City Building

This page describes the process by which civilizations plan their cities and construct new buildings.

Construction

Each city has a fixed cooldown for planning new buildings. This cooldown is 1 month and is not affected by most external factors. Cities cannot plan new buildings (but construction of under-construction buildings can continue) if:

• There are hostile units within city boundaries, or
• The city is in the process of being captured, or
• There are fires within the city.

A city can only build or upgrade one building at a time.

Choosing What to Build

How does a city decide what building to construct next? First it needs to determine which buildings it can build. In order for a building to be possible, it must satisfy the following requirements:

• Tech requirements - the city's culture must have unlocked relevant technology
• Zone requirements - barracks and temples can only be built when the city has a minimum of 20 zones. Other buildings have no zone requirements.
• Building limits -
  • Each city can build at most 1 bonfire / windmill / statue / well / mine / barracks.
  • Each city can build at most 5 docks.
  • Each city has a limit to the number of watch towers, which is affected by several factors.
• Population requirements - most buildings can only be built when the city reaches a certain population .
• Existing buildings - some buildings require the city to have a number of buildings before being constructed.
• Preexisting building requirements - many buildings require some other buildling to be present before being constructed. This ensures an orderly sequence of construction from lower-level to higher-level buildings.
• Resource requirements - the city's storage must have sufficient resources to construct the building.

The city randomly selects among these possible buildings to build next - note that this can be a new construction, or an upgrade from an existing building

Selecting Locations

For new constructions, the city needs to find a suitable location for the building. Different types of buildings have different siting requirements, which can be broadly classified into three types:

• Solitary buildings - includes mines, watch towers and windmills. These buildings must be built in empty areas far away from other buildings. Specifically, they must be built at a site, where the current zone and adjacent zones do not contain any civ buildings.
• Cluster buildings - includes all houses and halls. These buildings must be built close to other buildings. Specifically, they must be a built at a site, where the current zone and adjacent zones contain at least another fully constructed building, and do NOT contain any solitary buildings.
• Border buildings - includes watch towers. These buildings must be built at a site, where at least one adjacent zone does not belong to their own city.

There are some other buildings with unique location choices:

• Bonfires - bonfires are the first building constructed by a village. If the bonfire is destroyed later, the village will find a house, demolish it and erect a new bonfire at its site.
• Docks - docks must be built next to a sufficiently large area of water. See Docks for details.

Building Arrangement Patterns

For most buildings (apart from bonfires and docks), the village will first determine an 8×8 zone, then select a specific location within this zone.

• Humans, elves and orcs randomly select a location within the zone to construct
• Dwarves will preferentially select a location at the center of the zone to construct new buildings. Specifically, it has a 20% chance to select the central tile, and an 80% chance to select a location adjacent to the central tile as the location for the new building. As a result, dwarven cities look much tidier than villages of other races.

Debug Options

There are two options in the debug menu related to city building: CityFastUpgrades and CityFastConstruction.

• CityFastUpgrades accelerates the process of planning new building projects.
  • Specifically, when it is enabled, the cooldown for planning new buildings is reduced to 0, and cities can plan 10 new buildings / upgrades every time.
  • This option does NOT increase the speed of constructing new buildings by builders. However, building upgrades do not need to be worked on by builders, instead they are completed almost immediately after being planned (as long as the village has enough resources). As a result, the actual effect of CityFastUpgrades is to significantly increase the speed by which buildings are upgraded.
• CityFastConstruction aceelerates the process of constructing new buildings.
  • Specifically, when it is enabled, the construction time of new buildings is decreased to 0.
  • As a result, any new building / upgrade / road, once planned, is finished almost instantly, and do not require builders.