Changelog

Highlights

Colonies with a Shipyard can build ships — Caravel, Merchantman, Galleon,
Privateer and Frigate, at the original's costs. Previously the build list held
only Artillery and Wagon Trains. [481]
Rival AI ships no longer sail in visible loops or wobble in place for dozens of
turns; idle ships roam and warships engage. [449] [451]
Rival AI land forces are no longer passive during the War of Independence; the
war now actually resolves. [522]
Trading with a foreign European colony works the way the original does: a
loaded ship or wagon bumping the colony opens the real trade dialogs, where
they name the cargo they want and you choose goods or gold. It now requires
Jan de Witt (otherwise you are refused for mercantilism), is blocked during
war, and is human-only — the AI never attempts it. The old invented "dock
inside a foreign colony and transfer cargo freely" flow is gone. [475]
Difficulty affects combat again, as in the original: beginner handicaps that
were missing are in, on Discoverer an undefended colony of yours cannot be
taken in the first 80 turns and your own attacks hit twice as hard, and a
fabricated Discoverer penalty on your attacks is gone.
Turn order follows the original's interleaving — some rivals, then the natives,
then the remaining rivals, then the King — rather than a simplified
human-first order.

Colonies and production

Hammer production now debits lumber every turn. Lumber used to drop correctly
one turn and then bounce back to full the next while carpenters kept working.
[466]
Production previews now match what the turn actually produces (food, hammers,
and the lumber consumed).
Sons of Liberty percentage updates the moment a colonist joins or leaves,
instead of at end of turn. [447]
Schoolhouse teaching progress survives save and reload, and exported colonists
no longer look fully trained when they are not. [506]
Specialists in a colonist's job menu gained the Clear Specialty option,
returning them to Free Colonist. [431]
Running out of tools now reverts the right specialists instead of flattening
them to plain Colonists, and on-the-job skill learning happens at most once per
job. [509]
Cargo can be dragged straight from one docked ship into another's hold, without
a detour through the warehouse; shift-dragging performs a real transfer with an
amount prompt instead of being misrouted through warehouse logic. [432]
A colony's "enemy ship blockading the port" flag, which gates the Custom House,
no longer gets stuck — it refreshes every turn.
Clicking an already-built Carpenter's Shop (and some other buildings) no longer
claims it has not been built. [430]
The warehouse-full spoilage warning quotes the correct existing stock, capacity
and deposited amounts. [433]
Opening a colony lands on the Construction view rather than Production. [443]
The construction cost popup uses green text, right-aligns hammer and tool
costs, and pages through long lists instead of splitting into columns. [436]
The build preview no longer shows a hammers restriction that does not exist in
the original.
Units standing outside a colony's fence, stockade, fort or fortress are drawn
at the original's fixed position instead of shifting down as the fortification
is upgraded. [536]
"Need tools to finish construction" warnings are back; they had gone silent
when the colony produced no hammers that turn, or when the project was a unit
(Artillery, Wagon Train, ship) rather than a building. [537]
A single ton of pre-existing warehouse overflow now stays in store instead of
being silently clamped away, matching the original's rounding.

Combat

Attacking a foreign colony always asks for confirmation, including an
undefended one. [437]
Destroyed, sunk and demoted units pixelate away with the original's dissolve
effect instead of vanishing or leaving a stale sprite. Damaged ships now
disappear inside that animation instead of sitting visible on the map until
your next turn. [462]
Ships sunk by coastal forts play the sink animation. [464]
Coastal forts fire only on enemies and Privateers — no longer on nations you
are at peace with. [465]
Ships sailing past enemy warships, Forts and Fortresses are slowed or stopped
and lose movement points, with the original's escape messages. This replaces an
AI-only invented "naval ambush". [455]
Native raids were badly broken: villages could attack and gift in the same
encounter, raid without ever reporting losses, and re-raid the same colony free
of charge every turn. Fixed. [442]
A ship that loses to a coastal fort sails on undamaged; the port used to freeze
its movement.
Paul Revere's colony auto-defender no longer spends 50 muskets from the
warehouse — that was invented. It swaps in a temporary Soldier that always
disappears after the fight.
Braves attacking Artillery auto-lose, as in the original; the port matched that
rule too broadly before.
Post-battle promotion checks the right nation, and only converts soldiers to
Continental Army under the right conditions. [504]
The Combat Analysis dialog shows icons beside the bombardment, ambush/terrain,
fort tier and village-type rows, and the mislabelled "Tories"/"Rebels" rows now
read "Tory Unrest"/"Rebel Unrest".
Winning an attack against a Tory stack no longer plays the dissolve death
animation on your own attacking unit. [533]
When several coastal forts fire in one turn, each fort's announcement and its
Combat Analysis resolve one at a time, instead of every announcement arriving
first and every analysis afterwards. [535]
Sentried land units wake and drop their orders when an enemy moves adjacent;
previously they could sleep through a Royal landing beside them. [539]

War of Independence

The King's reinforcements generate Regulars and Cavalry for the correct side.
[505]
Royal Expeditionary Force units move under the full rival-nation turn logic
instead of a special-case hunting routine.
The Crown's invasion force is seeded at the start of the game rather than at
your declaration, at the original's per-difficulty sizes, and grows by a saved
royal purse that buys units periodically — replacing an invented
growth-on-tax-event rule.
When the Crown's land force runs dry it falls back to a difficulty-scaled Tory
uprising against one of your colonies, with the original's trigger chance and
targeting.
The intervention force is sized from your ally's actual military strength with
a fixed composition per landing, replacing an invented "three landings on hard"
rule.
The King's Man-O-War sails back out to the high seas after a naval battle
instead of disappearing.
A tribe defecting to the Crown shows the original's text, and its musket and
horse adjustment uses the right value instead of over- or under-arming it.
Trying to sail for Europe after declaring independence explains itself in a
popup rather than a status-bar line.
Popups about rival monarchs weighing independence no longer appear absurdly
early in the game. [424]
Continental Army mustering happens at the start of the turn after you declare
independence, not instantly on the declaration turn. [532]
The foreign intervention force no longer lands twice in one turn; the
announcement and the arrival are separate events, as in the original. [540]

Europe, trade and the Crown

The King's tax audience was rebuilt from a fabricated schedule onto the
original's turn- and year-based system, with the real scoring formula — rebel
sentiment, tax rate, treasury, population, turn count — deciding whether and by
how much taxes move. It shows the real text for each trigger too: victory,
royal wedding, war, Naval Act, Stamp Act, instead of one generic message.
Negotiations gained the original's Military Assistance request.
The trade-route sea-stop picker shows a proper destination list.
Paying back taxes on a boycotted good raises the original's Pay/Cancel dialog
quoting the sum, and tells you when you cannot afford it, rather than silently
doing nothing.
Veteran Soldiers recruited, trained or bought in Europe can arrive already
mounted as Dragoons, as in the original. [508]
Damaged ships with no repair port go straight to Europe for repairs instead of
loitering on the map. [463]
Custom House and European Status sale lines scroll three times faster. [425]
The Merchantman's order box is drawn in the right place, and Master Carpenters
carrying tools look like colonists rather than Hardy Pioneers. [419] [452]

Natives and diplomacy

Cancelling a talk popup with Escape no longer wedges diplomacy permanently —
every later meeting used to fail silently until you restarted. [461]
Contact and encounter popups for different tribes or nations no longer
interleave; one meeting finishes before the next starts. [427]
Moving into a native settlement walks all the way in and opens the menu instead
of stopping a tile short. [418]
The village menu lists its options in the original's order, with Attack near the
end. [501]
A village holding a grudge follows through and attacks after you refuse a
demand; distant villages with no grievance can no longer demand anything at
all; and gifts or demands happen once per real encounter rather than back to
back. [417] [439] [441]
Trade, haggle and demand dialogs show the chief's portrait. [422] [426]
A chief's tales of nearby lands reveal land on the same continent only, instead
of also uncovering ocean and other landmasses. [492]
Treaty and diplomacy messages use the correct nationality ("Dutch", "Spanish")
instead of wrong or post-independence country names. [468]
Buying horses from a village tops the wagon's hold up to 100 and spills the rest
into a free slot, instead of producing an illegal 135-horse stack. [471]
A stray map marker could prompt you to meet a tribe you had never approached.
Fixed. [416]
Disturbing a burial ground checks whether you have actually met the tribe
before applying the relations penalty. [497]
Removed an invented mechanic where villages could randomly displace or kill
your Scouts. [499]
Speaking with a chief who turns hostile plays its sound effect, and a failed
Cibola search no longer counts against your treasure limit. [502]
The Incite Indians target menu lists every nation; it used to hide ones you
supposedly could not afford, which is not how the original behaves.
Villages breed horses over time, and a village's herd decides whether it can
field Mounted Braves rather than plain ones.
Fixed relations disagreeing between how you see a tribe and how the tribe sees
you.
The surprise-raid warning is tied to actual war state rather than an internal
attack counter, and native aggression build-up now reads the right data.
Razing a native capital, or a village hosting your mission, announces itself;
the mechanic worked but was silent. Wiping out a tribe's last village now
announces the tribe's extinction.
A new sidebar readout — an addition, not in the original — shows what a village
buys and sells once you have visited it.

Rival European AI

The rival-European and native AI now run the original's own logic for goal
selection, Europe hiring and buying, land unit orders, colony management,
village growth and Brave movement.
Rival ships no longer loop endlessly or wobble near one spot for dozens of
turns. [449] [451]
Rival ships flee coastal fort fire correctly instead of dawdling beside
batteries and getting sunk. [470]
Rival nations can no longer attack you right after signing a treaty without
declaring war; a sneak attack now triggers the declaration (Privateers
excepted). [472]
Rival nations receive cross-driven immigrants and draw from their Europe
recruit pool; previously they accumulated crosses to no effect. [479]
Rival colonies staff indoor jobs with the original's logic, choose to build
units as well as buildings, and Jefferson correctly doubles their bell output.
[480] [483]
Rival Scouts explore, patrol and visit villages using the original's behaviour
instead of an invented wander that left them idle, stay exploring in wartime,
and are properly mounted when hired in Europe. [493] [494] [495] [498]
Rival garrisons stop disbanding themselves into colonists. [512] [515]
Rival Privateers now unload, deliver and sell captured cargo properly. [518]
Rival nations no longer over-recruit Veteran Soldiers and other experts from
Europe, and no longer send Soldiers, Pioneers or Colonists on ship-only
missions such as founding overseas colonies. [510] [511]
Scenario starts (America and similar) sail their fleets in from Europe and land
their colonists, instead of stalling on an order to sail to the tile they were
already on. [490]
Rival Europeans no longer form or break alliances with each other — that
machinery was a port invention the 1994 game never had.
Removed, as inventions with no basis in the original: land units auto-boarding
transports, Artillery hunting siege targets, evacuating threatened troops,
ships attacking neighbours on their own initiative, hunting distant enemies,
building special forts under threat, hand-picking colonists for expert jobs,
and special-case tool delivery and Europe selling. [513] [516] [517] [519]
[520]
The Discoverer trait's free Veteran Soldier is human-only again, and AI Cortes
no longer collects an invented treasure windfall. [478] [488]
Rival European ships judge an empty hold correctly (passengers were being
counted as cargo), which fixes their opening moves and war-transport threat
checks. [527]

Map, movement and exploration

Ships bought in Europe reveal fog on arrival instead of sitting blind until
moved. [421]
A "this unit cannot attack" warning during a Go To order no longer traps you in
a popup loop. [469]
A unit that has spent its moves cannot disembark until next turn. [423]
Wagon Trains can no longer be loaded onto ships. [482]
A Treasure Train fills a Galleon: one per ship, not six. [484]
Units aboard a ship cannot attack an adjacent enemy unit, village or colony
from the deck — land first. [485]
Ships can no longer sail onto the unreachable strip past the western sea lane.
[429]
Rival ship movement is visible only near your own units and colonies, not on
every tile you have ever explored. [450]
Hills and mountains on the Americas map no longer show forest underneath. [446]
New-game fleet starting positions are correct; a fleet could previously start
many tiles from its intended landing spot. [487]
The Fountain of Youth ruin grants immigrants to rival nations too. [496]
Go to Port and Go to Place now open a real destination picker listing
your coastal colonies plus Europe, with the original's titles and rows.

Founding Fathers

Elections resolve at the start of your turn rather than only after you end it.
[434]
John Paul Jones' Frigate starts docked in Europe and sails over like a
purchase, instead of appearing beside a colony. [467]
Added missing election effects: Bolivar's loyalty boost, Brebeuf upgrading
existing missions, Las Casas' conversions and Pocahontas' anger reset. [477]
Removed effects that never existed: Franklin's instant peace, Magellan's extra
movement bonus, La Salle's yearly stockade re-sweep and Fugger's automatic
boycott clearing. [476]

Interface and presentation

Nearly every message drawn from the game's own text file is now wired with its
real wording and choices; rows still using approximate or port-written text
dropped from roughly 190 to 2.
The Continental Congress bell bar, the Religion cross bar and the chief
portraits on the report screens match the original pixel for pixel. The bell
bar no longer collapses into a solid black block, the Indian Adviser's mood
headband uses the right sprite and position, and the chief portrait in meet and
diplomacy dialogs sits where it should.
Aztec and Inca settlements show their proper city (and capital) icon in the
sidebar instead of a generic village. [414]
Fixed a palette glitch that put grey patches in the Iroquois chief portrait and
others. [415]
Unskilled missionaries wear their own plain sprite rather than the expert
Jesuit's. [420]
The Indian Advisor report uses the correct small font for tribe names and
advancement level. [428]
The colony sidebar shows singular job titles ("Veteran", "Expert") as the
original does. [507]
A Scout entering a foreign colony gets its own menu — meet the mayor,
infiltrate, attack, or nothing — and both "Meet with Mayor" and "Nothing" now
work instead of redisplaying the dialog. [438] [453] [454]

Sound

The wagon-wheels effect plays when a Wagon Train reaches a colony, not on every
step. [440]

Packaging and platform

These landed in commits made a few hours after the 0.5-alpha tag itself, so
they are already present in the published 0.5-alpha downloads; they are listed
here because they are not in the tagged tree.

A Windows build: a standalone colonize.exe bundling SDL2, FluidSynth and the
soundfont. You still supply the original game data.
The Linux release is a single self-contained binary requiring only glibc 2.17
or newer (any 64-bit distro from roughly 2014) plus X11 or Wayland, rather than
a folder of libraries.
Music plays through a bundled TinySoundFont synthesizer when FluidSynth is
unavailable, instead of dropping to square-wave beeps.
Soundfont selection moved from an environment variable into settings.json,
which also gained a setting to force which synthesizer is used.
The window scale option is clamped to a sane 1–8.
Releases ship third-party license texts and source URLs for every bundled
library.

Under the hood

The codebase was split into a simulation library and a UI library, with the
dependency direction enforced at link time.
Three code-smell audits and two duplication audits drove the
invention-removal and de-duplication passes above.
Documentation was consolidated: the AI plans merged into one port plan,
oversized documents split, and conventions / debug-variable / archive indexes
added.
A machine-readable map of the rival-European AI control flow was added, with a
tool that renders it and checks it against the source.
A naming audit renamed misleading identifiers; the largest source files gained
section indexes.
Debug logging now covers Custom House sales, European money movements, Europe
recruiting and training, and which option you picked in a popup. [410] [411]
[412] [413]
Substantial test growth (unit plus golden and smoke AI gates); obsolete DOSBox
tracing tooling removed.
Fidelity work with no visible effect in play: a stray dice roll removed from
chief meetings, a veteran-status check tightened, a mismatched ship-bump
message corrected, and the rival AI's course-setting and goal-walk rewired onto
the original's own saved unit fields. [486] [491] [503] [523] [525] [526]

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