Half an hour away

Until this week, nobody in my towns cared how far anything was. When Hortense Stevens wanted bread, she walked to the nearest food stall, and if the nearest one stood on the far side of the map, that is where she went. A job could be anywhere at all. It made placing things far too easy, and it was not how people live.

So now reach is time, measured from home along the way someone really walks. A job, or a site to build, is in reach within an hour’s walk one way: about 25 tiles of open ground. A food stall, the market, the school and the healer are in reach within half an hour, about 12 tiles. Roads count. A step on gravel, stone or brick is quicker than one on grass, so the same half hour gets you further on a good road, and a climb costs extra.

The film is in Coalstead, the first of the nine towns on my big test map, at 08:00. The Stevens family lives in the long row of cabins below the main street, with the Heaths in the cabin next to theirs at the end. I open Food on the build bar, pick the food stall and slide it along the street. Under it the ground turns gold out to half an hour’s walk from its door, with a brighter line where that ends. Past the line the ground stays faintly tinted out to twice as far. It is the walk, not a circle, so it bends round whatever is in the way. Every home it serves gets a mint ring, and as the stall slides along the street, more of the row turns mint.

I place it at the end of the street, and the game counts 10 homes within half an hour. Felix Heath’s cabin is the last of them. His walk to that stall is just under the half hour, so his family counts.

Twice as far is not a hard wall. People still go up to double their reach, but they pay for it. Someone with a two hour walk to work sets off an hour early, so they get up earlier, sleep less, wake up with less rest and walk slower all day. A long commute now shows on the person doing it. Shopping and trips to the healer never make anyone get up early, since those trips are not tied to a shift. Past double, nobody goes at all: the job stays empty, the stall stays unvisited.

So a building can now be in the wrong place. When no home is near enough, the town says so, and its card tells you for whom it is too far: for the people who would visit it, or for everyone. Putting the stall at the end of the street, not the start, is now a choice that matters to the Stevens and the Heaths.