Activity paces. Sliders shape.
The same four renders below come from the same island, the same activity, the same number of build points — with the council set four different ways. That is the whole answer to "how do the sliders affect things".
The mechanic in five rules
- Activity earns build points (table in the next section). Points accumulate in a town treasury; nothing is spent instantly.
- Stage is decided by lifetime points only. Hamlet → Village → Town → City → Metropolis thresholds do not care how you allocated. Sliders never make you faster or slower.
- Each slider is a ladder — an ordered list of things the town can build, each with a cost. Expansion buys land and roads; Technology buys height and infrastructure; Happiness buys parks, plazas and life; Tourism buys landmarks and visitors.
- Once a day the builder spends the treasury by weighted round-robin: with Technology at 50% and the others at ~17%, roughly every second purchase comes off the Technology ladder. It only buys what the current stage allows (no towers in a hamlet), so an unspendable slider simply carries over.
- Changing sliders changes only future spending. Nothing is torn down; the town's history stays in its shape. A choice offered once per stage-up ("open a harbour district or a rail line?") is the one place a decision is discrete rather than continuous.
The four ladders (first rungs, illustrative costs in build points)
Expansion land · roads
- Stake 4 plots 20
- Dirt road segment 15
- Cottage on a staked plot 30
- Cobble the main street 60
- Annex an islet + bridge 200 · City+
- New district for a 2nd repo 150
Technology height · infra
- Upgrade cottage → house 40
- Crane appears (WIP) 0
- House → mid-rise 120 · Town+
- Train station + loop 180 · Town+
- Mid-rise → tower 400 · City+
- Elevated rail / monorail 600
Happiness parks · life
- Plant a tree row 10
- Well → small square 30
- Park with pond 80
- Fountain + benches 90
- String lights across the square 60
- + people density multiplier
Tourism landmarks · visitors
- Wooden pier + rowboat 40
- Balloon pad + 1 balloon 80
- Clock tower 150 · Village+
- Viewing tower 120
- Hotel with awnings 200 · Town+
- Harbour + ferry 500 · City+
What the visible stats then mean. Population = housing capacity × (0.6 + 0.4 × happiness index) — so Happiness makes the same houses hold more people and puts more of them on the streets. Visitors = tourism landmarks × recent activity, plus the public-repo bonus. Technology sets the skyline. Expansion sets the footprint. Justin's four slider names stay; they now each mean one ladder.
Justin's original sliders were percentages summing to 100%. Keep that on the owner page (it's honest about the trade-off); the coarse 4-step control on the first page is just a compact way to show the same split.
