Coverage & building

Building is the only way to raise what an industry produces beyond what the market gives you. It is gated on coverage — how many distinct sub-industries you hold, not how much you hold — and that single rule shapes every portfolio in the game.

Coverage is a count, not a sum

Seven semiconductor names cover one sub-industry. One company from each of seven different sub-industries covers seven. A million dollars in a single name builds nothing.

Some sub-industries have exactly one company in them — a sole supplier. Holding it is the only way to cover that sub-industry, which makes those names worth more than their production suggests, and worth the most to a guild, because rarity counts toward the score that decides who controls an industry.

What a level costs

level cost  =  100 SCRIP        <- base, at level 1
             x  the level curve      <- climbs steeply
             x  the industry's cost index
             +  the material of EVERY earlier industry

The curve is steep on purpose: the first level is minutes and a hundred SCRIP, the tenth is days and millions. Levels run to 10.

The material half is the real gate

Information Technology costs SCRIP alone. Consumer Discretionary costs SCRIP plus Silicon. Financials costs SCRIP plus all four earlier materials at once. That is what stops an early district going dead the moment the next one opens — it becomes the supply line.

And it is why you cannot buy your way past a material you never set up a plot to produce. A city that went all-in on one industry stalls here, holding plenty of SCRIP and unable to spend it.

And what it takes

A build takes real time — hours at first, days later. It can be rushed with USDG, and that payment goes to the treasury rather than minting or burning anything. Haste is bought from outside the economy so it cannot distort it.

What the bonus applies to

Each level adds 25% to production — per company, on the plot it was built on, not to the industry as a whole. Infrastructure is per company now, so it multiplies the dollars sitting on that specific name.

This is worth planning around: a level on the plot holding most of your value is worth more than a level spread thin, and the app’s Works screen exists to answer exactly that question — which of sixty plots to build next, which a board full of towers cannot show you.

Building opens the next industry

Reaching level 1 in your frontier industry advances the frontier. That is the only way forward, other than paying 500 SCRIP to skip an era — which also raises what the next one costs to build in, so skipping is a loan rather than a shortcut.

The full order and what each era unlocks is on the five eras.

Before you build

• Do you cover 4 distinct sub-industries in that industry?
• Is every one of those positions above $25?
• Do you hold the materials of every earlier industry, in the amounts the recipe wants?
• Is the plot you are building on the one carrying the most value?