Welcome to City Wars by Patty Mayo. Build an island, keep its residents alive and happy, grow an economy, and join multiplayer when you're ready to defend it.

This guide covers the V84 update. All prices mentioned are in-game city dollars.

Get the game

18+ ONLY. The beta is closed to new players. Existing users can continue playing, but we are not accepting new players at this time.

When the game offers a new version, choose Update now. It downloads only changed files and replaces the same installed copy, preserving your saved cities. You can also run Setup again and select your existing game folder; matching files are reused. See installation and update help.

Saving during attacks: Routine multiplayer reports and photos share an automatic checkpoint. Purchases and missile damage still save before confirmation. Manual saves remain immediate. Background saves are quiet; if saving fails, the game reports it and keeps the pending work for another attempt.

You can build your city before registering it for multiplayer. Downloading the game does not register a multiplayer city. Registering a city is what puts that city into multiplayer and makes it available for attacks.

Start with a small working neighborhood. Build an empire after you can afford to keep the lights on.

Essential controls

Mouse wheel

zoom.

Hold right mouse button + move mouse

look around the city (rotate and tilt the camera). While placing a building, this rotates its preview instead.

Q / E

rotate the city camera left / right.

B

building menu.

T

draw a street.

G

power tool.

R

rotate a building while placing it.

Escape

leave the current tool or panel.

Click a completed building

open its information and available actions.

A useful starting order

1. Build a short, connected street with room to expand.
2. Add a small number of affordable homes.
3. Build a power source and connect the neighborhood.
4. Add farms and food businesses that can use their produce, meat or dairy.
5. Add parking, then an oil-and-fuel supply as car travel develops.
6. Add police, fire protection, healthcare, education and entertainment as your budget allows.
7. Let the neighborhood operate. Check staffing, stocks, happiness and expenses before expanding again.

Face entrances toward usable roads and respect the placement outline. Leave emergency access and parking exits clear.

Clear natural vegetation

Choose Paint grass in Landscape or Demolish, then paint with the square brush to remove natural grass tufts, ferns and palms. Scroll to change brush size. Purchased plants, rocks, roads and buildings stay in place. Your clearings are saved with the city.

Construction is only the first bill. Workers, upkeep, power and supplies keep costing money after a building opens.

Each residential building supports at most 50 households (200 residents).

Residents need suitable housing, work and accessible services. A vacant luxury home will not automatically solve a shortage of low-income housing: residents look for homes in their wealth class.

Use the population information and individual building panels to check occupancy, available jobs and neighborhood needs. Add the type of housing your residents can actually use.

If suitable homes are unavailable, residents can become homeless. Encampments can form while the city still has activity. They lower nearby safety and increase addiction and crime risk for their occupants.

The lasting solution is appropriate housing. Residents can move out of camps when matching homes become available; empty camps clear away. Removing a camp without addressing the shortage does not create homes.

Demolishing a home does not instantly erase its residents. They first need a chance to relocate. If the city no longer has homes, jobs or services to support them, residents leave after a short relocation period.

Building worker capacity includes the earlier doubling of available jobs. This creates more available job positions; residents fill them through the normal hiring system. Your existing staff are retained.

Balance growth. More homes without enough jobs and services create new problems, and more businesses without enough workers may not operate effectively.

A nearby power plant does not automatically power a building. Use the power tool and check the building's status.

There are two different problems to watch for:

• Disconnected: the building does not have a working connection to a supplying grid.
• Connected but overloaded: it reaches the grid, but that grid cannot meet demand.

This matters for heavy industry. A steel foundry may have a cable attached and still lack enough electricity to operate. Check total demand and generation before adding more cables.

Keep spare capacity for construction, upgrades and emergencies. Separate grids cannot share electricity just because the citywide total looks healthy.

A building losing previously available power has a 10% chance of catching fire. An outage is a reason to act quickly.

GIGA-TWAT datacenters use spare electricity on their connected grid after ordinary demand. More allocated surplus means more MemeCoins; multiple datacenters share that surplus. They do not create free power for the rest of the city.

Open the datacenter to see its coin balance, power allocation and sale price. MemeCoin prices change each game day.

Food happiness depends on a working supply chain, not the number of restaurants you place.

1. Produce food at farms. Provide road access, workers and power.
2. Set the output you want residents to use to local consumption.
3. Connect food businesses that use those ingredients.
4. Check their stock and staffing, then give residents usable access.

Produce, meat and dairy supply different needs. Build toward variety. Sending all farm output to export can leave local food businesses empty.

If food happiness is low

Check ingredients, output destination, staffing, accessibility and quality. An empty restaurant cannot solve a food shortage.

Robotic farms

Robotic livestock farms produce both meat and dairy and have 40 worker positions. You can build one directly or upgrade an eligible meat or dairy farm.

A produce farm can become a Robotic Produce Farm, or you can build the robotic version directly. It starts with one growing floor and has 20 worker positions per floor. Add up to four more floors, for five total and 100 worker positions. Ordinary produce farms have 20 worker positions. Each extra floor costs $75,000 and adds yield, jobs, upkeep, storage and power demand.

Culinary University improves food quality at nearby food businesses over a broad area. It complements a stocked, staffed food network; it does not replace the ingredients.

EMS road rescues: Assigned medics can step off the curb to treat injured people in traffic lanes and carry them back to the ambulance. Longer approaches follow the sidewalk first. Ordinary pedestrians still use crosswalks.

Civilian traffic comes from actual journeys. Population alone does not put every resident in a car at the same time.

Residents need access to parking and fuel. Regular cars use parking facilities rather than driving into every shop or house. People can walk between their destination and a parked car, and short trips may stay on foot.

Spread parking garages and lots around the neighborhoods they serve. Check capacity and keep entrances and exits usable. One crowded garage can concentrate a large share of your traffic.

Fuel needs a supply chain: oil well → local delivery → gas station. Check that the well and station operate and can reach each other. Fuel availability and price affect whether residents drive.

Pedestrians cross roads only at marked crosswalks. Cars keep moving without waiting for them, and pedestrians are protected from vehicle injuries inside crosswalks. Traffic lights still alternate between vehicle approaches and allow each green lane to flow.

If roads are quiet

Check actual travel demand, car ownership, accessible parking, fuel stock and fuel price.

If roads are jammed

Check the front of the queue. Look for a full parking destination, blocked access, a fire or protest closure, or an overloaded junction. Spread destinations and provide alternative routes where possible.

Vehicles still follow normal traffic controls. Deadlock recovery helps vehicles escape conflicts, but it does not remove congestion caused by demand or closed roads. First responders can pass through one another so they do not trap each other.

Click the happiness meter on the top bar to see the map and contributing factors. Improve the weakest need rather than building more of whatever you already have.

Food businesses need ingredients and staff. Entertainment businesses need to operate and be accessible. Schools, healthcare and public safety support a functioning neighborhood. A finished building is not necessarily an effective service.

The Police Department provides policing. Check their operation, workers and access. The safety map also helps locate police cars.

Watch incident alerts. For a priority fire, click the burning building and choose Dispatch fire dept. This prioritizes that incident and can redirect crews from another fire, so consider what you are leaving behind.

Active shooters automatically bring police and available military units. No dispatch click is needed. The optional military response setting controls militia; turning it off does not disable support against shooters.

Happiness and unrest

• At 75% happiness or below, residents can become eligible for protests.
• At 70% or below, shooter risk increases.
• At 60% or below, militia risk becomes a concern.

These are risk thresholds, not guarantees that every resident will immediately cause an incident. Address the underlying reasons for unhappiness as well as the emergency itself.

Responding to protests

Select the protest to pay a settlement or deploy a troop helicopter. Military deployment requires a connected helicopter base with one available helicopter, two crew and four soldiers. The soldiers rappel down and use lethal force against the selected protest group. This deployment does not require an airfield or order an automatic bombing run.

Keep recovery money available. Fires, storms and attacks can turn an otherwise healthy city into a service shortage quickly.

Oil, steel and gold appear on the top bar. Click a stock to inspect reserves and highlight its production buildings.

Resource placement

Use the resource overlay when placing oil wells, steel foundries and gold mines. A resource-dependent building placed away from a useful deposit may perform poorly.

Local or export?

A producer's destination determines where its output goes. Keep enough supplying your own businesses before sending the surplus away.

Steel and gold supply advanced industry and military production. Sending everything to export can starve your factories or leave you unable to manufacture ammunition.

To send a chosen amount, click the relevant top-bar stock, enter a quantity in the reserves panel and choose Send selected quantity. You need an operating export hub with room for the goods.

The transfer puts goods in export storage. They sell on the hub's next scheduled cargo flight; the transfer itself is not an instant sale.

Oil already delivered to gas stations or backup generators is reserved for local use.

If materials are not moving

Check production, source stock, destination settings, road connectivity, power, staffing and storage at the receiving building. More factories will not fix a missing input.

Weapons

Steel foundry + gold mine → Weapons Factory → export hub or Pistol Nation.

The factory needs both steel and gold. Local weapon consumption needs a supplied Pistol Nation. Local weapon sales increase shooter risk; the gun-ban law suspends those sales.

Jewelry

Gold mine → Ice Shop jewelry store → local customers or export.

A stocked, operating shop serving local customers improves nearby happiness. Exporting its output does not provide the same local benefit.

Barely Legal Pawn

An operating pawn shop improves happiness for nearby poor residents.

GIGA-TWAT

Uses surplus grid power to generate fictional MemeCoins. Open the building to inspect its holdings and sell at the current quote. More datacenters divide the available surplus; they do not multiply the grid's electricity.

Culinary University

Provides college education and improves food quality at nearby food businesses. Its effectiveness depends on operation and staffing.

Upgrades

Open a building to see the upgrades it supports. Check the extra workers, upkeep, power and input demand before purchasing. Robotic produce expansion is limited to five growing floors in the current build.

Choose businesses for their effects as well as their appearance.

• Graffiti Mansion: two households for wealthy residents, supporting up to eight people.
• 420 Condos: 40 households shared by poor, middle-class and wealthy residents. Weed-addicted residents gain +10 happiness while housed there with power and road access.
• Wake N Bakery: serves meals that improve food happiness and separately sells weed delivered by connected warehouses. Food ingredients and weed stock are independent.
• Statue of Liberty: +5 happiness and +10 entertainment citywide while staffed, powered and road-connected. Additional statues do not stack the bonus.

• Vice Vista Hotel, Hotel After Hours and Uranus Hotel: attract tourists and add entertainment value nearby.
• Ho Hotel: a cheap hotel with a trade-off. It lowers nearby safety and increases addiction risk among nearby residents.
• Only Beds and Breakfast: a small quality hotel that improves nearby safety.
• Mobile Home Park: five low-quality homes for low-income households.
• RV Park: five medium-quality homes and a tourism benefit when it is operating.
• Pickle Ricks Bar: improves happiness and provides entertainment.
• Beer Belly's: improves happiness and provides entertainment.
• Master Bait, Chuckin Clouds, Lookmaxx Gym and Fades Are Us: neighborhood businesses that improve happiness and provide entertainment.

Local benefits depend on where people live and whether the business is operating. Stacking buildings in one corner is not a substitute for serving neighborhoods across the island.

The International Airport and White House are currently unavailable in the building menu.

Open a hotel to manage its room price. Check the building panel for staffing, revenue, expenses and the effect of your decisions.

As with other businesses, a new attraction adds operating costs and demand for services. Let your city absorb the expansion before building another whole district.

A large treasury can hide an unprofitable city. Watch the money coming in and going out while your neighborhood operates.

Construction, upgrades and military orders are purchases. Upkeep, wages, power generation and production supplies continue afterward.

Before adding a building, check:

• Can I afford its running costs?
• Are workers and any required education available?
• Can I supply its electricity and materials?
• Can residents or deliveries reach it?
• Does the city need what it provides?

Keep a reserve for emergencies instead of spending every dollar on construction. An export operation is useful only if it leaves enough food, fuel and industrial inputs at home.

Monitor operating results in building panels. If a shop has no customers, check access, stock and demand before copying it several more times.

Save your city regularly, especially before major redevelopment or joining multiplayer. Your island and its progress remain local even when its public location is registered online.

Build in stages. Confirm that each new connection works, then expand.

Registering your city turns multiplayer on. Other players can attack it. Prepare your defenses before registering.

Prepare first

• A stable budget and money for repairs.
• Reliable food and fuel supplies.
• Power capacity beyond current demand.
• Working fire services and healthcare.
• Bomb shelters within practical reach of residents.
• Completed, powered interceptor batteries covering important areas.
• Cash, steel and gold reserved for ammunition.

Interceptor ammunition is manufactured after city registration with multiplayer enabled. Have the resources ready so you can stock your defenses promptly.

If you want to attack, also prepare a road-connected military airfield and the required missile facilities. You still need to research and manufacture offensive missiles.

Important rules

• Multiplayer disables fast-forward.
• Launching an attack keeps multiplayer enabled for 24 real hours after your last launch.
• Turning multiplayer off does not cancel strikes already queued against you.
• Registration does not give you free missiles.

Stay in single player while building the foundations. Join when you are ready for the consequences.

1. Save your city.
2. Open Multiplayer / Military command, then Online → My cities.
3. Enter the public name for your city.
4. Search for a real U.S. city name or ZIP code.
5. Choose an Available ZIP. Each ZIP supports one player city.
6. Check the city, state and ZIP, then choose Claim selected ZIP · Free.
7. Wait for confirmation that the city is registered and multiplayer is on.

If a claim fails, read the message. Retry or choose another available ZIP; do not assume a failed request registered the city.

Your first location is free. This places your existing island on the online atlas; it does not replace it with a new city.

Moving

Open Online → My cities and choose Move city · $5,000,000. Search for a different available ZIP and confirm the move. Buildings, residents and progress stay with the city.

Multiplayer status

Manage it from the current-city card in My cities. If a lock is active, the panel shows when you can turn it off.

Your registered city name and published city information are public. Choose a name you are comfortable showing to other testers.

Open Military command → Arsenal. Choose an ammunition type; its details show research, cost and any missing requirements.

Offensive missiles

Research each type once per city. Production then requires a completed military airfield with street access, plus an operating missile facility:

• Ballistic: Thrust Issues Aerospace.
• Hypersonic, cluster and nuclear: FAFO Laboratories.

All offensive launches require an available Thrust Issues Aerospace launch site.

Choose a Quantity from 1 to 10 and manufacture when the requirements are met. Offensive missiles take 30 real minutes each, with up to 10 shared production slots. Expand the production queue to check unfinished orders. Research unlocks production; it does not give you a ready missile.

Interceptors

Choose Interceptor in Arsenal. They need no missile research and are ready immediately after a successful order. They are defensive ammunition, separate from the interceptor buildings that fire them.

The screen only presents actions available in the current situation. If manufacture is unavailable, read the requirement message rather than assuming the button is broken.

Automatic reserve production spends your money and materials. Enable it only when your economy can support it.

Manufacturing cost per round. All money is in-game city dollars.

Research and manufacture are separate purchases. A batch multiplies the per-round cash and material costs by the quantity ordered.

Hypersonic missiles have a 20% interception chance. Ballistic, cluster and nuclear missiles have an 80% chance. A successful nuclear interception reduces its damage radius by 75%; the missile still impacts.

The arsenal and launch review show the selected missile and its capabilities. Keep local steel and gold available rather than exporting the entire stockpile.

Visit without attacking

Open Online → Map. Search for a city or ZIP, or click its marker. Choose Travel to city to inspect its latest published scene.

This is a view of the city's buildings and reported condition, not a live simulation of its residents or vehicles. Fire or damage appears when included in the published scene. It may lag behind the owner's current game.

Plan a strike

1. Open Plan a strike.
2. Choose a ready missile. Look for the SELECTED marker and written missile summary.
3. Choose Continue to target city.
4. Select an eligible city on the map, then Use this target city.
5. Review the distance and accuracy, then Enter drone targeting.
6. Drag to move, right-drag to orbit and scroll to zoom.
7. Click the ground to set the impact point.
8. Choose Review launch, check your choice, then CONFIRM LAUNCH.

After acceptance, the view returns to your launch site for the launch sequence. The selected missile is used and consumed.

Accuracy decreases with distance, reaching a minimum of 30% at 2,800 miles and beyond. A chosen impact point is not a promise of a perfect hit.

Launching keeps multiplayer enabled for 24 real hours after your most recent launch. Keep enough resources for the response.

When an attack arrives

Watch the City Defense panel at the bottom right and its countdown. Open Defense to manage batteries and shelters.

Interceptors

You need ammunition, an enabled battery, power and coverage of the threatened area. A powered battery covers a 450 m radius. Hypersonic attempts have a 20% success chance; other missile types have an 80% chance. Nuclear interception leaves 25% of the original blast radius. Keep shelters open until impact.

Each attempt uses one interceptor. A battery reloads for 60 real seconds after 10 shots. Ammo in storage alone does not protect an uncovered neighborhood.

Shelters

Open them early. Residents must reach a shelter before impact to receive its protection. Capacity and travel distance matter; opening a shelter at the last second is not enough.

After impact

Use the official damage assessment and Reports, then inspect the city. Prioritize fires, lost power and damaged services. A pending attack is not confirmed damage, and scene updates or reports can take time to arrive.

Strike rewards

Confirmed damage to another city's building pays its construction cost. Confirmed destruction pays five times that cost. These are alternatives, not six times the cost for one destroyed building. If a damaged building later burns down and the report is updated, the total can increase to the destruction reward.

Payment follows confirmed results, not the launch itself.

These facilities add another layer of multiplayer attack and defense. Complete construction, connect roads and power, and provide staff before using their tabs in Military Command. Open Military Command → Spies, Bio weapons or Cure research. Clicking a facility opens its matching tab.

DoSS — Department of Shady Shit

Build one agency per city for $50,000,000. Open Military Command → Spies to recruit spies, deploy missions, scan your island or read assessments.

• Recruit: each spy costs $1,000,000.
• Sabotage: choose a target city and send available spies. Each living spy adds 10 percentage points to your missile accuracy against that city, capped at 100%.
• Biological mission: manufacture a payload at BIO MAX, select its type and a target city, then choose a ground point in the city view. Deployment uses one spy and one payload.
• Recall: living spies return to your roster and can be used again. Missions have no automatic end date; spies remain until recalled or killed. Lost spies do not return.

Targets must be another player's active multiplayer city running V80 or later. Deploying spies starts the same 24-hour multiplayer opt-out lock used for attacks. You cannot disable multiplayer while your city has active incoming or outgoing spy missions.

Find and stop enemy spies

1. Open Military Command → Spies → Island defense.
2. Pay $100,000 to scan. One scan reveals at most one additional enemy spy; an empty scan still costs money.
3. Select View located spy to locate the revealed spy.
4. Choose Dispatch military helicopter. You need an operating military base with an available helicopter and two crew.
5. The helicopter flies to the spy. When the spy is eliminated, the mission stops and both cities receive an assessment.

A biological mission starts with a 10 m area and expands by 2 m per game hour while the spy operates. Only the selected payload's resident or worker group is affected. Recall or elimination stops new infections; existing cases still finish and appear in the assessment.

Target requirements: sabotage requires a completed DoSS in the defending city; biological missions require a completed BIO MAX. Both players need the updated game so their completed facilities are advertised. A successful deployment plays a confirmation sound and shows a notice.

Mission progress: the affected area begins at 10 metres and expands while the defending city is running. Only the payload's matching residents or workers are affected. Reports show the radius, eligible residents in range, infections and deaths. Zero infections can mean the area has not reached eligible buildings yet. A detected outbreak displays a red alert with a button to open cure production.

BIO MAX — Biological Warfare Center

Build one center per city for $100,000,000. Use Military Command → Bio weapons to manufacture payloads, then deploy them from Spies → Missions. The following are fictional game balance values.

Woohan Research Laboratory

Construction costs $50,000,000. Research each of the four matching cures separately: $1,000,000 per cure, taking 30 operating game days. Research remains saved with your city.

1. Open Military Command → Cure research, select a cure and start its research.
2. Once research finishes, choose a quantity from 1 to 10,000 vials.
3. Pay $50 per vial. The whole batch finishes in 60 seconds, regardless of its size. One batch runs at a time across the city's labs.
4. Vials distribute automatically to operating, staffed hospitals. Treatment uses one matching vial per infected resident and lowers the game's fatality chance.

Research and production pause when the laboratory cannot operate. Existing cases resolve after one game day. Treatment improves the odds; it does not guarantee survival.

Read the results

Open Military Command → Spies → Reports to see mission status, infections, treated residents and deaths. Counts update as cases progress, so a mission's final assessment can change after the spy returns or is eliminated.

Building is not working

Check completion, road access, power, workers, required inputs, storage and its selected operating mode.

Food or entertainment happiness is low

Open the happiness breakdown. Check whether businesses actually operate and serve residents; count stocked, staffed services rather than buildings alone.

Steel or gold is missing from a factory

Check the producer's destination, stock, route and the receiver's capacity. Output sent to export will not supply that local factory.

Few civilian cars

Check journeys, car ownership, parking access/capacity, fuel supply and fuel price. Some residents walk.

Traffic will not clear

Inspect the head of the queue and nearby closures, exits and parking destinations. Capture a short video if the same vehicles never advance.

Multiplayer action is unavailable

Check registration, multiplayer status, an active lock, stock, facilities, funds and materials. Read the displayed requirement or connection message.

Reporting a bug

Include the game version, city name, what you expected, what happened, steps to reproduce it and a screenshot or short video. For performance problems, include your resolution, graphics settings and PC specifications. Share a city save if requested for reproduction.

Keep account tokens and multiplayer profile files private in bug reports.