Difference between revisions of "City Upgrades"

Latest revision as of 01:19, 5 October 2024

Overview

City upgrades are special buildings found in the Extensions tab of any house info window, added with the City Update of 2021. Different extensions get unlocked as you progress through the eras of the game. There are three main types of town upgrades: Public Services, Relax and Luxury, and two special: Constructions and Pollution Zone. Last, but not least, you can improve the visual appeal of your town by placing a few Decorations

Houses in these green, blue and purple catchment zones will automatically upgrade to generate more passengers, growing the city. It does not matter which specific extension of each color you build - whether you want to build only Wells, or a varied selection of Wells, Markets and Saloons is up to you. You might find the latter approach more decorative, but the former works just as well.

City extensions must be built with at most 4 empty squares separating it from the nearest city building, or you get the "Must be built within a city" error message. This means that larger stations (stations with many tracks) can make it impossible for the city to grow to "the other side of the tracks". If you start off with a smaller station (no more than four tracks wide), and only expand it once the city has grown to either side, you will be able to place extensions on the other side and make your city grow around your cities.

Buildings bigger than 1x1 have ONE square of their footprint assigned as the "Main" one. That square is the one which must be at the 5th square from the existing town; you might have to rotate the building to be able to place it on desired location.

Growing your city to the "other side of the tracks"

However, you can build a chain of city extensions, and these remain functional even if that chain is later broken. In other words, the proximity requirement only applies to placing these extensions, they remain functional once placed even if you demolish some interspersed ones. This goes for all extensions, including the "Town grow area" one. What this means is: you could temporarily delete a track square, build an extension (such as a Well or anything else), then building another extension four squares beyond that (on the other side of the tracks). If you then delete the extension in the middle of you tracks and rebuild the track, the extension on the other side of the tracks remain and will be functional. You can surround it with "town grow areas" to encourage the city to grow on both sides of your station. This despite none of these new developments being within at most 4 empty squares from any of the "old city" buildings.

You can even use the Advanced game setting "Relocate demolished buildings" (if enabled) to
1) build a couple of town grow areas on the other side of the tracks, then
2) erase a couple of existing houses on the old side of the tracks. You will be able to see how the game relocates those demolished houses to the new part of town! Voila: instant development making it look like your station is surrounded by the city on both sides right away, without having to wait for the city to expand!

How it works

It is important to use overlay when placing the city extensions. It should turn on as default when you try to place an extension, but if it doesn't, press the overlay icon in the upper right corner of your screen . Then select the first icon from the right - The City Upgrades Overlay

The catchment zones will be green around public services buildings, blue around relaxation buildings and purple around luxury buildings.

Warning: luxury buildings will have catchment zones only when activated - you must bring electricity  to the town. 

Each residential building has 4 levels. The number of game ticks for generating the passenger is individual for each house, but number of passengers generated in that given time interval depends on the house level. Each house generates:


Level 1 - One passenger in that given time interval

Level 2 - Two passengers (in the same time interval) if the house is built in either green zone

or blue zone

Level 3 - Three passengers if the house stands in the area covered by both blue and green zones

Level 4 - Four passengers if the house stands on the square covered by all three zones and is electrified. As added boost, activated Luxury upgrade shortens (by 1) the number of game ticks for passenger generating in each house standing in Level 4 zone.
Also, house on level 4 starts new process. It will generate 1 unit of Garbage alongside the passengers.

Public Services

Image	Name	Cost	Amenities (Catchment area)	Building dimension (tiles)	Unlocked at epoch
	Well	700	1	1x1	1
	Market	25	1	1x1	1
	Saloon	200 100	2	1x2	1
	Fire station	150	3	2x1	2
	Elementary school	50 150	3	2x2	2
	Police	150 50	4	2x2	4
	Hospital	400	5	3x2	6
	Hobby Market	3600 10	2	2x2	6

Relax

Image	Name	Cost	Relax (Catchment area)	Building dimension (tiles)	Unlocked at epoch
	Park	2000	2	2x1	3
	Tennis court	200 100	2	2x1	3
	Gallery	3000 100	3	2x2	4
	Football stadium	1000	4	3x2	6

Luxury

Luxury zones are active only if you electrify them.

Image	Name	Cost	Luxury (Catchment area)	Building dimension (tiles)	Unlocked at epoch
	Car dealer	1000 150	2	1x2	6
	Private TV Station	1000 400	4	2x3	6

Construction

You can build a Construction zone at the location where you would like the next house to spawn. Or you can built "Construction prohibited" area, which is a little park without any bonuses, it just prevents the city to spawn a house in that square.

Image	Name	Cost	Building dimension (tiles)
	Town grow area	25	1x1
	Town grow restricted	50	1x1

Pollution Zone

Each and every industrial building (with the exception of Forest) has pollution zone around itself. The size is different for each building and you can see it in the info window.

You can also see it in the city overlay as rusty brown zone around industrial buildings. Train platforms have 1 square pollution zone around themselves, too. The station buildings and decorations do not have pollution zone, neither do the road stations. It is advisable to block the pollution zone at the train station by placing station upgrades and/or decorations around the platforms.

The Pollution zone prevents houses from being upgraded. The effect of the pollution zone is permanent and cannot be canceled by building other city upgrades nearby. You can either have small level 1 houses around industrial buildings as "workers quarters" or you have to place the Construction prohibited extension, or some other extensions, just to prevent the city to spawn houses there.

Decorations

Decorations are just that. They improve your city looks, but have no effect on economy or anything else. You can use unlimited number of them as it pleases your inner architect.

Image	Name	Cost	Building dimension (tiles)
	Alley	300	1x1
	Fountain	200 10	1x1
	Statue	1500	1x1