I love this game, but I'm really getting tired of that long opening scene with the ship. I'm still learning how to play, so I make quite a few new games, but it's such a hassle always having to wait, and hitting ESC, etc. don't seem to help. Any way around this?

I believe you're thinking of something else. I've tried it out and 'viceroy' only skips the opening logo and intro sequence (all you have to do is switch out 'opening' with 'viceroy' in the dosbox config file). What eon is talking about is the animation sequence of your ship getting underway from the dock when a new game is launched (after picking country,difficulty, etc.).

I tried digging around the Colonization files and short of actually hacking the game I doubt it's possible to actually disable the animation. I thought I found a solution, but all it did in the end was delete the text for that animation sequence instead of forcing the game to skip it.

Edit: I was also able to identify the assigned picture files for the opening, but, as said, unless there's a way to disable it in the code, the game will still force you through it.

You CAN skip the last half of it. Around the "to explore the Ocean Sea" part you can get the game to skip it by clicking or pressing enter a few times.

It's a little odd because I know for a fact that you could skip the whole thing in the original DOS release. I did it all the time.

@ mistermumbles - Yes, you are correct. Running Viceroy.exe only skips the introduction and not the scene the OP was referring to.

So many great replies! This one seems to be the winner, though. I haven't tested it fully, but by amping up the cycles to 40000 I was able to skip the intro (by hitting space or enter repeatedly) after just 2-3 seconds, which I am more than happy with. (For anyone who doesn't know what all that means, just open up Colonizations normally and press CTRL+F11 to lower the cycles and CTRL+F12 to increase them.)There are no adverse effects that I can see, although I'll post again if I find any. Maybe I can even eliminate the intro altogether! Anyway, thanks a bunch.

speeding up dosbox did WONDERS for this game, but sadly, music is a little choppy now.. BUT the damn intro screen flys by. THANKS!! You guys made my day.. Back to the game now..

You can turn off the in-game music and run the .mp3's of the soundtrack in the background ;-)

You can also increase the cycles to speed up the loading
then decrease the cycles after in game to fix music.