Economics

Every business in your city belongs to one of twelve sectors, from farms to software companies. Behind them all are people deciding with what they can see: a founder sizing up a street, a family checking its savings, a job seeker weighing an offer.

How companies get founded in the city

Any resident with savings may try their luck, in a job or out of one. A would-be founder looks at a few empty shops near home, checks the rent and sizes up how busy the nearest rivals are; where there are none, they count the people living nearby. Founders tend to expect the best, so some open in a crowded trade.

A new company starts with cash for a few months and a year of its business license. The owner takes home what is left after wages and bills, and nothing in a bad month. Most firms turn out a little worse at their trade than their founders thought, and no two are alike, so the same minimum wage can sink one farm while the next shrugs it off. Fortunes keep changing: from year to year a business gets better or worse at its trade, so a strong one can weaken and a weak one recover, and a more talented CEO makes it a little better still. A firm that sells everything it makes hires someone in the place of each worker who leaves; only goods it can’t sell make it plan a smaller staff. A run of losses with no cash to wait them out, or a license that eats too much of what the staff can sell, closes the doors at once. Owners stay on for less than a job would pay, each by their own measure, and those who expect the best settle for least. A year of earning less than that closes the doors over the months that follow, and owners differ in how long they hold on, so a crowded trade thins out gradually rather than losing every weak business in the same month.

Follow the money

Money doesn’t grow in your city; it comes in from outside, and somebody has to bring it. That job falls to your exporters: the farms, factories and software companies that sell to the world beyond your borders. Visitors and outside investors bring some too. Everyone else just passes it around.

Once in, money moves from hand to hand. Households pay rent first, and it goes to owners outside the city. Then they buy groceries and clothes, and spend what is left on meals out and shows. A local shop pays for the goods it sells to makers elsewhere and keeps the rest for its own workers and owner. Online orders and anything no local firm sells go out of town, and sales tax takes a share of what is sold here. Some money leaves every time it changes hands, so each round of spending is smaller than the one before.

So the jobs at your exporters hold up jobs everywhere else: when a factory lets workers go, shops and restaurants lose customers too, before anyone has moved away. Spending follows three rules:

1. Households spend from their usual income after rent, which is the money they actually receive: wages, owner earnings, pensions and benefits. Groceries come first, and fun is the first thing cut.
2. Nobody spends money they don’t have. Savings soften a lost job; once they run dry, spending drops.
3. Money never appears from nothing: every payment leaves one account and lands in another. A payer short of cash pays what it has, and the books show the rest as missed.

Your city grows richer when more money comes in, from exporters with the workers, water and power they need, and when less goes out, because citizens find what they want in local shops.

Looking for work

Each week, people out of work apply to a few openings, and jobs close to home are easier to find. Employers pick the right skills first, then their own former staff, then whoever has been out of work the shortest. A criminal record or having no address moves an application down the list, and a shelter bed counts as an address.

People hold out for their old wage while their savings cover a month of basics, then take less. A company with a seat empty for a month raises its offer every week until someone comes, or until the worker would cost more than they bring in.

Your unemployment benefit pays people let go after six months with a local employer, for up to a year while they keep looking; people who quit, business owners and new arrivals who never worked here get nothing. After half a year with no offer and no benefit, some people stop looking. They drop out of the headline unemployment rate but stay in the broader one, so a falling headline is not always good news.

How each sector earns

Each sector follows its own demand rules: what makes its market grow and what limits sales. Some depend on citizens, others on visitors or other businesses. Farms, factories and software companies sell to the world outside, while schools and hospitals run on the city budget.

The cards use the same letters and colors as the game. Read each one as a small business plan: where do the customers come from, and what could hold this company back?

Within a shared market, companies split the sales by what they can make and how many regular customers they have. A new business starts with few regulars and wins more over months of reliable service; one that people can’t reach, or that runs out of what they want, loses them. When a trade makes more than the city wants, some of it finds no buyer, so an empty office is not, by itself, a reason for another company to succeed.

A business rents its space for three to five years. When the term ends, the rent moves to what the building asks today, and a business that needs half the room can move somewhere smaller and cheaper; a growing one can move whenever it needs more space.

Getting there

A job only counts if people can reach it. Picture Rosa’s bread shop across the river. Her ten workers drive in every morning, and her regulars drop by on weekends. Then traffic on the only bridge stops dead. Two workers give up and turn back, so two ovens’ worth of bread never gets baked, yet Rosa still pays all ten. Some regulars can’t get through either; they buy their bread at a shop they can reach, or, if none sells it, out of town. And a worker who misses work month after month loses the job in the end.

Every month the city counts these trips for every company: its workers’ trips to work and, for shops, restaurants, hotels and stages, its customers’ visits. What that means for you:

1. A company makes only as much as the share of its workers who arrive, and still pays them all. Lose one trip in ten to a missing parking space, a road stuck in traffic, no road at all or no bus, and you lose that share of its work.
2. It sells only to the customers who arrive. If a third can’t make it, a third of what it made finds no buyer, and their money goes to another shop or leaves town.
3. Nobody sends you a bill. The cost arrives the slow way: smaller profits, closed shops, lost jobs.

To spot it, look for the “Hard to reach” flag on any company where fewer than nine in ten workers or customers get there. The chart under “The Ledger” marks each such month with a car; point at it to see who made it and what stopped the rest. That obstacle is usually your fix: a parking lot, a second road, a bus stop at the door. A company with fewer than 36 trips a month is too small to judge, so it runs as if everyone arrived, and city departments never feel it: they run on your budget.

The values below put these rules in numbers: what each trade sells and pays, who counts as wealthy enough to want the finest homes, and what visitors spend. Change one and the rest of the economy shifts around it.

Parameters

Gross margins by sector

Sector input used to size the monthly business-cycle noise envelope, not the simulated net profit margin. A uses BEA 2024 farm value added / gross output (196,211 / 550,852 million); mapping this share into noise is an assumption. Larger margins produce wider monthly swings. Used by the unit-economics model in conjunction with MONTHLY_OUTPUT_PER_WORKER_BY_SECTOR and UNIT_PRICE_BY_SECTOR.

Sources: NYU Stern, Margins by Sector (US); BEA, GDP by Industry: value added (2024); BEA, GDP by Industry: gross output (2024)

Monthly output per worker by sector

Number of sector-specific output units a single worker produces per month. Combined with UNIT_PRICE_BY_SECTOR to compute company revenue: revenue = effectiveLabor × productivity × unitPrice × noise × multipliers. Integer output scales; prices outside A retain the wage-times-margin normalization. Farm prices instead use BEA value added per worker.

Source: OECD STAN (Structural Analysis Database)

New hire training days

30

How long a freshly hired worker counts as a trainee (drawing full pay, contributing zero to effectiveLabor) before becoming a veteran. Keyed off citizens.hire_date, stamped by assignCitizenToCompany on every hire/rehire; NULL (pre-feature and founder-bootstrap citizens) always reads as veteran.

⚠️ Source pending

Job switch pay premium

1.1

When an employed citizen is poached into a role that doesn’t already fit their profession (a no-requirement opening, or a specialist misallocated outside their field), they only switch if the new salary beats their current one by this multiple — nobody churns jobs for pennies. The existing same-profession switch rule (strict >, unchanged) is deliberately left untouched; unifying the two under this premium is a follow-up.

⚠️ Source pending

Retail demand units per tourist per month

120

How many retail transactions a tourist-equivalent contributes per month to sector G (Wholesale & retail). Tourists spend on souvenirs / convenience goods but the bulk of their wallet goes to accommodation and food (see HOSPITALITY_*), so the per-tourist retail weight is meaningful but secondary to citizens.

Source: Average tourist daily retail spend × stay duration / month

Hospitality demand units per tourist per month

300

How many hospitality units a tourist-equivalent contributes per month to sector I. Tourists basically live at hotels and eat out. At ~$11.93/unit this corresponds to ~$3,600/month per tourist-equivalent. Combined with the city-wide tourism-aura sum, this is the main lever turning attractions into hotel/restaurant prosperity.

Source: Average tourist daily lodging + food spend / month

Information startup outcomes

0

New software and media companies are a bet. Each one rolls twice, once for its founder and once for its idea, and a bad roll on either means nobody buys: most fail. A rare few become giants, if they can hire the staff to grow. Founders with a degree, in the prime of their careers, roll better, and a data center’s investors only fund ideas that work.

Source: Crunchbase 2026 unicorn count (~1,705 of >170k tracked startups ≈ 1%), CB Insights startup post-mortems (75% of seed startups never reach $1M ARR; 28% of software companies reach $100M revenue), Azoulay et al. (2020) on founder age

Kwh per unit by sector

kWh consumed to produce one sector-specific output unit. Energy cost per company = produced × kwhPerUnit × ELECTRICITY_COST_PER_KWH, charged monthly alongside payroll and rent. Variable cost scales with output, so understaffed or idle companies pay little; full-capacity firms pay the bulk of what the old fixed building-level energy cost charged.

Source: U.S. EIA Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey 2018 — Flipbook (Dec 2021), purchased electricity 778,396 million kWh; paired with BEA value of shipments ~$5.93T

Unit price by sector

What one unit of each trade’s work sells for: a box of food, a factory product, a shop sale, a night’s stay. Workers times output per worker times this price is roughly what a company brings in each month, before booms, hard times and shortages. Cheap goods sold in bulk and costly deals made rarely can earn the same per worker, but a wage above what a worker brings in makes every hire a loss.

Sources: BEA, GDP by Industry: value added (2024); BLS, Current Population Survey 2024, table 52 (employed by industry)

Monthly market wage by sector

The default monthly wage a private company offers in this trade, raised to the player’s legal minimum when higher. Existing salaries never fall and rise to a new legal minimum on the next payroll. Sector-by-sector wage differences are also what drives income inequality between neighborhoods: cities heavy in trade, hospitality, or arts will see a larger share of households stuck near the wage floor, while finance- and tech-heavy cities will spread workers further up the income ladder.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: Table B-3, average hourly and weekly earnings by industry (benchmark)

Boss to staff pay ratio

2.3

Cap on a private owner’s residual monthly draw, in trade wages. Employees and bills are paid first; the owner receives nothing in a loss. An owner invests a share of household savings equal to optimism minus 0.5, bounded from zero to one; that savings rule is an assumption.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) OEWS 2024/2025

Owner accepted pay share

0.65

The share of a job’s pay that a typical owner will settle for from their own business. People who run a business stay with it for less money than a job would bring: those who expect the best settle for less, careful owners for more, and only a whole year below their own share starts them thinking of closing.

Basis: measured

Source: Hamilton (2000), Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns to Self-Employment

Employment by sector

Weights applied to the random selection of companies created in the city. Sectors with higher employment have a higher chance of appearing as they have more demand for workers.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Business service purchases

What employers spend on banks, insurance and office support, as a share of the wages they pay. Big employers keep your finance and support firms busy; a city with few jobs leaves their offices empty.

Source: BEA 2024 Use Summary, September 2026 release

Household finance share of income

0.07648233454318752

The share of their usual income after rent that households spend on banking and insurance. Well-paid citizens keep your finance firms in business; when wages fall, so do their sales.

Source: BEA 2024 Use Summary, PCE column F010

Property service units per home

0.22

Each home with people in it makes this much monthly work for real estate firms: rent to collect, repairs to arrange, buyers to find. Empty homes and offices make none, so real estate grows with the homes you fill.

Sources: BLS, Industry and occupational employment projections, 2024–34; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024, table S1101 (households)

Consumption reference units

A measuring stick, not a rule: what an average person would buy each month from shops, restaurants and entertainment, in each trade’s units. Real spending follows each household’s own income and cash, so compare the two to see whether your shops are going hungry.

Sources: BLS, Consumer Expenditures in 2024; BLS, Employment and output by industry (table 2.11); U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Retail Trade Survey 2022 (restated); BEA, GDP by Industry: value added (2024)

Consumer spending

How households shop. Each month they spend a share of their usual income after rent: groceries and clothes first, then dining out and fun with what is left, never more than the cash they have. They judge their income over many months, so one bad month changes little, while a lost job slowly empties your shops. Some shopping always happens online, outside your city.

Sources: BLS, Consumer Expenditures in 2024; U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales; Ganong and Noel (2019), Consumer Spending during Unemployment (American Economic Review)

Consumer cost of goods by sector

Of all the money spent at a shop, restaurant, show, bank or office service, the share that pays for goods and supplies brought in from outside your city. Only the rest stays to pay local wages and owners.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Retail Trade Survey 2022 (restated); BEA, GDP by Industry: value added (2024); BEA, GDP by Industry: gross output (2024)

Cost of living

The basics a household needs each month besides rent: food, clothes, phone and fun for each adult, less for each child, utilities and internet for the home, and fuel for anyone who drives. Families pay for these first; when their cash can’t cover them, they take lower-paid work, and a few turn to crime.

Source: Numbeo

Unemployment benefit max months

12

Maximum calendar months after a qualifying layoff and maximum monthly payments per spell. Eligibility requires six months at the local employer and active job search; voluntary quits, owners and never-employed arrivals do not qualify. The existing twelve-month duration is a game assumption, not a universal US benefit rule. Hiring clears the claim. Eligible recipients hold out for better pay and are protected from crime recruitment.

⚠️ Source pending

Unemployment reservation wage multiplier

1.3

While a laid-off citizen draws your unemployment benefit, a job must pay more than the benefit before they take it, and this many times the benefit before they surely do. A generous benefit lets people wait for a decent job, but your worst-paid openings stay empty.

Sources: Chetty (2008), Moral Hazard versus Liquidity and Optimal Unemployment Insurance (Journal of Political Economy); Katz and Meyer (1990), The Impact of the Potential Duration of Unemployment Benefits on the Duration of Unemployment (Journal of Public Economics)

Ubi reservation wage multiplier

1.25

With a basic income, a job must pay this many times the monthly grant before a job seeker surely takes it; the lower the pay, the likelier they pass. It bites less than the unemployment benefit, because people keep the grant when they work. Expect your worst-paid jobs to be the hardest to fill.

Source: Pech 2010, Behavioral Economics and the Basic Income Guarantee (Basic Income Studies) — a BIG moves labour out of no-intrinsic-motivation jobs, not out of work

Altruist worker share

0.54

The share of citizens who take and keep a hospital, fire or police job because they care about the work, whatever your unemployment benefit or basic income pays. Generous support may pull the rest away, but it never strips your hospitals and fire stations bare.

Sources: Pech (2010), Behavioral Economics and the Basic Income Guarantee (Basic Income Studies); Shanafelt et al. (2012), Burnout and Satisfaction With Work-Life Balance Among US Physicians (Archives of Internal Medicine)

Ubi surf quit floor fraction

0.5

With a basic income, a worker whose take-home pay falls below this share of the grant may quit and live on the grant instead. Only the worst-paid jobs fall under the line, and at a modest grant nobody quits.

⚠️ Source pending

Ubi surf quit max monthly

0.08

The most likely a badly paid worker is to quit for the basic income in any month. Even an unhappy worker drifts away slowly, so a new grant never empties your workplaces overnight.

Source: Cesarini, Lindqvist, Notowidigdo & Östling 2017, The Effect of Wealth on Labor Supply: Evidence from Swedish Lotteries (American Economic Review)

Job acceptance floor fraction

0.5

Public salary index: fraction of published monthly living costs used by the civic wage schedule. Individual job acceptance instead uses last wage, own household costs and cash.

⚠️ Source pending

Job quit floor fraction

0.25

Fraction of the employee’s share of their own household necessities below which after-tax pay may cause a quit. A low threshold represents attachment to an existing job. The monthly quit chance ramps from 0 at this floor to 1 as take-home pay reaches zero, so a 100% income tax empties the payroll. Nobody works for free.

⚠️ Source pending

Civic wage floor headroom

1.1

Public pay keeps pace with living costs. When the city grows expensive, a public job’s pay rises to this much above the public pay floor, after tax, so you can still staff your buses and fire stations as rents climb.

Source: U.S. OPM — General Schedule locality pay

Civic wage tax gross up cap

0.5

Cap on the income-tax rate the prevailing civic wage compensates for. Up to this rate, civic salaries gross up so take-home pay still clears the acceptance floor; beyond it they stop compensating, so confiscatory tax policy degrades civic staffing on purpose (the same design intent as the payroll quit floor — a 100% income tax must not be free).

⚠️ Source pending

High net worth threshold

$1,000,000

Combined wealth of all adults in a household required to be classified as High Net Worth. These households demand the best housing with zero disapproval and zero crime, and will leave the city if unavailable. Also the wealth bar the immigration bouncer enforces at premium-tier housing slots.

⚠️ Source pending

High net worth expenses

$4,500

Extra monthly expenses (security, lawyers, personal assistants, etc.) charged to each adult in a High Net Worth household, split among the household’s adults. Sales tax is applied on top like other cost-of-living items.

⚠️ Source pending

Immigrant savings buckets

Savings brackets used to seed each immigrant adult’s starting wealth. The N-th bracket here pairs with the N-th probability in IMMIGRANT_SAVINGS_WEIGHTS_BY_GENERATION. The top bracket is open-ended (Pareto tail) and capped internally at SETTINGS.IMMIGRANT_SAVINGS.MAX_SAVINGS.

⚠️ Source pending

Immigrant savings weights by generation

Per-generation probability that an immigrant adult lands in each savings bucket. Generations are derived from the immigrant’s age at arrival. The N-th weight matches the N-th bucket in IMMIGRANT_SAVINGS_BUCKETS.

⚠️ Source pending

Upper income ratio

2

Households with equivalized income above this × city median are classified as Upper Income. They flee disapproval auras and leave the city if no safe home is available.

Source: Pew Research Center

Middle income ratio

0.667

Households with equivalized income at or above this × city median are classified as Middle Income. They prefer to avoid disapproval but tolerate it if no alternative exists.

Source: Pew Research Center

Average spend per tourist per day

$400

Average amount of money spent by each tourist per day in the city. This includes expenses such as accommodation, food, transportation, entertainment, and shopping.

Source: Budget Your Trip - New York City

Average tourist stay days

3

Average length of stay for tourists in hotels. Guests are checked out after this many days, freeing beds for new arrivals.

Source: NYC & Company Tourism Statistics

Hotel nightly rate

$150

Nightly room rate charged by hotels and motels per occupied room. Hotel revenue is purely occupancy-driven: no guests means no revenue.

⚠️ Source pending

Annual rate of new employer businesses

0.15

The annual rate of new companies per 100k inhabitants that employ at least one person. Used to cap the maximum number of new companies created in the city each year.

Source: Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship