Land and zones

Everything you build stands on zones, the squares of land in your city. You buy zones, put buildings on them, and sell the ones you no longer need.

You choose a city when you found your company, and it stays yours for the whole round: every building you own goes there, and you can only buy zones in it.

A city is 20 × 20 sections, each 20 × 20 zones. Purchase zones on the Zones page opens your city map; click a section to zoom in on its zones.

The Harbor needs two downtown zones on the shore and two in the water, and turns by itself to meet the sea.

The round starts with 1 activated downtown and 3 countryside sections, and all of the offshore. A new downtown section opens once every activated one has under 35% of its zones free; countryside opens under 60%.

Each building has a fixed shape, from 1 zone (the Fishing fleet and the Gas station) to 9 (the Forest). Buildings shows every shape and the zones it needs. A building must fit inside one activated section, on free zones of the right kind: zones you own, or zones still for sale. If any of its zones is next to a road, it produces 30% more.

Your first 10 zones are free. The next costs £300, and each one after that £100 more. The price only goes by how many zones you have bought this round, not by where they are. Buying or selling zones doesn't change your company value.

There are two ways to buy:

• With a building. A new building is paid for at once and waits until you place it. On your city map the sections that can take it glow gold: open one, click the spot and press Confirm. The zones under it are bought there and then, and it becomes a construction site for your staff (see Hiring staff). VIP members can also build straight into the best free spot.
• By hand. On a section, click the free zones you want, then Continue. This is an order: you pay now and the zones are yours at the next update. If another company gets them first, your money comes back.

A zone you own with nothing on it is checked every midnight. At the first midnight your secretary warns you, at the second you are fined £500 for it, and at the third it is taken back without payment.

The count beside Zones in the menu turns red while you have unused zones. Building on them or selling them stops this. Deconstructing a building leaves its zones yours, and empty.

Sell empty zones on the Zones page or on a section of the city map. The first zone you sell brings 50% of what your last zone cost, the next 50% of the zone before that, and so on; your free zones bring nothing. Each sale also takes one off your count of zones bought, so buying again costs what those zones cost before.

Sold zones, and zones taken back, go on sale to everyone again 5 to 10 hours later. When the round ends, every zone you own, built on or not, is cashed in for what selling them all would bring.