Colonization
From [[w:c:Ikariam|WikIkariam]]
Contents |
[edit] Required Research
To colonize you must research Expansion in Seafaring.
[edit] Palaces
To colonize you have to build a Palace. Without research upgrades, a level 1 palace needs 648 wood and takes four hours. The number of colonies you can found is limited by palace level.
- The maximum palace level is 12, so you can not have more than 12 colonies plus your capital.
[edit] Colonization
You will first need to upgrade your Palace to the appropriate palace level - e.g., to establish your third expansion colony you need a palace of level 3.
TIP: To avoid corruption, upgrade your Governor's Residence in all existing colonies before actually founding your next colony. (They need to be at the same level for 0% corruption.)
After you have your palace, you will need the resources in the table below. Once you have everything, choose a place to colonize.
When looking for an island with the desired mining facilities, don't forget to consider the following too:
- The Wonder on the island may give you additional benefits.
- The number of existing towns (too few, and the mines will be small).
- The score levels of other players on that island (lots of low level towns means low level mining).
Places to colonize have yellow flags on 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 sulfur, you will need to have the appropriate number of additional cargo ships available (beyond the 5 needed for the new colony). If you send them at the same time, they will share the same action point.
NOTE: A new town with a level 1 Town hall can only hold 1,000 Wood, 300 Sulfur, 300 Crystal glass, 300 Marble, and 300 Wine until you build a Warehouse.
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 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 0 |
| 3 | 2 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 9 |
| 5 | 4 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 16 [1] |
| 6 | 5 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 18 [2] |
| 7 | 6 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 20 |
| 8 | 7 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 21 |
| 9 | 8 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 22 |
| 10 | 9 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 23 |
| 11 | 10 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 24 |
| 12 | 11 | 40 | 12000 | 1250 | 5 | 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] Things to Consider When Founding a Colony
The first thing you must consider is the type of resource on the island you want to colonize. Check your trading post and find out which resource is not a common one, so you are able to sell this rarer resource easier than other resources.
Second you must look at how many players are on the island, and what level they are. If there are few players with low levels, then the sawmill and luxury resource mine will have a low level, letting you use only a small amount of workers. Try not to colonize an island loaded with inactives or people on vacation. Try and find an island that has high level players, because they will have donated a lot more building material to the resource mines.
Try to choose a colony that is not too far away from your capital; you will need to send resources early on to get your colony self-sustaining. But not too close either, as this decreases your trade range.
Check the wonder on the island, different wonders give you different benefits. As of Patch 0.2.5, the wonder blessings and some of their passive effects are unusable, so it may be a good idea to find wonders which grant a 10% bonus to luxury goods gathered: Temple of Gaia, Temple of Athene, Garden of Dionysus, and Hephaistos' Forge.
[edit] Which type to build?
While this is obviously up for debate (some players insist on doubling-up on marble, which is ok in a team), if you want to be self-sufficient, one strategy is as follows:
- If you start on Wine or Marble, get the other one.
- If you start on Sulfur, you might want to research Expansion, colonize Marble, and abandon your Sulfur. While this seems drastic, if you time it correctly, it will return better in the long run. In any case, you'll probably want to colonize Marble.
- If you start on Crystal, colonize Marble.
- Your second colony should probably be Wine or Crystal, whichever one you don't have.
- Your third colony should probably be Marble or Sulfur. Sulfur is likely to be available for cheap if you offer to buy, and Marble is always valuable for sale, use or trade.
[edit] First Things to do After Founding a Colony
- Change your Town's name
- Donate at least 200 wood to both sawmill and luxury (You DID send extra supplies with your colony, didn't you?). You won't need it anyway for quite a while and it is a nice first step to getting the neighbors to be nicer about your presence. Donate a pittance to the wonder. In the off chance that someone actually activates the wonder on your island, you'll at least get credit for contributing. As of version 0.2.7 donating to the island wonders has no effect, the passive gain given by the wonder does not rely on donations, so don't waste your gold until after this feature is implemented.
- Build your Governor's Residence
- Build a warehouse, and get it up to the level you need to upgrade your Governor's residence to avoid corruption
- Don't start gathering resources or research in the academy until you get your corruption to very low or zero. Your resource gathering citizens will be worth more at 4 gold income -- not gathering -- than 12+ gold lost per luxury gathered or research point. 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.
- Since corruption is such a big drain on resources at first, and it's imperative to focus on your Governor's Residence, you might consider not sending 300 each luxury to your new colony (at least, not wine or sulfur).
- First, the luxury is going to sit unused for at least 8 hours while the Governor's Residence is being built. When you're new, that luxury could possibly be better spent on your existing colonies.
- Second, especially sulfur and wine are going to be unused until you build a barracks and tavern, and your Town Hall is of sufficient size. When you're focusing on the Governor's Residence, you may have at least 24 hours before you need to use wine or sulfur (16+ hours for the GR's upgrades and the time to upgrade the warehouse).
- Third, unused luxury can make you a pillaging target, even if you don't have a Trading Port.
- Fourth, that can be up to 2 less cargo ships to send for colonization, which means you could possibly be using both cargo ship and luxury to make some gold or for trade of goods you can use, now, while you're waiting for your new colony to be viable.
