he Senate building is the city's main administrative structure. It houses your advisors, who maintain banners outside indicating the city's main four ratings: Culture, Prosperity, Peace and Favor, in that order. As the city progresses, these flags rise or fall to reflect your performance, so you won't need to visit your Ratings Advisor to see how well you are faring.

Unemployed people like to sit around on the Senate's steps, where they know that they're more visible to their governor. When you see people lounging on the steps of the Senate, your city has at least some unemployment. The more people there are, the more unemployment you have.

The Senate also employs tax collectors to walk through nearby neighborhoods collecting taxes due. (see Tax, below). The Senate's coffers store the money until it is transferred to your treasury at year's end. The Senate is a nicely maintained building and a center of wealth and power, and therefore a very desirable neighbor indeed.

Being such a grand building, the Senate is costly to build and requires many employees to function at capacity. It is nevertheless wise to build it fairly early in your city's life. Besides generating some tax revenue, it is often at the heart of the nicer district at the center of your city, and it gives you an easy view of information that's valuable to your city's progress right from its early days.

No city can ever have more than one Senate building.