Roanoke Colony Summary

In the game, Civilization IV: Colonization, the objective is to build different settlements, discover how to make them successful, and to conquer any obstacles that may arise-- all during the colonial period. This game displays many similar circumstances to that which were dealt with in our history. Early settlers found that some settlements would become more successful than others, for instance, Jamestown was more successful than the Roanoke colony, which was referred to as “The Lost Colony.” The Roanoke colony was nicknamed the Lost Colony because all of its settlers mysteriously disappeared in 1590; it is assumed that these settlers either died of starvation or were killed by natives. Jamestown was founded many years later, but was very successful. Jamestown was successful because of its location, which provided easy ship access and there were not native inhabitants to hinder their expansion plans. Colonists in this time had to figure out where the best places to settle would be, how they would successfully produce food, and discover how to expand and build new industries that would help them thrive. While playing the game, my partner and

I had to explore to find the best places to build new settlements, how to feed our people in order to keep them from starving, and had to build new industries to help them evolve into settlements that would flourish.
During class, we learned about several different colonies that were established on the East Coast such as Plymouth or the Massachusetts Bay colony, which is located in present-day Massachusetts, and the many hardships the settlers faced.

When settlers got to North America, they faced starvation and disorder. Settlers also encountered Native Americans, who seemed strange and different to them. While some settlers wanted peace with the natives, others did not. These are the same hardships we had to experience while playing the game. When we first started, we had no idea what to do or even where to begin making our settlements. We even had to restart the game because we established a town on a tiny island which offered nothing to us. The second time we started, we got up to having three settlements; Isabella, Shannon, and

Monica.
When we first started Isabella, we brought one hundred people to the town and maintained that population for the entire game, which is the same population we set for our other two towns. Since each town is located on the waterfront, we built a dock on each settlement and upgraded the one on Isabella to a dry dock. The dry dock allowed us to make bigger ships that could send larger shipments of goods to Europe. It took us a while to figure out how to send goods to Europe, therefore, one of the issues we faced while creating our settlement was that we made very little money. By the end of the game we only had five gold pieces. Another issue that we faced was a lack of storage space, so we would lose different items like cotton and lumber. We tried to solve this problem by building a warehouse, but still seemed to lose goods.