Cities, Population, and Focus
Settlement tiers, automatic workers, specialization, migration, and stability.
cities_population_and_focusFrom camp to city
A frontier develops through Camp, Village, Town, and City tiers. Each tier raises capacities for territory, districts, engineers, military formations, and other systems. Upgrades require population, active buildings, claims, resources, and time.
No citizen micromanagement
Population supplies workers, but the server chooses which eligible land improvements are worked. Food stability is protected first. The player chooses one readable City Focus—Balanced, Food, Production, Research, Commerce, or Military—to shape the remaining assignments.
Specialize cities
Districts and focus choices let one city become agricultural, industrial, administrative, or commercial while another emphasizes research or defense. Real terrain, nearby deposits, buildings, and networks make the best specialization emerge from place.
Local stores, shared research
Food, Timber, Stone, Influence, strategic materials, population, construction, and unit capacity belong to an individual city. Knowledge earned by regional cities is transferred into the civilization-wide Knowledge ledger, while completed technologies apply to every owned city. Influence is never shared because it funds local claims and culture.
One research seat
The permanent capital directs research at first. Research consumes Timber, Stone, and Food from that research city plus shared civilization Knowledge, so regional resources must be traded or transported back when the capital leads science. Universities unlock in the Age of Exchange. A civilization may own one University; once completed, its city becomes the research seat and supplies future local material costs.
People move
Housing, jobs, food, safety, services, war, and disasters affect attractiveness. Migration can be rural-to-urban, intercity, or refugee movement. Players manage conditions and policy, not individual citizens.
Empty stores cause decline
When a city's Food stock is empty and its net Food rate remains negative, population gradually falls until supply returns. Starvation never reduces a settlement below one resident, so recovery is always possible.
Stability is the readable health score
Sanitation, healthcare, education, safety, utilities, transport, housing, employment, food, pollution, occupation, and reforms feed broader stability. The goal is understandable city health without simulating every resident.