Soon after the last update it was discovered that the location chosen for the elites was not optimal. They began to complain about lack of leisure services, even though all services available were provided to them. So I guessed they were too far away from the buildings. Since Widening was going to expand anyway it seemed logical to build a second area with all service buildings. But this turned out to be very expensive. To come up with the necessary 120,000 per turn income tax rates had to be increased from 10% to 12%. This reduced satisfaction with tax rates by 10%. So making the few elites in the city happier did again cost the poor money and happiness. The first picture of this update shows such a poor soul in the unqualified workers area.

Later on it was needed twice to raise the income tax rate again, both times by 1%. Construction of the new service buildings had left the city poor and it just couldn’t come up with enough money to buy all the necessary resources. But in both cases overall happiness improved, despite the dissatisfaction with the tax increases.

The financial future of Widening didn’t seem bright at all. City hall was thinking about building power plants, so it didn’t have to buy the expensive electricity from OmniCorp anymore. But that would not solve all problems, since maintenance costs for power plants are also high. Then someone got the bright idea to build an MBA. This facility not only improves satisfaction with education facilities by 5%, it also increases office production by 40%. And offices are what the city has a lot of. By far most people in Widening work in offices. The new MBA is shown in the next picture. It is located on the edge of the area with the new services.

The new MBA was a big hit. It produced 35 tokens of office services right away. Four more intercity connections had to be built to be able to trade away all these new tokens. Now Widening is selling hundred tokens of office services to OmniCorp, for the magnificent sum of 350,000 per turn. Of this, 119,000 can be accredited to the MBA, which costs 40,000 per turn to maintain, but it’s worth it, because still it runs with a profit of 79,000.With an income of about 145,000 per turn the future seemed bright again. Cause for a celebration, so a new landmark was built, the Church of St. Nicholas, shown in the next picture, in the middle of the unqualified workers area, where it fits nicely, in my opinion.

I think this church is a really beautiful building, so it is shown again in the next picture, now seen from above. And it has been decided that St. Nicholas should be Widening’s patron, now that it has this beautiful church dedicated to him.

Overall satisfaction has taken a big hit due to the tax increases: happiness of the unqualified and the qualified workers dropped by almost 5%. Thanks to another landmark, the Kodak Theatre, shown in the next picture, happiness of the executives and the elites is somewhat stable at about 77%. Satisfaction with services is stable and good at about 90%. Leisure facilities however are not adequate, with a satisfaction of just 73%. Costly new investments will have to be made, so I’m not sure Widening can continue indefinitely on the chosen path. Maybe polluting industries are needed to compensate for the deficits that might be coming our way.

Widening is expanding beyond the reach of the pollution of the oil extraction fields, so satisfaction with the environment is on the rise. It increased by 2% and is now at 34%. The next picture shows the entire city as it has 502,174 inhabitants.

Widening now has its first high density buildings. The next picture shows a high density shop. There was at some point a serious problem with retail facilities. Even though demand was completely satisfied, satisfaction was very low. As it turned out having just medium density shops in the city is not enough, you need to have different kinds. So some shops were downgraded to low density shops, but this left lots of unqualified and qualified workers unemployed. So high density shops were constructed to provide for jobs. Now demand is saturated, but satisfaction is at 100%.

Widening is now expanding into the hills. This creates nice looking streets, as the final picture of this update shows. The composition of the population is still stable, but that will probably change, since the focus will shift from offices to high tech industries. The latter create more jobs for elites, and since now medium density homes can be built for them it is my intention to attract more of them. High tech factories and elite homes bring in more taxes, but need the support of offices, so in that sense these are more costly as well. Nevertheless it is my hope that the net gain will be that Widening can continue to buy all the stuff it doesn’t want to produce. The next update will be when the city reaches 750,000 inhabitants, and hopefully it will be clear by then what the future beholds.