Greetings to all. We’ve noticed a surge of inquiries concerning the Tile Upkeep introduced in patch 1.1.5f1, also known as Economy 2.0. To clarify its mechanics, we’ve created this brief development diary. We aim to address some of your questions and elucidate the rationale behind the introduction of Tile Upkeep. As always, we welcome your constructive feedback and any further questions that may arise after reading this.
Let’s begin with the fundamentals. Tile Upkeep represents a new administrative land expense applied to owned land. It’s essentially a fee that the city pays to the government for expanding its boundaries, akin to the real-world property tax on unused land. The initial 9 tiles available at the start of your city are exempt from this cost. The Tile Upkeep is only incurred when expanding beyond these initial tiles. This upkeep charge is a percentage of the map tile purchase cost, increasing gradually from 5% to 25% as more tiles are acquired. Thus, early acquisitions have a lower upkeep, but as additional tiles are purchased, the upkeep for each tile escalates, affecting all acquired tiles.
The X-axis represents the number of map tiles purchased, and the Y-axis depicts the percentage of the map tile purchase cost utilized to calculate the upkeep costs.
During the design of the Economy 2.0 update, we realized the importance of incorporating additional management elements when constructing your cities. Feedback from the community post-release and during the closed beta indicated that the game lacked sufficient challenge, especially in its later stages. This lack of challenge diminished the satisfaction of success. Expanding the city’s boundaries is a natural progression within the game, so introducing Tile Upkeep was a strategic way to regulate gameplay pacing, particularly in the latter stages where city growth accelerates, reflecting in tile expenses. Our objective with Tile Upkeep is to present more significant choices as you expand, requiring consideration not just of where to expand, but also whether your city can sustain such growth. Overall, we believe this enhances game pacing and improves the gameplay experience.
Naturally, this new cost influences your ability to reach the edges of the playable area and establish Outside Connections. Let’s briefly discuss the most economical approach to achieve this early in the game. If you haven’t noticed, map tile costs are influenced by their available elements—buildable land, resources, etc.—making water-dense tiles the cheapest. Therefore, purchasing ocean tiles becomes the most cost-effective method if your city needs a new Outside Connection promptly. You can then construct a bridge or pipeline to the boundary of the playable area. Alternatively, you can use terrain tools to create a more realistic landbridge and build a road over it; however, remember that more land within the tile will affect its upkeep cost.
The UI now displays not only the cost of new tiles but also their associated Tile Upkeep.
If you’re continuing an existing save, you may have unlocked numerous map tiles that now incur high Tile Upkeep. While expanding your city to generate additional tax revenue might offset these costs, if you’ve developed villages or rural towns using the Unlock All feature or a mod to unlock tiles, it might be too expensive to manage. In such scenarios, we recommend enabling Unlock Map Tiles under Map Options when you reload your save. Though this disables achievements, it also negates Tile Upkeep, allowing you to continue with your city. This feature is also ideal if you enjoy building smaller settlements and don’t wish to bypass the Milestone progression.
We’ve already received extensive feedback on Tile Upkeep, both positive and negative. We will continue to monitor discussions about the game’s current state, including Tile Upkeep, to further refine gameplay and balance, aiming to provide the best possible experience while aligning with our game development goals. Additionally, we have a survey available through the launcher where you can share your thoughts.
Please note that refining game features and balance is time-consuming. Even when we concur with your feedback, we may not be able to implement changes immediately. Nevertheless, we deeply appreciate your input and the time you invest in sharing your thoughts about the game and its updates. We look forward to your continued contributions and ongoing development in the upcoming seasons. Thank you for being part of this journey.