First Steps

You start with 150,000 $, a patch of land by the highway and a gift: the Colonial Authority pays for your first fusion power plant. That is all you need if you play it smart.

Your first hours

1. Lay a road from the highway into your area. Where it branches off is up to you. A simple road costs 150 $ per tile.
2. Zone an open district between the highway and the cliff. The first settlers move in here, first into trailers, later into family homes.
3. Place the fusion power plant and inaugurate it. Without power, people stay in trailers.
4. Accept the development loan. It is interest free and pays itself back out of your taxes (Development Loan).
5. Build the pig iron mine right against the cliff and keep its load low. At full load it costs 5,000 $ in wages per hour.
6. More housing, then trade, then industry. The dense district belongs between housing and industry, where it buffers the smog (Smog and Air).
7. Blast furnace, warehouse, thermal power plant, then police, fire department and hospital.

Typical mistakes

• Running the mine at full load on day one. The wages eat up your taxes. Raise the load only once your taxes can carry it.
• Housing right next to industry. Smog hurts the popularity of residential areas and lowers the rent.
• Forgetting power. New houses only appear if the power plant still has enough capacity to spare. Keep an eye on the "Free Energy" tile.
• Not inaugurating buildings. Finished buildings only start working after you click "Inaugurate" (Inauguration).
• Services too early and too big. Police, fire department and hospital cost money every hour. Start with a small setup and add more as the city grows.

When money runs short

Taxes never go negative. You only slide into the red through wages, services and loans. These help:

• the statement in the finance window, which shows you every shift (Statement and Shifts)
• drawing on your development loan again
• a loan from the District Bank of SpaceInvasion
• briefly turning down the load of your plants

Debt only blocks new loans, never the game itself.