When we were designing the Economy 2.0 update, we felt that more management features should be taken into consideration when you build your cities. Based on the feedback from you all following the release and from the closed beta group during the development of Economy 2.0, we came to the conclusion that the game was not challenging enough, especially in the later part of the game. And with the lack of a proper challenge being successful didn’t have the impact we wanted it to have. Growing the city’s limits is a natural way to progress through the game, so implementing an upkeep cost to map tiles was a good way to pace the gameplay, especially in the latter half where the city size grows rapidly and the map tile expenses reflect that. Our goal with the Tile Upkeep cost is to bring you more meaningful choices as you expand the city so you don’t just have to consider where to expand to, but also whether your city can sustain such an expansion. All in all we feel it strengthens the game pacing and improves the gameplay experience.

Of course, this new cost affects your ability to reach the edge of the playable area and create new Outside Connections, so let’s talk briefly about the cheapest way to create them early on. If you haven’t already noticed, map tile costs are affected by what is available in them – buildable land, resources, etc – making tiles with a lot of water the cheapest. This makes buying ocean tiles the absolute cheapest way to go if your city needs that new Outside Connection as soon as possible. You can then create a bridge or pipeline to the edge of the playable area. Or you can use the terrain tools to create a more realistic landbridge and build a road on top of it, but keep in mind that more land inside the tile affects its upkeep cost.