You have grass, which means you can finally build. This is where your town stops being empty land and starts becoming a place with a shape and a character. In this lesson we will meet the different kinds of buildings, get to know the all-important City Hall, and learn why where you put things matters almost as much as what you put down. This is the moment your town starts to feel like yours.
The kinds of buildings
You build on grass, and each building has a job. It is worth learning the family of them now, because the whole loop runs through these structures, and once you know the cast of characters the menus stop looking intimidating.
- Houses are where your citizens live.
- Workshops and farms make goods.
- Schools train specialists with professions.
- Warehouses give you storage.
And then there is the City Hall, which deserves its own paragraph. The City Hall is the administrative heart of your town. It is where you recruit new citizens, so it sits at the very source of your population. Think of it as the front door through which every new person enters your town. We will lean on it heavily in later lessons; for now, just know it is special and central, the building everything else gathers around.
Notice how neatly these building types map onto the core loop from lesson 1. Houses give you the people; schools turn those people into specialists; workshops and farms put the specialists to work making goods; and warehouses hold what you produce. The City Hall sits at the top of it all, letting the people in to begin with. So when you wonder what to build next, the honest answer is usually whichever part of your loop is the current bottleneck - no room for people means a house, nowhere to put goods means a warehouse, no one to staff a workshop means a trip to the City Hall and the school. Let your town tell you what it is short of, and build that.
Your City Hall is one of a kind
Every town is founded with exactly one City Hall, and it is permanent - you can never build a second, demolish it, or rebuild it. What you can do is upgrade it, all the way to level 5, using the same materials and the same nearby services (its area of influence) that a house of that level needs. Every level you add lets you recruit a bigger batch of citizens at once, so growing your City Hall is how you speed up your whole population.
Levels and what they cost
Buildings have quality levels - you will see them written as Q1, Q2, and so on. Higher levels mean more capacity and output, which is the main way a building grows up. There is a ceiling, and it differs by type: most buildings cap at level 5, but houses are special and go all the way to level 10. So a house has more room to mature than anything else in your town.
The cost of construction scales with the level you are aiming for, and the formula is friendly and predictable. A level N build takes N hours and 5 times N energy, plus raw materials. So a level 1 building is quick and cheap - a single hour, just 5 energy - which makes it perfect for getting started. A high-level building, by contrast, is a genuine investment of time, energy, and materials. There is no trick here, only patience: the bigger the building, the bigger the commitment.
Let us make the formula concrete with a slightly bigger building. Aiming straight for level 4 means 4 hours and 5 times 4, which is 20 energy, plus the materials. Compare that to building level 1 first - 1 hour and 5 energy - and then upgrading your way up later. Either route gets you to level 4 eventually, but starting small means a working building in your town within the hour, earning its keep while you gather what you need for the next step. Building big from scratch just makes you wait longer for the same result, with all the cost paid before anything works. For a young town, sooner is almost always better than bigger.
Start small, grow up
Because a level 1 build is only 1 hour and 5 energy, it is almost always smarter to put up a small building and upgrade it later than to wait and build big from scratch. You get something working sooner, and the loop starts turning.
Roads, influence, and the layout puzzle
Here is the part that turns building from a list into a puzzle, and it is the part seasoned mayors quietly love. Your patches are connected back to the City Hall by roads, and roads matter most when you go to upgrade a building. An upgrade needs a road of the right level reaching the patch, so the roads are not just decoration - they are infrastructure that your growth depends on. If you box a building in with no proper road, you can find yourself unable to upgrade it later, staring at a structure you cannot improve. And one subtlety is worth knowing from the very start: a road you are still building does not connect anything yet. While it is under construction it is temporarily blocked, exactly like a real street closed for works, so the game treats the link as if it were not there until the build finishes - if a nearby build, upgrade, or production refuses because there is no road to the City Hall, an unfinished road is often the reason. Wait for the works to complete and it will connect like any other.
On top of roads, some buildings must sit within the area of influence of another building nearby. In other words, certain structures only work if they are placed close enough to a supporting building. This is why layout is part of the game and not an afterthought. You are not just dropping buildings wherever there is space - you are arranging a little town that has to stay connected and supported, the way a real city plans its streets before its skyline. A thoughtful layout today saves you a great deal of regret tomorrow.
Leave breathing room
When you place your early buildings, leave room for roads and for the supporting buildings you will want later. A cramped town is hard to grow; a town with a little space planned in upgrades smoothly. Think a couple of moves ahead.
If all this talk of roads and influence and layout feels like a lot to hold at once, let me lift the weight off you. You do not have to design a perfect town today. Your first buildings can go down simply and close to the City Hall, and you will learn the layout puzzle by living in it for a few days. The advice to leave breathing room is a nudge, not a test you can fail. What matters is that you now know roads and influence exist, so when an upgrade one day asks for a better road, you will understand rather than panic.
There is also a lovely sense of progress hiding in here. Up to now your town has been potential - land, energy, a plan. The moment you place that first building, the game changes character. You have a structure with a level, a job, and a place on the map. Even a single level 1 house is the first real piece of the machine you are assembling. Everything in the lessons ahead - filling houses, training workers, running production - needs buildings to do it in. So place that first one without overthinking it.
So building is more than placement - it is the start of planning, and you are becoming a planner whether you meant to or not. You choose a type, pick a starting level knowing it costs N hours and 5 times N energy plus materials, and you think about how roads and influence will let it grow. Take it gently and leave yourself room. Next we will zoom in on the most fundamental building of all: the house, and the simple rooms that decide how many people your town can ever hold.