Every building in your town needs ground to stand on, and that ground is the subject of this lesson. Your town is a grid of land patches. You start with a few usable ones, and you can claim more at any time you like - there is no window that closes. A patch is simply the piece of ground that one building will sit on, so the number of patches you control is, in a real sense, the size of your town. More patches means more room to dream.
I want you to feel relaxed about land, because nothing here is a trap. You are not bidding against other players for scarce ground, and you are not racing a timer. You claim a patch when you want it, you prepare it, and you build. If you only ever take one patch this week, that is perfectly fine. We are simply learning the steps so that when you do reach for more room, it feels routine.
Claiming a new plot
Claiming an empty plot costs 0.01 gold. A small detail that trips people up: this is paid in gold, the premium currency, and it goes into the game fund - it is not paid in your local currency. So even though it is a tiny price, it comes out of your gold balance specifically. That is the only catch worth flagging; otherwise claiming land is about as cheap as anything gets in CoinRepublik. A handful of patches will barely register against any gold you have earned.
It is worth pausing on that gold-versus-local distinction, because it is a theme you will meet again. CoinRepublik keeps gold, the premium currency, separate from the ordinary money your town earns. Land is one of the places it asks for gold specifically, so if you ever try to claim a plot and feel like nothing happened, the first thing to check is that you actually have at least 0.01 gold in your balance. The cost is small enough that a few correct quiz answers from lesson 1 can cover several plots, so do not let the gold price scare you off claiming room to grow. Room to grow is the whole point - a town with no spare patches is a town that has stopped dreaming.
Why you cannot build right away
Here is the part new players do not expect, so let me prepare you for it now. A fresh plot is not a tidy green field - it is covered in trees. You cannot build on a wooded patch. Before anything can go up, you must clear it. Clearing is a real little job with several requirements, and all of them must be met before it will run. None of them are hard, but they all matter together.
- It costs 10 energy.
- It consumes a small amount of raw materials.
- It requires at least 1 free unskilled worker to do the labour.
- It takes 6 hours to complete.
When that clearing job finishes, the trees are gone and the patch becomes grass. And grass is the magic word: only grass is buildable. A patch that is still wooded, or still mid-clearing, simply will not accept a building. So the mental rule is short and never changes - buy, then clear, then build, in that exact order. If you ever find you cannot place a building, the answer is almost always that the patch underneath is not grass yet. Whenever a build refuses you, look down at the ground first.
The order never changes
Buy the plot, clear it to grass, then build. Trying to build on a tree-covered or half-cleared patch will always fail, because only grass can hold a building. Keep this little three-step phrase handy and you will never be confused about why a plot will not build.
The chicken-and-egg for brand-new towns
There is one small wrinkle worth naming so it does not catch you off guard. Clearing needs at least 1 free unskilled worker - a single pair of free hands to do the job. Usually you will have one to spare, but if every worker you own is already busy in a building or on another task, clearing has to wait until one comes free. In that case you simply recruit a citizen first, or free one up, and then clear. It is just the loop asserting itself: people before land-work. The town needs at least one free hand before it can tame more ground.
Do not let that discourage you. Recruiting is that energy-free action - it costs materials and time instead of energy - so getting a worker is painless even when your energy is low. Once you have a free unskilled worker on hand, clearing is smooth sailing, and you can start opening up patches whenever you have the energy and materials to spare. A handy habit is to keep a spare free unskilled worker or two around precisely so that clearing is never blocked - one is the minimum, but having a couple in reserve means you are always ready to expand the moment a good plot catches your eye. A little slack in your workforce turns expansion from a chore into a snap decision.
Let me reassure you about the waiting, since six hours can sound long to an eager new mayor. Clearing is one of those slow background jobs the game is full of, and the trick is to start it and then go do something else entirely. While that patch is being cleared, you can recruit more citizens, run production in a building you already have, or simply log off and live your life. The clock ticks whether you are watching or not, so a clearing job is never really six hours of your time - it is six hours of the patch's time, and yours is free to spend elsewhere. Seasoned players queue up these slow jobs the way you might start a load of laundry: set it going and come back to it done.
It is also worth understanding why the game makes you clear at all, because the reason makes the whole system feel fairer. If every plot arrived ready to build, land would be nothing but a gold cost and the game would lose a layer of planning. Clearing turns land into a small project: you spend energy, materials, time, and the labour of real workers to tame each patch. That cost is what makes a well-developed town feel earned rather than bought. So the trees are not an obstacle in your way - they are the reason your finished town will mean something. Every patch of grass on your map is a little victory you worked for.
So that is land in full: a grid of patches, cheap to claim in gold at 0.01 each, tree-covered until you spend 10 energy and 6 hours clearing them to grass with at least 1 free worker. Hold the order in your head - buy, clear, build - and the rest follows naturally. With buildable grass in hand, the next lesson is the fun part: putting actual buildings on it, and meeting the City Hall, the heart of everything that comes next.