Welcome to our Forge of Empires Colonial Age Guide. Today, we will be talking through the 7th era in Forge of Empires. It follows the Late Middle Ages the Industrial Age comes after. The Colonial era includes eight provinces to conquer: Narcien, Lavignon, Troulope, Lombardeaux, Deuxerres, Varseilles, Pisterrac, and Haulenois.
Forge Of Empires Colonial Age
Before we decide to research the first technology of the Colonial Age, we first fill both technologies, Muskets and Maritime Shipping, full of Forge points.
This is a proven strategy at the beginning of each Age to shorten the time when you already have New Age difficulty levels in your guild expedition but don’t have New Age units yet.
Then the time has finally come. The seventh age is reached. There is a reward for this and some items will be unlocked immediately.
These are mainly premium buildings, which are only built using diamonds. But you can get along very well without these buildings.
We would rather save diamonds for other purposes, especially since these premium buildings will be mediocre in the next age.
Today you can hardly imagine that the game once ended with the LMA and that on October 15th, 2012 the Colonial Age was the first new age added to the game.
It still largely follows the familiar knitting pattern of the previous ages.
Compared to the late Middle Ages, the costs for buildings were increased again.
The demand for coins and supplies is gigantic. The travel times of the scout exceed 24 hours for the first time and the construction times, for example for residential buildings, are among the longest in the whole game and were reduced again significantly in later ages.
If you are one of the lucky players who find the raw materials paper and coffee on the map, you can save yourself the exploration of porcelain and industrial goods completely.
The porcelain manufactory and the tar kiln are larger buildings and therefore less popular.
So it can sometimes be more difficult to get these goods by trading. Since Colonial Age goods are used as a raw material in Modern Era as so-called unrefined goods for the production of refined goods, it is worthwhile to produce larger stocks of these goods, which far exceed the current demand. This makes it a little easier later on.
There is a quest that can be aborted, which wishes to explore all goods technologies.
However, it does not offer any significant rewards.
Another tip for the side quest series: If you want to reduce the population, you don’t necessarily have to demolish cultural buildings to do so.
Removing a single piece of street can already bring about the desired success.
The research alone, without the new buildings, extensions and military units, devours exactly 1,000 forge points, 115,337 coins and 421,870 supplies.
It takes about 1.5 months to get all the Forge points from the city hall. Whoever builds 40 gambral roof houses in the colonial era will need 320,000 coins and 1.2 million supplies.
Since colonial buildings also require significantly more population, many players think of constructing a great building for population early.
The military buildings and their expansion to 4 units each are also extremely expensive. In short: Even considerable reserves of coins and supplies are quickly exhausted in the Colonial Age.
In addition to the many forge points, a large number of goods are needed for research.
If you follow our advice to never demolish goods buildings up to and including those of the LMA without having a stock of more than 300 per good, you will have no problems.
If you are missing these goods, it is better to stay in the LMA and create the necessary conditions, e.g. by exchanging the required Colonial Age goods for LMA goods.
Nobody wants to get stuck in the middle of development.
After all, at the end of the colonial age technology tree, colonial age goods are still needed. You can exchange LMA goods for them or quickly conquer the provinces with the goods and build the two colonial goods productions, which will also fulfill the accompanying quests.
You get one last time three area expansions through research. In future ages there will be only two per age through research and the city will grow slower than before.
Two additional expansions can be bought with diamonds as at the beginning of each age and two more can be bought after conquering the respective provinces.
With time the city will also change optically. The colors of the Colonial Age are only slowly asserting themselves.
The two great buildings of the Colonial Age are the Deal-Castle and the Frauenkirche of Dresden.
The Frauenkirche offers some satisfaction and produces goods daily.
If you invest a lot of forge points in this building, you will tend to develop more slowly than other players. However, it makes the game easier and mistakes of the player are mitigated.
So this building makes the game a bit easier. Players who have an increased need for goods, whether for GvG or for negotiations during the guild expedition, also like this building.
The Deal Castle improves the attack and defense of the city defense, increases the gvg reinforcement pool of your guild and gives medals every 24 hours.
The medals may be tempting at first. But the quantities are rather manageable.
A great building has to convince with other strengths. Compared to the observatory, the positive effect on the guild’s reinforcement pool is rather marginal.
The effect of the bonuses for the city defense works. No city is impregnable, but if something makes life harder for the looters, then the bonuses of this building – as already with the Basilius Cathedral of the LMA. With the introduction of the PvP Arena this building becomes even more important.
In the LMA we had replaced all residential buildings with apartment houses.
This is still the relevant type of housing even during most of the development within the Colonial Age. Only very late in the technology tree the gambral roof house can be developed.
Replacing all residential buildings with gambral roof houses immediately eats up gigantic amounts of coins and supplies.
But you can’t really get around it, because the demand for population is gigantic and space is actually always scarce.
The expensive replacement of the houses only brings about 25% more population, so it cannot cover the growing demand alone. Additional houses have to be built.
The most interesting supply production building is the tobacco plantation. It requires slightly less space than the HMA farms, but produces more.
As a relatively large building, it benefits especially from bonuses of great buildings and the motivation of other players.
With the trading company, the colonial era offers a very efficient cultural building, but it is also very expensive again, especially in terms of the required supplies.
The academies of the LMA will therefore keep most of them for the time being and only older cultural buildings, e.g. churches, will be replaced step by step.
The city you can see in the video tends to have a little more cultural buildings than usual, as I can’t get any polish on the test center sometimes.
Most players will certainly manage with significantly fewer cultural buildings than in my example.
When the colonial military buildings are finally in place, the city looks quite different.
Guide courtesy of FOE Hints.
Click here to visit the video on YouTube, or watch below:
Hi, I’m Lucas – a passionate and experienced Forge of Empires player and the editor here at ForgeofEmpiresTips.com. If I am not playing the game, I am learning more about the game’s new and upcoming features or writing strategy guides here.