New colonies

Hi people!

Can anyone explain the conditions to stablish a new colony?

- I'm playing as Makedonia, and I've just conquered Segestika. I was planning on stablish a military colony building, which only with the main factional government or without government at all appeared as an option. So I'm without the possibility to start the cultural conversion.

I guess the settlement must grow to the next level to have this option available (At this moment only 580 souls) so I'll give more feedback later about this.

- The "Hellenistic polis" building only is useful for recruiting and gaining more settlers, in my experience, but it has no use in cultural conversion.

- When playing as AS, this mechanics seem to work the same way, but there's no advisor message informing about available settlers.

- I've observed, sometimes, when clicking a city, appear or dissappear as an optional construction the buildings I'm talking about.

If I'm wrong, please correct me, but without some kind of guide I'm walking on swampy terrain.

Thanks everyone, cheers!

The colony script is now working as it should in 2.03. In order to either establish a new Minor Hellenistic Polis (polis_one) or Hellenistic Colony (helcol_one) or upgrade a helcol, you need colonists available, who come from owning a Hellenistic Metropolis (polis_three). There are only five of these on the map at the start of the game: Athenai, Korinthos, Syrkousai, Alexandreia and Pergamon. Thus the only factions who start with colonists are Makedonia, Ptolemaioi and Pergamon. AS don't have any Metropolii at the start, thus have no colonists available. Ironically, KH can't send out colonists, but start with a Metropolis.

You need to either conquer one of those, or upgrade a Hellenistic Polis (polis_two) into a polis_three. In order to do that, a settlement needs Hellenistic Polities 69% or above, have a market_three (Forum or equivalent, I think) and minimum gov5 (Hellenic Administration). Conversion does happen simply by having your government buildings in place, but it does go at the rate of about 1% a year, so unless somewhere is close, this is probably going to be the bar to any upgrading, because that will take a long time.

Once you have a polis_three in your domain, for each one, you get a colonist group every 16 turns (ie if you have two it's every 8 turns). As above, you can use this either to seed a new polis_one in a place which has a trader and Hellenistic Polities of at least 29%, or install a new helcol_one somewhere with farms_two. The latter will accelerate conversion to a Hellenistic Polities 30%, then the next level (requiring colonists again) will speed it to 50%, and finally helcol_three accelerates it to 70%.

In other words, if you're looking at somewhere with negligible levels of HP, you need to install a helcol_one first, which will speed the time to being able to install a polis_one. The problem you will have with Segestika is that it's size means you can't build the requisite level of farms, but by the time it reaches that scale, you will then be able to install a helcol_one (assuming you still hold Korinthos). In the meantime, if you want Phalangitai anywhere besides Pella, you should be aiming to install a helcol_two somewhere - Demetrias is a good option for this. You'll need two lots of colonists to do that - one for each level of helcol, and have to upgrade farms, road garrisons and install a Game Field.

The Polis and Colony are both troop-producing buildings, but give different troops. You get Greek-style levies and semi-professionals in the main out of the Polis (Hoplitai, psiloi, old-style cavalry, etc). You get Macedonian-style professionals out of the Colony (Phalangitai, Thureophoroi, Kretans, newer cavalry etc).

Hope that helps.

It helped, and a lot.

Thanks Quintus.

I have a similar question regarding getting colonists as Carthage. Is it similar to how the Greeks develop colonists, or is it a slightly different mechanic? What exactly allows you to put down more Poeni settlers? Just wondering, since I'm fairly baffled by the idea (even if I like it a lot), and decided to switch to the Boii for now, who not only makes more sense to me, but allows me to have fun scaring Rome.

It works similar to how the Greeks get colonists, except instead of Hellenistic Poleis, you get them from your top-level government building instead (Carthaginian Council or something). I think. I haven't played Carthage apart from taking a look at their mechanics sometime last year.