Sail to the shore of the island that you have chosen and build a warehouse, which will be the base of your new settlements.Transfer the supplies you brought with you by clicking on the ship in the status mode and then on the wooden crate which will appear in the menu. This will bring you to the loading menu, where you can unload your ship by clicking first on the supply you want to unload and then on the arrow pointing up. Now you can start with the actual colonization.

The catchment area, or service area, of each building and of the settlement as a whole is extremely important. The total service area of the settlement consists of the sum of the service areas of the warehouse and any market places that have been built. Construction is limited to this area, displayed in the light green on the game screen. The only way to increase this area is by building more market places.

The service area of each building refers to the area serviced by that particular building. During construction this area appears as a yellow frame around the building. You can display the service area of a building at any time by clicking on it in the status mode. It will then be displayed in light green.

Begin building your settlement by entering the construction mode and clicking on the desired building or object in the appropriate sub-menu. Keeping your citizenry satisfied should always be your main goal. Start off by making sure that there is always enough material, such as wood, bricks, and tools, on hand for construction and that there is always enough food to keep your settlers fed.To this end, first set up a forester in a forest, a fisherman on the coast, and then build a number of houses. Use streets and roads to connect all of the above with the warehouse, so that everyone has equal access to all the resources. Carters with market wagons automatically transfer the goods from the producer to the warehouse and the marketplace.

If you can't erect a particular building, check the "status" line at the top of the screen to see if you have enough construction material on hand, and also make sure that you are building inside the settlement's service area. When building a chain of production you must ensure that the resource-based production units, such as the wheat farm shown in the screenshot on the right, are located within the service areas of the industrial production units, in this case the windmill and bakery. The warehouse, or a marketplace, forms the final, and most important, link in the chain.These are the only places from which it's possible to distribute the goods to the population, or to sell them to a third party.

Always watch the production levels of each unit you build! In order to check the current production level of any unit, click on it in the "info" mode and look at the display, shown in percent of maximum. To ensure maximum production on a farm, a plantation, or from a forester, always make sure that the entire service area of the unit in question is planted with the correct crop.The service areas for sheep and cattle ranches should be completely deforested in order to supply the maximum amount of grazing land.