Since I’ve been able to upgrade my governor’s residences to the same level as my palace, I’ve wondered how long it would take to create my 6th colony. It would be great to have a mobile colony for military campaigns with my alliance to avoid naval defenses and long pillage travel times.

So while searching for discussions on having a 6th colony, I found this neat analysis by joehbad from Canberra. Read on and enjoy…

I have been researching the plausibility of going for a 6th city, and I noticed that there is a distinct point in the leveling of buildings when the costs really jump. So I have graphed up the level vs resources for each building and noted the sharp change in slope. I’m going to use it as a guide to when to cease upgrading each building. To save you the effort, see below:

Town Hall: 24. 2391 population
Academy: 16
Tavern: 16. 1472 happiness for 63 wine/hr
Wall: 24. 240% bonus
Barracks: 24. Also optimum level for peak unit
Warehouse: 16. Lvl 17 required for 6 cities
Port: Not relevant, level controlled by risk of pillage
Shipyard: 16. Peak unit at lvl 15
Museum: 8. 560 happiness when full
Hideout: 20
Embassy: only relevant to Alliance leaders
Workshop: level 10 gets all a techs
Trading: 16. But lvl 15 has the same range of 8
Sawmill: 21. 450/hr or 506/hr with helping hands. Timber needs to cost > 16 gold to make Helping Hands (HH) useful
Mine etc: 16. 200/hr or 225/hr with helping hands. Resource needs to cost > 32 gold to make HH useful

And if you are also think of going for a 6th city, you will need:

5 x lvl 16 warehouses = 172550 wood, 90040 marble
5 x lvl 5 palaces = 990720 wood, 660490 marble, 440320 wine & crystal
Total = 1,163,270 wood, 750520 marble, 440320 wine & crystal.

5 x level 21 sawmills = 21.5 days
2 x level 16 marble mines (with HH) = 69.5 days
1 x level 16 crystal mine (with HH) = 81.5 days
1 x level 16 winery (with HH) = 81.5 days, but all production is consumed locally, so this will have to be purchased @ 35-40 = 15.4 to 17.6 million.
That is 41 days of income from 5x level 24 cities roughly, so it is plausible to buy this in, and buy some crystal to top up production.

Call it three months. Ouch

I’d like to see an analysis on whether or not dealing with corruption every time the mobile colony is planted for military campaigns is bearable. This would mean one would no longer have to upgrade all warehouses and governor’s residences in all the other colonies. And I wonder if the 6th colony would be useful at all for harvesting and gold production since being 1 level down a palace  is already means a corruption penalty of 16% . Would being 5 levels down be equivalent  to  100%?  Quite  a  waste  if  you  won’t  be upgrading  anything  on  that  town.

Another drawback of a mobile colony is that you waste the pillaged resources from a high level trading port … although, when towns are under attack, the port is usually downgraded to level 1… so I guess the point of a mobile colony really is to get close enough to your enemy to unleash as many attacks as possible to reduce the enemy’s troops to the minimum possible in the town being attacked.

The other side of having a 6th colony is to plant it permanently to further growth. I’ve found that 3 marble towns, 1 crystal and 1 wine is a good combination for 5 colonies. What would the 6th be? It would be interesting to hear the reader’s opinion…