The Colonists — progression guide: what to build and research, in order

The Colonists has no population to grow and no tech tree you can rush: your colony advances when you upgrade a Residence, because Energy comes in three tiers and every tier of building is locked to the matching tier of Energy. That single rule sets the order of everything else — a Level 2 Workshop that demands Energy L2 is dead weight until you have an L2 Residence paying for it, no matter how much research you have banked.

This guide is the material-and-research order for the base game (no New Lands DLC) on the PC build, with the exact costs, build times, ratios and prerequisites taken from the developer's own wiki and the game's published data files. Version written for: v1.9.29 (September 2026).

The spine: energy tier → workshop tier → tech tier

Residences produce exactly 1 Energy per day at every level. They are not housing — they are your power plants, and the Water/Food/Alcohol/Luxury Food going into them is the real cost of research.

Day zero: what the colony ship actually gives you

The Colony Ship lands with 16 Logs and 8 Energy L1 in storage and trickles out up to 1 Log or 1 Energy L1 every 2 days. That trickle is an insurance policy, not a supply line: 16 Logs is roughly your entire Age 1 construction budget, and almost every Age 1 building is paid for in Logs.

The developer's own FAQ gives the opening order: a few Residences, a Well, a food building, a Lumberjack and probably a Forestry — then a stone Surface Mine and a Workshop. Note what is not on that list: no planks. Workshop L1 costs 4 Logs + 4 Stone, so your first research needs no sawmill at all. The sawmill becomes urgent the moment you look at the tech costs below.

The energy loop and its ratios

One Residence L1 per building that burns Energy L1 per day is the floor, and it is never quite enough on a real map because bots walk slowly. The nominal numbers:

And the supply side:

A working Age 1 base — one Surface Mine, one Workshop, one Lumberjack — draws 6 Energy L1/day, which is 6 Residences, 6 Water/day (1.5 Wells) and 6 Food/day (1.5 Sheep Farms). The same Well and the same food later have to feed Breweries and Paper Mills too, so build the second Well before you think you need it.

Keep the food and water off your trunk roads. The standard fix is an energy pod: run Paths (not Roads) from the Well and the food building straight into the Residences so their stackbots deliver directly, and let only the finished Energy leave on the road network. Paths between two buildings let them trade without touching a road post; a Path that merely links two road posts does nothing. Whitelist/blacklist the road post feeding the pod to keep Meat and Water from leaking into the rest of the colony (Transport Rules — C+click copies a rule set, V+click pastes it).

Age 1 research: your first twelve techs

Everything Workshop L1 can research, with the full cost. Times are game days.

Construction I is the single most valuable tech in the game. It unlocks Blacksmith, Blast Furnace, Boatyard, Brewery, Brickyard, Charcoal Burner, Cider Press, Fletcher, Flour Mill, Harbour, Lumberjack Hut L2, Small Monument, Shaft Mine L1 (with Mining I), Orchard, Residence L2, Road Layer L1, Watchtower L2, Wheat Farm and Workshop L2. Take Scaffolding I and Stonemasonry straight away, then Construction I, then Mining I.

Order worth following on a peaceful map: Sawmill first (you cannot pay for tech without planks), then Scaffolding I → Stonemasonry → Construction I → Mining I → Mining Speed I → Science I → Cobbled Roads → Construction Speed I → Coppicing I if your lumberjacks are running out of trees. Armour I and Repair I are pure combat techs; skip them on a peaceful map and take them early on a military one.

Planks and Tools: the two currencies that actually gate you

Planks. Every Workshop L1 tech combined costs 85 Planks, 115 Stone and 10 Logs. That is before you have built a single Age 2 building. One Sawmill makes 2 Planks/day, so two or three sawmills feeding one Workshop is normal, and a Wood Storage Yard next to the Workshop keeps the queue full.

Tools. Every Workshop L2 tech combined costs 390 Tools — plus 60 Bricks, 20 Planks, 20 Iron, 15 Stone, 30 Logs and 20 Clay. A Blacksmith makes 2 Tools/day from 1 Iron + 1 Planks + 0.5 Fuel, so a single Blacksmith would need 195 days to fund the whole Age 2 research tier. Build two or three, with a Blast Furnace each, and accept that Tools are the reason Age 2 feels slow.

Across the whole game the 48 base techs cost 820 Tools, 290 Books and 150 Steel — plan the Tools chain before you plan anything else.

Age 2: what each new resource needs, and what unlocks it

None of these appear until Mining I and Construction I are both in.

Fuel means Coal or Charcoal — either satisfies a recipe that asks for Fuel.

Mining I alone does not get you Iron. Shaft Mine L1 burns 2 Energy L2/day, and Energy L2 only comes from an L2 Residence, which needs Construction I. So the honest Age 2 sequence is: Construction I → Residence L2 + Well/food capacity for the extra residences → Mining I → Shaft Mine L1 or Surface Mine L2 on an Iron/Coal/Clay deposit → Blast Furnace + Charcoal Burner → Blacksmith → Tools → the Workshop L2 tier.

Surface mines sit on surface deposits; shaft mines sit on underground deposits and reach deeper ones. Check the map (M) before you commit — the infinity symbol marks resources that only a shaft mine can reach, and counts mark surface deposits.

The residence ladder

Alcohol is Beer (Brewery: 2 Wheat + 2 Water → 3 Beer, 6 Beer/day; Construction I + Brewing) or Cider (Cider Press: 1 Apple → 2 Cider, 4/day; Construction I). Luxury Food is Bread (Bakery: 2 Flour + 1 Water

• 0.25 Fuel → 2 Bread, 4/day) or Chocolate (Chocolate Factory: 3 Cocoa Beans + 2 Milk → 8 Chocolate,

8/day). Wheat needs Wheat Farming (15 Tools) and a Wheat Farm (10 Stone + 6 Planks, Construction I); Flour needs a Flour Mill (10 Stone + 10 Planks, Construction I + Breadmaking).

Upgrade, don't rebuild. An upgrade keeps the building producing at its old level until the upgrade finishes, and reuses the materials already spent — an L2 → L3 Residence upgrade needs 4 Stone, 4 Planks and 8 Bricks instead of 8/8/8. The catch is that the superseded materials are gone: the L1 Residence's 2 Logs are lost forever when you upgrade to L2, and a badly placed building stays badly placed.

Transport progression

Roads carry resources between Road Posts; Paths carry them between buildings. Roads are 4 to 6 tiles long, hold one Carrybot each, and each end post holds a maximum of 4 resources — when a post is full the carrybot stops and shows a red exclamation mark above its head. That is the single most common cause of a stalled colony.

Shorter roads are strictly better: halving a road's length doubles the number of carrybots serving the same distance, so trunk routes should be a chain of short 4-tile hops rather than one long meandering road. Diagonal roads also help, because carrybots cut corners. Where a route saturates, "braid" it — two parallel roads sharing the same posts with a Storage Yard as a switch — which is another way of saying "more than one carrybot per post".

Sea and rail come later and cost real research:

• Boatyard (12 Stone + 6 Planks, Construction I + Boatbuilding I) → Clipper. Boatbuilding II

(20 Planks + 20 Iron) unlocks the Lugger. Harbour (8 Stone + 4 Planks, Construction I) takes one boat; the Large Harbour (4 Stone + 8 Planks + 12 Bricks, Construction II) takes three and has a construction queue of 24 instead of 12.

• Steam Engines I (15 Iron + 30 Tools) unlocks the Train Station, Tracks, Trains and One Way

Signals. A Train Station costs 10 Planks + 10 Bricks + 10 Steel and needs Construction II; Steam Engines II adds 30% train hopper capacity.

Every building has to be connected by road or path to something with a Bot Printer — the Colony Ship, Harbour, Large Harbour, Train Station and Large Storage Yard all have one — and each bot takes 120 game ticks to print. On a big map, print bots at both ends of the colony: multiple printers put bots into service much faster than one.

Age 3: Steel, Glass, Books and the Workshop L3 tier

Workshop L3 costs 12 Planks + 12 Bricks + 12 Iron, needs Construction II, and burns 3 Energy L3/day — so Residence L3, so Alcohol and Luxury Food, comes first. Almost everything at Workshop L3 costs Books as well as Tools and Steel, and Books are the longest chain in the base game:

Logs + Water → Paper (Paper Mill, 3 Logs + 2 Water → 2 Paper, 4/day, Construction II) → Leather in (Tannery, 1 Hide + 1 Salt → 1 Leather, 2/day; Hide from a Cow Farm) → Books (Printing Press, 2 Paper + 1 Leather → 1 Books, 2/day; needs Construction II + Printing I, and Printing I itself costs 30 Tools + 30 Paper).

The exceptions are worth knowing: Coppicing III, Armour III and Repair III are the only Workshop L3 techs that need no Books.

Quartz, Salt and Gold only come out of the ground at Surface Mine L3 (12 Planks + 12 Bricks, Construction II + Mining II, 2 Energy L3/day: up to 6 Stone, 3 Clay/Iron Ore/Coal, 2 Salt/Quartz/Gold per day) or Shaft Mine L2 (12 Planks + 12 Bricks: 6 Stone, 4 Clay/Iron Ore/Coal, 2.7 Salt/Quartz/Gold). Quartz feeds Glass (Glassworks: 2 Quartz + 1 Fuel → 1 Glass, 2/day, Construction II + Glassmaking); Salt feeds Leather; Gold is only needed for Cannons III and the Large Monument.

Monuments

Monuments speed up production, road transport and boat/train loading; the boosted buildings then need more input to keep up, so the boost is not free. They are also the most common victory condition.

The full research reference

Category, prerequisites, cost and time for all 48 base-game techs, grouped by the Workshop that can research them.

Workshop L1 (12 techs)

Workshop L2 (21 techs)

Workshop L3 (15 techs)

Effects worth stating explicitly: Mining Speed I/II/III add +10%/+25%/+50% mining speed; Coppicing I/II/III add +15%/+30%/+50% tree growth; Construction Speed I/II/III add +20%/+50%/+100% build speed; Science I/II/III add +10%/+25%/+50% research speed; Engineering I/II add +20%/+50% boat and train speed; Steam Engines II adds 30% train hopper capacity; Printing II adds 50% Printing Press speed.

Science and Construction Speed levels matter more than they look: research takes days, and a 50% research speed bonus pays for itself across the 48 techs.

Victory conditions

Maps can carry up to three of: Domination (capture enemy colony ships), Construct Building, Cash Balance, Supply Task, Resource Storage, Recover Crashed Colony Ship, and — on time-limited multiplayer maps — Most Money or Most Victory Points. Runestones generate 1 point per day (small) or 2 per day (large) while inside your territory, boosted by Monuments. Territory only grows when a Guardbot occupies a finished Watchtower — 11 tiles at L1, 14 at L2, 17 at L3 — and everything inside a watchtower's exclusive area burns when that tower is removed, so place them on the border, not in the middle of your base.

Traps that cost new players their first ten hours

1. Storage Yards accept nothing by default. A new Storage Yard holds zero resources until you set a

rule for each resource you want it to hold. Building one and wondering why it stays empty is the classic first mistake.

1. The outgoing queue holds 8 (1 for a Residence). Once it is full, production stops. If a building

is idle and its output has nowhere to go, that is why.

1. A full Road Post holds 4 resources and the carrybot waits. Long chains of congested road posts

will silently throttle an otherwise healthy production line; watch for red exclamation marks.

1. Resources with no valid destination are destroyed, and a resource already en route will keep

travelling to a far destination even if a nearer source appears. Fix it with Transport Rules, not with extra roads.

1. One long road is worse than several short ones. Halving road length doubles the carrybots serving

that stretch.

1. You can always still build Level 1 buildings. If you run out of stone, Watchtower L1 (8 Logs) and

Surface Mine L1 (3 Logs) keep the colony moving — and you can dismantle stone-built buildings to recover the stone.

1. Surface Mine L1 only mines Stone. Clay, Iron Ore and Coal all need Mining I (20 Planks) first.
2. Brickmaking is a dead tech until Mining I. The Brickyard needs Clay (20 Clay to research it), and

the only Clay sources are Surface Mine L2 and Shaft Mine L1.

1. Mining I does not give you a working shaft mine. Shaft Mine L1 burns 2 Energy L2/day, which means

Construction I → Residence L2 before it will run at all.

1. The Workshop tier is gated by residences, not research. Workshop L2 needs Energy L2; Workshop L3

needs Energy L3. Build the Residences before you queue the research.

1. Shaft mines must sit on an underground deposit (Stone, Clay, Iron Ore, Coal at L1/L2; the extra

Salt/Quartz/Gold at L2). Surface mines sit on surface deposits. Use the map's infinity symbol to tell them apart before you place anything.

1. Dismantle, don't destroy, if you might want the materials back: dismantling recovers the

construction resources and anything in the building's buffers, over time. Destroying is instant and recovers nothing.

1. Upgrading loses the superseded materials — the 2 Logs in an L1 Residence are gone when you

upgrade it — but it does keep the building producing during the upgrade.

1. A construction site's queue is 12 items (24 for a Large Harbour), spread evenly across the

resource types it needs. A big four-resource building therefore stalls with fewer than 3 of each type on hand; stage materials in a nearby Storage Yard.

1. Nothing works without a bot printer. Harbour, Large Harbour, Train Station, Large Storage Yard

and the Colony Ship have printers; a distant outpost with none of them will starve for bots.

1. Food and water should not travel your trunk roads. Deliver them straight into the residences on

Paths and let only the Energy leave.

1. Watchtowers fire, and L2/L3 need research: Watchtower L2 needs Construction I + Arrows I (20 Logs

• 10 Stone); Watchtower L3 needs Construction II + Cannons I (10 Iron, 20 Tools, 10 Books). On a

military map, Arrows I is a defensive tech, not an optional one.

1. Frontier maps change the rules. The monthly Frontier is a different map every month with

modifiers (doubled construction costs, no surface resources, residences on milk instead of water, and so on). Nothing in this guide assumes Frontier rules.

Sources

Version: The Colonists v1.9.29, PC (Steam / GOG / Epic), released 1 September 2026 — the latest entry in the developer's own patch notes. The republic's last base-game balance pass was V1.5.12 (June 2021), and the 1.9.x series since has been Frontiers plus quality-of-life fixes, so the building and tech data below still matches the live build.

Sources used:

• The developer's official wiki (Codebyfire/Mode 7): <http://codebyfire.com/colonists/wiki/index.php/Main_Page> — pages Building, Building Construction Initial Sourcing, Research, Research Resources, Resource, Natural Resource, Energy, Fuel, Understanding Energy, Understanding Research, Roads and Paths, Transport Rules, Resource Routing, Local Storage Buffers, Storing Resources, Optimization, Territory & Map, Placing Buildings, Miscellaneous Tools, Tree, FAQ, Getting Started, Campaigns, Victory Conditions, Runestones, Frontiers, Monument, Patch Notes, plus the individual building and tech pages (Workshop L1–L3, Surface Mine L1–L3, Shaft Mine L1–L2, Well, Residence L1, Vegetable Farm, Colony Ship).
• The game's own data files, published by the developer for modders: <https://github.com/codebyfire/colonists-base-codex> (all_buildings.json, buildings/, all_techs.json, techs/, all_resources.json). Every construction cost, build time, energy/fuel rate, prerequisite and research cost in this guide was read out of these files.
• Official site: <https://thecolonistsgame.com/>
• Steam patch notes and announcements: <https://steamcommunity.com/app/677340/allnews/>

Where the sources disagree, the game data files win, and the differences are noted here so you can check them yourself:

• Build times. The wiki's master Building table lists construction times about 17% shorter than the

game data (Workshop L1 0.8 day against 1.0; Small Monument 13.3 days against 16). The individual building pages and infoboxes agree with the game data, so this guide uses the game-data values.

• Steelworks. The wiki table says 3.3 Steel/day; the game data gives 1.5 production cycles per day

producing 2 Steel each, i.e. 3.0/day. Treat it as roughly 3 per day.

• Armour I / Repair I. The Workshop L1 page lists both as 20 Logs + 10 Stone; the Research table

and the game files both say 10 Planks + 10 Stone. 10 Planks + 10 Stone is correct.

• Repair III requires Repair II in the game files; the wiki's Research table lists Armour II, which

appears to be a wiki error.

• Tech names. The game files call Brickmaking, Breadmaking and Brewing "Brickmaking I", "Breadmaking

I" and "Brewing I", and Paved Roads is "Brick Roads" in the data. The wiki names are used here.

One source was checked and discarded: the Fandom wiki (thecolonists.fandom.com) has 82 content pages and almost all of them are empty stubs. No number in this guide comes from it.