Neighbouring towns: find, connect, absorb

Finding towns

Neighbouring towns lie in the fog, and not all of them within sight: one just a few parcels from where you started, the others far out, often behind a river, a lake or a slope. A town only appears once the map is uncovered up to it. There are two ways to do that: with parcels you buy in its direction – each purchase pushes the edge of the fog a little further – or with a track that uncovers a narrow strip of land on either side as you lay it.

When you find one, the game announces “🧭 Discovered”, the town’s name sign appears above it, and a dashed line in the colour of the sign shows how far its land reaches. If you are stuck on a town task because you do not know a suitable town yet, the tasks board shows an arrow pointing roughly towards the nearest undiscovered one.

What a town gives you

• 👷 A town whose gift is “people” sends workers – but only when your city has more jobs than it can fill itself.
• 🛍️ A town whose gift is “customers” sends shoppers to your shops – but only when they can serve more than your city needs.
• 🤝 On top of that, every connected town always helps a little wherever you are shortest right now: workers, customers or jobs for your unemployed.
• 📏 It never brings more than a quarter of what your own city has – and never more than the people living in its houses.

A town complements your economy, it does not replace it. Tap it and its card works out what it would bring you today – or says plainly why nothing would come right now: too few free jobs, full shops, a full line or a full road on its way. Read the card before you put money into a connection.

The number of residents on the card is the number of people who actually live in its houses. It is the measure for everything else: for what it can send you, and for what you get if you take it over.

Connecting: road or rail

A town counts as connected once one of your roads touches its gateway, one of its lanes or its platform, and the network behind it has jobs. For the nearby town a road is usually enough. Because a road may only lie on your own land, you buy yourself a narrow path of parcels towards it.

The railway takes you to the distant towns. Track may also cross land you do not own, as long as it connects to existing track – so you do not buy a corridor. The track tool marks where the track can join the town’s station: purple where it works, red with a reason where it does not right now. Run it up to there and put a station on exactly that line in your city; a station on a different line does nothing for the town.

Passengers from neighbouring towns cost only half the rail running cost. If the line is full, the card says so: a second track right next to it or a separate line makes room (more about the railway in the guide).

Letting it grow and supporting it

• ⏱️ On its own a town grows about one stage per half hour of play – twice as fast once connected, three times as fast as soon as its people really come to you.
• 🏛️ A market square adds a little more speed.
• 🏢 An expanded main street brings taller houses and sends you up to one and a half times as many people.
• 🏗️ A housing estate gives it land with houses straight away and two more stages – as often as you like, each one costs more.

A town only grows while you play; after a break it catches up on at most one hour. There is no upper limit: every few stages it buys another parcel and builds on it, never right next to your land, and over time its houses grow taller. If you wait too long, the meadow you wanted for yourself may already be its own – you can still buy it from the town, though.

The supports cost more the bigger your city and the town are. They pay off most for a town you want to keep as a partner for a long time.

Absorbing: the old town

If your land borders one of its parcels, you can buy it from the town at the normal parcel price: tap it, then “Take over parcel”. Its houses and lanes stay and become yours. They pay you taxes but cost upkeep and, like your own, need a way to work. The town shrinks as you do so, and its gift with it.

Only the town centre is never for sale. Once everything else is yours, it remains as an old town in the middle of your city and draws tourists: they bring you money for good, the more people you took over with its houses, and rising with your city. The town’s card tells you beforehand what the old town would bring today; afterwards the amount is on its card and on its own line when you tap your income.

A practical tip: if you take over a distant town that only the railway reaches, give the houses you took over their own station or a road to the city. Otherwise their residents find no work, and welfare eats the profit.

When what pays off

We measured this in test cities with a medium-sized town of around a thousand residents. In a city of 10,000 residents it costs just over 2 million 💰, and after about 20 minutes the money is back. With 100,000 residents the same town costs around 50 million 💰 – back after about an hour. With 200,000 residents it is around 170 million 💰 and about two hours.

A big town pays off faster than a small one, because it carries more people on every parcel. That gives a simple rule: you can absorb the small nearby town early and cheaply. The distant towns are better left to grow as partners for a while – connected, perhaps supported – and taken over once they have grown big. Until then you get their gift, afterwards a bigger old town; only the land costs more by then.

You do not have to guess which calculation holds for your city: every town’s card says what it brings when connected and what it would bring as an old town. And since both numbers grow with the town, it is worth checking now and then.