After successfully prosecuting the Incan War, do I press on against other nearby native settlements? Or do I disband my army and get down to the business of settling this New World? The name of the game is colonization, not conquest. So it's time to build, gather, breed, and get down with the God machine. Stealing native treasure can wait. Plus, there aren't any other nearby natives at this point. So rather than tromping off deep into the wilderness with cannons in tow, Aguirre: Wrath of God-style, I'm going to settle down and boom for a bit.

God machine? Read about it after the jump.

In Civilization, every population point either works a tile or ticks up a number above a city specialist. Population is just a number representing capacity. But in Colonization, every single population point is a character with skills, and usually with a very specific role to play. Some characters are petty criminals or indentured servants, good for little more than manual labor. Others are skilled craftsmen who are efficient at rolling cigars or distilling rum. Still others are valuable celebrities, like the elder statesmen who encourage independence or the firebrand preachers who lure new colonists from Europe.

Every single one of these characters can be given weapons (a manufactured resource) and turned into a basic military unit. But then there's a type of colonist called a soldier. He can work the fields, the distillery, or the town hall as well as your average colonist. And that's exactly what he does in peace time. But give him guns and he's got more combat strength. Furthermore, he gains experience (and therefore promotions) twice as fast as a non-soldier.

From these characters, you build your military. I have two soldiers, both of whom I "purchased" from Spain. One has advanced to the point that it's got General Braddock attached. At the end of the Incan War, I send them into settlements where they set aside their weapons, which are conveniently stored in warehouses, and get to work. General Braddock gathers lumber in Fort Beaver, and the other fishes from the shores of New Madrid.

There are basically four ways to get new colonists. One way is to simply gather a lot of food. Once you've pooled 200 food, it's consumed in exchange for a new colonist. This can take a long time and colonists gathering surplus food could have instead been used to produce lucrative trade goods. But there are some colonies situated among so much food that you might as well use them as "colonist farms". A second way to get new colonists is to simply "buy" them from Spain. It's not cheap, but there's no financial upkeep in Colonization; you basically spend your money on colonists or ships. A third way to get colonists is to conquer native settlements or install missionaries to "convert" natives. Converted natives get a bonus at gathering raw materials. But the most common way to get colonist is by building up a God machine to lure them.

One of the resources you can create in your settlements is crosses. Build a church and then put someone to work in that church. The more folks working there, the more crosses they generate. Upgrade the church to a cathedral and it's even more productive. As you accumulate crosses, you persuade people from the Old World to join you. That's the God machine.

My God machine is slow to start as I haven’t bothered constructing any churches. There were natives to be slaughtered instead. But in 1548, I select John Winthrop as one of my Founding Fathers (he was the governor of the colony that eventually became Massachusetts, but he works for Spain now). His special ability is that he causes town halls, the basic buildings at the center of every settlement, to generate one cross per turn.

But the Spanish God machine isn't working in earnest until 1580, with the purchase of a firebrand preacher to work at the New Madrid church, which had previously been staffed by a master weaver with nothing else to do (I'm not bothering to harvest any cotton). In 1592, a second firebrand preacher appears in my pool of immigrants and I install him at Southwatch, a tiny outpost I've built on the southern point of the continent. These guys are like fuel for my God machine. By the beginning of the 17th century, I've got a very healthy cross infrastructure going.

Crosses are important early on to grow your settlements (the blanket English advantage is that immigration costs 25% fewer crosses). But like Great Persons in Civilization IV, each new immigrant increases the cost of the next one. In a typical game, it seems like the God machine becomes hardly worth the cost during the later stages of the game. In fact, firebrand preaches are among the first civilian colonists I like to load up with guns and send out. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, Father.

On Monday: The sesquicentennial State of the Spanish Colonies address.

(Click here for the previous Colonization game diary.)