colony building (or lack of)

[etropic]

i cant build a colony

im useing the right type of resources, im useing a worker unit
inside, outside city area
inside, outside cultural area... nothing works
I never have seen the build colony option....

is there something else that is needed ?

[Ghengis Brom]

Do you have a road leading to the resource from one of your cities? Also remember that colonies can only be built on strategic or bonus resources (i.e. horses, iron, silks, ivory, etc.).

[etropic]

yup

ya... useing the book for knowing the diff resource types, Im only trying to the right ones.... got roads, got railroads, got no roads, ive tried everything I cam think of, every combination of whatever to trigger it.....

perhaps someone will go out of their way and make a complete list of everything needed to build a colony..... ?

[Skanky Burns]

The basic criteria are:

A strategic or luxury resource.
That resource not within anyones cultural border.
Just put a worker on it, and you will get the option.

One final point, they cannot be built on bonus resources - things like gold or bananas. Only resources that are used inside the city for making people happy or making units.

[Jack_www]

All you have to do to build a colony is to put a worker right over the resource that you want to build a colony on and press the button on the workers actions that make the worker form a colony, and thats it. You dont even need roads leading up to were you want to build the colony. In all my games though I really ever build a colony, instead I build a city on top or near the resource I want, that way the AI wont come along and put a city right next to the colony, and it is gone.

[godinex]

What version patch do you have?

[Elucidus]

Yeah I rarely build a conoly myself, but they gave you the basic criteria. Good Luck

[godinex]

The colonys are great just for one thing... they dissapear when a cultural limit is over... I will like an all terrain colonies sustented by the militar power.

[Coracle]

One of the many stupidities about Civ 3 is colonies.

They just disappear when a rival civ builds a city nearby, or when its "culture borders" (also nonsense) flip over your colony.

In reality, and in history, trying to take over a colony that way would be considered aggression and an act of war. But in Civ 3 logic is reversed. If you lose your colony that way YOU get blamed if yiou refuse to leave and a war occurs.

[Elucidus]

Yeah that always struck me as odd too.

[kailhun]

I'd completely forgotten about colonies. I'm usually too busy grabbing land with cities. The workers are all used to road stuff up, mine and irrigate to waste on a colony that will disappear when it falls within the borders of a city.

Robert

[Elucidus]

Not me, everytime I see a resource I figure out if a colony or a city is better.

[falsfire3401]

I've only used colonies once. In a recent Regent game, playing the Germans, I was going for a conquest victory. I'd just finished wiping out the Iroquois, Zulu, and Japanese on their continent (too far from mine to make it worthwile to keep their cities, I just razed them). Had only one city on that continent, with an airport that I rush-built so I could keep sending fresh modern armours to the front lines.

The last remaining civ was the Persians, and they were trading me three luxury resources. I knew that if I lost those luxuries my cities would fall into disorder, or at best have their production severely hampered. I saw two of those luxuries somewhat near my airport city, and the third only existed within the Persian cultural borders. So I built colonies on the two I could, fortified with mech infantry, and positioned my troops (8 modern armour, plus 2 mech inf. and 1 worker) outside the Persian borders with the nearest wines tile. First round of war, lost my trades of course, but blitzed the persian city near the wines and quickly built a colony, fortified with the 2 mech inf. Tada, at war but without losing any luxuries.

[Elucidus]

That seems to be a common occurance in my games, except with strategic resources.

[Arrian]

I generally use colonies when I'm capturing enemy cities, and their cultural borders shrink to size1. Many times, luxury resources end up in no-man's land between cities, and I use a captured worker to colonize it so I get the luxury right away, to help with war weariness or to trade. It's just a temporary thing.

I think the name "colony" mislead some players. "Work camp" or "plantation" might be better.

-Arrian