Cities are the main assets of the game. Your rise comes less from raw map-painting and more from founding, growing, specializing, and protecting cities.
| Stage | Population | What unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Outpost | starter | Basic extractors (farm, fishery, lumber camp), guard post, well |
| Hamlet | small | Walls (light), barracks, scribe hut |
| Town | medium | Marketplace, healer, full guard tower, secondary chains |
| City | large | Tier-2 production, advanced research, alliance hookups |
| Greatcity | very large | Wonders (one slot), specialized districts, advanced civic |
| Capital | seat | Capital-only buildings, governance, additional wonder slots |
Stages unlock as population thresholds + need-grid satisfaction are met. A city can downgrade if needs collapse.
Every city tracks four need axes:
Each axis is a 0–100 gauge with thresholds (red / yellow / green). Stage upgrades require all four green.
Cities can specialize:
Each culture has natural specialization affinities — Fjordborn coastal raid bases, River Crown population mills, Ironpeak forge cities, Azure Isles trade ports.
The core building set is shared across all cultures (~109 base buildings). Each culture adds its own variants and unique buildings on top — bringing the total to 292 canonical entries. See the full building catalog.
Building categories:
Each city has a Leader assignable from your hero pool (or default culture-fit auto-leader). Archetypes:
A leader's archetype gates which buildings get bonus output and how quickly upgrades complete. Your culture biases which archetypes feel native.
Cities stratify into classes (see society):
Class composition shifts with culture, governance, and tech.
A city can fall into unrest if:
Persistent unrest leads to revolt; persistent revolt leads to abandonment. A decayed city becomes a ruin tile until reclaimed by a new Settler.
When besieged, a city's stockpile draws down faster, garrisons take morale damage from sustained pressure, and walls degrade per attack cycle. Counters: walls, guard tower upgrades, divine blessings, alliance relief armies, supply tunnels (Ironpeak only). See combat for the siege model.
Sources: city_development_system.md, rts_city_development_design_table.xlsx, society_system.md, technology-builing.md.