🏙 UrbanPact

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🏙 Cities & Building

Join or found a city, run build projects, raise premium landmarks, and grow into Residential Districts.

Cities

Why have a city at all? A city is your team. Everything its citizens gather flows into one shared stockpile — and that stockpile funds buildings, which is where the game opens up: better buildings mean higher wages, more production, unlocked crafting, and new roles to grow into (Minister of Trade, Urban Development, and more). Cities don't fight each other; they compete on the scoreboard, so a citizen's day-to-day job is simple — queue up gathering and crafting to feed the shared stockpile, help decide what to build next, and as the city grows, take on a role that splits up the work. Gold stays personal; resources are communal.

Every player belongs to a city, and you get two ways in: join an existing city to drop straight into a team that's already building, or found your own to become its mayor and build from scratch. Both are covered below.

Joining a city

/cities Lists all public cities with their population and score.
/join Shows all public cities — visible from anywhere, even if you're already in a city.
/join cityhandle Join the named city. If you're in the wilderness, you exit for free (no bus pass) and your resources convert to gold. If you're switching between real cities, a 50g bus pass is charged and you leave your old city automatically. Mayors must transfer their mayorship before they can leave.

Private cities are invite-only — they won't appear in the list and can't be joined by handle.

The city panel

/city is your city's dashboard, split into three tabs you switch with the buttons at the top:

Your full resource stockpile has its own home at /resources, so it's not repeated here — that keeps each tab short and quick to read.

Founding a city

Costs 2,000 gold. If you're leaving the wilderness, no bus pass is charged — your leftover resources convert to gold first. If you're leaving an existing city, a 50 gold bus pass is charged. You become the mayor automatically. Mayors cannot abandon their current city; transfer the mayorship first.

/found riverside Riverside Heights Founds a city with handle "riverside" and display name "Riverside Heights".
/found riverside Riverside Heights private Same, but invite-only. The last word "private" triggers the flag.

Inviting players

Any city member can generate a permanent invite link for their city.

/invite Returns a link you can share. Anyone who uses it joins your city directly — no bus ticket needed.

Invite links work for both public and private cities. They're the only way in to a private city.

City Telegram group

Mayors can link a private Telegram group to their city. Once linked, the bot posts live announcements there — build starts, completions, cancellations, new members joining, and tier promotions.

/linkgroup Run this inside your city's Telegram group (bot must be an admin). Links it to your city and sets custom role titles for any role-holders already in the group.
/synctitles Re-syncs role titles in the group. Run this after assigning or changing city roles.

Once a group is linked, a join link appears on /city and /profile for all city members. This is the easiest way to invite teammates who have anonymous profiles — share the link directly and they can join without needing to be @mentioned.

/unlinkgroup Disconnects the city group. Announcements stop; the link is cleared from city and profile views.

Mayor powers & city roles

The mayor can toggle city visibility and assign city roles to trusted members. Roles unlock as the city builds certain buildings and share specific responsibilities with the mayor:

/roles Open the role assignment panel. Tap a member to see their current role, then tap a role button to assign it — no typing required. Assigning a role to a new member automatically transfers it from whoever held it before. Tap 🚫 Remove Role to clear a member's role. Mayor only.
/visibility private Locks the city. Only the mayor can do this.

Renaming your city

The mayor can change the city's display name (the friendly name with emojis) for 500💸 treasury. Open /city and tap ✏️ Rename City, then send the new name (up to 32 characters). The city's handle and web links stay the same, so nothing breaks.

City info

/city Shows your city's resources, buildings, members, active project, and prestige score (if any).

Building stats

From the 🏛 City panel, tap 📊 Building Stats to inspect any building your city has — available to every member.

🌐 Every city also has a public web page. Visit the rankings page and click any city to see its full profile — stockpile, buildings, a public summary of building stats (visits, prestige, and production totals), active project progress, city bonuses, and the full citizen roster. No login required.

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Building Projects

Buildings are the engine of city growth. Each one produces resources every tick, unlocks city roles, or provides economic advantages. Only one project can be active at a time. The mayor or the city's Minister of Urban Development can start or cancel projects.

Starting a project

/build Shows the active project progress, or the build catalog if none is active. The catalog lists your full range of buildings — one line each — grouped into 🏗 Standard Buildings (upgrades to your existing city buildings), ✨ Tier 3 Specialties (the luxury production buildings unlocked at TH3), and 🏛 Premium Landmarks (visitor attractions), so you can read the whole catalog at a glance. Below the list is a category button for each group: tap one to open its buildings with tap-to-start buttons and full details a tap away, and ← Back to return. This keeps the menu readable even for a big Industrial-era city with dozens of buildings, instead of one endless wall of buttons.
/build sawmill Mayor starts a Sawmill project by command. Shows what the building produces per tick and material costs scaled to your city's population. Upgrades show current → next production.

How projects complete

Each tick, the game automatically draws required materials from the city's shared stockpile toward the project. There's nothing manual to do — keep gathering and the project progresses on its own. When all requirements are met, the building is constructed and everyone in the city is notified.

The build status message is a snapshot from the moment it was drawn — it doesn't update on its own if you leave it open while the hourly update runs. Tap 🔄 Refresh on the panel any time to pull the latest progress, or to see the finished result once the building lands.

Your city's City Score is the running sum of everything your members produce — points are awarded the moment goods are made (gathers, crafts, building output), so spending or building with those resources never claws the points back. Members visiting other cities' premium buildings also add points. Score only ever goes up.

Population scaling

Material costs scale with your city's population so that bigger cities don't automatically dominate. A larger city needs more materials — but it also has more players gathering them. The math is designed so build times stay roughly equal regardless of city size.

Cancellation

While a project is active, the mayor sees a 🚫 Cancel Project button directly on the build status message. Tapping it cancels immediately — no command needed. The text command also works:

/build cancel Mayor cancels the active project. 50% of consumed materials are returned to the stockpile.

Reputation from building

When a project completes, reputation is paid out proportional to each player's gather contributions. The top contributor earns up to +25 reputation. Everyone who contributed earns at least +1, plus a one-time 🏆 Builder medal bonus of +10 on your first project.

Town Hall progression

The Town Hall is the civic backbone of your city. Its level gates what the rest of the city can build:

Buildings

🏛 Town Hall /build town_hall

Produces Treasury each tick. The civic heart of any city — its level determines what the rest of the city can upgrade. Reach Level 2 to unlock Lv2 upgrades; Level 3 to unlock Tier 3 luxury buildings.

🪵 Sawmill /build sawmill

Produces Timber each tick. Timber is the primary Tier 1 construction material. Level 4 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🌾 Farm /build farm

Produces Grain each tick. Grain sustains your population and feeds future mechanics. Requires Grain to build — stock up before starting the project. Level 2 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🪨 Quarry /build quarry

Produces Stone each tick. Stone is used in heavy construction. Level 3 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🔩 Mine /build mine

Produces Iron Ore each tick. Used to craft Iron Ingots ingots (1× Iron Ore + 1× Coal + Crucible).

⛏ Coal Shaft /build coal_shaft

Produces Coal each tick. Required for smelting Iron Ingots, Steel, and Charcoal.

🏺 Clay Pit /build clay_pit

Produces Clay each tick. Used to craft Bricks. Requires Clay to build — gather some before you start. Level 3 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🧵 Textile Mill /build textile_mill

Produces Fiber each tick. Used to craft Rope. Requires Fiber to build — gather some before you start.

🏪 Market /build market

Boosts wages for all citizens by +10% / +20% / +35% / +55% / +80% per level. Applies to home and away workers alike. Requires Fiber to build. Level 3 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🏦 Bank /build bank

Pays each home-working citizen a gold dividend per tick: +3g / +6g / +10g / +15g / +22g by level. Away workers miss out — one more reason to stay involved locally. Level 2 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

📚 Library /build library

Grants +1 reputation per hour to every active member of the city. Up to 3 levels. Level 2 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

🏬 Trading Post /build trading_post

The city shop. Level 1: tools (Shovel, Axe, Scythe, Pickaxe, Crucible, Workbench). Level 2: consumables (Queue Boost, Rested Potion, Rush Token, Hired Help). Level 3: Luxury Goods — the Mayor or Minister of Treasury can purchase Tier 3 rare goods with city Treasury (500💸 each). Level 4: unlocks the Master's Charter — a one-time personal purchase that raises your tool cap to Level 10 and lets you lease any Masterwork for high-volume crafting, for life. Level 2 upgrade requires 🧥 Leather.

⚒️ Craftworks /build craftworks  ·  /craftworks

Requires Town Hall 3. A guild of NPC craftspeople who produce refined goods each hour — no player queue slots required. The Mayor or Minister of Manufacturing uses /craftworks to assign workers to recipes. Workers = city population × 20 (base), split evenly across all active recipes, each producing 1 unit/hr per worker. Each recipe requires its source building at Level 3: Planks → Sawmill, Bricks → Clay Pit, Iron Ingots → Mine, Rope → Textile Mill, Charcoal → Coal Shaft, Steel → Mine + Coal Shaft. The build confirmation shows which recipes are already unlocked. Workers consume each recipe's input materials from the city stockpile (e.g. Leather spends pelts, Steel spends iron ingots + coal) — output each hour is capped by whatever inputs you have on hand, so keep the raw materials flowing.

The panel also shows what your city's active build (or any Residential District under construction) still needs, right where you assign recipes — but only the parts of that need your Craftworks can actually help with. A shortfall in a rare luxury good or a raw gathered resource won't show up here, since no recipe can make either one; it only lists resources one of your recipes actually produces, so every line is something you can act on. If there's nothing a recipe can help with — everything under construction is out of the Craftworks' hands — it shows your Tier 2 stockpile instead, the numbers you're actually choosing recipes against.

Labor Contracts: The Mayor or Minister of Manufacturing can spend Treasury to temporarily hire additional NPC workers — always +50% of the Craftworks' current base workforce, for 24 ticks (1 day) per contract, stacking up to 240 ticks (10 days). Use the 📋 Hire Labor button in /craftworks, which always shows exactly what a contract costs and how many workers it adds before you buy. At an ordinary Craftworks, cost scales with your city's population; once your Craftworks has been upgraded to a Masterwork (see Crafting), a contract is priced per worker instead — a full +50% boost there is +1,400 workers for 7,000💸. The panel always shows your city's current 💸 Treasury right below the Workers line, so you can see what a contract costs against what's actually in the vault. If Treasury can't cover the next one, the panel warns you and the button itself tells you how far short you are, instead of letting you tap a contract you can't afford.

🏹 Hunter's Lodge /build hunters_lodge

Requires Town Hall 2. Unlocks the hunting mode in /gocamping and makes the Bow and Tanning Rack available at /vendor. Players go on timed hunt quests and bring back game; the Lodge processes it into Pelts (Tier 1) at each hourly tick. Higher Lodge levels unlock new hunting areas with larger animals and give hunters more queue slots (3 at Lv1, up to 5 at Lv3). Max level: 3.

Most buildings have up to 5 upgrade levels. Higher levels produce more per tick and may unlock additional city features. All 7 Tier 1 resources appear in building requirements from Level 1 onward. Level 2+ upgrades require significant Tier 2 crafted materials (Planks, Bricks, Iron Ingots, Rope, Steel, Charcoal) — and your Town Hall must reach the matching level first. Several buildings also require 🧥 Leather at specific upgrade levels — see the individual cards above. Leather comes from the hunting system (Hunter's Lodge required).

Level 3 upgrades require 3 different Tier 2 materials at 45–60 units each (~3–4 queue crafting ticks per resource, 7–9 ticks total). Craftworks (Level 1, Town Hall 3 required) sits just above that: 3 Tier 2 materials at 68–76 units each. Tier 3 specialty buildings are harder still: 4 Tier 2 materials at 90–110 units each (~6–7 ticks per resource) plus 1–2 luxury goods (Tier 3 resources, 5 units each) assigned randomly to your city when Town Hall 3 completes. Check /build to see which luxury goods your city needs for each specialty building — the assignment is permanent and unique to your city. See the Building Encyclopedia for exact costs per level.

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Premium Buildings & Prestige

Premium Buildings are landmarks that turn your city into a destination. Build one, keep it stocked with luxury goods, and players from other cities can queue a Visit action to come experience it. There are now two generations: the original landmarks unlock at Town Hall Level 3, and a pricier set of Town Hall Level 4 monuments (see below) is now available too.

Building Names

When construction completes, every building automatically receives a creative establishment name — generated by AI and unique to your city (e.g. "Aldwyn's Timberyard" or "Hall of the Tide"). The namer draws from a wide range of styles and avoids names already used in your city, so each landmark feels distinct. The name appears in your tick reports, the Visit panel, and on the city web page.

The Mayor or Minister of Treasury can rename any building at any time from the Build panel:

Use the "✏️ Rename a Building" option at the bottom of the Build panel to get started. Buildings named before the namer was improved carry a ✨ free one-time re-roll — look for the ✨ marker in the rename list.

How Visiting Works

Any Citizen-tier or above player can visit premium buildings in other cities (or their own). Open /visit or tap 🏛 Visit Buildings in your /queue menu to browse what's available. The panel lists every city that has landmarks — a 🟢 marker shows where you have visits ready right now — and you tap a city to see its buildings and queue a visit. A visit queues as a normal action — it fires on your next hourly tick.

To see every premium building in the realm at a glance, open the 🗺 World Map on the website. Pick your name from the dropdown to highlight the landmarks you've already visited, spot 🆕 newly-built ones, and see which are currently out of stock.

Your 🛂 Passport tracks where you've been: use /passport (or the 🛂 Passport button on /profile) in the bot, or view it on your website profile. It shows your visited landmarks as stamps, your completion %, your Traveler / Connoisseur / Ambassador medal progress, and what's left to collect.

And to see it from the other side — who has been visiting your city's landmarks — send /visitors in the bot for a running log ("👤 someone visited The Vellum Archive — 3h ago"), or check the ✨ Recent Visitors section on your city's public web page. Your hourly report still calls out visits as they happen; this is the version you can look back at any time.

When a visit fires, the host city's stockpile is checked for the required luxury goods. If available, they're consumed and you earn Reputation. Visiting also costs you an admission ticket in gold that goes to the host city's citizens — see Tycoons & Luxury Trade for how tickets, restocking, and earnings work. The host city earns Prestige, and your own city earns a little City Score — 5 / 10 / 15 points by building tier (A / B / C) — a small team bonus on top of the rep you pocket personally, rewarding cities whose members get out and explore. A short story about your visit arrives as a separate follow-up message — each one is unique. You can turn these off in ⚙️ Settings.

Each building has a 24-hour cooldown per player — you can't farm the same building back-to-back. Visiting your own city's buildings doesn't earn you rep or City Score (you live there), but the city still gains Prestige and the luxury goods are still consumed. City Score is only awarded for visits to other cities.

Buildings in the Visit panel are marked to show your history at a glance: 🆕 never visited, visited before and ready again, still on cooldown, 🚫 host city out of stock. The panel also shows what you've already scheduled: a 📋 Your queue line at the top tells you how many of your queue slots are visits and lists each one by name (which city, which landmark), and any building you've already queued a visit to is also marked 📋 right alongside its status icon — so you can see your whole planned route before you tap something twice.

Closed on arrival: you can still queue a visit to a 🚫 out-of-stock building (it might restock before your visit fires) — you'll just get a heads-up that it may be closed. If it is closed when you arrive, the trip still counts toward your travel medals (so completionists can fill their passport even when a city runs dry) and you pick up a small rested bonus on the way home — but you earn no reputation, and the host city earns no prestige. The host's hourly report flags that they turned a visitor away, nudging them to restock.

Building Tiers

TierLuxury goods usedVisitor repHost prestigeYour city scoreExamples
⭐ A1 unit/visit+5+3+5Tavern, Jade Garden, Jeweller's Showcase, Dyehouse Gallery
✨ B2 units/visit+10+7+10Spice Market Bazaar, Glassblower's Studio, Powder Hall, Silk Exchange
💎 C3 units/visit+20+15+15Grand Theatre, Marble Bathhouse, Imperial Gallery

Town Hall 4 Monuments

Once your city reaches Town Hall Level 4, a second set of ten grander landmarks becomes available to build: Clockmaker's Tower, Falconry Mews, Cartographers' Guild, Botanical Conservatory, Scriptorium, Hall of Champions, Royal Menagerie, Grand Cathedral, Hanging Gardens, and The Colosseum. They work exactly like the original landmarks — same visit mechanics, same 24-hour cooldown, same luxury consumption — but they cost far more to raise (six-figure material piles plus a hefty treasury contribution) and pay their host city much more Prestige for the investment: 10 / 20 / 40 by tier, roughly double the original landmarks' 3 / 7 / 15. The Reputation a visitor earns is exactly the same either way — a Town Hall 4 monument isn't a better personal payday, it's a bigger gift to whichever city built it. If your city has both generations, /visit shows a quick menu to pick which set you want to browse.

Prestige

Prestige is a rolling 14-day score for your city — the sum of prestige points earned from all visits in the past two weeks. Older visits naturally fall off, so a city must stay active as a destination to maintain its score.

Why prestige matters: it boosts wages for every citizen in your city. Every 50 prestige points add +1% to wages, up to a maximum of +50%. A well-visited city with 2,500 prestige gives all its citizens a meaningful daily income boost — one of the strongest passive bonuses in the game.

Prestige appears in several places so your city's reputation is visible to everyone:

Visitor Medals

Exploring premium buildings across the realm earns three leveled medals (Bronze through Diamond):

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🏭 The Industrial Era (Town Hall 4)

Town Hall Level 4 opens the Industrial Era — the point where a city stops gathering by the handful and starts producing on an industrial scale, with a roughly 100× surge in raw output and a whole new tier of upgrades to spend it on.

🏭 It's a big enough chapter to have its own guide. See The Industrial Era for the entry gate, the 100× flood, the recommended build order, and every Level-4 upgrade.

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🏘 Residential Districts

Once your city reaches Town Hall Level 4, industry draws people. Word spreads that the mills and quarries are hiring, families load their wagons, and your city stops being a workshop and becomes a home — it gains a population of Residents who are not players. Residential Districts are city-owned neighbourhoods you found to house them.

Residents are not Citizens. Citizens are the players who build and run the city; Residents are the NPC families who live in its districts. The two are always counted separately — Residents drive prestige, not City Score.

Founding a district

Open /city and tap 🏘 Districts, then Found a Cottage Row. Only the Mayor or a Minister of Zoning can found districts. You'll see a full breakdown first: the build cost, the per-family move-in cost, and the upkeep the district will draw once families arrive.

Founding a district doesn't spend your stockpile all at once. Each hour, the city automatically builds the district from surplus — the materials it has above your reserve floor. It never spends below that floor, so essential stock is always protected. A district rises over several hours with no further clicks.

While a district is still going up, the 🏘 Districts panel shows its progress and a Needs line of exactly what materials it's still short on. Tap the district to see the full list — how much of each resource is left to build and how much you currently have spare above your reserve to feed it. A ⚠️ means a material has no spare above the reserve right now, so the build is waiting on it — gather or trade more of it in to get things moving.

Tuning the reserve floor. The reserve floor is the per-resource cushion your districts never draw below — 750 by default. Lower it (Mayor or Minister of Zoning, from the 🏘 Districts panel → 🛟 Reserve floor) to let your districts build and feed themselves faster from a thin stockpile — even down to zero. Raise it to hold more back for your own crafting and exports — there's no upper limit, so you can set it as high as you like to keep a big glut safe from the district sink. Your districts never spend a single unit below whatever floor you set. Luxury goods are the one exception — Diamonds, Silk, Dyes, Glass and the rest are never held back by the reserve floor, no matter how high you've set it. A district only ever needs a few of them at a time, so the floor (sized to protect a big raw-material stockpile) would otherwise lock those small amounts away for good.

Your own building projects always draw in full. The reserve floor holds back your districts only — it never limits your own city builds. Upgrade to a Masterwork or raise any landmark and it draws the whole stockpile it needs straight away, regardless of the floor. If a hungry build leaves your districts short of upkeep that hour, their happiness simply dips until you restock — families never leave. Your active build comes first; the districts take what's left.

How districts fill and thrive

Why build them

Residential Districts turn a fully-industrialised city's overflowing raw production into something permanent. All that surplus timber, stone, grain, and fuel goes into homes and the families who live in them — a growing town you govern rather than a stockpile you watch overflow. Housing families earns the leveled 🏘 Boomtown city medal (Bronze through Diamond), and your city's Residents and its living census of family names appear on its public web page.

Naming your districts

A district isn't just "Cottage Row III" forever — once construction finishes, it earns a real neighbourhood name (things like "Willowmere Cottages" or "Thornfield Row"), and every screen that mentions it — the Districts panel, your hourly report, the city feed, your city's web page — uses that name from then on.

Don't like the name it picked? The Mayor or Minister of Zoning can change it from the district's page in the 🏘 Districts panel: tap 🎲 New name for a fresh AI-generated one (50💸 treasury), or ✏️ Custom to type your own (500💸 treasury, only charged once you submit a name).

🏹 Auto-Hunt — standing leather supply

Districts run on materials, and the higher tiers run on leather — which only comes from pelts. Once your Hunter's Lodge reaches Level 4, it starts supplying that leather on its own: the Lodge hires standing hunting parties that mount a full expedition automatically every hour, with no taps and no queue slot. You come back to a stockpile of fresh pelts ready for the Tanning Rack.

Auto-hunt spends a bundle of your city's surplus raw materials (timber and stone, mostly) each tick — and, like your districts, it only ever draws from above your reserve floor, so it never touches what you're holding back. It's a steady pelts-for-leather faucet and a permanent drain on your raw glut, the same way districts are.

Your hourly report shows the haul and what it cost. The parties bring back game, measured by weight — the Lodge dresses it into pelts on the next tick, so the line reads like "brought back 584 lbs of game … becomes 85 pelts next tick" rather than pretending the pelts already exist. It also shows the total spent in supplies — that word means the whole bundle of raw materials together, not any single resource — followed by a 🔧 Drew from surplus line naming each material and amount, just like your districts' draw.

It's a pure pelt supply — no trophies, medals, or hunting reputation. All of that still belongs to hunting by hand via 🏹 Hunt. Automation feeds your leather; the chase stays yours.

Auto-hunt is on by default for every Lodge-4 city. Your Mayor or Minister of Zoning can toggle it off anytime from the 🏘 Districts panel, and the same reserve floor that governs your districts controls how much the hunting parties may spend.

Merchant Quarters — the next tier up

Once you're comfortable with Cottage Rows, you can found a 🎩 Merchant Quarter — a wealthier neighbourhood for better-off families. Where cottage families live simply on raw materials (timber, grain, stone), merchant families expect finished goods: their homes are furnished, their tables set, their larders stocked. That's the difference — a Merchant Quarter runs on refined Tier-2 goods, not raw.

Five new goods arrive with the tier, all craftable at your Workbench and producible in bulk by your Masterwork (or bought in by trade):

The easiest way to keep a Merchant Quarter supplied is to assign these recipes to your Masterwork — its NPC workers make them every hour from your raw stockpile, no clicking. You can also craft them by hand or trade for them; a district happily consumes them whatever their source. As always, if the goods run short one hour the district just goes quiet until you restock — nobody ever leaves.

Merchant families arrive as your city grows. Build up your cottages and prestige, and a trickle of merchant families takes to the road — you'll see them waiting in the 🏘 Districts panel, a nudge that it's time to open a Quarter for them. Founding one is Mayor / Minister-of-Zoning only, same as any district.

One honest note: Furnishings need leather, so building out a Merchant Quarter is leather-paced. Once your Hunter's Lodge hits Level 4, auto-hunt (above) supplies that leather steadily on its own.

👑 Grand Villas — the top tier

The highest tier of all: 👑 Grand Villas, a small (8 families), wealthy neighbourhood for a city's most aspirational residents. Where merchant families want finished goods, grand families want the finer things — their homes are richly furnished in leather, and every family that moves in brings home a few luxury goods from your stores.

Grand Villas are a deliberate step up:

As with every district, founding a Grand Villas is Mayor / Minister-of-Zoning only, families arrive as a trickle once you've built up the tiers below, and a district that runs short on upkeep just quietly dips in happiness until you restock — never eviction, never anyone leaving.

🚢 Luxury imports — the backstop when trade can't keep up

If your Grand Villas are short a luxury and you can't get it by trade, a licensed Tycoon can bring it in for you. An NPC caravan delivers the missing goods straight into your stockpile, and your city treasury pays the toll — 500💸 per unit. Your citizens never touch this cost personally; it comes straight out of the city's Treasury.

Trading is always far cheaper. Importing a handful of units to unstick an otherwise-finished neighbourhood is a routine, occasional expense — but importing everything a whole zone needs would run your treasury dry for weeks. The toll is deliberately steep so a neighbour is always the better deal; the caravan is there for the last mile, not as a substitute for trade.

It only ever fires against a real shortfall — nothing is ever bulk-bought or purchased on demand, and if the city can't afford the toll (or no Tycoon happens to be carrying that luxury right now), nothing is charged and the family simply waits, exactly as it always has.

Founding a Grand Villas now warns you up front. The founding screen shows which luxuries you're short of, the toll per unit, and the worst-case total cost if you never trade for a single one — plus a warning if your treasury couldn't cover it. A Grand Villas zone is a big stone investment; you should know the luxury bill before you commit, not after.

Imports are on by default so an away city's zones don't stall while nobody's watching, but your Mayor or Minister of Zoning can turn them off from the 🏘 Districts panel if you'd rather always wait for a trade. Your hourly report calls out any caravan that arrives, naming the goods and the toll paid.

Minister of Zoning

Founding and pausing districts can be delegated. A mayor can appoint any citizen as Minister of Zoning (a city role unlocked at Town Hall 4) to manage the city's districts — separate from the Minister of Urban Development who handles building projects.

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