Memoriapolis is a simulation game that combines city-building and colony management. To thrive, gather abundant resources, and utilize your structures wisely, you’ll need strategic planning. One of the key elements of success in the game is upgrading your buildings.
Upgrading is vital since you’re limited in where you can place your buildings, so maximizing your available space is essential. The game can be quite complex, and initially, figuring out how to upgrade buildings and what benefits those upgrades provide may seem daunting. This guide aims to equip you with all the necessary information to navigate these challenges.
Important Note: Memoriapolis is currently in early access, which means its content is still being developed and may change in future updates.
In Memoriapolis, you’ll need two main ingredients to unlock different buildings: blueprints and your current age in the game. Blueprints are one of the resources you can gather, and to start producing them, you need to build an Architectural Office.
Keep in Mind: You can only build one Architectural Office at a time. To enhance blueprint production, ensure high Creativity satisfaction levels among your citizens, as this will boost your output. Upgrading the Architectural Office will further increase the number of blueprints generated, and there’s no limit to how many blueprints you can hold.
To upgrade buildings, access the Building Tree from the menu in the bottom-left corner. However, remember that you can only upgrade buildings that are unlocked—if a building isn’t unlocked, you won’t be able to upgrade it.
Once you’ve unlocked a building, select it in the Building Tree. You’ll see Roman numerals next to its name representing upgrade levels. Each level requires individual unlocking, just as with the building itself, and you will need blueprints to obtain these upgrades.
Unlocking a higher level doesn’t automatically upgrade your existing buildings. After new levels are unlocked, you’ll need to manually upgrade each building, which requires specific resources and may take several game cycles to complete.
Note: The only buildings that require upgrading are the Production and Proximity buildings; the others remain at their initial levels.
After you unlock building upgrades with blueprints, you must upgrade each structure individually. Note that this process incurs a cost, and higher building levels demand more resources. It’s essential to ensure your economy is stable enough to support these upgrades. Below are the resources required for various buildings:
| Resource | Required Building to Obtain | Required Age |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | Cutting Camp | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Stone | Small Quarry | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Clay | Small Quarry | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Sand | Small Quarry | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Wooden Beam | Carpentry | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Rubbles | Carver | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Tiles | Tilery | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Brick | Brickwork | Antiquity (First Age) |
| Gold | Small Mine | Middle Age (Second Age) |
| Iron | Small Mine | Middle Age (Second Age) |
| Gold Leaves | Goldbeater | Middle Age (Second Age) |
| Steel | Steel | Middle Age (Second Age) |
In addition to resources, you will also need workers to upgrade buildings. To boost your workforce, increase your city’s population, as workers represent 33% of your total population.
You can also free up workers by pausing the operations of certain buildings. Just click on the building and hit the pause button. You can pause multiple buildings simultaneously through the Horrerum building, which helps you manage operations and locate specific structures more easily.
Workers not only construct buildings but are also essential to keep them functioning. Production buildings can create noise, impacting the attractiveness of nearby areas, which is a significant consideration for your city planning.
Even with sufficient resources and workers, remember that upgrades won’t happen instantly; you’ll have to wait through the game’s cycle-based time system to see the completion of each upgrade.
Each production and proximity building can be upgraded to a specific level, with the maximum level varying by building type. When a building can be upgraded to level five, you will need to choose between two options from the Building Tree. Once you select one option, the other becomes permanently unavailable.
Some production buildings might create negative disruptions, diminishing attraction. However, when these buildings reach level five, they stop producing disturbances entirely. Depending on the path chosen at level five, certain buildings might even start to create positive attraction.
These buildings extract specific resources, but they must be strategically placed near natural resources to function effectively. Without proximity, they will stop operating. The production buildings include:
By upgrading these buildings, you enable them to extract more resources each cycle and improve their storage capacity. However, they will generate noise, which decreases the attractiveness of surrounding areas. Therefore, it’s wise to position them away from attraction-generating buildings. Once natural resources are depleted, these buildings will cease operations, so be prepared to demolish them when necessary.
There are two types of generating production buildings:
These buildings are not required to be near natural resources. However, they function differently:
Small Farm: You must decide how many fields the farm will contain when constructing it. Its food output will vary based on the number of fields, and upgrading the farm will enhance food production from each field. Like other production buildings, it also generates disturbances.
Transformation-based production buildings operate by taking resources already extracted and converting them into new resources over several cycles. These buildings need access to the input resource—although they don’t require proximity to natural resources, their function is contingent on already acquired resources. For example, the Carpentry building requires wood to operate—without it, the building is useless.
The conversion rate for these buildings is consistently three to one. While upgrades don’t modify the conversion ratio, they do increase the output quantity, saving you valuable time. For instance:
Proximity buildings affect their surrounding areas differently and do not generate disturbances or attraction, making them neutral in both aspects. Each proximity building serves a specific purpose, which is reflected in their upgrades:
It’s crucial to approach building upgrades in a methodical order instead of randomly. Your first priority should be upgrading the Architectural Office, as it is the key to unlocking additional building upgrades through blueprints.
As your city’s population grows, so does the demand for food. If your inhabitants’ Health satisfaction declines, their food consumption rate will rise further. Be sure to upgrade your Small Farms; the more fields they have, the more food they will yield.
Next, concentrate on upgrading the Cutting Camp. This building is essential not only for wood but also for clearing forests, thereby creating space for new constructions. Upgrading these camps will provide extra land for expansion.
If your upgrades require resources like Gold, Iron, Steel, or Gold Leaves—and you have yet to reach the Second Age—there’s little you can do. These resources are only accessible in the Second Age through specific buildings. Until you get there, focus on building multiple structures of the same type and upgrading them as much as available resources will allow.
Do not overlook your capital (town center) upgrades, as these are critical for unlocking new structures and expanding the radius in which you can build, allowing you to develop in new areas.
