Europe or trades with the natives for other goods or gold. By harvesting natural resources, skilled craftsmen can convert them into finished goods for sale or trade. Additionally, silver can be mined for direct trade and ore can be mined to turn into tools and then in turn guns. Skilled craftsmen produce twice as much as regular workers and specialist buildings can be built to increase overall production as well.

The game runs on an upgraded version of the Civilization IV engine with changes including enhanced graphics, streamlined code, and redesigned interfaces. With these enhancements, Colonization requires video cards that support Pixel Shader 1.1 (Direct X 8.0).

The single victory condition – declaring and winning a war for independence – has been both criticized and accepted by reviewers. Another criticism of the game is that it only has four playable colonial powers. The exclusion of Europe's other prominent colonial powers has been called a "limiting" factor in the game.

Variety video games reporter and reviews editor Ben Fritz criticized the concept of the game in his blog because of issues such as the depopulation of Indigenous Americans and the Atlantic slave trade that occurred during European and American colonization. Firaxis has responded to Fritz's blog post with the statement, "the game does not endorse any particular position or strategy – players can and should make their own moral judgments." Trevor Owens contributed to the conversation in an article that considers the game's usage of different, arguably problematic elements, asking "wouldn't, and shouldn't, any game about that period in the Americas be racist and offensive, if it were even remotely faithful to that time period?"