What $464K buys
Every new plot starts with $464K, and nothing is free: the city gets no starting power or water. All prices in the game are set in won and shown in dollars at a fixed 1,400 won per dollar, so the figures below are what an English screen shows. The opening the guide checklist asks for (25 street tiles, a wind turbine, a water works, 20 tiles of industry and 40 of homes) costs about $116K, leaving roughly three-quarters of your money.
Everything you build also adds to the city’s assets, and every settlement 0.5% of that total is charged as wear. A $53.6K turbine therefore costs $268 a settlement on top of its operating cost, for as long as it stands.
- Roads: street $321 a tile, avenue $857. A bridge tile costs six times the road and three times its upkeep.
- Subway: $7.14K a tile.
- Zoning: $14 a tile. Erasing a zone is free.
- Utilities: wind turbine $53.6K (3,000 people), water works $53.6K (18,000 people), thermal plant $107K (14,000 people).
- Services: fire station and police station $25K each, school $32.1K, clinic $50K, park $25K, sports court $44.3K, university $429K.
Low, medium or high density
You choose the density when you paint a zone, and the city pays an infrastructure share each time a building rises on a tile. That share is $214 a tile at high density and scales down with capacity, so low-density homes cost about $23 a tile to develop, low-density shops $18 and low-density industry $21.
Capacity per tile is what density buys. Homes hold 1.0, 3.3 or 9.4 people at low, medium and high density; shops hold 0.5, 2.0 or 6.0 jobs; industry 0.3, 1.5 or 3.0 jobs; farms 0.6, 1.0 or 1.6 jobs.
Repainting a developed tile with a higher density of the same zone keeps the building and charges the zoning fee plus the difference in infrastructure share. Painting a lower density or a different zone empties the building, and the confirmation counts how many will go.
What the demand bars measure
The Homes, Commercial and Industry bars are pressures, and each compares a want with what exists:
- Homes: jobs against workers. Half of all residents work, and jobs include shops, industry, farms and public facilities. A low Homes bar means the city is short of jobs (or appeal is low), not of houses.
- Commercial: each resident (and each visitor brought by an airport or station) wants 0.44 shop jobs.
- Industry: 0.9 jobs for every shop job, plus 350 jobs of outside demand that exists even in an empty plot. That fixed outside demand is why industry is the zone that starts a new city.
- Farms: one farm job feeds 60 residents, plus 30 jobs of produce sold outside.
The low-density shop problem
Put those numbers together and one thing stands out. A low-density shop tile holds 0.5 jobs, and every resident wants 0.44 shop jobs, so a town of low-density homes needs almost as many tiles of low-density shops as of homes before the Commercial bar settles. Commercial zoning is capped at 22% of buildable land against 40% for homes, so a low-density town runs out of shop land first.
Medium-density shops hold four times as many jobs per tile, so raising shop density is usually the cheapest fix when the Commercial bar stays high. Shops also have the shortest road reach of the three: they only develop within 3 tiles of a road, against 4 for homes and industry and 8 for farms.
Where tax comes from
At the default 9% rate, each settlement collects $7.14 per resident, $10.7 per shop job, $8.57 per industry job and $5 per farm job. Each amount scales in direct proportion to its own slider: 12% residential tax collects a third more from residents than 9%. Farms pay at the industrial rate, and airport visitors spend at the commercial rate.
Appeal uses the average of the three rates, not each one. If one base is much larger in your city, you can lean the tax onto it and lower another slider by the same amount without changing appeal.
Where money goes
Per resident, each settlement costs $0.64 for utility supplies, $0.43 for disaster insurance and $0.79 for services at a 100% budget. The supplies and services lines are multiplied by a network factor of 1 + population ÷ 220,000, so they cost more per head as the city grows. Roads cost $6.43 a settlement per street tile and $17.1 per avenue tile, a little more on diagonals; subway costs $71 per tile.
Industry has one more line: imported raw materials at $5.71 per industry job. Against $8.57 of tax, an industry job nets under $3 before anything else, while a shop job brings in $10.7 with no import line. Factories earn their place mainly by creating shop and home demand. Feeding the city from farms cuts the import bill by up to 30%, and road links with neighbours make imports cheaper still.
When each service starts to count
Service quality is a weighted sum: school 26%, clinic 20%, fire 18%, police 18%, university 10%, park 5% and sports courts 3%. Below a service’s threshold population, the city counts it as fully satisfied even if you have none. From the threshold to twice the threshold, the need rises gradually to full weight.
Each facility also has a capacity. Past it, the facility’s effect falls in proportion: one school serves 22,000 people, so at 44,000 residents its coverage counts for half. The tooltip on each facility in the build menu shows its radius, capacity and threshold.
- Fire station: needed from 9,000, radius 55 tiles, serves 30,000.
- School: from 11,000, radius 48, serves 22,000.
- Police station: from 14,000, radius 55, serves 30,000.
- Park: from 18,000, radius 30 (it already reduces pollution before that).
- Clinic: from 22,000, radius 65, serves 40,000.
- Sports court: from 30,000, radius 22.
- University: from 45,000, radius 95, serves 70,000.
Why building early costs you
A facility built before it is needed adds nothing to quality but still costs money. Operating cost follows use, but never drops below 20% of its base value. A school built at 2,000 residents costs about $514 a settlement to run plus $161 of wear, for no benefit until 11,000. If your funds go negative, the city’s advice is to demolish such idle facilities before raising tax.
Upkeep also grows with the city. Between 10,000 and 60,000 residents, operating costs rise from base to mature values: a fire or police station from $1.71K to $13.9K a settlement, a school from $2.57K to $19.7K, a clinic from $4.29K to $25.5K, and a water works from $2.36K to $5.89K. Before placing a facility, read the build preview: it shows the money left after construction, the extra cost per settlement, and at a deficit how many full settlements your funds will last.
Power and water together
Power and water are both measured in people served, and the city uses whichever of the two is worse. That value multiplies appeal and also caps how many people your homes can hold, so a surplus of one does nothing while the other is short. One water works covers 18,000 people, as much as six well-spaced turbines; a single thermal plant covers 14,000 but adds 2.5 points of citywide pollution. Utilities are the one service needed from the first resident, so they are never idle buildings.
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