City of Wonder Colony Guide - Expand Your Empire with Colonies
How to Build Colonies in City of Wonder Basics
To get started with colonies you will need a colony ship. You can find the colony button to the far right of your game play area. You can have friends help you build the ship or you can just buy it for some game gold. Once you have the ship built you can set sail and try and find a piece of land to settle on. This introduces a small mini game where you uncover clouded over tiles to find the island. You will use expedition points here until you have found the island. You can also use gold to find the island automatically and begin building your new island paradise. You can decorate your island with all new island themed decorations, houses and even make a river complete with little canoes. Use water tiles to build culture and military ships or place decorative items like fish.
Colony Currency the Sand Dollar
City of Wonder introduces the sand dollar with colonies. Sand dollars can be converted from your regular city silver. You can build buildings to produce goods the normal way and use silver to convert over to sand dollars. So for example, coconut milk costs 500 silver and gains you 50 sand dollars in return once the good is produced. So you are still producing goods with silver it just converts to sand dollars. Your main city will still be your economic powerhouse and the heart of your game.
Culture Structures
Building culture in colonies is the same as the regular game except you have water tiles available too for culture ships. You have outriggers, sailboats, canoes, tugs, trawlers, and at the high end oil rigs, and yachts. You’ll need to research new technologies to unlock all these great looking ships in the game. Other culture structures include rocks, fish, boulders, piers, and beach tiles. Colonies already features some very nice looking decorative items for your game.
Colonies Military
In colonies your military structures are ships for the most part. You have Viking ships and pirate ships on the low end and battleships, aircraft carriers and land bunkers towards the high end of the game. These units help build up your naval power which you can use against other players in the expedition portion of the game. While the selection is limited you can be assured that there will be more great units soon in this expansion to City of Wonder.
Trade
Building trade is the same as the base game here as well. You’ll find rice paddies, pineapple fields, fishing pier, cannery, sea ports, and casinos to help you make more money. Trade structures are a little low right now so hopefully soon more will be added to the game.
Conclusion
Playdom has created a great expansion to City of Wonder. This is the first expansion and more are expected since other areas of the map are locked. The new units and technology are great as is the quiet soundtrack. Be sure you have enough silver in your base city before you play colonies because you’ll need plenty to start out with this new expansion.
