Founding a Colony with MineColonies

Comrades, a town is a plan made in stone. With MineColonies, citizens of the Commonwealth found colonies where workers (builders, farmers, miners, cooks, guards) live and labour together. This lecture takes you from the first camp to a working colony.

Before you found one, ask: where? A colony claims the land around it. On common land, raise the matter in the council or with the game master first, so colonies do not crowd one another and the plan can count on them.

The build tool and blueprints

Every building in MineColonies starts as a hut block, and every hut block is placed with the build tool. Hold a hut block and use it: a window opens with a ghost of the building. Choose a style (the look of the whole colony), turn and move the ghost until it sits well, and confirm. The hut block is placed and a work order goes to the builders.

The buildings are blueprints (older guides say schematics), carried by the Structurize mod. The scan tool saves anything you have built as a blueprint of your own. The recipe book shows how every hut block is made; each is crafted around the build tool.

The first steps

1. The camp. Start with a supply camp on land or a supply ship on water. Placing it builds a small camp with a chest of starting supplies.
2. The town hall. Place the town hall hut block. This founds the colony and claims the land around it. A few citizens arrive to live in it.
3. The builder. Place a builder's hut and give it a worker (in the hut's window, or let the colony assign one). The builder raises every other building, starting with his own hut and the town hall.
4. Materials. The builder asks for what each building needs. Look at his requests in his hut's window, or carry a clipboard, which lists every open request of the colony. Put the goods in the builder's hut and he takes them from there.

Feeding and housing the citizens

Citizens have needs, and a colony whose needs are met works harder:

• Food. Early on, give the citizens food yourself. Then build a farm with a farmer and fields, and a restaurant with a cook, where citizens go to eat.
• Housing. Each citizen needs a bed in a residence. More residences, and higher levels of them, let the colony grow.
• Safety. A colony that has grown attracts raiders, who come by land or sea depending on where the colony lies. Build a guard tower (one guard) or barracks with towers (many), and give the guards weapons and armour.
• Health. A hospital cares for sick and wounded citizens.
• Company. A tavern brings visitors, whom you may invite to join the colony.

Each citizen shows how content they are; low happiness means lower work. The town hall's window shows the whole colony at a glance.

Getting goods where they are needed

As the colony grows, carrying every request by hand becomes impossible. Build a warehouse and hire a courier: the courier fetches what workers ask for from the warehouse and carries their products back. Keep the warehouse stocked, and the colony runs itself. The Professor of Engineering shows how Create can feed a warehouse (/cw lecture engineering 2).

Levels and upgrades

Every hut has levels, usually one to five. Upgrade a hut from its window; the builder receives the work order and asks for the materials. Higher levels bring more workers, better products and new abilities. Some huts and levels also need research at the University; the Director of Research lectures on it (/cw lecture research 1). As far as the Academy knows, a builder can only build up to the level of his own hut, so upgrade the builder's hut early. The hut's own window is always the authority on what an upgrade needs.

Comrades in the colony

The town hall's window also sets permissions. Add your comrades to the colony so they may build and work in it: a colony of the Commonwealth is a common work, not a private estate.

What next

My second lecture is on building well (streets, light, materials and the style of the Commonwealth): /cw lecture architecture 2. Questions: /cw ask professor-architecture <question>.