Pro membership

What it gives

It gives twelve things. The first is a Pro mark beside your name: it shows in the ranking, on an island as a city's owner, in chat and on the diplomacy and alliance screens. The second is Seals, given at regular intervals for as long as your membership runs; the amount and the interval are on the Pro page. The third is a construction queue: while a city is building you line up the next jobs, and when one ends the next starts by itself. The fourth is moving the buildings of your city: you put a building on an empty plot, or swap two buildings; how it works is in The City and its Plots. The fifth is the panel that opens when you hover over the figures in the top bar: it shows all your cities one under another, each one’s goods, how full its warehouse is and its free citizens, and pressing a row takes you to that city. If you are not a Pro member and have more than one city, the panel opens locked: the city you are in can be read, your other cities stay blurred, and the button at the foot of the panel takes you to the Pro page. On a phone, the "All cities" part of the Treasury and store page shows only your other cities' names and the same button. The sixth is the Life screen showing all your cities in one table: each city’s people, housing, happiness, growth and Gold side by side, with the cities that need your eye at the top; pressing a row opens that city’s own Life page. Without Pro the Life screen stays the page of the city you are in, and its “All cities” option leads to the Pro page. The seventh is the Economy screen showing all your cities in two tables: each city’s tax, wages, military upkeep and net, with its goods, output and how full its warehouse is, side by side, and the cities running a deficit, or whose full warehouse has stopped their output, at the top; pressing a row opens that city’s own Economy page. Without Pro the Economy screen stays the page of the city you are in, and its “All cities” option leads to the Pro page. The eighth is the Army screen showing all your cities on one page: the units in each city with their pictures, the armies on the road, the battles and the military upkeep of all your cities are read together, with the cities that have an enemy marching on them, are under siege or are held by another player at the top; from each city’s menu you give an order from that city, send soldiers to it, disband soldiers there, or open the city’s own Army page. Without Pro the Army screen stays the page of the city you are in, and its “All cities” option leads to the Pro page. The ninth is notifications on your phone or in your browser: when a building is finished, your army gets home or an army sets out against one of your cities, you are told even while the game is closed. The tenth is subject tabs in the bell and on the Activity page: you read your record as war, army, building, trade, empire, alliance and messages, each tab showing its own unread count, and the bell's panel is wider to hold them. Without Pro your record is one list. The eleventh is the receiving warehouse when you send goods to one of your own cities: each good shows how much of it that city holds, and below that how much free room its warehouse has now; if the load will not fit, you are told how much does not. Without Pro you learn this by switching to that city and looking. The twelfth is ships that don't come back empty: when you send goods, you choose what the ships bring back from the far city, as a share of the hold for each good; to bring goods from another player's city you need their consent (Ships that don't come back empty). Without Pro the ships come back empty.

Pro belongs to a world: the mark shows in that world, the construction queue works in that world's cities, the Seal gift goes into that world's purse and the notifications tell you what happens there. If you play in two worlds, each has its own Pro; the Pro page lists your worlds and shows which of them are Pro.

Pro gives no edge in battle. Notifications tell you nothing new; they bring you what anyone can see in the game while the game is closed. Nor does the construction queue make any building cheaper or faster; it only starts the next job while you are away. Moving buildings gains nothing either: the layout is only how the city looks, and production, defence and battle do not look at which plot a building stands on. The panel in the top bar tells you nothing new either: you could collect the same information by visiting your cities one by one, and the panel only shortens the walk. No soldier, ship, resource or speed can be bought with money or Seals; your production, your army, your research and your speed follow the same rules as everyone else's. The most Seals can bring is a small comfort: with Seals you can commission a custom monument, and a custom monument gives more happiness than a standard one. That is the same for everyone, whether they bought their Seals or were given them. The Seals article tells what else Seals make; apart from holiday days, all of it is appearance only.

The Seal gift

The first gift is added to your purse in that world on the day your Pro membership begins, and the same amount arrives at regular intervals for as long as it runs. When you spend them, gifted Seals are no different from Seals you bought, but they belong to that world: a spend uses them first, and when the world closes they end with it.

If your membership ends and later begins again, nothing builds up for the time in between: the gift comes on the day you start again. The dates of your latest gift and the next one are on the Pro page.

A free start

In every new world you join you are Pro for your first days, free; the Pro page says how many. This free period is given once per e-mail inbox in each world: the same world does not give a second one. Deleting your account and opening it again with the same address, adding a plus-sign tag to the address or putting dots in a Gmail address does not bring a new one in that world, because all of these addresses land in the same inbox. Nor can a second account be opened on the same inbox: each player has one account.

The subscription

To carry on you take a monthly subscription. The subscription is for whichever world is chosen on the Pro page. The payment page is the payment provider's own; your card details are never typed into the game.

The subscription renews itself every month. You may stop it whenever you like: when you do, you stay Pro until the end of the month you paid for, and then the mark goes. Stopping it changes nothing in your game.

Pro lasts as long as the months that have been paid for. If your card cannot be charged on the renewal day, Pro ends at the end of the month you paid for; the payment provider tries your card a few more times, and on the day a payment goes through Pro runs on to the end of the renewed month. If a month you paid for is refunded to you, or you get the money back by disputing the charge with your bank, that month of Pro is taken back too, and a disputed subscription also ends. A world has one subscription at a time.

A subscription is bound to its world

A subscription is bound to the world it was bought for and does not move to another. For Pro in another world as well, you subscribe for that world separately. In the mobile app, Pro bought through the App Store or Google Play can be in only one world at a time, because the store holds one subscription at a time on an account; the app's Pro page says so, and you can subscribe for another world on the website.

Before a world closes, Pro stops being sold there and subscriptions bought on the website stop renewing; the world stays open until the last paid period has run out. A month you paid for is never cut short because a world closes. The game cannot stop a subscription bought in a store from renewing. So, as the only exception, your store subscription moves to your next world and carries on there: to the world you played most recently, if you have a player in another world, or otherwise to the first world you join. To stop it, use the store's own settings.

If you delete your account, every subscription you bought on the website, whichever world it is for, is cancelled the moment the deletion becomes final. While you can still change your mind, the subscription carries on; if you restore your account, your Pro stays exactly as it was. Deleting your account does not stop a subscription bought in a store; you stop that yourself in the store's settings. How to delete your account is explained in the account page article.