Overview
This is a collection of tips that can help you master The Colonists
Introduction
Hello and thank you for clicking on my guide. If you find it helpful, please like it!
I love this game and for games that I love, I like writing guides to help others love the game as much as I do!
The Colonists is a game that is simplistic at first glance and the first few tutorial missions on the campaign give you a lot of confidence that this game isn’t too hard.
As you progress through more campaign levels, you start to notice far more traffic jams and factories that are sitting idle waiting on materials.
Sound familiar?
This guide will give you tips to better set up your colony, including how to to best use, setup and manage the various buildings.
Energy pods
If there is one thing that you read and learn this is the single tip that will make things flow so much easier. It is called an Isolated energy pod. It’s isolated because nothing has to travel to it and the only thing leaving it is energy. If used across your map, you’ll eliminate the movement of food and water over your roads, greatly reducing your traffic jams.
Let’s take a look at one shall we?
A sheep farm and a well are built first. Once these are online, build 2 houses and once those are done, build 3 more. Yes you can supply 5 houses with this setup rather than 4. There will be the occasional empty house not currently producing energy but it will be brief.
Once you have this setup and running, it’s important that you click on the sheep farm and the well and click on the export whitelist and add each house to the list. This way, your sheep farm and well will only supply to these houses and no other houses can pull demand from this pod.
This is the single greatest thing to streamline your colony from the very beginning. Later, when you get to cider, it’s possible to build a L2 energy pod with the cider press feeding the pod (leave the orchard separate since it can produce for about 1.5 presses).
This is covered on the Game wiki here:
[link]Lumberjacks & Forestry
Lumberjacks
Are the core of your production. They produce logs which are used in a lot of tier 1 buildings and they feed into sawmills. How you arrange these to get the most out of them can get you more logs for your energy.
A Lumberjack can chop 1 or 2 trees down with one energy cell if the trees are close to their hut.
Look at your lumberjacks. How far are they travelling? Are other buildings blocking their access to quick trees?
I have found placing them parallel to the road eases a lot of these problems, giving them unfettered access to trees and keeping them from “going the long way around”.
Then you want to surround the tiles adjacent to it with trees from a forestry.
Forestry
Ok let’s talk about the forester. Did you know you can place them anywhere? And that you can remove the path that you use to build them once it has it’s robot assigned? This was a big “aha” moment for me.
So what you want to do is to cram that forestry up against rocks, on the sand, basically in the crappiest place you can find where it’s not too distant to walk to the tiles surrounding your Lumberjack. Once it’s built, and the forester has started to plant the first tree, completely remove the path to the Forestry with the destroy tool. You can now mark these tiles for planting.
Directing the Lumberjack to cut the trees you want
When you have a lot of trees, it takes too long to let them cut something that is usable. Use the Priority tool by clicking on the Lumberjack and clicking on the square. You can then click any tree you want them to remove. SHIFT-Click removes a tree from the priority list.
This is great to have them carve a path to where you want the next watchtower to be.
Using Storage and road posts to stage material
Pulling material across the map to build something is very tedious and watching all that material make its way piecemeal makes the game seem like it’s really slow.
A better way is to build a storage yard up near where you want to build. On larger maps, I’m constantly building small storage yards as I build out to store logs to build outposts.
What you want to do is to build the storage yard and then on a roadpost that is between the storage yard the rest of your colony to set the roadpost to “Blacklist Except for Storage” and blacklist the material you are storing in the storage yard. The roadpost blacklist will prevent the material from going back somewhere else.
If you then prioritise the storage yard, it will pull all the material.
VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t start building your structure until most of the material has made it to the storage yard because the game won’t pull material that is in transit.
TIP: Level 2 buildings need stone and planks. Stage 6 of each in a storage yard and then when you’re ready to build that orchard, level 2 house, etc, the material is there and it’s a short path and the building will be built very quickly.
Secondary tile placement for sheep, vegetables, orchards, wheat and cows
When you build any of these buildings, you get to set tiles where these will be. Each building behaves a bit different on how you select these tiles and here are some placement tips:
All: All of these require a green grass tile.
Important: Try to put the actual building on non-grass area so you optimize the grass for the fields.
Sheep: Each tile must be touching one face of another tile. You want to cram sheep into the corners or into unused space. Use auto placement to get started, then remove tiles and fill in the crevices of the map.
Here’s a crazy example of what you can do with sheep:
Vegetables: These can be anywhere you can find a long skinny row that’s mostly level. They don’t have to be adjacent to each other.
Orchards: LIke Vegetables – they can be anywhere on the map. Get creative.
Wheat: Like Vegetables and Orchards but require significant space.
Cows: Like Sheep – each tile must be adjacent to another tile, but you can get pretty creative in filling in corners of the map.
Easing congestion on the roads
The single biggest improvement you can make to easing congestion is to only build one thing at one time because more material = more congestion.
Deleting Material on a road
Sometimes you ‘re just going to get a traffic jam though and you’re going to notice material that is moving on the road that you are saying “WTF” is that material on that road THERE?
It’s sometimes just better to delete bad material that is jamming you up. You can zoom in and click a material on the road and delete it.
Prioritising what gets moved on the roads
However, we’re typically not as concerned about congestion because it’s going to happen, particularly if your’e building a large complicated building, what you want to do is control the material that is the most important for that part in the game.
So here is a huge tip on how to prioritise material:
In the upper left corner, there is this tiny button menu. Click on that very first icon and all the material that exists in the game is in this priority list. You can adjust any material up / down.
This is what controls (other than setting priorities on buildings) which material gets picked up at a traffic jam FIRST.
You want to revisit this priority throughout the game and adjust it periodically for the level you are at (L1, L2 or L3) because you don’t care about logs when you’re trying to move bread.
Use the Road Layer to improve your roads!
Upgrading your dirt roads to cobbletones and then bricks will greatly speed up your distribution and this will greatly ease congestion.
TIP: Prioritise which roads the roadlayer does first by using the highlight tool!
Understanding and using Priorities
Priorities are useful but you need to use them carefully and with purpose.
Priorities can only be set on one building from each type at one time. If you have 3 surface mines, you can only choose one. But you can prioritise one surface mine, a workshop, a shaft mine, etc.
However, if two different buildings are both prioritised and both pulling the same resource, these will be shared between the two.
Setting priorities can be done either when you are building something, or after something is built and you want to get resources to it.
The bad thing about priorities which can hurt you is that it will “pull” from the entire map to satisfy this demand and if you haven’t set road post whitelists / blacklists or even worse if you have islands and tons of harbors, you could actually pull from a long way a way, actually hurting yourself in the process.
Prioritising while building:
If you are timing things to get buildings done to match up with research for example, this will direct all material that it can find. I find this only useful the beginning of the game when I have a lot of plans and not enough resources to go around. Mid-late game I rarely use this and instead use storage to stage materials in preparation of building (see this tip in another chapter).
Prioritising operations
This is primarily used to direct energy to be full so the robot / workshop is never waiting on energy.
Tip: Once you see that a building has energy + something in transit, you can toggle priority to another building. This is helpful in the beginning when you have two surface mines mining rock and you need a lot.
Local Storage Buffers
Local Storage buffers are placing storage yards next to critical buildings and whitelisting the storage yards to only deliver to that building (preventing other buildings from pulling from the storage)
This is covered in the game guide and I’m just going to point to it here so you have an easy reference:
[link]Watchtowers
Watchtowers are how you expand in the game, and it’s tempting to try and get all the land covered as you progress outward.
Watchtowers can be upgraded, expanding their coverage – so you don’t have to get into all the nooks and crannies on your first foray into the wilderness.
Did you know you can remove watchtowers from overlapping areas without any impact?
-> It’s a good idea to save and then delete just on the off-chance that you misjudged and a building is no longer covered because it will turn into rubble.
Harbors
Whitelists or Banlists
You have a choice. Export banlists or import whitelists. You can not have both
Export Banlists: Prevent material from leaving
Import Whitelist: Only accept this material
You absolutely have to manage this. Otherwise, those logs that just arrived will be on the next ship out.
They are tedious because you’re constantly adjusting them as a new colony grows and doesn’t need logs / planks anymore.
I find that building a large storage yard first and setting it up to have a quantity of things you’re going to need (L1 energy / logs / planks / bricks) a good idea and it helps a lot to smooth the demand out. Also you get full ships of material going to there.
Double the fun
You need at least 2 ships going between harbors. Don’t go too many otherwise they’ll be in queue forever.
Import energy instead of importing food
In general, I find it much easier to manage just importing the energy you need to an island if you have the land somewhere else. Your economy on your base is strong and creating energy is a great way to use that economy, particularly for L1 and L2 energy.
It lets you focus your new area with just industry instead of housing.
Ignore the Lugger
That research tree is just going to need to be unfulfilled. You need to have large harbors to allow the lugger to dock and the large harbors are very hard to build once you already have a harbor.
Build 1,2 or even 3 harbors on an island
Spread out your transportation and dedicate harbors for specific resources.
Things that will muck up your colony
Here are a collection of things that I’m constantly banging my head against the wall because these things slow the whole colony down because something isn’t getting built quickly.
Putting huge quantities on storage yards right away. It is easy to just put the full storage on a yard when it first gets completed. Say for example, a small storage yard with 16 logs to feed a nearby sawmill. The problem is all these logs will all of a sudden clog your roads. It is more prudent to change the storage to 4, wait a minute, increase it to 8, wait a minute, increase it to 12 and so on.
Building houses before you have water / food already in inventory. If you queue up water, sheep and a house, the house will pull water & food from somewhere else and you will find that house just sitting there idle for weeks / months because some stupid water is halfway across the map and not getting prioritised.
-> To eliminate this problem you should build the water & food and have inventory available and then build however many houses you have food / water for. So, if you only have 2 water, build 2 houses and then wait a bit and when you have 2 more, build the next 2 houses.
Forgetting to switch Export Blacklist to Import Blacklist on harbors. Ok, this is is really frustrating when this happens. At the beginning of landing on a new area with a harbor, you’re going to want “export blacklist” to prevent the logs / L1 energy / stone / planks from leaving just as they arrive at a storage yard. The problem is once you get that foothold and you’re producing logs with lumberjacks, you no longer really need logs imported.
The problem is that when you build that charcoal burner / Sawmill and they need logs, they will continue to pull from across the map, when if they just would have waited 15 seconds, you would have had a log locally. You’re not going to notice this until you wonder why that charcoal burner isn’t burning and all your local lumberjacks are full of logs. And then you will bang your head against your keyboard.
To be added to as I remember!
You will never have too many bricks
You need to be cranking on bricks from the time you unlock brickyards to the end of the game.
While Clay shaft mines only requre L2 energy, you can get more clay by upgrading to L3 once you have L3 energy production online.
Consider building a monument near your clay shaft mine and placing brickyards in its area of influence as well to mass produce bricks.
Use 2-3 charcoal burners so you never run out of coal / charcoal. Get 3 forestry + 2-3 lumberjacks feeding the charcoal burners.
Monuments are not just end game goals
If you have an end-game goal of building > 1 monument, there is no need to build them sequentially. Build them at the same time. You can prioritise one if you want so that when it gets done the nearby buildings will have bonuses.
Building Monuments as soon as they become available will greatly boost your economy.
Planning your Monument center is critical when laying out your colony.
Once you hit Construction I, I recommend a Level 1 Monument surrounded by:
Sawmill
2 Blast Furnaces
Blacksmith
Steelworks
L2 Workshop
Once you hit Construction II, I recommend a Level 2 Monument surrounded by:
Clay Shaft Mine
2 Brickyards
Bakery
L3 Workshop
Glassworks
Trains
Trains suck. It’s one of the very few klugy thing in this game and you’re going to get very frustrated on campaign 11 trying to make that train work and you’ll agree with me they take too much space and resources for too little benefit.
Yes, I have some pictures in here with trains. I was experimenting with them at the time so that I could really understand how to plan & use them effectively. I learned how to use them & do the tracks, but as for easing congestion, or getting things done faster, I didn’t really think they provide the benefit.
Just ignore them.
Research Tips
In The Colonists, wanting to get further down that research tree is something that just nags you and while on some maps you may be able to queue up the next area right away, this is by and large a bad strategy.
This is because research is a long drain on energy and resources and it’s going to starve a lot of other things that you’re wanting to build.
It’s a really good idea to occasionally pause research to allow the various buildings get caught up / inventory full before you push that button, particularly with energy.
In the early game, the closer you can place the Workshop to BOTH a sawmill and surface mines, this will minimize research time.
On some maps, having two workshops is a desirable strategy. Have one that is primary (getting construction I, II and III) and letting the other one get the other miscellaneous areas. Keeping the primary one prioritised keeps focus on the important things and the other one will gain research as it can obtain material.
Having a storage yard next to your workshop and having it whitelisted to only export to the workshop is a great way to stage materials for research and guarantee they won’t get pulled for other things.
Critical Research path
The game has lots of things to research. To progress to new buildings and new levels, there is the critical path which has the areas that you absolutely need and what they gate. Anything not listed is not critical path. Not saying they aren’t important but I won’t cover them here.
Stone Masonry
Scaffolding
Construction I
-> Unlocks orchards + cider presses
-> You can now research boat building if you have a water map
-> Unlocks small monument
-> Unlocks Blast Furnace that turns iron ore into Iron
-> Unlocks Blacksmith for making tools
-> Unlocks Charcoal burner which can be used if you have no coal
Mining 1
-> You can now build Level 2 surface mines and Level 1 Shaft mines which both require L2 energy to run. These are required for Coal, Clay and Iron Ore which you will need.
BoatBuilding (optional) -> Unlocks Harbors and Boatyards
Upgrade Workshop to Level 2 so you can research Level 2 items
(Make sure you build L2 houses + L2 surface mine / L1 shaft mines before you upgrade your workshop otherwise it will be idle waiting for these things)
Brickmaking -> Unlocks brickyard
Scaffolding II
Construction II
-> Unlocks Medium Monument
-> Unlocks Cow Pastures for hides and Tanning for turning Hides into Leather
-> Unlocks PaperMill required to make paper
Wheat Farming -> Unlocks Wheat Farms
BreadMaking -> Unlocks flour mill and Bakery required for making Bread
Now you can start making L3 houses because Bread is gating your L3 energy produciton
Mining II
-> Now you can build L3 surface mines and L2 Shaft mines which are required for Salt, Quartz and Gold.
Printing Press -> Unlocks Printing press to make books
Upgrade Workshop to Level 3 so you can research Level 3 items
Glass Making -> Unlocks glassworks
Scaffolding III
Construction III
-> Unlocks Large Monument
Information on everything
One thing that The Colonists does so well is being transparent about everything that is going on. There are resource monitors and trackers that can tell you where everything is at, where it is doing and how well everything is operating.
Overall Utilization
At the top of your screen is a reminder of how well all the buildings are being utilized. I find this very useful in the early game (up to Level 2) as I want this > 80%. If this is not > 80% then this is a good reminder to go looking for why you’re not utilizing all the buildings effectively.
Later in the game, this becomes less of an indicator as you will have idle buildings as you need fewer logs, stone and planks.
Production / Demand
This is an extremely helpful report that the game provides. It’s covered briefly in the tutorial but I think it’s a very powerful tool to help you manage the colony. It’s the icons on the lower left of your screen. This tells you at a high level if you’re able to meet the demands across every resource in the game. Check it frequently.
In Transit goods
Whenever you have a building that is waiting on materials – you can see where the materials are at and whether they’ve been sourced.
It tells you how long the material has been in transit. If this is > 10 days, then you need to look at this and see if this it desired behavior and perhaps delete the material so it will be sourced from a closer location!!
You can then click on the material and it will show you where on the map it currently is at.
Looking at material on roads
By clicking on any resource on a road / path, it will tell you where it was produced and where it is going.
Battle campaign levels
This is kind a spoiler on how to approach and beat the battle levels, so if you’d rather learn on your own, then please skip this section!
If, however, you have done the battle sections and you’re having difficulty, here are some tips on how to beat it.
Overview
You need to be focused. First on expansion and then getting to Level 2 as fast as possible to upgrade your towers to Level 2. The first side to get to Level 2 and to research arrow upgrades will win.
For expansion, you need to be cranking on the logs and build out L1 houses + Lumberjacks + forestry and building Watchtowers until you get to the enemy(s). Once you hit the enemies, you need to “fill in” the watchtowers to limit their expansion. They will not stop.
You’re going to want 2x the forestry and lumberjacks you typically have in an economic campaign level, which means you’re going to need the double the number of L1 houses you typically build in an economic campaign. You want storage yards on your front lines filled with logs and arrows. Logs to repair captured enemy bases and arrows for ammunition.
Details
Build 2 lumberjacks
Build 1 energy pod of five L1 houses
Build 1 surface mine near rock
Start building watchtowers
Build another energy pod of five L1 houses
Build 2 more lumberjacks + 2 more forestry
Build L1 Research and Research Masonry
Build sawmill
Build another energy pod of five L1 houses
Build 2 more lumberjacks + 2 more forestry
And keep building these on all spare land except where you will build the cider press, orchard + L2 houses. Reserve that area.
Research Scaffolding
Research Construction I
Build orchard + Cider Press
Build 4 new L2 houses
Upgrade Workshop to Level 2
Build L2 Research facility close to your furnace, blacksmith and sawmill. Keep your old L1 Research Inactive.
Research Arrows
Research Arrows 2
Research Arrows 3
With your L1 Research, do these as you have material
Research Repair -> will help you repair captured watchtowers
Research Armor
At this point, you’re done with research. How well you set up your economy to handle 8-12 lumberjacks, 15-20 forestry’s will depend if you have enough logs to win.
Always be building lumberjacks, forestry and storage yards as you conquer territory. Don’t stop!!! Keep the logs coming in fast!!