Quick Start · Part 8 · About 4 minutes
What to aim at next
You can build in every mode and read your accounts. What remains is direction — knowing which of the many numbers on screen are worth steering towards, and which are just applause.
The loop you are actually playing
Serve demand
A connection carries people and freight that previously had no way to move.
Settlements develop
Better service raises accessibility, which raises development, which raises output and population.
Demand grows
Larger, richer settlements generate more demand — and pay more service-linked tax.
Then it starts again, on a bigger map of flows than before. Every decision in the earlier parts feeds this one loop.
This is why nothing appears to happen in your first years. Development moves on a scale of decades. A road built today does not repay you this year; it changes the slope of a curve you will read in twenty. Judging your opening moves by the first year's numbers is the fastest way to talk yourself out of a good network.
Milestones: two very different kinds
Milestones are worth understanding precisely, because the game presents them all the same way and they are not remotely equal.
Every milestone pays one-time cash of two to eight dollars per head of population. Against a fund that started at a fifth of national GDP, that is small — pleasant, not strategic. Do not plan around the money.
Some milestones also carry a persistent reward, and those genuinely change how your nation works:
| Persistent reward | What it does | Earned by |
|---|---|---|
| Policy slot | One more policy active nationwide, on top of a base of 12 plus one per five settlements | National rail network, expressway network, high-speed era, air coverage, port trade, ten cities, megacity |
| Development speed | +10%, +20% then +30% to development growth — compounding over the whole game | GDP per person reaching $10,000, $20,000 and $40,000 |
| City feedback cap | Raises how much a well-built city can lift its settlements, from 5% to 10% then 15% | A settlement reaching 1,000,000 and 5,000,000 people |
The development-speed rewards are the most valuable things on that list, and note what earns them: not building anything in particular, but making the country richer. They are the strongest argument for the loop above.
Steering without chasing
The right relationship with milestones is peripheral vision, not a checklist. Build for demand, and glance at the list to break ties.
- Province capitals
- Worth keeping an eye on, because administrative status is a demand multiplier — 1.25× for a province capital, 1.5× for the national capital. Connecting them tends to be good regardless of the milestone that names them.
- Network-completion milestones
- Expressway network, national rail, air coverage, port trade. Each wants all province capitals or every province served, so they are late goals. Let them arrive; do not force them early.
- Population milestones
- Not built directly at all. A million-person city is the result of sustained good service somewhere, which is why it unlocks a bonus to city feedback rather than to construction.
If a milestone would have you build something you would not otherwise build, it is not worth it. The cash will not cover the mistake.
The five habits worth keeping
- Read demand before building. Drag across a pair, or sort the demand list. The map is not the plan.
- Test the monthly cost, not the construction cost. Can the monthly net survive the new maintenance?
- Build one thing well. Several half-served corridors earn less and cost more than one properly served one.
- Check that services exist, not just infrastructure. Track with no operating line, an airport with no market, a port with no route — all cost and carry nothing.
- Give it decades. Growth is slow by design. Let time run and re-read the demand list.
Where to go from here
Quick Start ends here. When you want the reasoning rather than the recipe, How the World Works has it, in the order it is worth reading:
- Creating the map you want — what the country you generated actually decided.
- Economy and public finance — the full money model behind Part 6.
- Building and operating the network — every mode in depth.
- Designing your cities — the layer beneath every settlement.