The Business Logic

💰Revenue is not profit

Every financial day your town earns rent and sales, then pays upkeep for every building, staff beyond your founding team and your delivery fleet. Your Operating Accounts in the Mayor Office show revenue, costs and profit for each day. A busy town can still lose money.

🛟Keep a cash cushion

Bills are taken from cash each day. If you cannot pay, they become overdue and your town enters recovery: no new land, buildings, upgrades or hires until you pay. Hold at least two days of bills in cash, and set aside your next tax estimate as tax day approaches.

🏘Location, location, location

Each home has a neighborhood appeal from 0 to 100, set by the amenities around it:

Amenities on the same block count in full, in the next district half, and across town a little. A level-2 amenity counts fully. Appeal sets how full a home can get: 40% with nothing nearby, up to 100% in a complete neighborhood.

Rent

Rent grows with the building's level, the price of its land and its location (from 0.8x to 1.4x), then with occupancy. Sought-after blocks earn the most.

🧺Food keeps homes full

Residents buy food baskets at your groceries every day. A grocery needs both bread and fruit. Homes move toward their cap as residents are fed: 80% of baskets served fills them to the cap, half that fills them half way, and none empties them. Advertising ("Find tenants") brings 15% in at once, and they stay if they're fed.

🔧Buildings age

Buildings age one year every two financial days. At 30 years a building is worn: homes lose tenants year after year and upkeep rises. Renovation, available from 25 years, makes a building good as new. Your mayor can renovate worn buildings automatically when the town can afford it.

🏦Borrowing

The community bank lends a starter loan and larger loans secured by your property. Your credit score sets how much you can borrow. Repayments are due every financial day; three missed payments let the bank foreclose on the pledged property. Borrow to fund what earns, and repay from profit.

⚖️Debt and tax planning

Bank debt changes your tax bill, as it does in real life. The interest part of every loan repayment is a deductible cost, and the property levy is charged on equity: what you own minus what you owe the bank. Borrowing to build earning assets therefore lowers the bill while it grows the town. Loans are still limited by your credit and the property you pledge, and missed repayments still cost you that property.

🧾The federal income tax

Every 30 financial days (a monthly bill) the Treasury of Nehborly serves a tax bill. Income tax takes 10% rising to 45% of the month's profit; a losing month pays no income tax and carries forward to cut the next profitable month's bill. The property levy is 2% of your assessed property a month (2.5% above 50,000, 3% above 200,000), like a yearly property tax: empty homes and closed buildings are assessed at half, and the levy never takes more than half of the month's income. Thriving towns pay the most. You have five financial days to pay.

Unpaid tax becomes a bank loan already in default: assets are frozen, the bank takes every coin above 80 each day, adds interest, and starts auctioning property after five days. Paying the bank lifts the freeze.

🛢Oil economics (Petroleum Coast)

Each pumpjack costs 25,000 coins on a 9,000-coin rig site and 180 coins a day to run. It pumps six barrels a day per level into a tank that holds thirty per level; a full tank stops pumping. Crude follows a market cycle around 110 coins a barrel, minus 4 coins haulage. Every pumping day wears the rig: output falls with condition and stops below 20% until it is serviced.

Oil income is taxed like any other, with a 15% depletion allowance on sales and maintenance counted as a deductible cost. Rigs also count as jobs for the coast's homes, raising their appeal.

✅The savvy mayor's checklist

• Two days of bills in cash, always.
• The next tax estimate set aside before tax day.
• Groceries stocked with bread and fruit.
• Amenities built where the homes are.
• Loans only for buildings that pay them back.
• Renovations before buildings wear out.