City Upgrades

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.

Era	Public Services	Relax	Luxury
Early Steam	Well
	Market
	Saloon
Steam	Elementary School
Early Diesel	Fire Station	Park
		Tennis Court
Diesel	Police	Gallery
Early Electric			Car Dealer
			Private TV Station
Electric	Hospital	Football Stadium
	Hobby Market

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. Also, activated Luxury upgrade shortens by one the number of game ticks for passenger generating in each house standing in Level 4 zone.

Public Services

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

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	Details	Available from Era	Building Tile Size
		5	1x2
		5	2x3

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 next house in that square.

Image	Details	Available from Era	Building Tile Size
		1	1x1
		1	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 block the area.

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.