State of the Simulation Address.

MEGACITY: State of the Simulation address  (as of Living City Patch 2.0)

INSIDE MEGACITY: How the City Simulation Works

A look at the simulation systems, production pipelines and player decisions available in the current Early Access build.

MEGACITY’s simulation runs through advancing game ticks. Production, consumption, population change, construction, research, travel, treatment and other active systems progress on that shared clock. You can let time run or advance it through turn-based controls.

The important part is how those systems connect. A factory needs more than an unlocked blueprint. An army needs more than recruited troops. A district can have supplies somewhere in the city and still lose access to them.

Below is a closer look at the working systems behind those connections.

Production: From Raw Materials to Usable Equipment

Production chains convert extracted resources into refined materials, components and finished products.

Extraction → refining → components → finished goods → storage and use

Operational facilities, worker allocation, input materials, power and storage constrain production. A researched product is not automatically manufactured, and manufactured stock is not necessarily installed, equipped or available at the place that needs it.

Players can develop production capacity, review recipes and stockpiles, and identify shortages holding back output. Materials feed onward into construction, trade, medical provision, military supply and advanced equipment.

This creates competing demands: using materials for an expansion can leave less available for another production line or an urgent order.

Population, Housing and Employment

Population is not simply an increasing score. Growth and decline respond to housing, public health, food, water, migration restrictions and other city conditions.

Housing and essential supplies → population stability → workforce and demand → further infrastructure needs

More residents provide a larger tax base and workforce, but also increase demand for services and transport. Housing shortages constrain growth; essential-resource shortages can cause unrest and deaths.

The game tracks demographic groups alongside employment and social conditions. Most residents are simulated as populations or cohorts, while officers, companions and certain specialist formations have individual records. The simulation does not invent a separate character profile for every citizen.

Players influence this balance through construction, recruitment, policies, service provision and border controls.

Districts: Local Conditions Matter

Districts have their own population, designation, development and operational conditions. Citywide totals do not tell the whole story.

Players can specialize districts, inspect local needs, develop infrastructure and manage emergencies. Gate closure, quarantine and utility isolation are separate orders with different consequences.

Prepare local reserves → check staff and readiness → restrict access or isolate services → monitor shortages → restore connections

An isolated district may depend on stored supplies and backup power. Those reserves can run out. Closing a gate does not automatically provide enough personnel to enforce it, and reopening the gate does not reconnect an isolated utility feed.

District readouts help distinguish available resources from actual local access.

Utilities, Damage and Maintenance

Power, water, transport and other service networks support the systems using them. Damage, inadequate maintenance and disrupted connections can reduce effective service.

Supply and network access → usable service → supported operations

Water quantity and water safety are separate concerns. Having water in reserve does not establish that it is safe. Likewise, citywide transport capacity does not remove a district’s access restrictions.

Players can inspect supply, condition, staffing and recorded outages, maintain infrastructure, and manage reconnection. These dependencies allow a local problem to affect production or care without treating every shortage as a citywide failure.

Construction and Research Are Processes, Not Instant Rewards

Construction and recruitment use paid, timed orders with eligibility and capacity checks.

Research also advances through actual project work. Technology prerequisites determine what can be started, while staffing and facilities affect progress.

Prerequisite research → project work → unlocked capability → construction, manufacture or installation

Finishing research may unlock a building or design rather than immediately granting its benefits. Equipment still needs to be produced and installed; a new unit may require training or conversion.

Research teams can queue eligible projects. Named scientists can record work and experience, and supported field-testing incidents can produce real injuries, material losses or laboratory damage. Incidents are probabilistic: the same project need not produce the same report in every campaign.

Laboratories, Disease and Countermeasures

Science includes dedicated laboratory workflows rather than a single general research bonus.

Disease Control, Genetics, Biology and Biomechanics have their own requirements for staff, equipment, specimens and work.

A disease response can follow this chain:

Recorded illness → sample collection → analysis → identification → matched countermeasure research → manufacture → administration

Samples have sources, collection dates, storage requirements and expiry. A confirmed sample establishes evidence about that case—not every illness in the city. Completing countermeasure research does not create free doses.

Biology supports district specimen collection and analysis. Biomechanics includes product testing and manufactured mobility support. These systems consume actual supplies and operate within their own staffing and facility limits.

Healthcare: Capacity, Staff, Equipment and Supplies

Medical buildings provide physical capacity, but effective care also depends on personnel, instruments, equipment condition and consumables.

Patients → accessible treatment capacity → staffed and supplied care → recorded outcomes

Players recruit medical professionals, install instruments, maintain equipment and supply supported pharmaceutical programs. Treatment programs share finite dispensing capacity and consume stock.

Different treatments have different purposes. Antibiotics address supported bacterial cases; radiation medication supports recorded radiation casualties but does not remove contamination. Pain relief is not the same as healing.

Named military and uplift injuries connect to recovery records. Eligible replacement treatments require the relevant research, products, stock and funding.

Military Organisation, Training and Logistics

The military connects recruitment, training, housing, assignments, equipment and supply.

Recruitment order → training → available personnel → assignment → deployment → losses and recovery.

Training Barracks provide training capacity separately from ordinary troop housing. Personnel assigned away, stationed or committed to an encounter are not additional free troops available elsewhere.

Military vehicles and installations also need crews. Players can prioritise limited manpower between those demands and review readiness alongside supply coverage.

Food, fuel, ammunition and vehicle parts have distinct roles. A civilian commodity with a similar name does not necessarily refill a military stockpile.

Supported company reserve controls provide a further replacement pipeline: paid training creates reserve personnel who must then be mobilised into the force.

Combat Uses Committed Forces and Recorded Results

Combat is resolved within the main game using the forces and resources committed to the encounter.

Available forces and supplies → reviewed order → resolution → recorded losses, survivors and recovery

Combat and support systems account for their supported combinations of readiness, equipment, terrain, weather, targeting, cover and other modifiers. Ground deployments, aircraft and strategic missiles have their respective dispatch and arrival rules.

The automatic combat presentation displays saved results rather than rerolling the battle when viewed. Force counts, abstract strength and named-person outcomes are kept distinct.

Battlefield recovery can return ammunition, weapon scrap, vehicle parts and robot components to their actual inventories. Storage limits can leave material awaiting collection, and completed recovery cannot be claimed twice.

Trade and Transport Require Actual Arrivals

Physical trade connects agreements to journeys, cargo and settlement.

Agreement → shipment → travel and possible interruption → arrival → cargo and financial settlement.

Goods still aboard a shipment are not already in the city stockpile. Routes can be delayed or interrupted, and recorded incidents help explain what happened without attributing unsupported causes.

The annual summer siege can hold incoming overland shipments at the perimeter. Cargo remains aboard while crews consume provisions; movement resumes through the transport system rather than by instantly crediting the delivery.

Local public transport separately models capacity and demand. Players can expand supported bus, tram, subway and monorail infrastructure, while monitoring overload and district access restrictions.

Scavenging and Reclamation Leave Lasting Changes

Recovery sites retain consequences across visits.

Scout → recover surface salvage → excavate buried material → reclaim or decontaminate.

Surface and buried salvage are finite, separate reserves. Successful recovery reduces what remains, and time alone does not refill a depleted site. Previous clearance can improve later operations, while failed or missing expeditions leave recorded uncertainty.

Contaminated reclamation material follows a physical handling chain:

Field containers → depot transfer → city collection → waste accounting and compatible containment**

Crews, collection vehicles and storage matter. Recovering contaminated material does not make it disappear.

Intelligence Is Limited by Evidence

Intelligence separates hidden activity from what the player has actually learned.

Collection or reconnaissance → retained report → target case file → observation, confidence and age.

Supported operations have costs, prerequisites, timers and outcomes. Case files retain reports and distinguish domestic, foreign and unclassified information.

A reported observation can become stale. Missing evidence is not proof that a threat is absent, and discovering an incident does not automatically identify who caused it.

Players can review sources, monitor targets, investigate supported leads and prepare follow-up operations without receiving an unrestricted view of the simulation’s hidden state.

Politics, Automation and the Campaign Record

Officers and political groups have tracked attributes and relationships. Appointments, demands, promises, spending and player decisions can create recorded changes.

Council vacancies can be filled through a reviewed candidate slate and spending limit. Political readouts distinguish current values from changes supported by earlier records.

Automation allows supported routines to be delegated through **Off, Suggest and Act** controls. Managers still depend on their requirements, budgets, available resources and authorisations; enabling a manager does not remove those constraints.

Reports, receipts and City Pulse bring parts of this activity together: what changed, where it happened, what was spent and what remains blocked. Some readouts are exact records; others are estimates or aggregate measures, and untracked information should not be mistaken for zero.

The Current Early Access Boundary

These are connected simulation systems, but they do not simulate every resident or every physical interaction individually. Some operate through named people and assets; others use cohorts, capacities, indices or aggregate results.

Features marked **Under Development** remain outside this overview’s claims. Off-world colonisation and deep-fleet operations are not being presented here as completed gameplay.

The existing simulation is built around managing those dependencies: not just producing more, but getting the right supplies, staff, equipment and access to the systems that need them—and following the consequences as the campaign advances.

About This Game

You are the Commander of a vast megacity built on top of a dead world. You did not build this city. You inherited it: crumbling infrastructure, humming reactors, hostile factions, crowded districts, and a population that expects you to keep the lights on.

You are part mayor, part warlord, part bureaucrat. The only thing standing between civilization and total urban collapse. You are not paid enough for this.

This is not a city builder. The city already exists. Your job is to stop it from killing itself.

A CITY THAT FIGHTS BACK

MEGACITY is a dystopian strategy-management simulation with the depth of a spreadsheet and the soul of a dark comic. Govern through laws, policies, edicts, budgets, research, construction, diplomacy, espionage, military force, and the occasional act of bureaucratic desperation.

The simulation tracks the systems that keep a city alive: food, water, power, industry, trade, housing, employment, health, crime, corruption, morale, unrest, infrastructure, weather, radiation, and the biosphere. Every improvement creates new pressures. Every shortcut leaves a bill for someone else.

In real-time mode, problems can grow while the game is running; in turn-based mode, the city waits for you to end the turn. Decisions echo through the districts, and a prosperous balance sheet is not enough if people cannot live there.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE NUMBERS

Your citizens are not just a population bar. Crime, accidents, disease, disasters, attacks, harsh weather, radiation, and military operations leave human consequences behind.

Residents can be wounded, sick, or missing. Some recover. Some do not. Deaths are recorded by cause, while injured and missing people remain part of the city's ongoing burden. Progress can reduce the damage, but it cannot make catastrophe harmless.

Your officers, advisors, captains, soldiers, workers, and commanders have their own roles, traits, loyalties, and failures. Competence matters. Loyalty matters more. Corruption festers quietly until it does not.

FACTIONS, FAITHS, AND POWER

Internal factions compete for influence over the city. The Authority wants order. Corporate interests want access. Criminal networks want territory. The Mutant Collective wants rights. The Rust Wardens control critical infrastructure and remember exactly who stopped paying them.

Factions have leaders, demands, loyalties, threats, beliefs, and changing relationships with one another. Negotiate, appease, manipulate, investigate, suppress, or let rivalries turn into open conflict.

Faiths move through the districts and pull at loyalty, crime, corruption, and unrest. Sponsor a faith, tolerate it, suppress it, or remain secular. If one belief takes hold, you can choose to build a leader cult around yourself—gaining influence while inviting schisms, backlash, corruption, and assassins.

MILITARY COMMAND

Build squads from distinct troop classes and combine them into formations with different strengths. Choose deployment doctrines, match troop composition to the mission, and use captains whose traits change how a squad fights, moves, and survives.

Recruitment and construction take time. Missions have real consequences. Casualties are persistent, injured troops need treatment, and a fallen captain does not have to erase an entire formation. Prepare a successor, preserve the squad, and decide what victory is worth.

THE WASTELAND AND THE BIOSPHERE

Beyond the walls lie irradiated deserts, toxic waterways, overgrown ruins, abandoned infrastructure, strange wildlife, settlements, raiders, salvage, and communities that chose life outside the city's control.

Send expeditions into the wastes, establish trade, recover technology, hunt megafauna, discover lost sites, and decide whether the land is a resource, a threat, or something worth restoring.

The wildlands are part of the city's future. Weather, radiation, pollution, ecological damage, conservation, and recovery feed back into public health, food, stability, and prosperity. A golden age requires a city that is livable, not merely rich.

INDUSTRY, RESEARCH, AND THE LONG BUILD

Expand an interlocking industrial economy through research, infrastructure, contracts, supply chains, trade, and construction. Choose what to manufacture, what to import, which systems to upgrade, and which shortages the city can survive.

Buildings and troop programs take time to complete. Training facilities, software upgrades, mega projects, orbital infrastructure, and civic investment turn the city into a long-term project instead of a sequence of instant purchases.

Research reaches from practical survival systems to advanced statecraft, covert operations, orbital technology, and weapons capable of changing the balance of power. Every new capability opens another responsibility.

A LIVING NEWS FEED

The city reports on itself through a relentless broadcast ticker and a stream of dispatches. War declarations, ceasefires, construction, disasters, ecological shifts, policy changes, faction demands, expeditions, and public scandals become part of the daily record.

Expect dry announcements, impossible headlines, bureaucratic euphemisms, and the occasional story that is funny only because the alternative is screaming.

STORIES WITH CONSEQUENCES

Branching events and multi-stage storylines put people, institutions, factions, and the wider city under pressure. Responses can change resources, relationships, districts, the biosphere, and the future shape of the city.

There are no universally clean solutions. A compassionate answer may weaken the treasury. A ruthless answer may stabilize a district. A clever compromise may create a problem that arrives several turns later.

You can also take on contracts, investigate crime, run covert operations, manage officers, pursue personal interactions, recover lost knowledge, complete civic and wasteland projects, and leave a legacy through the choices that survive you.

TWO WAYS TO RUN THE CITY

Every new city asks one question before the trouble starts: real time or turn based?

- Real time: The city lives on its own clock while you play. Ticks pass, crises erupt, and the simulation pauses when you close the game.

- Turn based: Nothing advances until you end the turn. Read every report, weigh every decree, and take the time to understand the consequences. When a crisis demands attention, the day waits for your response.

The world is harsh in both modes. The pace is yours.

REAL TIME AND TURN BASED

Real time mode supports configurable tick pacing, autosave, labeled save slots, and backups. The game also supports Steam offline mode; no internet connection is required for ordinary single-player play.

Steam Cloud keeps saves and commander profiles available across devices. Start at the desktop, continue on a Steam Deck, and return to the same city with its history intact.

You can customize your commander profile and portrait, adjust the interface for your screen, and choose how much information you want to see before making a decision.

A WORLD BUILT BY SIMULATION

In Early Access, MEGACITY's world is built from authored content and a living simulation:—

No longer containing AI-generated prose/narrative/slop.

Events, headlines, and reports draw on your city's systems, data, history, and decisions, so the story grows from what actually happens.

MEGACITY is inspired by deep management games, dark absurdist comics, and the firm belief that strategy games should make you laugh while everything you built catches fire.

No microtransactions. No pay to win. No loot boxes. No battle passes. Just a city that needs running and a Commander who signed up for this.

KEY FEATURES

- Dystopian strategy city management.

- Real time or turn based play.

- Govern a living post-collapse megacity.

- Balance economy, infrastructure, crime, health, morale, and survival.

- Human consequences: wounds, sickness, missing people, recovery, and deaths.

- Internal factions, faiths, leader cults, diplomacy, and intrigue.

- Squads with troop composition, doctrines, captains, succession, and persistent casualties.

- Wasteland expeditions, settlements, salvage, wildlife, and ecological recovery.

- Research, construction, contracts, supply chains, and long-term projects.

- Branching events, multi-stage stories, and consequential decisions.

- Espionage, crime investigation, military operations, and officer management.

- Dynamic weather, radiation, disasters, and biosphere pressure.

- Live news ticker and reactive city dispatches.

- Configurable real-time tick pacing.

- Steam Cloud sync for saves and commander profiles.

- Single-player and offline friendly.

- No microtransactions or pay to win.

- Solo-developed.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

MINIMUM

- OS: Windows, macOS, or Linux

- Processor: Modern processor

- Memory: 4 GB RAM

- Graphics: GPU with WebGL support

- Storage: Available disk space

RECOMMENDED

- OS: Windows, macOS, or Linux

- Processor: Modern multi-core processor

- Memory: 8 GB RAM

- Graphics: Dedicated GPU

- Storage: Additional available disk space