Microlandia 2.3.0: Bridges, four-lane streets and better terraforming

Bridges are important for cities on maps with water because they connect different parts of the city. Until now, bridges were simple structures that extended the road, but for this update, we decided to rebuild them from scratch, with different types of bridges, each with its own purpose.

• Beam: the practical everyday choice, quick to build, with supporting piers and a maximum length of 500 metres.
• Cable-stayed: distinctive pylons and fans of cables, spanning up to 1,100 metres without piers in the water. More expensive and slower to build than a beam bridge.
• Suspension: for the longest crossings—up to 2 kilometres—with no piers in the water. Higher construction and maintenance costs, available in red or steel grey.
• Stone: arches and landmark gate towers, reaching up to 500 metres. Slow to build, but cheap to maintain.

You no longer need to use the road tool to build bridges. There is now a dedicated tool called Bridges that lets you build the different types.

All four types carry the road layout they connect to, including four-lane streets, bike lanes and street parking. Start your drag on an existing street: the tool builds the connecting road and bridge together. Bridges can cross valleys as well as water, staying level with their starting street and meeting ground at the same height on the other side.

We’ve also added a new type of road: the four-lane road. As the name suggests, it has two lanes of traffic in each direction. This is particularly useful for creating arterial roads that need to handle more cars and buses, such as when you want to connect two important parts of a city without running into traffic problems.

Along with the bridges over rivers and the sea, we’ve also improved park bridges, the ones that cross ponds. You can now make them longer, allowing you to create much more beautiful landscapes.

We’ve also improved the terraforming tool. It’s now much more precise and makes leveling areas less frustrating. You can also create lower terrain at the water’s edge, forming something like a beach. This is something we’ll be expanding on in future versions of the game.

Beyond the bridges, new roads, and terrain tools, we’ve put a lot of work into many small changes that together make a big difference. We’ve made some balance adjustments to make it easier to start a city from scratch. For example, the smallest buildings in the game now take less time to build.

We’ve also relaxed the placement rules for power pylons. The construction interface is much more user-friendly and explains the game’s rules more clearly, and our tutorial is now much more helpful in teaching you how to start a city with a healthy economy from the beginning.

We’ve also included more than a dozen important bug fixes for issues reported by the community.

Full changelog:

• New bridge tool with four types of bridges: beam, cable-stayed, suspension and stone.
• The Road tool can now build four-lane streets that carry twice the traffic at the same speed
• Now in: Finnish, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian and Traditional Chinese.
• Improved terraforming with more precision of the terraform tool and the ability to create beachside on shores.
• Pond bridges can now extend over larger stretches of water.
• Improved the school hiring, they no longer overhire teachers, scaling correctly according to the number of students.
• We’re making the early game easier and more fun, with a shorter tutorial and faster construction of basic buildings.
• Improved the look and feel of the construction interface, with better explanations of the rules and more user-friendly controls.
• Household basic needs correctly cover adults without their own pay cheque.
• Fire stations release excess firefighters when staffing is reduced.
• School understaffing warnings reflect pupil demand; medium schools unlock at 1,000 residents.
• Town houses reduced from 12 homes to six.
• Interrupted imports of 1.x saves can resume correctly.
• Industrial air pollution reworked: recalculated to be more realistic, and now affects the health of nearby residents.
• New artwork: an Art Deco corporate tower, revised residential complex, and pane detailing on reflective glass. Improved skies and reflections, with revised clouds and dawn colors.
• Relaxed the placement rules for transmission towers, now every tower connects to all four neighbours, following the Energy map’s purchasing priority.
• Improved the Salina map with more land, beach coves and better islands to build on.
• Improved the precision of sales and property tax
• Empty homes and shops no longer drive up your power imports, and electricity sales count only the power the grid actually delivered.
• Children born years apart, instead of a couple having all its children at once
• Fix for the price of garbage exports.
• Fix for the private security civic development policy, which was sometimes not being applied to all companies.
• Fix for Workers behind on rent not paying income tax.
• Fix for building upkeep, now prorated for the days a building actually stood.
• Fix for bulldozing streets and bridges sometimes not allowing a valid removal.