Sandbox Construction · Economy handbook
How the economy works
Everything starts as sand. Residents move into homes, ask for bread, coffee and a pub, and every one of those needs is a chain back to a field, a tree, a pit or a well. Here are all of them, with the numbers.
Read from the content packs.
The tier ladder
Residents come in tiers. A tier unlocks once the city has enough residents of the tier before it. Basic needs fill the houses; luxury needs raise tax and happiness. Select a need to find it in the diagram.
The supply chains
Land and imports on the left, buildings and goods in between, the people who need them on the right. Select a good or a building: blue is everything upstream that it depends on, red everything downstream that depends on it.
Ratio calculator
Tell it who lives in your city and it counts the buildings, upstream included: the bakery, the mill behind it, the farm behind that.
What comes from the land
Fields, trees, sand, water pipes and deposits: the raw ends of every chain.
Communities, food and fun
Different households want different things. Who moves in follows what is around a home, and five different places to eat beat ten of the same.
Known gaps
Goods nobody makes or nobody uses, and needs nothing answers yet. Found automatically.