Colonization · Terrain
Desert
2 food · ore 2 · cotton 1
Poor ground that still pays its way: two ore a tile is real production, and an Oasis makes a desert square worth settling beside rather than around.
What it does
Yields 2 food, 2 ore and 1 cotton, with no defense bonus and open, fast movement. The Oasis resource improves it.
Key details
- Food
- 2
- Movement cost
- 1
- Defense bonus
- +0%
- Commodities
- Ore 2 · Cotton 1
- Bonus resource
- Oasis
About terrain in Colonization
Every square grows food and, usually, exactly one raw commodity — tobacco, cotton, sugar, furs, lumber, ore or silver. A colonist assigned to a tile harvests one of them, an expert in that trade doubles the take, and rivers, plowing and roads add more on top. Forest tiles hide open ground beneath them: a Pioneer's plow clears the trees permanently and leaves the terrain listed on each entry.
Strategy — Read a colony site by what it can specialise in, not by its food alone. You want one strong food tile to grow on and a cluster of squares yielding the same commodity — three prairie tiles of cotton beat six tiles of three different crops, because only concentrated output is worth a master planter, a weaver and a warehouse.
