Forgive me for bad nomenclature, for the purposes of this discussion colony=a city on another continent which exists solely for the purpose of the strat resource that lies within its' borders.
That being said let me relate an interesting anecdote; I noticed that some of my workers were making a break for it--not an unusual event--it used to bother me now I just let one of them go. In this case I had no coal and most of workers weren't doing much except for building fortresses, remember no coal no tracks.
Well any way I followed this one workers journey alll the way across the continent, after he got 3/4 of the way across it appeared as if he was making a beeline towards this unused coal resource situated just outside the cultural boundarys of 2 other civs. By this time I'm fairly desperate so I when he reaches the coal square I tell him establish a colony. I was amazed, but coal then showed up in all my cities strat resource box!!...about 5 turns later I established a city next to the square, did the
temple->ch->lib->cathedral rush build thing and voila had a thriving city whose cultural boundaries ran smack into the neighboring cities center squares in effect stealing half the land from both of them . This all happened while the the 2 affected civs were taking apart the most of the civ that was most powerful during the ancient era, china--which had never gotten access to saltpeter. The moral of this story is, get saltpeter or you're toast.
