Parcelspedia

A game tick

Every tick runs six stages in order, identically on every machine:

1. Commands: everything players and the AI asked for is applied, sorted by author and sequence.
2. Utilities: power and water networks are flood-filled across parcel borders. Each owner uses their own supply first, then buys from the cheapest neighbour selling. Power is settled before water, because pumps need power.
3. Demand: map-wide residential, commercial, industrial and office demand, shifted per player by their tax rate.
4. Growth: every eligible zone tile on the map competes for one shared pool of newcomers.
5. Land value: service coverage, traffic, pollution and crime are recomputed and land value moves toward its target.
6. Economy: taxes in, upkeep out, trades paid, treasury clamped at the debt floor, scores updated.

The game lasts 10 years (3600 ticks) by default.

Taxes

Every powered, occupied zone tile you own pays tax every tick:

• Occupants = level × people (or jobs) per level of that zone. See Zones.
• Industry is taxed at base land value (200) wherever it stands: factories don't care about the view. Every other zone pays on its tile's actual land value.
• Unpowered tiles pay nothing.
• Tax rate runs from 0 to 20%, default 7%. Each point above 7% cuts your demand (see Demand), each point below raises it.

A useful rule of thumb at 7%: each occupant pays a month per 100 points of land value.

Revenue calculator

Upkeep

Paid every tick for everything you have built on your parcel. Zones themselves cost nothing to keep.

Bridges (roads on water) cost double upkeep. Each placed building's upkeep is listed on its entry below.

Power and water trade

Networks ignore parcel borders. Within one connected network, every owner first covers their own demand from their own plants, pumps and towers. Owners who are still short buy from neighbours who have ticked Sell surplus, cheapest price first. The buyer pays the seller every tick:

• The AI offers at 4¢ per unit per tick. At that price, one unit sold all month earns .
• Power use: a zone tile needs 1 + its level; a building needs its listed power draw.
• Water use: a zone tile needs its level (empty lots need none). Levels above 1 won't grow without water.
• Water producers make nothing without power. Pumps and treatment plants that touch the river get their river bonus.

Score and winning

So each point of land value anywhere on your parcel is worth of score, as much as cash. A 32×24 parcel at an average land value of 400 is worth . The highest score when time runs out wins.

Your treasury starts at . Spending needs cash in hand. Upkeep can push you below zero, but never below .

Demand

Workers, jobs and shoppers move freely across the map, so raw demand is computed for the whole map and then normalised to −1000…1000:

Your own bars are the map-wide bars minus (your tax − 7) × 4 × 10. At 10% tax you lose 120 points on every bar; at 4% you gain 120. Bonuses come from powered landmarks (stadium, town hall, airport); see their entries.

If your demand for a zone falls below −500, occupied tiles of that zone start leaving even when they are well served.

Growth

Each tick, up to 4 tiles per zone type, across the whole map, move up or down a level. Which ones is decided by competition:

• Only tiles that are sustained (powered, a road within 2 tiles, and watered if above level 1) and whose owner has positive demand can grow. The highest scores win, so cheap land loses newcomers to valuable land, including your neighbour's.
• When map demand is negative, the lowest-scoring occupied tiles shrink first.
• A tile that isn't sustained loses a level with a 4% chance each tick.

What each level needs

Land value

Every tile has a land value from 0 to 1000. Each tick it moves 1/6 of the way toward a target:

Amenities, nature and shops spread by distance: full strength on the source tile, fading linearly to zero just past the radius. Effects ignore parcel borders, so a neighbour's park helps you and their factory hurts you.

Pollution, traffic, crime and fire

Zones

Zoning costs per tile (low density) or (dense). Low density grows to level 3, dense to 6. Building on woodland costs an extra per tile.

Roads and networks

All balance constants

The raw values from config/balance.ron. Money is in cents, rates per tick. Every save keeps the values it was started with.