If the green settlement upgrade will not unlock, stop building for a minute. Town to City checks more than the number of houses on the map. It checks the population class named by the current objective, the happiness of every class that the objective includes, and—since the 1.0 release—the tourist-destination requirement attached to the final two city stages. A beautiful district can therefore be one unmet class gate away from progress.
This roadmap is for the campaign in the v1.0.4 era, checked on August 23, 2026. The supplied stage walkthroughs were recorded during Early Access in September 2025. They remain useful for the order in which housing classes, needs, and research layers appear, but their old number-only requirements are not treated as the current authority. Open the upgrade panel in your own client before every push; the panel is the contract, and this guide tells you how to prepare the systems behind it.
Use the objective panel as a three-part gate
Read each upgrade requirement as three separate questions. First, does the city contain enough residents of the requested class? Second, is every happiness average named by the objective at or above its line? Third, is there a special progression condition, such as a tourist destination, that population cannot satisfy?
Write those three answers down before spending money or research points. If only one is red, work on that line. Adding normal homes cannot fix an Artisan count. A new luxury building cannot fix an unstaffed warehouse. Raising happiness cannot substitute for the tourist destination now required by the late campaign.
| Panel line | What to inspect | What a false fix looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Population or class count | Occupied residences of the exact class, not empty capacity | Placing more normal houses while the panel asks for Artisans or Bourgeoisie |
| Average happiness | The weakest visible need for every class included by the gate | Decorating a healthy class while another class remains below the line |
| Special condition | Requests, class research, or a valid tourist destination | Waiting for population to make an unrelated condition turn green |
Do not click the upgrade the instant every line turns green. First check that the town still has spare workers, a functioning supply network, and room for the next need category. The button records that you met the old stage; it does not promise that the new stage will remain stable.
Dwelling to Hamlet: prove one service block before chasing residents
The opening dependency is station → road → occupied home → staffed food stall → staffed warehouse. Build the smallest version of that chain that you can inspect at a glance. A road must connect the station to the residential block. Arriving families must be assigned to actual homes. Food buildings need workers, and the warehouse must have workers and a usable route to the shops it supports.
The Early Access capture reached the first upgrade with 50 residents and 60% average happiness. Treat those as a historical checkpoint, not a promise that a future patch will always use the same values. Your current upgrade panel decides. The useful lesson is the pairing: population will not keep rising if the happiness side of the gate falls behind.
Before expanding the opening block, click one house, one food stall, and the warehouse. The house should show the intended service rather than an unresolved need. The stall should have labour. The warehouse should have a connection and transport capacity. Only then add another cluster of homes. If a family stops arriving, use the families, workers, and warehouse recovery tree instead of filling the map with empty buildings.
The Research Center is a controlled expense
The Research Center advances the campaign but competes for the same labour pool as food and logistics. Staff it after the first service chain works. If a new research worker makes a stall or warehouse fail, that worker did not create progress; the assignment moved the bottleneck into the system that keeps happiness and arrivals alive.
End this stage with a small labour reserve or a clear reassignment plan. You want enough capacity to unlock the next need without stripping the opening food loop.
Hamlet to Village: match families before density hides the problem
Hamlet introduces a more individual city. New families can arrive with placement preferences, and the Mayor’s Home opens requests. Read a family before assigning a house. A waterside, cliffside, tree, flower, service, or housing-style preference is easiest to satisfy before the family moves into a dense block.
The supplied walkthrough uses the A New Dress request to demonstrate this stage: build the Mayor’s Home, research the Clothing Store and its colour option, connect the appropriate warehouse, and set the requested colour. The exact reward is not important to this roadmap. The sequence is. A request can depend on research, a building, logistics, and a property on that building. If it does not complete, verify all four instead of rebuilding the shop.
Apparel begins to matter during this part of the campaign. When the happiness panel exposes a new category, fix that category where the affected residents live. More poultry or cheese will not repair an apparel shortage. Likewise, a Clothing Store that has no worker or no supply path is not a completed happiness solution.
The old walkthrough recorded 120 residents and 60% happiness for Village. Use the number only to understand the scale of that capture; confirm the live objective. What must be stable before upgrading is more durable:
- the Mayor’s Home can issue and complete requests;
- apparel service works rather than merely existing;
- new households are placed with their visible traits in mind;
- the food and warehouse chain still has enough labour after research expands.
Village to Small Town: add leisure and capacity before another housing wave
Village is where an opening layout often fails under a new need rather than under raw population. Leisure appears in the supplied campaign route, while research and warehouse upgrades make larger districts possible. Do not read those capacity upgrades as permission to grow immediately. First prove that the existing warehouse is actually saturated and that the current leisure building reaches the residents who need it.
The Early Access stage guide reports a 180-resident, 60%-happiness gate. Again, read the current panel. The actionable pre-upgrade test is a two-cycle observation:
- Pause new housing and let the current district run.
- Check whether food, apparel, and leisure stay out of the red.
- Watch whether warehouse warnings clear with the present workers.
- Add one small residential cluster.
- Repeat the same checks before committing to the stage upgrade.
If the first cycle is healthy and the second is not, the new cluster exposed a capacity or coverage edge. Solve that edge locally. A second warehouse belongs near a genuinely distant district; it is not a cure for a disconnected road, zero workers, or a shop that is already served by the wrong link.
Fontebrac becomes available around this transition in the supplied campaign evidence. Opening the map is not the same as operating it. Keep the main town able to attract families before starting the agricultural network. When you are ready, the Fontebrac farming route separates Farmer Residences, crop fields, granaries, crop-powered buildings, and Farm Points so the second town does not drain the first.
Small Town to City: build the Artisan system, not just Artisan houses
Researching the Artisan class changes which population counts. An Artisan family needs the correct residence and the services attached to its higher expectations. The old Small Town route paired Artisan Residences with housewares, leisure, luxuries, and the appropriate worker assignments. That is the useful order: unlock the class, prepare one supported Artisan block, then accept and house the new class.
Do not prebuild a full Artisan quarter before its first block works. Start with a road and warehouse reach, then one class residence, then the service buildings shown as weak in the Artisan happiness breakdown. Place labour only after checking which worker class the building accepts. A normal worker pool that looks large on the city summary may not satisfy a class-restricted job.
The supplied pre-1.0 route used 30 Artisans for Town and 80 Artisans for City, with 60% averages for the included classes. These are useful historical landmarks, but not substitutes for the current green-button readback. In either build, the two stages introduce distinct tasks:
- Small Town → Town: prove that Artisan housing and the first housewares/luxury services work.
- Town → City: scale the Artisan district while adding Public Service without exhausting normal workers, Artisan workers, or warehouse throughput.
At Town, housing floors can save land, but density and family preferences still matter. A family that wants a single-floor home is a poor candidate for vertical consolidation. Move or match households deliberately before upgrading residences in bulk.
City to Grandiose City: the old population route is no longer enough
City unlocks Bourgeoisie progression and another service tier. Older walkthroughs describe 25 Bourgeoisie for Large City and 60 for Grandiose City, with 60% happiness across normal residents, Artisans, and Bourgeoisie. The official 1.0 changelog changes the interpretation of those guides: the last two city stages now also require Bourgeoisie inhabitants to have a tourist destination.
That means the late route has two parallel workstreams. One is residential: research Bourgeoisie housing, place it inside supported districts, assign suitable jobs, and provide the food, apparel, leisure, housewares, Public Service, luxury, and decoration shown by the live panels. The other is tourism: create a hotel-based destination and a valid route that the client recognizes.
Do not try to solve both on the same afternoon of city growth. Stabilize the first Bourgeoisie block, then build one tourist destination, then return to the upgrade panel. The dedicated hotel and tourist-route guide covers route points, theme requirements, workers, invalid-point signals, and the v1.0.2–v1.0.3 fixes that changed route troubleshooting.
When the tourist line stays red, confirm that it is a working destination, not merely a placed hotel or monument. Open the hotel menu, inspect the route, and check worker and route status. When the class line stays red, confirm occupied Bourgeoisie residences rather than empty capacity. When happiness stays red, inspect each included class separately; a strong normal-worker average cannot carry an unhappy Bourgeoisie class through the gate.
Research for the next red line, not the most expensive unlock
A stage presents many attractive research options. Rank them by the objective and the current failure signal:
- Unlock the required class or system. Artisan housing, Bourgeoisie housing, farming, and tourism are structural gates.
- Repair the red need. Choose the service category actually missing from the affected district.
- Remove a measured capacity ceiling. Take a warehouse, research, housing, or service upgrade after observing the ceiling.
- Improve money storage or taxes only when the cap or income is the blocker. Higher-class taxes can trade money for happiness, so read the result instead of assuming it is free progress.
- Decorate with a target. Home decoration, work decoration, family traits, route themes, and general beauty are different jobs.
This order prevents the classic stalled-city loop: spend workers on research, unlock an expensive building, staff it by stripping logistics, lose service coverage, drop happiness, and stop arrivals. A research unlock is ready to use only when the town can operate it.
When every number looks right but the button stays locked
| Visible symptom | Next inspection | Success signal |
|---|---|---|
| Population line does not advance | Residence class, occupancy, and whether arrivals have been assigned | The exact class counter increases |
| Average is close but never stable | Weakest category and the class/district causing it | The named class average remains over the line after a service cycle |
| A new building has no effect | Workers, roads, warehouse link, coverage, and correct service category | The affected house or panel recognizes the service |
| Late-stage tourism condition is red | Hotel worker, route points, route theme, reachable destination, eligible Bourgeoisie | The current upgrade panel recognizes a tourist destination |
| Connections changed after loading | Client version, then each customized house/shop connection | Preferences persist after a save-and-load test on v1.0.4 or later |
The v1.0.4 Construction Update specifically fixed customized house and shop connection preferences being reset after a load. If an older build appears to undo your logistics choices, update before redesigning the city. After updating, make a fresh save, set one test preference, reload once, and confirm it persists before applying the layout across a large district.
Patch boundary and evidence
The official Steam page establishes the current PC release, campaign and sandbox modes, multiple connected towns, citizen classes, farming, tourism, and research systems. The official Steam announcements provide the decisive current boundary: version 1.0 added tourist destinations to the final two city-stage upgrades, version 1.0.3 revised tourism feedback and route behavior, and version 1.0.4 fixed saved connection preferences.
The seven supplied stage walkthroughs were readable and used to map the Early Access order from Dwelling through Grandiose City. Their recorded population figures and suggested unlocks are treated as historical checkpoints because they predate 1.0. The current objective panel wins over every number in those references. No fixed prices, research costs, service capacities, or route scores are published here.