Building questions

Short answers to what players often ask about buildings and land. For the whole story, see Land and zones, Production and efficiency and Upgrading buildings.

1. On My factories press Build a new factory (or Construct a new shop on My shops, Build an office on Offices).
2. Pick a building on Build: Requires shows what it uses, Cost its price and Zones how much land it needs.
3. Press Build this factory (or shop, or office). It is paid from your savings at once.
4. Your city map opens: open a section that glows gold, click the spot and press Confirm. Zones you don't own yet are bought with it.
5. Put staff on the construction site: open a person's profile, choose the site under Place and press Move.

VIP members can also press Build in the best free spot, which does steps 3 and 4 in one go.

Yes, while it is not on the map yet: Deconstruct the factory (or shop, or office) on its page gives you the full price back. Once it is placed, even as a construction site nobody has worked on, deconstructing gives back only 20% of what it cost.

• It is not on the map yet. A building you have bought waits until you place it with Place it on the map on its page.
• Nobody works on the site. Its Construction panel then shows the time remaining as infinite. New staff wait at head office until you move them there.
• It just takes time. Bigger buildings need more construction points, and Builders bring their production points while anyone else brings only their attribute points.

Your first 2 factories need only 1% of the usual work, so with staff on the site they are built almost at once.

It must fit inside one activated section of your city, on empty zones of the kind it needs, your own or ones for sale: Buildings, under Info in the menu, shows each building's shape and zone type. On your city map, only the sections that can take it glow gold. Within a section it can't go on a road, on another building, on another company's zones or on zones just sold that are not back on sale yet, and your savings must cover the zones you don't own. Buildings can't be turned round, except the Harbor, which turns by itself to meet the sea.

A building gets the 30% road bonus if any one of its zones is next to a road, and the map tells you when you point at a spot. If no such spot is left, you can build away from the roads without the bonus, or wait for more land. A new downtown section opens once every activated one has under 35% of its zones free (countryside under 60%), and zones other companies sell or lose come back on sale 5 to 10 hours later.

No. Everything you build stands in the home city you chose when you founded your company, for the whole round. You can still look at every other city on Map, under Info, with its companies, buildings and vehicles, and you trade with all of them on one market.

Up to 25, counting factories, shops and offices together. Buildings you have bought but not placed yet, and construction sites, count too. The Build page shows how many you have; to make room, deconstruct one you no longer need.

A factory takes 3 people, a shop 2 and an office 2, and the Extra worker upgrade adds one place where a building offers it. A construction site takes as many as the finished building will. The building's page shows its Preferred employee type: people of that profession bring their production points, anyone else only their attribute points. See Hiring staff.

Each factory and shop can take two of Efficiency +20, Base production +50% and Extra worker, depending on the kind of building. The first unlocks once it has made or sold 1,000 units and costs £5,000; the second unlocks at 3,500 units and costs £10,000. Buy them in the Upgrade 1 of 2 panel on the building's page; your secretary writes when one is ready. Offices can't be upgraded.

Buildings age. Every midnight a building loses a small share of its base efficiency, and that share grows with its age, so it slips slowly at first and faster later. Its page shows Current and Base efficiency, and the current figure turns orange below 90% of the base and red below 75%. Only the Efficiency +20 upgrade raises it again, by 20 points up to 100%, and the building goes on ageing from there.

A new building starts at its type's full base efficiency, but rebuilding costs a lot. Deconstructing gives back only 20% of what the old one cost and nothing for its upgrades, the new one has to be paid for and built again, and it counts its units towards upgrades from zero. So it is mainly worth weighing for an old building without upgrades, with plenty of the round left. The old building's staff go back to head office and its stock to your warehouse; its zones stay yours, but empty zones are warned at midnight and then fined, so place the new one straight away.

It is a reminder, not a stop: the factory's own stock of its input is below the Keep in stock amount on its page, and it keeps working with what it has. Goods move in from your warehouse at every update, so make or buy more of the input. Only when nothing is left inside does it show Short of goods and make nothing. Goods you have locked in the warehouse are never moved in.

The Factories tab on Build lists each raw-material factory with the factories that use its goods set in below it, and its Requires and Produces columns say what goes in and what comes out. Buildings, under Info, shows the same for every building, with what it costs and who works there. Every step after the raw goods uses 2 units of its input for each unit it makes.

Investing at the bank, open once your Company Value reaches 20,000, adds 1 CV for every £20 at once, but the money is gone and earns nothing more. A building keeps making goods for the rest of the round, and every unit adds CV and money you can use again, so early in a round building usually pays better. Whatever is left in your savings when the round ends is invested for you anyway. Invest money you can't put to work, or when a higher CV now helps: your rank, how much the bank lends you and your share price. See Savings and investments.