Grow your Colonies
Every tile you own belongs to a Colony, either as its Core or as one of its Holdings. Marching onto open ground claims nothing: you gain ground by growing a Colony, founding a new one, or taking a rival's whole.
The Core and its Holdings
The Core is the Colony's heart, a single tile. Every building except the producers stands there: the Academy, the Barracks, the Workshop, the storehouses and the rest. The Core holds the Colony's stockpile, its wall and its emplacements, and it is the only place the Colony can be besieged and captured.
Holdings are the tiles around it. Each carries exactly one producer, a Gold Mine, a Quarry or a Farm, and that is where the Colony's income comes from. A Holding keeps no stockpile. It can be raided but never taken on its own: whoever captures the Core takes every Holding with it.
Growing a Colony
A new Colony starts with its Core and the six Holdings around it. The Surveyor's Office is what lets it grow: every level lets you claim one more Holding, from the open tiles touching the Colony, nearest ring first. Among equally near tiles the choice is yours, and a Colony can grow out to three full rings.
The Industrialist claims one more Holding per Colony than anyone else.
Founding new Colonies
A Pioneer founds a Colony and is spent doing it. Send one to a spot whose whole first ring is free, with no camp, no landmark and nobody's tile on it. If the ground is taken by the time it arrives, it walks home.
You may found one Colony beyond your first for every level of Colonization you research, and the Expansionist charters one more. Colonies you capture never count against that allowance, and a Colony you lose frees its place. There is no range limit: distance only costs travel time.
Choose your ground
Where you settle matters. The ground under a Holding decides how much its producer yields: a Gold Mine on the right hills out-earns the same mine on open plains, and a Farm wants the plains. The ground under a Core changes nothing about production, only how fast armies cross it.
Read the land before you found and before you claim: a Colony surrounded by the right terrain pays for itself for the rest of the world.
Loading the terrains.
Every Colony pays its own way
Each Colony keeps its own gold, materials and food. Whatever you do at a Colony is paid from that Colony's stockpile, and a Colony that is short never borrows from its siblings. Move resources between your Colonies, or to an ally, with Baggage Trains.
Storehouses at the Core cap each stockpile, and whatever arrives beyond the cap is lost. Research and class perks, on the other hand, apply to every Colony at once.
Food and upkeep
Every unit eats from its home Colony each turn, wherever it stands: training, marching, or holding a landmark far away. Food is the one stockpile that can fall below zero.
A Colony in food debt produces less gold and materials, and the deeper the debt the harder it bites, up to a limit. No unit ever starves or deserts. More Farms, and the right ground under them, are the way out.
The capital
Your first Colony is your capital. Its Core holds out longer under siege and its buildings climb higher than any other Colony's. Spying is paid from its treasury.
Lose it and your oldest remaining Colony becomes the capital. Whoever captures it gets an ordinary Colony: the capital's extra strength does not change hands.
Moving between Colonies
Armies and Baggage Trains march tile by tile. Your own and your allies' ground is crossed at full pace, anyone else's more slowly, and rough terrain slows everyone. An army on the march cannot be attacked.