MarginCity

Margin City

The ruling class watches the profit margins. Everyone else lives in them.

Margin City is a hand-planned city for Shadows of Doubt. Instead of a random layout, every district, landmark and main street sits where it does for a reason: money in the north, the civic heart in the middle, and the poor packed against the southern waterfront. From almost anywhere, a glance at the skyline tells you where you are.

A copy of this map (Margin City map.png) is in the mod's folder.

The city

District — What it is

The Heights and Park Terrace — Old money. Quiet town-houses and apartment towers on clean streets, split by Founders Avenue.

Downtown — The skyline: the Ledger (City Hall, where the city keeps the books on everyone), flanked by the spired Credit and Debit towers, with the Dividend and the Equity beside them.

The Commons — A park belt across the whole city, right in front of the Ledger. Cross it and you're in the other half of town.

Chinatown — Shop-houses around the old Jade Mansion tower: Golden Lotus, Jade Garden, Wing Lee Noodle House, Kam Fung Pawn. Paifang gates mark the ways in.

Red Light — A neon strip running south from Lantern Square: The All-Nighter diner, the back rooms on Velvet Street and Neon Row, and Hotel Lowtide at the bottom, by the water.

The Bricks — The worst block in town: the Fathoms slum stacks, back-alley workshops and a few shops that shouldn't be open.

The Stacks — Chemical plants and workshops along the waterfront, west and east of the Hotel.

Some streets to know: Ledger Row and Treasury Street along the Commons, Margin Street (the line between the rich and poor halves), Velvet Street and Neon Row down the strip, and Smokestack Row and Wharf Road on the waterfront.

Behind the layout:

• Wealth follows the district. Homes in the Heights are genuinely richer than homes in the Bricks: furniture, finishes, grime and the people who live there.
• Clean streets uptown, grit downtown. Shacks, barrel fires and junk stay out of the wealthy districts.
• Themed streets. Chinatown's gates and the Red Light's dressing follow the streets that actually run through those districts.
• About 1,000 residents across 7 × 8 blocks inside its waterfront: bigger than the game's largest size, but tuned to stay smooth.

How to play

1. Install with r2modman or Gale (BepInExPack and City Planner are installed for you).
2. Launch the game from the mod manager (Start modded). Margin City is copied into your cities.
3. Start a new game and pick Margin City from the city list.

City Planner is what copies Margin City into your city list. Once it's there, Margin City plays and its saves load without any mods.

Manual install (without a mod manager)

1. Install BepInEx (once).

• Download BepInExPack_IL2CPP 6.0.755 with Manual Download.
• Copy the contents of its BepInExPack folder into the game folder, next to Shadows of Doubt.exe (in Steam: right-click the game › Manage › Browse local files).
• Launch the game from Steam once. The first launch takes a few minutes while BepInEx sets itself up (a console window fills with text). Quit once you reach the main menu.

2. Install City Planner and Margin City.

• Updating from Margin City 1.0.x? Delete CityPlanner.dll from your BepInEx\plugins\MarginCity folder first. City Planner is now its own mod.
• Download City Planner with Manual Download, create the folder BepInEx\plugins\CityPlanner in the game folder and copy everything in its zip into it.
• Download this mod with Manual Download, create the folder BepInEx\plugins\MarginCity and copy everything in the zip into it, including the Cities folder.

3. Play. Launch from Steam as usual and pick Margin City under New Game.

Good to know:

• Updates are manual: download the new version and replace the files.
• Turning mods off: rename winhttp.dll in the game folder (for example to winhttp.dll.off) and the game starts without mods.
• Steam Deck / Linux (Proton): also set the game's launch options to WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%, or BepInEx won't load.
• Don't mix the two ways: if you use r2modman or Gale, launch from the manager and don't also install BepInEx into the game folder.

Margin City isn't in the city list?

1. Start the game from your mod manager (r2modman or Gale: Start modded). Starting it straight from Steam doesn't load mods installed by a manager.
2. Still missing? Copy the two Margin City… files (.citb and .txt) from the mod's folder into %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\ColePowered Games\Shadows of Doubt\Cities, then restart. In r2modman, Settings › Browse profile folder opens the mod folders (look in BepInEx/plugins).
3. If that doesn't help, send us your BepInEx/LogOutput.log (search it for "City Planner").

Make your own planned city

Margin City was built with City Planner, which comes with this mod. Its folder has a planner page you open in your browser, and Margin City's own plan to start from.

Safe to remove?

Yes. Once Margin City is in your city list, new games and saves in it load without this mod or City Planner (the city file stays in your game's Cities folder). Keep City Planner if you want to plan cities of your own.

Compatibility

• Built for the main (IL2CPP) branch of the game.
• Works alongside other mods, including The Protectorate's (Sanitation Department, Detective License and the rest).
• Margin