Building and upgrading

Everything in your city is one of the same 28 building types, named and drawn the way your city knew them.

Placing

Tap Build, choose a category (Economy, People, Culture, Defence, Army, Landmarks) and a building. Drag its outline to a free green spot and tap Build here. Red means something is in the way, or the spot is outside the area you can build on yet.

You can only build within your city’s zone, which grows each age. The four long avenues from the town centre stay clear, and the rings are kept for walls.

Builders and timers

Each builder crew works on one job at a time: a new building, an upgrade or clearing land. You start with two; the third joins when you enter the second age; the fourth and fifth can be hired for kola (250 and 500).

A building’s level-1 build takes seconds or minutes; later levels take hours or days. You can cut a timer short with a talking drum (one hour off, two charges, a new one every four hours) or finish it at once with kola. Speed-ups.

Cancelling a job gives back half of what it cost. Most buildings can be moved for free; the town centre and walls stay put.

Upgrades

Select a building and tap Upgrade. Ordinary buildings can go one level above your town centre (to level 15 at most). Landmarks, the hero’s palace, the wonder, the port and the great defences go to level 5, one level for each town-centre level after they unlock. Each level costs about 55% more than the last.

Clearing land

Trees, bush and rocks cover the land around the city. Tap one and clear it with a builder: it gives Materials, and three times in ten a little kola.

Walls and gates

Three wall rings open as the city grows: the inner ring at town-centre level 4, the middle at 7 and the outer at 10. Wall segments go up instantly; gates sit where the avenues cross a ring. Raiders have to break through a wall or find a gate. Some town-centre levels ask for a number of segments, a finished ring or every segment at a certain level.

Water

The port, bridges, beaches and waterfronts must touch the river or the sea. Cities away from a navigable river have an inland trade hub in the port’s place, built anywhere: a horse market in Oyo, a caravan station in Kano and Sokoto, a railway yard or freight terminal in later eras, the dry port in Kano today.

Every building type

Names from Benin · Kano · Lagos today. “Unlocks” is the town-centre level; “Most” is how many you may have at level 15.