Hi everyone. As we have seen a bunch of questions about how the Tile Upkeep added in patch 1.1.5f1, also known as Economy 2.0, works, we created this mini development diary. We hope this will answer some of your questions and give a better understanding of why we added the Tile Upkeep, and like always we welcome your constructive feedback and questions that might pop up after reading this.
So, let’s start with the basics. The Tile Upkeep is a new administrative land cost applied to land you own. It’s a fee that the city pays to the government for expanding its city limits inspired by the real-world property tax paid for unused land. The first 9 tiles already unlocked when you start a city do not have a cost. You are only charged a Tile Upkeep once you expand beyond those. The upkeep cost is a percentage value of the map tile purchasing cost and the percentage value increases on a curve from 5% to 25% as more map tiles are bought. This means early map tiles have a lower upkeep cost but as more map tiles are purchased, the upkeep per tile also increases affecting all purchased map tiles’ upkeep cost.
X axis is the number of map tiles purchased, Y axis is the % of map tile purchase cost used to calculate the map tile upkeep costs.
When we were designing the Economy 2.0 update, we felt that more management features should be taken into consideration when you build your cities. Based on the feedback from you all following the release and from the closed beta group during the development of Economy 2.0, we came to the conclusion that the game was not challenging enough, especially in the later part of the game. And with the lack of a proper challenge being successful didn’t have the impact we wanted it to have. Growing the city’s limits is a natural way to progress through the game, so implementing an upkeep cost to map tiles was a good way to pace the gameplay, especially in the latter half where the city size grows rapidly and the map tile expenses reflect that. Our goal with the Tile Upkeep cost is to bring you more meaningful choices as you expand the city so you don’t just have to consider where to expand to, but also whether your city can sustain such an expansion. All in all we feel it strengthens the game pacing and improves the gameplay experience.
Of course, this new cost affects your ability to reach the edge of the playable area and create new Outside Connections, so let’s talk briefly about the cheapest way to create them early on. If you haven’t already noticed, map tile costs are affected by what is available in them - buildable land, resources, etc - making tiles with a lot of water the cheapest. This makes buying ocean tiles the absolute cheapest way to go if your city needs that new Outside Connection as soon as possible. You can then create a bridge or pipeline to the edge of the playable area. Or you can use the terrain tools to create a more realistic landbridge and build a road on top of it, but keep in mind that more land inside the tile affects its upkeep cost.
The UI has been updated to show not only the cost of new tiles but also the Tile Upkeep they come with.
If you’re continuing an existing save, you may have unlocked a lot of map tiles that now come with a high Tile Upkeep. You may be able to expand your city to build additional tax income to offset this cost, but if you have built villages or rural towns on the map using either Unlock All or a mod to unlock map tiles, that may just be too much to cover. In that case, we recommend enabling Unlock Map Tiles under Map Options the next time you load your save. While this does disable achievements, it also disables the Tile Upkeep so you can continue your city. This option is also great if you enjoy building small towns or villages and don’t want to skip the Milestone progression.
We have already seen some great feedback on the Tile Upkeep, both from those who like it and those who don’t. We will continue to follow discussions about the current state of the game, not only in regards to the Tile Upkeep, so we can further refine the gameplay and balance to provide the best possible experience for you while maintaining our goals for the game. We also have a survey where you can share your thoughts, currently available through the launcher.
Please keep in mind that iterating game features and balance takes time, so even when we agree with your feedback, we may not be able to address it for a while. Nevertheless, we greatly appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts about the game and the changes we make. We look forward to reading it and continuing development in the fall. Thank you for being a part of this journey.