Schools and universities are the backbone of your city’s economy. Doctors are literally vital, engineers will start-up high margin firms, and accountants are the glue that ties it all together.

In order for them to sprawl in your city, as well as lawyers, electricians, artists, and other disciplines taught in university, the city must also provide the children that will go on apply for higher-education with a reliable school system. One that can also be way out of poverty for the next generation of a low income family.

In 1.9 we changed the rules of the simulation to make education the intricate and long term win that it should be. A bit of an under-the-hood update but a really significant one as it can allow cities to specialize in particular industries.

Bigger universities

• We are splitting the single university building into three specialised faculty buildings: Humanities, Medicine and Engineering.
• University buildings now require to be built in a campus zone, which is a special kind of park. Bigger and better campuses counts towards your park score.
• School children that graduate will apply to university, given that you have the faculty for their desired profession.
• Citizens that are accepted to university will stay out of the workforce for 4 years.
• Without schools there can be no university students, and unschooled children have a higher chance of becoming criminals.

Water

• Water is now required for farms and vineyards
• Extracting water is possible when placing the new „Water tower“ building
• Farms and vineyards without water towers nearby will produce just 20% of output.

New buildings

• Residential tower: the largest and most dense residential unit in the game, with 14 stories, and a total 126 4-room units.
• Museum of source code: A gift that appears after 10,000 engineers graduate from university

Other stuff that is also cool

• Brand new game renderer, now based on WebGPU. This has many implications for performance, requiring less CPU work for a smooth framerate.
• All simulation systems were optimized, relieving unnecessary CPU and I/O work, which results in less „simulation stutter“ effects on large cities.
• Improved UI experience on Steam Deck.
• Simulation rebalancing and bug fixed statistical errors and wrong calculations, based on feedback from the community.
• New OST music by Pablo Rubio.