Thank you, to all of you that purchased Citystate since its release in 2018. Despite a rough start back then, your feedback and contributions pushed me to improve the game again and again. Along the way the community has grown so quickly that I was able to become a full-time developer and focus 100% on the game. Today, thanks to your support and the relative success of Citystate I've been able to start working on something more ambitious.





I hope you guys will embark with me on this new adventure. This is going to be once again a very unique city-builder, so as always I'm waiting for your ideas and opinions.

As I've been almost uniquely focused on the game itself, I didn't take the time to centralize all the information. The steam page will be used for that purpose and where I'll post all the development updates.

Citystate II - Store Page

I understand the frustration that some of you will have, feeling like I'm giving up on Citystate 1. There are many reasons that pushed me to start again from a blank slate which I've mentioned already. Mainly: the limitations of the 2D game engine I used (performance, freedom of action, data management, lack of support...), flaws in the foundations of the game (initially it was not even supposed to have commercial and industrial zones, the consecutive major updates added complexity, some inconsistencies and not as much gameplay value as I'd like) and a growing lack of interest (less sales!).
Citystate II is a great opportunity for me to finally realize what I always wanted to do in the first game but couldn't. Hoping to see you there soon!

Andy.

A new update just went live! We can now suppress the riots, build walls against illegal migrants or set up refugee camps to welcome them. Vertical farms have also been added!

Army

- We can build army bases, each base provide 1 regiment
- The army can be used to suppress riots
- Suppressing riots gives a temporary approval bonus
- The army can be used to stop caravans of undocumented migrants
- The army can be used to stop fleeing groups of citizens

NB: You can either assign the army to an empty area (sea or land) or directly send them to a group of migrants or rioters. Only the second option will result in a stability and civil rights loss.

- We can build border walls to prevent migrants to reach the city
- We can build refugee camps to accommodate them
- Refugee camps can also help moving people out of slums. Informal settlers will go to refugee camp and then reintegrate society.

Migrations

- Wealthy countries without border policies will be visited by caravans of migrants. When they reach the city they will settle in slums.
- Countries with economic troubles (unemployment, negative growth rates) will see their own citizens fleeing by foot.

- The border control window has been entirely revamped. There are now 4 policies to decrease immigration and 4 policies to increase it. This menu also show explicitly the immigration policies' effect on the growth rates.

Vertical Farming

- Farms can now be build with middle demand only.
- Low class demand will build fields and orchards
- Middle class demand will build greenhouses.
- Greenhouses can evolve to vertical farms with high education and health scores.
- Greenhouses and vertical farms produce more food.

Other changes

- 4 new steam achievements (PC ONLY)
- Resetting the region now reset colonies too.
- A high unemployment rate is now slowing down all classes' growth.
- Low class buildings generate half traffic than the others.
- Destroying building has less effect on stability. Points lost are displayed when building destroyed.
- Destruction costs are now dynamic.
- Advices from advisors for informal settlers and border control has been updated.
- Additional 4th greenhouse asset.
- Slum growth mechanics changed. Spread less easily.
- Army bases will improve the security score.
- Region UI changed, new color theme. Way less ugly.
- Policies have a stronger effect on the security score.
- Map creator UI in region changed, some buttons were useless and have been removed.
- Changed tooltip in title screen custom mode
- Influence of airports on the middle and upper class growth severely reduced. Yes, I saw what you were doing guys.
- Sales tax effect on growth now properly displayed in the stats window, included in each "tax effect" number.
- New app icon.

Bug fixes

- Creating a new city was resetting the regional fund
- Couldn't turn off the music in colony mode
- Build a mall in colony was resulting in NaN/Infinity money
- Picking a government building would sometimes instantly build it in the background.

PATCH 1.2.4b

Changes:

- The sandbox mode now includes all political features
- Deployed troops have a wider range (1 tile around them, total 9 tiles)
- Stability points increase 50% faster
- Big changes to the approval rate, making it higher in general and especially in small cities and more sensitive to the unemployment rate.
- Big changes to the riot system, trigger less often in general and are less destructive.
- People can protest for 2 new reasons (high unemployment and too low health+education)
- Cursor over the approval rate shows accurate description and sum of its computation.
- Unemployment in small towns will no longer deplete the demand entirely
- Some changes to the top help messages
- Parks can no longer be used to stop migrants
- Approval bonus from suppressing the riots limited to 30
- New game intro

Bug fixes:

- Sales tax revenue don't appear in census tool for hotels stage 2+
- Army bases were disappearing after loading some games
- Changing a policy before all issues have been addressed was severly slowing down the rate at which new issues pop up
- In some situations issue points would stack up after all issues have been answered
- In some situations reopening an issue would reopen it twice.
- We could build water under migrants
- Riot message was too long and cut off
- Unemployment effect on the approval rate was never positive
- Stability points was offset in Tycoon mode
- Floating star selector in region mode removed

PATCH 1.2.4c

Changes:

- 3 new steam achievements (PC only), space explorer achievement updated, some icons changed.
- There are less waves of migrants, immigration rate is lower, more conditions are required for them to come, related advice message appears less often. Apparently you guys don't like migrants at all, lol.
- Migrants won't build slums if there are enough space in refugee camps.
- Migrant slums take longer time to disappear.
- Deploying the army against migrants will prevent them to come back for the next 12 to 24 months (depending on the number interventions).
- One upper class stage 7 building changed.
- Ski slope building changed.
- Changed demand's equations, rate unchanged but demand grows faster mainly for bigger cities (30 to 40% increase for a city with 100,000pop)
- Slight additional tweaks to the riot mechanics.
- Health and education related policies have more effect on education and health scores.
- Triggers for vertical farms to grow changed, now: positive $$$ demand, health > 80, edu > 80, enviro > 80.
- Spice is 30% more profitable.
- Added a small "game loading" in the intro with the game version.

Bug fixes:

- Music was not playing after loading a city.
- Menus were overlapping when editing a map in region view.
- Cities are now updating correctly. Still, because some of your cities might have missed some of the previous updates some bugs with the menus will remain, however every new city and cities you haven't touched in the last 4 weeks should be 100% working.




There won't be any additional major updates for Citystate in the future, I'll write a blog post about it in the next days.
I'm still carefully following all bug reports and will patch the game again if necessary.
Thanks!

A new update has just been released! Send spaceships from your city to explore and build colonies on other planets.


- Build spaceships in your city and send them to explore and colonize distant planets.

- 20 planets with their very own characteristics, different flora, different amount of resources, different levels of difficulty.

- Mine for the expensive Spice to make a revenue, balance your colony's finance and have enough cash to build more ships and explore more planets.

- Build and manage the colony: its food supply, employment, entertainment, education and health.

- More than 20 new buildings for the colonies, with a resolution twice bigger than the usual assets.

- And a new soundtrack!

- And 2 extra steam achievements (PC only)

The space update is a small game in itself with its own mechanics. There's very little politics involved here, just an exciting end game bonus!




Large cities get a noticeable performance increase.
Some recurrent computations have been entirely recoded (land value, road access, environment points). They were causing repetitive freeze.
Destroying jungles and deserts are now lag free too.


- Added the option to reset the region.
- New message for the street protest. When a riot occurs the camera won't scroll to it anymore.
- Water provides a few environment points .
- Regional bonus growth is less powerful.
- Arcologies added to the transparency layer.
- Slums spread slower.
- Riots have been slightly tweaked.
- Added a tiny bit of incremental difficulty.
- When all issues have been addressed the counter shows "+" in stead of "1".
- Added pop up text when not enough stability to change immigration.
- Added some pop up text in the region mode.
- Faster fund transfers.


- Destroying a monorail was causing some tiles to disappear.
- The dropdown list in the fund menu was showing the same city several times.
- It was possible to build reserves on top of each other and above other buildings.
- Tourist buildings were always connected to a road even if not.
- Region map editor was not saving the maps in some situations.
- Park land value bonus corrected.
- Trade balance was displayed red even when positive.
- Theme Park shows correct amount of visitors and employees.

The windowed mode isn't working once the game is exported to steam, this feature is then considered canceled.

If you find any bug please take a moment to report it!
You can expect a patch to come up in the next few days.

Many have asked about new updates and the future of the game so here's exactly what I'm working on!



About the Space update:

The main idea is to get a nice reward when advanced cities start to make a lot of extra cash. Well, I might have been a bit ambitious on that but I'm getting to something a bit more concrete (and doable).



We'll be able to build the spaceships from the cities in the region mode. Planets will have to be discovered and then colonized. We'll build and manage self-sustainable colonies, producing resources and sending the profits back to the region, allowing more ships to reach more planets.
Each solar system will host one planet, more or less hospitable. The flora and the resources will differ from planet to planet.
A part of your cities' population will be send to the new colonies. I know many you have overpopulated maps!
This will be pretty light in terms of political content, this is really just a feature for the win.



About the Migrations update:

This was requested many times and I think this will fit perfectly with the existing mechanics.
- We'll be able to deploy the army to disperse the riots, at the cost of a few civil rights points.
- Unhappy citizens will try to flee the country. We'll be able to deploy the army to stop them!
- Wealthy countries will attract migrants, they'll come by land or by sea and settle by building shanty towns. You'll have the option to use the army to send them back home. We'll have the possibility to build walls in case the flow becomes uncontrollable. Yes, this update is heavier in political content, and controversy.

Until then please report any bug you may encounter. I'm trying to answer as many topics as I can, don't hesitate to ask for help if you need too!

The region mode is finally up and running! The new region interface scale things up, all the City-states we create can now work together. The region system is also a great foundation for future updates, the budget each city-state decide to put in common could be used in many ways...




- 20 playable maps (96*96 tiles)

- Maps are pre-made, which means that environments are more realistic, biomes are larger and continuous throughout the region.

- A new and quicker way to edit maps

- Custom regional currency, logo and name.

- Custom political background: affect tax collection and approval (a socialist region will prefer strong civil rights while a capitalist region will prefer a high freedom index), things get easier when a governor and its people share the same values!

- Regional fund: transfer money from a city-state to the region and from the region to a city-state. Practical to take money from an advanced state to a beginning one to speed things up. This fund will serve in the future for any potential army / space exploration program / shared facilities / ...

- Region stats: total population, average unemployment, currency exchange rate ...

- Regional bonus growth: the more city-states the higher the bonus. Also depends on the average GDP per capita. This bonus will increase your demand growth (or decrease it if the region is poor and inhospitable).




- You can now exactly know what's affecting the approval rate by passing your cursor over it.
- We can now build multiple airports
- The unemployment rate now affects the amount of tax collected! Higher it is the less tax the citizens pay.
- The GDP computation has been changed, it's higher, $50,000+ for advanced cities.




- The trade capacity has been changed to units in stead of value. It's now the quantity of units exchanged that matters in stead of the goods' value.
- The debt interest rate is finally working properly. It's not possible to use it to cheat anymore!
- Population and balance are more clearly displayed "100000" => "100,000"
- It's easier to unlock the Bazaar
- Stats menu shows the proper number of available beds in hotels.
- Fixed a bug that allowed negative sales tax
- Fixed a bug that could ge tus more than 100 Civil Rights
- Fixed a bug that was hiding the effects of the utility policy in the legislation list.
- Tooltip when you try to change the tax rate without having enough stability points.


Most of the bugs that I was able to fix were reported by you! Thank you!
This update increased the code size by 50%, which is huge, so if you find anything weird again please report it so I can upload a patch quickly.

Citystate is now available on Mac!

But that's not all, update 1.2.1 brings 13 new parks and new indicators for commercial and industrial development.


We can now choose among 24 options to beautify our cities.
Among the 13 new parks, 2 have to be unlocked.




I've added 2 new indicators next to the demand bars. They tell us what's the maximum possible stage commercial and industrial buildings can reach up to according to the state of the economy.
When passing your cursor over them it shows what's limiting the building growth.





- It's now easier to get higher stage commercial buildings. Still, it is advised to plan your city thoughtfully, don't fill the map with high density residential areas if the unemployment rate is already high. Investments made in housing and new companies are in concurrence, investments will go into the housing market first if you have too many high density housing lots.

- When continuing after the end of the tutorial, normal help messages were dismissed. This is not the case anymore. Plus, if your city was built upon the tutorial the new update will add back the help messages.

- Reopening an issue to change a policy now requires 10 stability points.

- The census tool will now tell you the reason why farms don't develop.

- Some texts were cut with the census tool.

- Some improvements to the tutorial where people could stay stuck at certain steps.

- The legislation window won't overlap with other menus anymore.

- One of the beach sprite was not properly aligned with the terrain.

- One of the upper class stage 7 building has been changed.

- When placing parks, the cursor appropriately turns red or green and follow your mouse.

- Numbers in the debt window are now rounded.

We made it! This is finally the end of the experimental versions, a significant milestone in Citystate’s development. Since its first release Citystate has doubled in size, both in content and in possibilities.
And once again a bunch of new things come with this new update!




- The issues reveal all the consequences after choosing a policy (approval, education, health, security, environment…)
- We can see and compare all the consequences of all passed issues in the legislation window.
- The difference between the effect on the approval rate and the economic growth is now clear. I hope not to hear “oh! why does the lower class disliked more subsidies?!” in the future.
- The advisors give hints with each issue. They can either support a certain option, explain the mechanics behind the options or predict some of the consequences. The content of the advices differs according to the team you choose.
- We can now choose the advisory team when creating a State. Still the same two teams: one is more inclined to capitalism and the other one to socialism.
- We can freely switch team at the cost of 40 stability points.
Each option has a specific effect on the approval rate, this effect disappears over time. The figure is displayed before choosing a policy.






- 3 state-owned factories can now be built
- The factories will produce manufactured goods by using local minerals.
- The production will be reduced if you don’t have enough workforce or resources.
- Mines can be either privatized or owned by the government. Both options come with different perks.


- The game finally remembers your settings.
- Support of 16/10 resolution.
- AUTO SAVE !
- Hide the interface, set scroll speed, turn off some graphics elements, set the - FX and Music volume, ...


- Commercial density options (3).
- A brand new stats menu with a custom graph and 22 new rates.
- There are 7 little question mark bubbles giving information about the main indicators.
- A new design for the mountains and deeper water tiles.
- A third and faster speed option.
- A new question is asked when creating a new State replacing the one about tax.
- The water tool has been entirely reprogrammed. The game doesn’t lag anymore, at all, when destroying or placing new water tiles.




- Inequalities and population decrease the security score.
- The sales tax now impact the middle and upper class growth.
- The working population is a bit smaller (catching with real world data).
- Taxes from the low class and middle class earn a bit more revenue.
- The prices of gold and manufactured goods is more advantageous.
- Factories now have a negative impact on the nearby land value.


- Many menus were redesigned to a darker a fancier style.
- New title screen background + options button.
- 10 new banner help messages and rewriting of the others.
- Many typos have been corrected.
- Bug when destroying a reserve fixed (@crassus)
- Sales Tax Button bug fixed (@crassus)
- Loading Cursor
- Things I forgot to take note of, again.
- Pushing “9” will display the old not-politically-correct-enough stats menu.
- Pushing “8” creates new boats for Marinas and “7” creates helicopters.

It took 2 days more than expected but it's here: bigger maps, sandbox and tycoon mod, step by step tutorial and a refreshed title screen!




- 3 options: 64*64; 96*96; 128*128
For reference maps were 75*75 before. (One tile is 50m*50m. In SimCity 4 tiles are 16m*16m with the biggest maps being 256*256, that is 4km large. The biggest map in Citystate is now 6.4km large!)

- Please be aware that the biggest option will run slowly on old computers. Generating massive maps will also take longer.

- The minimap disappear automatically after 5 seconds if no interaction. This saves up to 40% of CPU usage.


- Sandbox: unlimited money and no politics (no issues, no government type, no government buildings).

- Tycoon: no politics (no issues, no government type, no government buildings).


- A quick, step by step tutorial to help beginners getting familiar with the game. It introduces the main mechanics and how the economy works.


- New title screen!
- Lower tax rates at start
- Stability points were not visible if at 100%
- Faces were inverted in the advisory board
- We cannot indefinitely zoom out with the keyboard anymore, max mouse wheel zoom out increased.
- Forest are faster to place in map editor.


Citystate will be repriced in 10 days at $14.99.
Update 1.2.0 should get live on June, Tuesday 12.

A second huge update just went live! Commercial zones and tourist buildings!



- Small shops evolve into office buildings and then skyscrapers throughout 6 stages.
- Provide sales tax revenues to the government. The sales tax rate can be changed along the other income tax rates.
- Require sufficient available workforce.
- Require middle demand for early stages and middle plus upper demand for higher stages.
- A good quality of life and high land value will boost its development.
- Can provide a couple of thousands of jobs at stage 6.

- We can now build 3 activity buildings for tourism: beach, ski slope and natural reserve.
- Activities will earn tax revenue according to tourist frequency.
- To come to the city, tourists need hotels and activities.
- Hotels can grow on commercial lots (that are at stage 3).
- Hotels evolve in 3 stages.

- We can now build while in pause.
- New road tool, making road lines automatically.
- Unemployment plays a more important role, a high rate will significantly decrease the middle and upper income growth and increase the low income growth.
- Maintenance costs have been changed and harmonized. It's now called "public utilities", costs depend of quantity of occupants/employees per building. The census tool gives all the data.
- Parks' land value effect doubled.
- It's now possible to take a loan before getting to 2,000 citizens.
- Guide and top banner messages updated.

- Slightly faster map generation.
- Faster and less noisy drilling.
- Less employees in farms.
- Stage 2 of upper class houses need medium density lots.
- Government buildings and special buildings costs showed in one line in the budget.
- Improvements and bug correction of the census tool.
- Improvements and bug correction of the interface buttons.
- Slums also have public utilities spendings.
- Improved map editor buttons.
- Water tiles were not always properly merging.
- Higher stages of industry now require high land value to evolve.
- Mining window now show deposit quantity.
- The theme park can attract 10,000 tourists (if enough beds available in hotels)
- The blue crane logo was sometimes stuck.
- Some government buildings could be hidden under the ground...
- Industry land value was not properly computed.
- Unemployment in statistics window was always at "00".
- Each road placed gives 3 points of trade capacity.
- The pause banner was getting stuck after saving.
- Trade capacity computation was wrong.
- Seaports were not costing any money...
- The natural reserve gives 8 environment points.

The commercial update was the last "content" update for Citystate. The next two updates will bring new game mods, a tutorial, other comfort features like the option menu and information tools (stats, info bubbles, ...).
The core mechanics of the game won't evolve too much from now on.

The most ambitious update ever made for Citystate just went live! We can now grow industries in our cities!



- Industries evolve through 6 stages from basic manufactures to tech companies.
- Require sufficient available workforce.
- Require sufficient trade capacity (with ports and road connections).
- The education score and the land value allow the evolution from stage to stage.
- Basic factories require low and middle demand whether advanced stages require middle and upper demand.
- Industries use minerals and export manufactured goods.
- The number of employees tends to decrease when factories shift to automation (stage 4-5).

Agriculture and industries need to be able to export their production. For that purpose we can now build ports and road connections.
When we trade more than the infrastructure can handle the industries will decay.

- Mines, Government Buildings, Arcologies, Special Buildings and industries create jobs.
- A lack of workforce will let industries to decay.
- A high rate of unemployment will lower the approval rate.



- Abandoned buildings show reason of abandonment.
- Loans reimbursement lasts for 8 years in stead of 4 (smaller monthly amount to pay)
- Land value effect from monument is now computed.
- Only one red light district appear in stead of 3.
- Help and advisors messages have been updated.
- New UI icons.
- A few things I forgot to take note of.

Compatibility
- Is compatible with version 1.1.1, less compatible with older versions.
- I recommend to start a city from scratch, this update brings big changes to the core mechanics, your big old city might not really like it.

Please report bugs!

Coming next... 1.1.3