Thinking about it more, Dutch-playing gave Trade advantages (which, by the time it mattered, I didn't care about), Spain a military one (not my play-style, early-game, and later on I could swamp everywhere with my English units), French did better encounters with natives (somewhat enticing, but not balanced so it was worth it) and the additional recruitment-rate (and starter units + ?caravel?) of the English was just too good for the initial strategic expansion splurge.
Trade was never too difficult; often enough I could handle myself in fights (with natives or other colonials, at least before LIberty brought the motherland over as well); a cautious approach with native villages meant I mostly didn't annoy them before they weren't more problematic than I was capable of being forceful. Those extra (and above-baseline) immigrants (until I was Independent, at least) was by far the most useful thing I could use.
(For Civ (original) I tended to go for the Zulus, rush a high-speed unit (and maybe even my initial settler, to put Zulu capital in the Cairo-esque locale, delaying my initial foundation slightly) up from mid-southern Africa to the Suez-square to fortify it to initially block off Africa to all others but beach-landing Barbarians and unfortunately hostile discovery-tile spawning (in the pre-seafaring phases of the main opposition NPCs, this is) and spawn colonists and cities across the whole continent as quickly as posdible with relative impugnity, to springboard all forms of production (resources, units, tech) by domination of the continent and get ahead (the path through ship techs and then onto railways as main focuses on the tech-tree), sending exploration units of a current type up and round both Arabia and European coastlines (and, if they survive long enough, using the circumpolar 'lands' to reach the Americas, even before ocean-going shiptech is available). The alternate version was, I think, the Aztecs, who I could use to similarly block off South America across the Panama (or southern Mexican) narrowness, guaranteed only one main rival at most in NA, to then use similar tactics. But for a challenge, the English and their 6-tile 'Britain' starting spot (albeit with bonuses start in shipping?) forced me to be more adventurously expantionist to not get overtaken by the two or three European nations (France, Germany, and another?) that may have been directly competing, but the luckier one could often gain cities and production by taking them from the unluckier ones. But I digress.)
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Topic: Sid Meier's Colonization (Classic) (Read 2669 times)