Sid Meier's Colonization (Classic)
BANGER · Strategy · 2014
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $6.99.
- Length
- 18.6h
- Value
- $0.38/hr
- Reviews
- 96% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, 100% DirectX compatible graphics, 102 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
The New World lies before you with all its peril, promise and infinite possibility. Your colonists anxiously follow you to shore. The treasures of an entire continent await you.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
The value story
It has never been cheaper than $0.97. That was October 2015. It has been discounted 91 times in the 12 years tracked here, typically at 70 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales.
On value it sits in the top 1 percent of its genre. It is better reviewed than 99 percent of its genre. The nearest things to it, THE GAME OF LIFE ($6.49, scores 28) and A Total War Saga: TROY ($19.99, scores 32), are both worse buys on this math.
$21.01 is where it would stop being a BANGER. It is priced at $6.99.
This site sampled 313 of its Steam-purchase reviews; none were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written May 2020 to August 2026.
18.6 hours to finish it, 60 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 3.2 times the campaign.
Players
114 players online when we last checked, on Sep 30, 03:50 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
Years ago my cousin had a computer and I did not. Overnights at his house were often spent by me bogarting it to play this and Daggerfall. This game is even more engaging now than it was then. Greater than the sum of its parts, Colonization is subtly quite deep. Getting a bunch of automated trade routes going in order to shuffle resources throughout your colonies is a satisfying example of the self-sufficiency that...
Capacity for larp is acceptable. Pretty simple/intuitive. Very addictive. Some aspects very unrealistic. 15+% tax on any given colonial import is just completely ridiculous but it's a necessary mechanic to incentivize independence so I get it. Play England if you want it to make sense. Play Dutch if you want to have fun coming up with dumb names.
Finally a game which shows respect to the great age of european exploration. And fixes the issue so many strategy games have where the end game becomes a foregone conclusion or takes too much grinding to reach. You can go to the endgame any time you want, and all you have to do is survive, then retake your cities. Brilliant design.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Sid Meier's Colonization (Classic) scores 93/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/327400/sid-meier-s-colonization-classicReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 27, price as of Oct 1.
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