Game Rules Guide

Settlers can found a village only on a fully empty regular tile with no owner, garrison, settlement reservation, or other dependency. An exact foreign return movement anchored to a retired Artifact or Barbarian coordinate is the exception: it keeps travelling and does not block reservation or settler arrival. Any other source-side movement is rejected before resources or settlers are spent. If the target becomes unavailable while settlers travel and a source expansion slot remains, they return with the founding resources.