Why your buildings fall apart - the 30 day problem and repairs explained from a beginner

Hello to everyone, especially the new players. I am not an expert, I started not long ago, but I am older and I like to understand how things work before I click, so I spent some time figuring out one part of the game that confused me a lot at the beginning, and that is the fact that buildings and roads do not last forever. I wish to share what I understood, in simple words, because I did not find it obvious at all. When I built my first buildings I assumed that once a thing is built, it stays built. This is how it works in many games. Here it is not like that. Many things in this town have a lifetime, and after some time they expire or they wear down, and if you do not pay attention your town slowly stops working without any clear warning. The first thing I noticed is the famous 30 days. A lot of buildings expire after 30 days. For example the service buildings - the police station, the fire hall, the church, the hospital - these hire their workers and then they expire after 30 days. The gold mine also expires after 30 days. Roads expire after 30 days too. So you cannot build something one time and forget about it for two months. After roughly a month, that thing is at the end of its life and you must deal with it again. Then there is wear. Buildings get worn over time, like a real house that needs painting and fixing. The game shows you a wear percentage. When a building is worn, you can repair it. What I learned about repair is this: the cost is proportional to the wear. If the building is at, let us say, 40 percent wear, then you pay 40 percent of the original construction cost to repair it - and not only in materials, but also in time and in energy. So a repair is like doing a part of the construction again. This means it is usually cheaper to repair regularly, in small amounts, than to let a building rot completely and then pay a huge repair. At least that is my understanding and my plan now. I also learned the hard way about demolishing. At one point I built something in a bad place, a real beginner mistake, and I wanted to remove it. I thought, no problem, I demolish it and I get my materials back and I build somewhere else. Wrong. When you demolish a building, you do NOT get the materials back. They are gone. And worse, tearing the building down takes as long as it took to build it in the first place. So if a building took you many hours to construct, the demolition also takes many hours, and at the end the land just becomes grass again and you have nothing to show for it except a free plot. So please, think twice before you place a building. Measure twice, cut once, like we say. Placing in the wrong spot is an expensive mistake here. One more detail that took me time to understand. Not every building behaves the same. Some, like the service buildings and the gold mine and the roads, have that hard 30 day expiry I mentioned - they simply reach an end date. Others wear down gradually and need repair rather than full rebuilding. So when you plan your week, it helps to roughly remember when you placed each important thing, because the 30 day clock is counting quietly in the background from the moment it was finished. I started writing down on a paper, next to my computer, the date I built my gold mine and my main roads, just so I am not surprised. It sounds old fashioned but it works for me. And about warnings - this is my main complaint as a new player - the game does not really shout at you when something is about to die. There is no big red alarm in your face. The information is there if you look, the wear percentage, the state of the building, but you have to go and look for it. Nobody pushes it to you. So the responsibility is on you to inspect your own town. Now, why does all this matter for a beginner? Because the biggest danger in my opinion is not losing a battle or anything dramatic, it is simply neglect. You log in, you build nice things, you feel good, then you do not log in for a week because life is busy. You come back and half your town is expired, your roads are gone so your buildings are disconnected, your service buildings are dead, your production has stopped. It is like a garden, if you do not tend it, it dies slowly. So my routine now, and I recommend it, is simple. Every time I log in, before I build anything new, I do a tour of my existing town. I check what is close to expiring. I repair the things that are worn before they get too bad. I make sure my roads are alive because if a road expires, the building it connected is now useless until I fix the road. Only after everything existing is healthy, I think about expanding. I will be honest, at the start this maintenance felt boring and I just wanted to build cool new stuff. But the players who last in this game are the ones who maintain. A small well kept town beats a big abandoned one. This is the lesson I wish someone told me on day one, so I am telling you now. If any veteran reads this and I got a detail wrong, please correct me in the comments, I am still learning. But this is what I observed so far. Take care of your town and it will take care of you. Good luck to all the new players.