Any tips on starting new colonies?

[yutowap33]

Any tips on starting new colonies?

[Arralen]

Assets beyond 6 hexes add administrative strain.

[Mina]

- Start by building a railhead and Truck station on the tile you want to put your new city at. They're 1 turn to build and essential, because getting materials and food to your new city's incredibly important.
- Try to have cards like Zoo/Commercial Project available before starting a new zone. You're going to need to have your worker morale at 50 or better in order to get shit built in a reasonable timeframe, if worker morale is bad then you'll struggle to convert pop into workers, so you won't have enough people to build your QoL shit, so morale won't start improving, and repeat ad nauseum.
- Investor Backing is also good to play on new cities because it provides a random but static amount of money. Private investment scales depending on existing population
- If you've got any Autonomous Cloning Facility cards then use them on your new zones. 1000 pop a turn is most beneficial for tiny settlements.
- If at all possible, place your new cities in places with nearby free folk settlements that you can rope into their zone borders.
- Otherwise consider recruiting some colonists from one of your bigger cities with population to spare (Via zone orders). You'll need logistic points to send them but it can be a big boost when you'd otherwise have to rely on natural migration.

In general, newly created zones are a lot slower than just conquering an existing one from a minor. If you've got a bigass swath of empty field or forest then you don't need to place a new zone, it's when you come across a cluster of ruins or a few mineable resources that are well outside of the 6 tile no admin strain radius of your existing city that you wanna put one down.

[Maerchen]

As a side note, the quick zone tab on the left can only fit 26 zones. My 38 zone empire is quite difficult to manage. I went full commerce, got the stacking production bonuses. 4.5k IP per turn from light industries and service tax is a nice thing to have...

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: yutowap33

Any tips on starting new colonies?

Generally it is better to keep your population concentrated in one city, idealy the Capitol/SHQ position. Higher Tier assets are more upkeep efficient, so that makes bigger cities more interesting.

Assets more then 6 hexes from "their" city, cause administrative strain. Adminsitrative Strain over 10% can cause production reduction. Usually you pick new cities to aleviate that problem.

Terrain is important. While hard terrain makes the city a lot easier defendable by Infantry, it also increases the cost for road and rail access dramatically. The best terrain is ruins, as it offers all the defense for no relevant cost increase.

[Mina]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, because higher tier buildings offer both more production AND more cost-effective production, you're best off concentrating everything in a single large city where your SHQ is placed, other zones are for resource extraction mainly. Size III gives you a large enough population base to run a bunch of resource extraction, as well as your private economy stuff like farms/qol/etc.

There might be a point where a single megacity and its SHQ might not have enough logistical points to manage the entire zone's pull/push requirements, in which case you'd need to figure out a location for a new megacity and its assorted industries, along with a new SHQ. I haven't encountered it yet personally

[BlueTemplar]

- You *might* (or might not) actually want to make new cities without even hitting 10% admin strain with your old ones if you're interested in having more city-only assets (but higher levels of the city-only assets you already have are generally a better idea). But of course your regime needs to have enough unemployed population/colonists, otherwise you'll have to shut down public or private assets or live with the inefficiency.
- Have a good governor ready for the turn after you create the city.
- Start with your Zone unincorporated for higher population happiness growth, and so that its initially zero civilization score doesn't impact yours. This will also give more resources for the private sector to build up.
- Increase worker pay 1 millicredit at a time until it hits 70+ happiness and rising : you won't have many workers to start with anyway, and their salaries will help the private sector. Lower it 1 millicredit at a time when it hits 80+.
- Add some direct investment of your own too, as this increases population happiness. You might be later able to convert population happiness (easier to achieve) into worker happiness (harder to achieve) via a faction "worker privileges" card.

[Uemon]

Get colonists, build QOL buildings, play QOL cards, send more colonists. Early on, only do this if there are big deposits that are farther than 6 hexes away from your city. Mina and zgrssd made all the important points.

Overall the power of cities lies in city hex only buildings that you can unlock with economic council, which allow you to produce resources inside your cities (and thus not rely on external metal/rares/food etc). With every level efficiency of those buildings increases, so essentially you can run an empire from a level V city (200.000 pop). The problem with small cities is that they will grow very slowly and you can only build low level buildings, which give very few resources. So unless you dump a lot of colonists (which still have to come from somewhere) try not to overdo it because it will take a while before those new cities become really economically relevant (on their own, access to resources still counts obviously).

[KarisFraMauro]

Speaking of city improvement cards, what governs the militia headquarters one? I've never even seen it before my current game, and it doesn't look like it's connected with any particular profile. Maybe I missed it though.

[Uemon]

ORIGINAL: KarisFraMauro

Speaking of city improvement cards, what governs the militia headquarters one? I've never even seen it before my current game, and it doesn't look like it's connected with any particular profile. Maybe I missed it though.

I am 90% sure it is connected with profile, i believe its fist related card?

[Maerchen]

It is an autocracy card. I am wrong, it is fist.

[BlueTemplar]

Oh, also, you probably want to Allow Emergency Food, wouldn't want your newly arrived population to starve !

Whether it arrived via migration or via colonists - I guess that in some situation you might want to dump colonists on it as population rather than workers if you have enough workers but still need more populace to upgrade the city ASAP?

[KarisFraMauro]

Digging a little deeper you are indeed correct, it's volunteerism at fist 40. But it isn't listed in the profile as far as I can see, you have to look in the encyclopedia.

[Clux]

Make sure that the new city its on a strategic position, it must be nearby of resources, a good defensive position (due terrain) or in the worst case, make sure that it will be useful to keep expanding towards the wilderness-non aligned to conquer other regimes (kinda like an Outpost)

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: KarisFraMauro

Digging a little deeper you are indeed correct, it's volunteerism at fist 40. But it isn't listed in the profile as far as I can see, you have to look in the encyclopedia.

Stratagems given to you by happy factions based on the current Profile do not appear in the Profile page. It has been reported as a bug a few times now, I think.

[KarisFraMauro]

Huh. I thought maybe it might be a bug, either that or something related to the version played.

[yutowap33]

ORIGINAL: Mina

- Start by building a railhead and Truck station on the tile you want to put your new city at. They're 1 turn to build and essential, because getting materials and food to your new city's incredibly important.
- Try to have cards like Zoo/Commercial Project available before starting a new zone. You're going to need to have your worker morale at 50 or better in order to get shit built in a reasonable timeframe, if worker morale is bad then you'll struggle to convert pop into workers, so you won't have enough people to build your QoL shit, so morale won't start improving, and repeat ad nauseum.
- Investor Backing is also good to play on new cities because it provides a random but static amount of money. Private investment scales depending on existing population

That pretty much what I did. I used 10k colonist, only went for Rail station and no Truck station (hopping that civil authority will take care of the latter in this remote community), and used my spare zone cards to boost the colonies (I built 2 to see how they compare).

I am little confused about private investment expansion, is there some build order and timer between constructions? because both colonies started by building a farming community, and now despite having pile of cash in private funds has no next project

[newageofpower]

They need enough unemployed civilians (population, not workers) as future employees to keep building stuff.

[yutowap33]

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar
Oh, also, you probably want to Allow Emergency Food, wouldn't want your newly arrived population to starve !

When it's a good idea not to allow emergency food? I was scared by it once, since then I always do, not sure what the disadvantages are.

ORIGINAL: BlueTemplar
- Start with your Zone unincorporated for higher population happiness growth, and so that its initially zero civilization score doesn't impact yours. This will also give more resources for the private sector to build up.
- Increase worker pay 1 millicredit at a time until it hits 70+ happiness and rising : you won't have many workers to start with anyway, and their salaries will help the private sector. Lower it 1 millicredit at a time when it hits 80+.

I definitely missed that.

ORIGINAL: Uemon

Overall the power of cities lies in city hex only buildings that you can unlock with economic council, which allow you to produce resources inside your cities (and thus not rely on external metal/rares/food etc).

What buildings you consider to have the most benefit? Also a while back someone mentioned that extra zones made their empire flourish economically, any idea what he was referring? (I don't see anything in the trade report that might lend to that)

[newageofpower]

ORIGINAL: yutowap33
What buildings you consider to have the most benefit? Also a while back someone mentioned that extra zones made their empire flourish economically, any idea what he was referring? (I don't see anything in the trade report that might lend to that)

Commerce/Light Industry spam is pretty strong early/midgame. Though in the newest beta, the private sector turns off everything to build more Farms....