Colonization
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[edit] Requirements
To colonize you must have researched Expansion in Seafaring.
For each colony you wish to build, you must have an equivalent level of Palace upgrades. For example, to establish your third colony you need a Level 3 Palace. Without any reductions, a Level 1 Palace needs 648 wood and takes four hours to be built. The number of colonies you can found is limited by the level of you [Palace]]. The hard cap for the Palace is Level 11, beyond which it is not possible to store all the building material needed for the upgrade in each town. This means that you cannot have more than 11 colonies plus your Capital.
[edit] Preparation
Establishing a new colony will create corruption in all your other colonies ('not in your Capital). You should upgrade the Governor's Residence in all existing colonies before actually founding your next colony. They need to be at the same level as your Palace for 0% corruption in all colonies.
[edit] Scouting
The first thing you must consider is the type of resource on the island you want to colonize. Sometimes this will depend on your strategy and play style. Generally, however, marble and wine are the safest bets because everybody needs these resources. Marble is especially valuable early on due to its extensive use in the construction of buildings. You may even consider getting two marble colonies prior to other resources, since you will be using that much and it is fairly easy to trade some marble to get the other resources you need. However it is sensible to have a wine colony as your second (if it is not your first) as trade can often be expensive or dangerous.
Crystal glass is perhaps the least valuable luxury item. Crystal glass is necessary for certain recruting Doctors and Diving Boats, building academies and Temples, upgrading Units and Ships and conducting experiments (swapping it for research points) but may be a problem to buy or sell. If everyone follows these suggestions, a glut of marble on the market may be harder to sell, especially since Palaces and Governor's Residences are no longer needing a too much marble each.
- If you start on Marble, get Wine, then Sulfur.
- If you start on Wine, get Marble, then Sulfur.
- If you start on Sulfur, get Marble, then Wine.
- If you start on Crystal, Marble should be a priority, but both Sulfur and Wine are important very quickly after that.
- If you start on Sulfur or Crystal, another option is to move to a Marble island and abandon your original capital.
- A fourth town should probably be Crystal as it is required to build Academies and later levels of the Palace and Governor's Residence, as well as to train Spies.
Second you must look at the level of the island's resources (mouse over them in the island view). If the sawmill and luxury resource mine have a low level, you cannot make good use of them. If the island is full of low-level players they may become inactive or try to leech all the time, making progress of the shared resources very slow. Try not to colonize an island loaded with inactives or people on vacation. Try and find an island that has higher level resources because they will have donated a lot more building material to the resource mines. One note of caution, however, is that if you are relatively new or weak and you move onto an island with high-level resources, there are probably also high-level players that could easily farm your town if they wanted to, especially if you cannot or will not contribute your fair share to the island's resources. Most sensible players will allow a grace period of a few weeks if you are a small player before requiring that you begin donations.
Try to choose islands that are not too far away from each other; you will need to send resources back and forth to make sure each colony is running smoothly and you don't want to tie up your trade fleet for many hours each trip. Moreover for rapid reinforcement times when defending an attack it is very useful to have towns close together. However, if you are a trader, try not to build them too close either, as this causes overlap in your trading range and makes you more insular; you won't be able to interact with as many different people and alliances.
Check the miracle on the island, different miracles give you different benefits.
[edit] Colonization
Places that can be colonized have yellow flags on the island view. As soon as you order the colony, foundation works appear on its site. Now you will need to wait for cargo ships to load and arrive at their destination.
If you plan to send additional supplies of wood, wine, marble, crystal glass, or sulphur, you will need to have the appropriate number of additional Cargo Ships available (beyond the 3 needed for the new colony). If you send them at the same time, they will share the same action point. Note, however, that beyond some extra wood and a little marble to get the town started, you probably don't want to send extra resources, and here's why:
- Corruption in a new colony is so bad that the first thing you probably want to do is upgrade the governor's residence, and beyond level 1 you will also need to build and upgrade the warehouse. In the meantime, you will have no use for wine (no tavern), crystal, or sulfur. Note: for your 6th and 7th towns it is worth building a Carpenter and upgrading it to level 32, as it will save you well over 50 thousand wood by the time you have upgraded your Governor's Residence and Town hall.
- Unused resources will make you an easy pillaging target since greedy neighbors will know that a new town is likely undefended, and even weak players can easily steal from you until you get the colony's defenses up. You should deploy defensive troops to your new town asap to prevent this.
A new town with a level 1 Town hall (and no Warehouse) can only hold 1,500 of each resource. This is the maximum amount that you can send with your colony ships. Note that a new town receives 250 wood (taken from the 1,250 needed to build the colony), so the maximum additional wood you can send is capped at 1,250.
You can start using your brand-new colony as soon as the ships return home, when you can start putting your new colony to full use. But remember that your new colony will not be 100% efficient from the start since it will have Corruption; you will need to build a Governor´s Residence to the same level as your palace for your colony to be completely productive.
The following table shows the requirements for colonization and expansion.
| Town | Palace |  |  |  | Available Cargo Ships | Warehouse Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 0 |
| 3 | 2 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 9 |
| 5 | 4 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 16 [1] |
| 6 | 5 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 18 [2] |
| 7 | 6 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 20 |
| 8 | 7 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 21 |
| 9 | 8 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 22 |
| 10 | 9 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 23 |
| 11 | 10 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 24 |
| 12 | 11 | 40 | 9000 | 1250 | 3 | 25 |
- ↑ By researching Spirit Level, it is possible to build a level 4 palace with only a level 15 warehouse.
- ↑ By researching Spirit Level, it is possible to build a level 5 palace with only a level 17 warehouse.
[edit] After Founding a Colony
- Change your Town's name
- Build and upgrade your Governor's Residence, along with the warehouse as needed.
- Don't start gathering resources or research in the academy until you get corruption under control. Your citizens may be worth more for taxation at 3 gold income (no corruption penalty) than in gathering resources or performing research, where they may suffer a severe penalty to productivity. An exception might be if you are dependent on the market for an expensive luxury item, which is holding up the growth of your other towns.
- As your town matures and you start sending workers to the island's resources, remember to donate wood for upgrades in accordance with your level of usage, or your new neighbors may resent your leeching.
