City

Cities are the centers of civilization on developing worlds. Cities are constructed using buildings and roads. Buildings house the industries that manufacture commodities and equipment.

Cities create status reports for the people in their chain of command four times per game-universe day. There are twenty-eight game-universe days per real day so a status report is sent about every thirteen minutes. Status reports show changes in jobs, population and morale. Note that population and morale changes occur at the time the report is generated. The result of the report is the status quo in the city until the next status report is generated. Morale does not fluctuate between status reports. Population may change between reports due to spacecraft passenger traffic or the casualties of war. Jobs fluctuate between reports when new jobs are created, when current jobs are finished, or when jobs get halted or resumed. City status reports provide the information needed to manage the morale and population of a city's inhabitants.

City status reports are accessed on the Governance (F12) window. Go to the Places tab and right-click a city name to request the most recent report or a history of reports. When the most recent report is requested, you actually receive the last two so you can compare them easily.

Zone of Control

Cities represent the presense of a growing civilization that has advanced beyond nomadic hunters and gatherers. A city is symbolic of a larger populace present in its region of the world.

Worlds are divided into resource zones. A city controls the resource zone that contains the town square of the city. Control of a resource zone enables your empire to block construction in that zone by other empires. The Zone Build Permission policy of an empire determines what other empires are permitted to build in the zones controlled by your cities.

Cities often overlap more than one resource zone. Cities do not control the zones they overlap, only the zone that contains the town square.

When cities of different empires exist within the same zone, their zone build permission policies affect each other. For example, empire A and empire B are friends. Empire A permits friends to build in their zones; empire B does not. Empire B is free to expand their city and build more cities. Empire A cannot build any new construction of any kind.

Gaining Control of a City

One empire controls each city. The empire who controls the flag at the town square controls the city. To gain control of a city, you must replace the flag at the town square with the flag of your empire.

Each person and troop present influences a flag according to their empire's stance toward the holder of the flag. Enemy flags are lowered to the bottom of the pole then changed to your empire's flag. This is symbolic and does not require you to have a flag in your possession. Friendly flags are raised to the top of the pole.

Defense bases increase the difficulty of controlling a city. You cannot raise or lower the flag at the town square unless all of the defense bases of the city are controlled by empires that are friendly or neutral toward your empire.

When no player or troop is standing near a defense base flag, it slowly returns to the owner of the town square flag. To hold a defense base flag, at least one player or troop must remain at the defense base until the town square flag is changed.

When a city is captured, the local banks are pillaged of all funds from the government and citizen accounts. The loot is split equally between the conquering players present in the city. All players in the city get an equal share, whose empire is an enemy toward the losing empire at the time the city is captured.

Morale

Morale of the citizens of a city is effected by these factors. Some of these factors are mutually exclusive of each other.

Cause	Morale Effect	Notes
Decay	-1 Per Building Decayed	Cities decay due to abandonment and underpopulation.
Harsh Environment Without Power	-2	Occurs in harsh environment only due to cramped living conditions and no power.
Harsh Environment	-1	Occurs in harsh environment only due to cramped living conditions.
Suffocation	-5	City in harsh environment has no air at all. 10% of population dies.
Gasping	-1, -2 if available air is less than 1/2 air needed	City in harsh environment has some air but air is less than the full amount needed.
Starvation	-5	City has no food at all. 10% of population dies.
Hunger	-2	City has some food but less than the full amount needed.
Food Variety	+1 or +2 depending on variety and ecological role of citizens	City has enough food for all citizens and there is a variety of kinds of food. Not applicable when hungry, even if there is variety. Threshold for +2 variety bonus varies by ecological role due to number of food types available to each.
Occupation	-1 to -5 depending on disloyalty level	City is controlled by an empire that is not the empire of allegiance of the citizens. This penalty drops slowly as their disloyalty drops, until it turns into a loyalty bonus.
Loyalty	+1 at 50% loyalty, +2 at 90% loyalty	Citizens are loyal to the empire that controls the city. This bonus rises as their loyalty increases.
Overpopulation	-1 for each 5% above max population	Maximum global populations are listed in a table in the worlds section.
Homelessness	-1 per 4 homeless citizens, max -10	Penalty imposed when citizen population exceeds the number of homes.
Abandonment	-1 for every 14 days since last visited	Cities need to be visited by your empire or they feel abandoned. A city is "visited" when an officer commands a ship in the solar system or when a player who is online is in the solar system. See Abandonment Decay below.
Cramped Living Conditions	-3 if apartments exceed 3/4 of living space, -2 if apartments exceed 2/3 of living space, -1 if apartments exceed 1/2 of living space	Too many apartments means a lot of people are living pretty close together.
Unemployment	-1 to -5, depending on unemployment %	Unemployment occurs when the number of citizens exceeds the number of jobs.
Overworked	-1	Homes are full and jobs are available. There's work to do but no room for more people to move in to help so the current population must do every job.
Arena	-1 for every arena needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 arena per 175 population.
Cantina	-1 for every cantina needed, max -2 +1 for every excess cantina, max +2 Starving, hungry, suffocating or gasping reduces the + bonus by 1.	Citizens want 1 cantina per 50 population, minus one if they have liquor.
Casino	-1 for every casino needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 casino per 200 population.
Church	-1 for every church needed, max -2 +1 for every excess church, max +2 Starving, hungry, suffocating or gasping reduces the + bonus by 1.	Citizens want 1 church per 45 population.
Garrison Troops	-1 for every 5 excess garrison troops.	Citizens will tolerate 1 garrison troop per 30 population, not including the troops at the town square. Each military flag adds up to 5 garrison troops to the troop contingent. Another way to look at it, citizens will tolerate 1 fully manned military flag per 150 population.
Grocery	-1 for every grocery needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 grocery per 100 population.
Hospital	-1 for every hospital needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 hospital per 80 population.
Park	-1 for every park needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 park per 90 population.
Police Station	-1 for every police station needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 police station per 60 population.
Retail Store	-1 for every retail store needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 retail store per 55 population.
University	-1 for every university needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 university per 70 population.
Zoo	-1 for every zoo needed, max -2	Citizens want 1 zoo per 150 population.

Loyalty and Occupation

Citizens of a city are loyal to their empire. Loyalty is reported as a percentage on the city status report. This is the percentage of the citizens who are loyal towards the empire who controls their city.

When citizens move into a city, they are not immediately loyal to the controlling empire. Their loyalty is gained slowly, at about one person per city report cycle. It is typical for the loyalty percentage to change a lot when the population of a small city grows quickly.

When a city is conquered, citizens remain loyal to their previous empire. This is reported as disloyalty to the occupier in their city status reports. The disloyalty of citizens drops slowly, at about one person per city report cycle. When the disloyalty level reaches zero, the citizens change their allegiance to the empire who controls the city; then loyalty toward their new empire begins to rise.

A city that is disloyal toward the controlling empire is an occupied city.

Occupied cities may send city occupation reports to their previous empire at the same time that they send city status reports to the controlling empire. The likelihood of a city occupation report at each city report cycle decreases as loyalty toward the previous empire decreases.

While a city is occupied, the controlling empire cannot construct or demolish any buildings or roads. Construction must wait until the citizens change their allegiance.

Disloyalty towards an occupier affects the productivity of the citizens. Citizens become more productive as disloyalty decreases. While disloyalty is high, construction and manufacture by citizens is slowed.

Occupation affects the morale of citizens. Citizens incur a morale penalty that decreases as disloyalty decreases.

Occupation prevents drafting of local citizens. While a city is occupied, troops cannot be drafted from the populace by defense bases. The only way to increase the number of troops at a defense base in an occupied city is to bring them to the base from elsewhere.

Inventory and Power Reserve

Each city maintains an inventory of all commodities stored within its buildings. The size of the inventory depends upon the buildings present in the city. The construction page contains a table showing the amount of storage added by different buildings. The inventory size limit is applied to each commodity individually. A city with an inventory size of 100 can store up to 100 units of each commodity: 100 vegetables, 100 beans, and 100 mechanical parts for example.

A city's inventory may contain a mixture of qualities of the same commodity. The combined total may not exceed the inventory size. A city with an inventory size of 100 might have 30 beans of quality 200 and 45 beans of quality 125, leaving room for 25 more beans, but the total amount of beans in stock will not exceed 100.

Construction and manufacturing processes fetch materials from the city's inventory as needed. The resulting quality of construction and manufacturing is the average quality of the components used to make the building or product. To produce the best products and buildings, a city supplies the best quality commodities from its inventory before the poorer quality commodities.

A city will buy and sell commodities from its inventory to spacecraft. A spacecraft may trade cargo with any city if the ship is physically present on a road slab of the city. When a city has an airport, spacecraft may trade cargo with the city if they are near a friendly space station in the solar system. A space station acts as a trade hub for all friendly cities in the solar system.

Cities strive to improve the quality of their inventories. When a city manufactures, imports, or buys commodities, the city replaces lower quality commodities if necessary to fit the new commodities into its inventory. A city will not buy, import, or manufacture commodities of lower quality if they will not fit into its inventory. This improves the quality of its inventory whenever possible, which improves the quality of the commodities it manufactures and the buildings it constructs.

Power reserve is treated much like the city's inventory. Electricity is stored in the power reserve when it is produced, not in the city's inventory. Electricity always has quality 255; there is no poor quality electricity. The size of the power reserve is based on the presence of certain buildings; the power reserve added by each building is shown on the table on the construction page. Buildings and roads use varying amounts of electricity from the power reserve depending upon the size of buildings, manufacturing processes, life support, and electric lighting. Spacecraft may purchase electricity from the power reserve to recharge their capacitors and cities will purchase electricity from spacecraft.

Ringworlds provide power as part of the ring hull infrastructure. Ringworld power is adequate to supply manufacturing processes and lighting. Defense bases require a great deal of power to be readily available in city capacitors. For this reason, power plants should be built in ringworld cities that have defense bases.

Abandonment Decay

Cities decay to remove unused and unwanted data from the game Universe. Limited server resources require that unused things be removed, for the benefit of those things that matter to active players.

Abandonment is the primary force for city decay. Cities must be visited by an avatar to prevent abandonment. A morale penalty begins to grow seven days after the last visit by an avatar who is on line, increasing by one every seven days. At first, the morale penalty is not significant. In time, the morale penalty outweighs all positive morale factors. This inevitably causes the population to dwindle to nothing.

When the population of a city is one or zero, the city is deserted. The buildings and roads of deserted cities crumble away, a few at every city report. After no more buildings or roads remain, the town square itself crumbles away, leaving no trace that it ever existed on the world.

Cities are visited to prevent abandonment. For the purpose of preventing abandonment, city visitation can be satisfied in two ways by avatars who are on line.

• An avatar passes through the city's solar system. All cities in a system are visited by the presense of an avatar who is on line, regardless of political stance.
• An avatar remotely visits their home sector. An avatar can declare a home city. The solar system containing an avatar's home city is visited whenever the avatar is on line, wherever they are. In addition, all solar systems in the same sector as their home city, that contain cities of their empire, are also visited.