A poster by the name of Gliese 581 at Civfanatics has posted an example of how he can exploit Colonization's "liberty bell" system to easily win the game in less than 100 turns. He basically dismisses all his colonists once he's built up a few defenses, and then makes a beeline for easy independence against a complacent king. Note that his system won't net you much of a score, so it's clear that developer Firaxis considers this "playing wrong". But as Gilese 581 puts it:

This clearly shows how fundamentally flawed two portions of the game currently are…:

1) The ridiculously bad defense of AI colonies…

2) The [Royal Expeditionary Forces] can not be tied to [liberty bell] generation like it currently is. There needs to be a linear progression of [European] unit buildup… You need to...overtake the king's buildup progress, declare independence and fight of his army before the time runs out, or you are defeated by him or an AI colony.

These are both excellent points. Although I really like Colonization, it's indicative of Firaxis' lax QA process since Civilization IV. Consider too the wretched espionage system in the Beyond the Sword expansion, the clumsy attempt to address it in a patch months later, the terrible AI in Civilization: Revolution, and how long it takes them to patch relatively simple but significant problems. I love the work Firaxis does. I just wish they would do it a little better.

(Thanks to wisefool for finding this!)