Overview
This guide is meant go get you through the first 2 era’s of the game and have a good economy. If you want to experience a learning curve of somekind then do not read this guide but go ahead and play for yourself.
First things first – picking the family and the map
So first off, this guide is based on my personal experience and preferences. Feel free to do an chose whatever you wish.
– Family
The first thing you have to chose is the family. Each family has their own traits and events.
The traits are something you can see before starting the game. These traits are influenced by the choices you make during the game.
Traits give you benefits and drawbacks. Some traits I like are ‘Socialite’, ‘Honest’ and ‘Progressive’.
The events that come with the different families are only experienced through playing the different families.
The familly I chose are the ‘Shuyskys’.
This family has:
– Socialite (+)
– Honest (+)
– Elitist (-)
– In game event ‘Family fortunes’, go for ‘outside help’. This will grant you an astonishing 1000k to personal funds (++)
– Map
Picking the map does not have that much of an impact.
I chose the Rimini of Swarelia, I found it the easiest map to use my build strategy.
Politics
As you are the mayor of this town politics seem to be very important in this game.
Rules to that I lived by:
- Never influence parties, if you play correctly the parties will always be in favor. (it comes down to having a lot of tax income.
- Always use quickened vote when building or modifying districts. Costs 1 prestige.
- When reaching 3rd era, you will need your influence to stay the mayor. (I have not reached this part yet with this playthrough)
Wheel of Life
The wheel of life shows you what your citizens want and how happy they are.
The happier your citizens are the more tax they will pay.
The most important thing to get is personal growth, this determines how many low class workers will evolve to working class and further. (this is what I think, maybe a dev is laughing when he reads this, but hey it worked for me)
Try to have personal growth at a 10. Then focus on the thing you have the least of.
Building the first districts. (Opening moves)
So at this stage we have:
1. The Shuyskys
2. The Rimini of Swarelia
The first thing you need to do is to build a district.
It is good to have a general layout in mind of your city, this goes for every citybuilder but it also goes for Urban Empire.
We are going to build a total of 8 districts before we unlock the first invention.
We are going to build 2 sets of 4 districts each.
Each district will have ‘default grid’, try to have width and length equal and try to make it a 4×4.
The reason for this is very simple, if we build a service in the center of a set of 4 districts it will cover aproximately 95% of those 4 districts. So each service benefits 4 districts, in this way we only have to build 2 service buildings of each.
For the first district you have to use your own personal funds and place a city hall in the district.
Then before unpausing the game build a 2nd district next to the one you already build, place a school in this district (place it in the center of the 4 districts planned), go ahead with normal vote.
There is one more choice we have to make before unpausing the game and that is the right invention.
At the start of the game there are only 4 choices which makes it easy. Go for telegraph, this will unlock ‘spread selection’ which is a really important feature.
Unpause the game for only 2 months. Now you will run a deficit of around 50k and have an income about 40. If you increase the taxes now to 20%, it will not get you out of the deficit because there is so little to tax. But it does increase the income of the city so every party will vote yes.
Unpause the game and wait till the first vote comes up. This vote for the 2nd district should not be a problem. When you finish this vote you will have quite a deficit in tax income, which is exactly what we need. This is more incentive for the tax vote to go yes.
Make sure the game is paused when building or getting the tax vote, we do not want to waste any time. To build 8 districts before the first invention hits we need efficiënt time management.
There is one thing left we have to do before unpausing the game. Go to the freshly build school, and endorse the service to the max. This will improve the WOL personal growth.
Try and build the 3rd district if the council agrees go ahead, if it does not agree wait a bit till you get better income and then build the 3rd district. Or influence them a little bit with a close vote.
Keep building districts and try to use your prestige if you have any.
In your second set of districts add a school to the first district and endorse this service.
With good time management you should be able to finish this before the 1st invention hits.
7 districts (4×4) , 2 schools and taxes 20%. Build the 8 disitrict directly after the first invention hits and do not forget to add a church.
Second district I build on the top left of the first, as you can see I have a school and a church down in this district. 230k income.
In this era a event should happen called family fortunes, go for outside help this grants 25 prestige and 1000k personal funds. The prestige we use for quickened vote and the money we use to endorse services. The prestige will rise quite easy if you have such a good tax rate.
Second invention and second moves.
Second invention
First off we need to chose that second invention before building that 8th district.
The invention we will chose is thermodynamics. Now why is that, very simple we first need to change a couple of things to our layout this will cause massive unemployment and a big deficit so it is no use if we unlock something we cannot implement yet (gas). So why thermodynamics and not health authorities, thermodynamics comes with the first institution ‘port’. Institution are buildings that give nationwide benefits they cover the whole map. These buildings are one of our high priorities ingame.
So go ahead tick the invention and build the 8th district with a church.
Spread selection
With our first invention we unlocked the church which is a nice building ofcourse, but more importantly we unlocked ‘spread selection’.
With spread selection we can change R/C/I of our districts.
Wait till you have finished your 8th district afterwards pauze.
Build a 9th district somewhere, does not matter where, make it as big as possible, use sparse grid and make it 100% industrial. Use quickend vote ALWAYS!
We are going to seperate industrial from our R/C districts. Industrial needs other infrastructure then Residential and this is a efficiënt way to do so.
Do not unpause yet, go to every district and change the spread selection to 80-70 R / 20-30 C. This does not cost anything so use personal funds. As you will see our tax income will plummed, but the council will vote yes for the new district because we have a lot of money in the bank and we asked for the vote while running a nice profit.
Unpause and wait till the vote, you’ll see that they vote yes and go ahead and build a second 100% industrial district. You will also notice that the Industrial district fills up rapidly due to the high demand. This will increase our tax income aswell. Build a couple of them till you even out the balance or the 2nd invention finishes.
Third invention
So what we have at this stage of the game. 8 districts of 70/30 R/C and aproximately 3 districts of industrial. We have 2 schools and 1 church done. If you still have time for another modification go ahead and implement the 2nd church. Do not forget to endorse your services.
Third invention
We will chose ‘gas infrastructure’. It unlocks the gas grid and 2 upgrades. The gas grid is benificial for companies and industry. The additional 2 upgrades give bonus to environment and safety for our Residents. Furthermore it unlocks our first road upgrade ‘cobblestoneroads’ this is important for our industry because some of them will reach max capacity pretty soon. (less efficiency if I am not mistaken)
Thermodynamics
While we wait for our 3rd invention to finish we can build some more stuff. First of all build the ‘railway station’ this will boost all the districts.
When you have finished this go ahead and modify 2 district and add a police station. 1 police station per 4 districts.
Afterwards just wait for the 3rd invention to hit.
Fourth invention
Fourth invention
After we get the gas infrastructure go for the safety authorities. Clinics will get the WOL up pretty good.
Infrastructure
So we unlocked the gas infrastructure and the first road upgrade (cobblestone).
We are going to upgrade our districts
The R/C districts want Gas infrastructure, and 2 stars on the streetlights. This will give bonus to the Commercial businesses and a big bonus to environment and safety for the Residential buildings.
The Industrial districts only need the Gas grid upgrade. No streetlights are needed. They do not need services like health safety or so. You want to check wether their road capacity has reached its limit. If it has reached its limit also upgrade to cobblestone.
For modifying the districts use prestige (quickened vote)
When choosing what to upgrade first chose your most developed districts.
So probably the first R/C district you build and then the first Industrial district. Just keep upgrading.
This is where my step by step guide will end. I will give pointers on how to procede further into the game. Below you can see 4 R/C district with the clinics and the all the gas upgrades. As you will notice the WOL is exceptionally good for this early game.
How to move on through the rest of the game.
Inventions
When chosing inventions it is good to keep the following in mind.
– Inventions that give bonusses to personal growth or unlock stuff that add personal growth, for instance it is not bad to rush to the university
– Inventions that let you build or upgrade an institution, these buildings gave nation wide bonusses.
– Inventions that let you build new services that are required, when environment is low try to unlock the park etc.
– If the above do not apply then go for an invention that lets you get a new benificial edict.
Districts
– Fill the rest of the land with Industrial districts, demand will always be high for this.
– R/C will keep on growing no need to add any of this.
Edicts
– Try and get progressive edicts through
– Do not be afraid to increase costs of buildings it is usually worth it.
Infrastructure
– Make sure you give R/C the things they need
– The same goes for Industrial
– Always upgrade the most dense districts first.
– Upgrade density in districts which have all the infrastructure available
– Upgrade the most dense districts to higher density first and do not forget the road capacity
– Road capacity is important!
– Upgrade districts where you are going to implement the most things first.
Taxes
20% should be fine
The End
I hope this guide helps you play the game. As a closer here is a screenshot of my game towards the end of era 2.
As you can see I have a good tax rate, WOL 10, inventions almost done era 3, absurd amount of prestige and a nice 31000 citizens.
