Buildings — Overview

Four things about a building

Plot: where it may stand — not every building fits everywhere. Level: starts at 1 and climbs; only a few buildings have a ceiling. Requirements: the other buildings and research it needs. Price: materials, sometimes Gold, and time.

Every building and its current prices are in the Building Table.

How levels work

A building rises one level at a time; there is no skipping. Every level is dearer and slower than the one below it, and the curve compounds. Most buildings have no last level: the price and the time keep getting heavier, but you can raise them as far as you like. The Palace, the Governor's Residence and the Monument are different; their level fixes a number, which is why they have a ceiling. The Palace's level is the number of colonies you may found. The Governor's Residence's level is the rank your colonies are asked for before you found a new one. The Monument is a building of a single level.

The Town Hall's first level takes a handful of materials and a minute; its high levels want millions of materials, tens of millions of Gold and days of time, and what follows is heavier still.

Build time

The time comes from the building's own curve; the world's speed and any construction-speed bonus shorten it.

It is fixed the moment the work starts: a bonus you earn while a build is running does not speed up that build. It speeds up the next one.

While a building is being raised or upgraded, the city map shows above it which level it is going to and when it will be done. If the building is making units at the same time, the production clock stands beneath it.

You can call off a build that is under way: in the building's or the empty plot's window, Cancel construction under the clock asks first and shows what will come back. A cancelled level counts as never built: a new building leaves its plot empty, and a building being upgraded stays at the level it has. Most of the goods and Gold you paid come back; the rest is lost. The goods go into your store, where raiders can reach them, and whatever does not fit is lost. Later levels of the same building waiting in the queue drop out too. If other work is queued, it starts at once.

The construction queue

If you are a Pro member in that world you can line up the next jobs while a city is building: the next level of the same building, an upgrade of another one, a new building on an empty plot, or a new annex beside your Warehouse. The moment the work under way ends, the next job starts by itself, whether you are in the game or not. How many jobs the queue takes is on the Pro page.

Queuing a job costs nothing and sets nothing aside: the goods stay in the city's store until the job starts. You can sell them or spend them on something else, and a raider who reaches your city finds them there. You pay the price at the moment the job starts, from whatever your store and treasury hold then; as with a build you start by hand, its time is set at that moment too. When you queue it, its requirements are checked as if everything ahead of it were already done: queue the same building twice and the second job raises the level after that.

If, when a job's turn comes, your store or treasury cannot pay its price, or the job can no longer be done (the building has been demolished, one of its requirements no longer holds, or the Warehouse a new annex was to stand beside is gone), that job is cancelled, and the later levels of the same building drop out of the queue with it. The queue does not stop there: the first job left is looked at the same way, and starts if its price can be paid. Activity tells you what dropped out and why; if you have notifications turned on, you hear about it on your phone as well.

The queued jobs are listed on the city map beneath the construction under way, and each is also shown above the building it is for. Take one out of the list and the later levels of the same building come out with it; as you paid nothing for any of them, nothing comes back. The queue does not change the rule that a city builds one thing at a time; it only means you need not be there to start the next one. If your Pro membership ends you cannot add new jobs, but the queued ones still start when their turn comes. Which place beside the Warehouse a new annex will take is settled the moment you queue it, and when its turn comes it is built exactly there. Annexes queued one after another take different places, and queued ones already count towards the number of Warehouses a city may hold.

Price: materials, Gold and tiers

A building does not want the same materials at every level. The base materials are wanted from level 1; advanced materials (Marble, Iron) join from a level of their own; so does Gold.

Gold belongs to the PLAYER, not the city: materials sit in that city's stores, Gold is one pool for the whole empire. The first level of your first building never costs Gold.

The first levels at which a building asks for Gold are discounted. The discount is largest at the first of them, shrinks a little at each level, and a few levels later the building asks its full price. The Palace and the Governor's Residence are outside this discount. You always see a level's real price in the upgrade window.

Prices speed up at high levels. The first levels follow the familiar curve; after that, wood, stone, Marble and Iron climb more steeply with every level. The City Wall and the Warehouse are cheap in their first levels, but past the middle levels their price climbs faster than other buildings' does. Higher still, every building also asks for Iron and Marble even if its own curve never did; neither falls below an amount in proportion to that level's wood price. You see what a level asks for in the Building Table and in the upgrade window. Buildings you have already raised stay as they are; only upgrades from now on are charged the new price.

The materials of a level have to fit in the store together. If the price is more than your city's store can hold, no waiting, producing or buying makes that level possible: the store takes no more than it holds. The upgrade window says so plainly and asks you to raise your warehouses first; the button stays dark, and Pro's "tell me when the goods are in" is not offered for that level. At high levels the room a Warehouse adds grows as fast as the prices of buildings, so as long as you raise your Warehouses along with your buildings the store is never what stops you. With a store left small you can run into the same wall at any level.

Requirements

There are two kinds: a building requirement — that OTHER building's level, never the one you are raising — and a research requirement.

A requirement is met once and never asked again. And nearly everything hangs off the Town Hall: if your city has stalled, that is the first place to look.

Lowering and demolishing

You can lower a building by one level or demolish it altogether; it happens at once. Part of what the levels you remove cost comes back: the materials to the warehouse, the Gold to your treasury. When you demolish altogether, each level's share is worked out on its own and they all come back together. How much comes back is shown in the building's window, on the "Lower or demolish" tab, before you press anything.

A demolished building does not come back, so the game asks you to type DEMOLISH in the box to make sure it is not an accident. Capitals or small letters, either will do. The Town Hall, the Palace and the Governor's Residence can be lowered down to their first level but never demolished.

A building stays where it is if it has construction under way or queued, if the city is at war or occupied, if the returned materials would not fit in the warehouse, or if the spies a smaller Hideout could not keep are on a mission or in training. To demolish it altogether, the workshop must also have no production running, the city no open orders on the market, its spies no mission under way, and no others of the same building may stand beside it.

What a level gives goes with it. If a Temple, an Academy or a Hideout gets smaller, the priests, scholars and spies who no longer fit join the free citizens; a demolished Monument's dedication ends. If the Town Hall is lowered and the population is now above the new limit, nobody leaves, but the population does not grow until there is room again.

A requirement already met for other buildings is not taken back: lower the Town Hall and the buildings it let you raise stay where they are. Only the upgrades that come after ask for the requirement again.