Government Mode
Once a member of your political party becomes mayor of a city, a Government mode icon appears at the bottom of the screen. Click it and you give orders on behalf of the city government rather than your corporation.
To go back to running your company, click the Business mode icon next to it.
What changes in the interface
Cash and surplus
The bottom of the screen shows the city government’s cash and surplus in place of your corporation’s cash and profit.
The mayor approval rating
The city’s mayor approval rating is displayed alongside it.
The Land-use Planning Tool
Government mode gives the mayor a land-use planning tool.
Clicking the icon opens the Land-use Planning menu, which restricts areas of the city to particular uses.
The zoning tools
| Tool | Sets selected land plots to |
|---|---|
| Mixed Residential-Commercial | Mixed residential and commercial zones |
| Residential | Residential zones |
| Commercial | Commercial zones |
| Industrial | Industrial zones |
| Agricultural | Agricultural zones — where land costs significantly less than in any other zone |
| Not For Sale | Plots withheld from sale entirely |
Applying a use to the whole city
The circular icon at the bottom of the menu toggles whole-city application. Turn it on, pick a land use, and it applies across the city at once.
Pre-existing zones
Each city that starts with a population already has a Mixed Commercial and Residential zone.
Cities you found during the game, and the starting city in Survival Mode, have no pre-existing zones at all. Zoning them is your first job.
The Build menu
In Government mode the build menu lists a different set of buildings — only those the government may build and run from the city fund.
Zone colors can be viewed without opening the land-use menu at all. They also appear on the mini-map when it is set to business relation mode.
Management automation tools
A set of tools that take the micromanagement of individual government buildings off your hands, so you can work at the level of the city instead.
Open the Cities screen and select the Mayor page.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Auto Adjust Operation Levels of Civic Buildings | Sets the operation level of every civic facility according to demand. |
| Auto Manage Media Firms | Runs all of the city’s media firms. |
| Auto Manage Apartments | Runs the corporation’s apartments, setting rents to the preference you choose under Rent. |
| Auto Manage Commercial Buildings | The same for commercial buildings, again following your Rent setting. |
Balancing the city budget
The problem: you inherit a city of pre-built government buildings whose operating expenses outrun the government’s income, leaving a serious deficit — and there seems to be no way to shut a building down.
The answer: every government building has an operation level slider. Scaling a building down reduces its running cost, and setting it to 0% suspends it completely, so it incurs no monthly expense at all.
