Shadows of Doubt: How Buildings and the City Editor work

I like achievements. I also like over-optimising stuff way past the point of diminishing returns.

This game has an achievement called <Spare No One>, which is described as “KO everybody in the city at least once”.

Being the opposite of insane, I decided to mess with the City Editor(CE) to create the smallest city. Minimizing the amount of targets is great, sure, but that also reduces the research and, in case I missed someone, the error tracking.

And so I went down the City Editing rabbit-hole, and it’s pretty fun building cities and then exploring them. However, the tool is in its really early stages, so many things aren’t clear.

Here are some of the notes I took about the CE and how buildings in general work.

This is not an authoritative work: I just play this game whenever the detective bug hits me. Think of this as just my personal notes. If there are errors or omissions, head to the comments.

Ah, the City Editor tool.

The name says it all: It’s a tool that you can use to somewhat customise new cities.

It’s quite limited in functionality as of this writing, and somewhat opaque, which is why I took the notes that made up this guide. Hopefully they add more functionality in future.

Accessing the CE

You access the CE by selecting “On” for the “Enable City Editor” option on the “Generate City” screen whenever you start a new game.

You cannot edit an existing city that you are already using in a game.

My understanding is that you need to have finished the game at least once before you can access the CE.

Using the CE

The CE has 4 main functions:

• Naming your city
• Changing your city size
• Changing the random seed
• Change buildings on tiles & rotate them

Now if you’re thinking: “wait, what about all the other buttons?”……yeah they don’t work yet.

Naming your city is pretty self-explanatory: Just type in “Neo-Tokyo 4” or “Emily-opolis” or “Dan’s Island” and that’s what your city will be called.

Don’t waste time editing street/building names, they won’t use the names you give them. Once you use the city, the game will automatically generate random names for buildings/streets.

There are 4 city sizes available:

• Small (3 x 3)
• Medium (4 x 3)
• Large (4 x 4)
• Very Large (5 x 4)

Note that to change city size, you need to clear away your existing map and generate a new one. This will remove any existing edits.

If you’re in the CE and customizing your city, then all you need to know about the random seed is:

• you cannot adjust city street surfaces manually.
• you cannot adjust the square viewing platforms along the edges of the map manually.
• you cannot add the corporate neon signs to the sides of tall buildings manually.

Apartment Tower A with Starch Cola neon sign. Btw, I personally call it the Gothic tower, and the square Apartment Tower B the Art Deco tower.

All these cosmetic factors are determined by the random seed.

Note that to change the city seed, you need to clear away your existing map and generate a new one. This will remove any existing edits.

This is probably what you’re looking for: Changing buildings.

After you generate a city, click on “Tile Edit”, then select the tile you wish to change. It will be highlighted with a purple-white outline and an arrow showing where it’s facing. Doors to the main structure will generally be on the face of the building.

Click on the drop-down menu and select what you want the building to be. Click the rotate button to rotate it 90 degrees clock-wise.

There are 12 different types of buildings so far, as they appear on the in-game drop-down menu:

[1] Chemical Plant[2] Mixed Industrial[3] Diner[4] Town-house (Town-house A, All Residential)[5] Apartment Tower (Apartment Tower A, Gothic)[6] Apartment Tower (Apartment Tower B, Art Deco)[7] City Hall[8] Fathoms[9] Hotel[10] Commercial Tower[11] Park[12] Town-house (Town-house B, Ground Retail)

Yes, there are 2 “Town-house” and 2 “Apartment Tower”. I refer to them using the names in the brackets to avoid ambiguity.

Note that there are requirements to generating a city, so you can’t create a city that’s entirely Parks and no residences.

I have seen neuropsia’s 100% achievement guide, and disagree with the minimum city building requirements mentioned:

Originally posted by neuropsia:

“In the City Editor, you must have at least one City Hall, at least one building with retail space (i.e. Apartment Buildings or Commercial Towers) and at least two residential buildings.”

From my own testing, you MUST have:

• At least 1 City Hall
• At least 1 Diner
• Sufficient housing
• At least 1 office space

How much is “sufficient housing”? We don’t know the exact number.

However, from testing, the game checks for residences before it checks for offices. The following table details the extra buildings placed and the error triggered (City Hall & Diner already placed).

My guess is that the game is checking for enough housing, roughly 40 apartments, which is the maximum number of apartments above-ground in a block of Apartment A (See table at the end).

As for the quest for the smallest city that started this whole guide…

The smallest city I can make so far is:

This is the result:

Kinda wish I picked a better name.

To see the population of a city, start a new game, choose to Select City and pick the city from the drop-down menu.

Some things I’ve observed:

Number of Floors is always the same for a particular type of building

Each building has a set number of floors. Note that the 19th Floor of the Commercial Tower is roof access. The highest floor with apartments is Commercial Tower 18th floor.

Floors will have around 1 to 4 general layouts.

This is showing the B1 floors of 2x Apartment Tower A placed side-by-side. The layout is different, to say nothing of the illegal businesses available on the right but not on the left.

This is Floor 4 of 2x Apartment Tower A placed side-by-side. Only 2 apartments on the left, 4 apartments on the right.

The possible layouts are determined by the shape of the floor.

This is Floor 10 of 2x Apartment Tower A placed side-by-side.

For example, floors 10 to 16 all have the same shape: A square with a missing bit at the top left. All those floors will pull from the same group of possible configurations. For this shape, there are only 2, both shown in the picture above.

Every floor 10 to 16 of every Apartment Tower A will have one of these two configurations.

Echelon floors
Only 3 buildings have Echelon restricted floors, where you will be deemed trespassing unless you have gained enough Social Credit to reach Level 7.

• Commercial Tower: Floor 11 – 19
• Apartment Tower A: Floor 9 -17
• Apartment Tower B: Floor 11 – 15

Flooded floors
Only 3 buildings have Basement 2 floors, where it’s always flooded and you’ll immediately get the smelly debuff if you touch the water:

• Apartment Tower A
• Apartment Tower B
• Hotel

Table for each building

Lastly, a table that shows how many of each general type of room each building can spawn. I was only intending to record apartments, but included other stuff and created a monster. orz

As it was originally only for apartments, the list doesn’t show stuff like power rooms, surveillance offices, hotel reception etc.

I tried to create a table, but steam limits tables to 15 columns, so picture of table it is.

The bold border indicates that those floors have the same shape, and same set of possible layouts.

Apartments(#)
Offices(O)
Retail businesses(R)
Medical Wards(M)
Enforcer Office(E)
Industrial Plants(P)

Special areas are written in full.

The table

Examples:

The B1 floor of a Commercial Tower spawns a Power Room + 5 other rooms. These 5 rooms can turn into apartments or illegal businesses. That goes for all the ma

Floor 1 of a Hotel will always be the Ballroom(no idea why it’s called that, looks like reception + bar to me), a staff kitchen, and a security room. There’ll also be a Rooftop Bar on Floor 9.

City Hall has 2 wings on either side of each floor, which can be either Medical Wards or Enforcement Offices. One of the wings on the first floor will be a public bathroom.

The Ground floor of the Chemical Plant will always have an Industrial Plant and a Canteen.

The Ground floor of the Mixed Industrial will always have 1 Apartment, an Industrial Plant, and a Food-related retail business (Fast Food Restaurant, Asian Restaurant etc.)

I just wanted to create a small city for the achievement…

Also, I wanted to create a comprehensive breakdown for each building type, but kinda burnt out writing this guide, and sorta dumped all the misc notes at the end there.

Hopefully this information will be of use to somebody. Good luck getting to retirement, detectives!