Chapter 5

Rooms, materials, styles and lots

This chapter is the reference for everything you build with that isn't an item: the 14 room types, the floor materials, walls, doors and windows, the two architectural styles, the three kinds of lot, and the climates.

Room types

A room is an enclosed space you've assigned a type with the Rooms tool. To count, it must meet its minimum area and hold the items it needs. The room inspector (click the room with Select) shows both.

Rooms at St. Michael's, tinted by type: the nave and narthex, a sacristy and reconciliation room off the nave, and a fellowship hall, kitchen, restroom, office, nursery, and classroom around it.

Worship rooms

Room	Min. area	Needs	What it does
Nave	40 m²	At least one oak pew, row of chairs, or meeting bench	Where the congregation sits for worship. Every church needs one.
Narthex	12 m²	A door to the outside	The entrance hall where people arrive, are greeted, and gather. Every church needs one. It adds +0.45 to a visitor's chance of being welcomed.
Chancel	9 m²	Nothing	The area worship is led from, around the altar, table, or pulpit. Also called the sanctuary or platform.
Balcony	12 m²	Pews or chairs	A gallery of seats above the back of the nave, on the upper floor with stairs up to it. People take the floor seats first.
Choir loft	9 m²	Choir stalls, chairs, or pews	A gallery above and behind the congregation where the choir sings. With four or more singing from it, everyone gains +0.02.
Sacristy	6 m²	A Vestment cabinet	Where vestments, sacred vessels, and paraments are kept and prepared. Required by Catholics, Lutherans, and the Orthodox.
Reconciliation room	4 m²	A Confessional screen	A private room for confession. Expected by Catholics and the Orthodox.

Gathering, teaching and support rooms

Room	Min. area	Needs	What it does
Fellowship hall	40 m²	A table (folding or wooden)	Coffee hour, suppers, and receptions. Coffee hour gathers round a Coffee pot here (or in the narthex if the hall has none). Community meals are held here, for as many as its tables seat (16 at a folding table, 20 at a wooden one) and there's food for: 60, and 80 more for each Commercial stove in the hall or kitchen. Services move here while the nave is a building site. Hosts the food pantry, youth group, scouts, twelve-step groups, and parties. Needed for the Church and Campus growth stages.
Kitchen	12 m²	A Commercial stove and a Sink	Church suppers and the food pantry. With one, community meals cost $2 a diner instead of $3.
Classroom	12 m²	A table, and seating (a row of chairs, a pew, or a bench)	Sunday school, Bible study, and meetings. A Sunday school class takes as many as its seating holds, with a teacher on duty. Hosts the preschool, youth group, scouts, and twelve-step groups. The Campus stage needs three.
Nursery	10 m²	A Crib and a Sink	Care for infants and toddlers during worship. Opens only with a nursery volunteer on duty. Families with infants lose 0.08 without one.
Office	8 m²	A Desk	An office for clergy or staff. Needed for the Campus stage; a twelve-step group can meet in it.
Restroom	4 m²	A Toilet and a Sink	"Visitors notice whether they can find one." Anyone who needs one and can't find one loses 0.1. As many can use it at once as it has toilets; anyone who waits five minutes in line loses 0.03, and after ten gives up (−0.06). Stall dividers, stall doors, and a mirror finish it.
Columbarium	8 m²	Columbarium niches	A room of niches for cremated remains.

Toilets, sinks, and baptistries need a Plumbing stack within 12 metres. Put the restroom, kitchen, and nursery side by side and one stack serves them all.

Floors

Floors are laid by the square metre. They change how a room sounds (its absorption) and how it looks. In the build bar, Floors has a tab for each kind: carpet in eight colours; tile, wood, and stone, each in several patterns. Carpet soaks up sound and suits a band; wood is a middle way; tile, stone, and concrete make a room ring, as an organ and a choir like.

Every floor, a patch of each: the carpets, then tile (plain with grout, chequered, terracotta, blue and white), wood (oak, maple, and walnut boards, and parquet), stone (flags, slate, limestone, marble), and concrete.

Floor	Pattern	Cost	Looks	Absorption
Carpet
Burgundy carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Gold carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Green carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Grey carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Navy carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Purple carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Red carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Royal blue carpet		$60/m²	3	0.30
Tile
Ceramic tile	Tiles with grout	$90/m²	4	0.02
Terracotta tile	Tiles with grout	$95/m²	5	0.02
Checkerboard tile	Chequer	$100/m²	5	0.02
Blue and white tile	Chequer	$110/m²	5	0.02
Wood
Oak boards	Boards	$120/m²	6	0.10
Maple boards	Boards	$130/m²	6	0.10
Walnut boards	Boards	$160/m²	7	0.10
Oak parquet	Parquet	$170/m²	7	0.10
Stone
Slate flags	Flagstones	$190/m²	7	0.02
Stone flags	Flagstones	$200/m²	8	0.02
Limestone squares	Tiles with grout	$210/m²	8	0.02
Marble chequer	Chequer	$320/m²	9	0.02
Other
Sealed concrete		$30/m²	1	0.02

Floor above the ground costs 2.5 times the price; a basement floor 4 times.

Walls, doors and windows

Part	Cost	Looks	Notes
Wall	$900 a metre	3	An interior or exterior wall, one metre long. Three times the price in Gothic.
Door	$1,500	4	A door in a wall. Absorbs a little sound (0.1).
Window	$1,200	5	A clear window in a wall. Lets in daylight by the way it faces; absorbs a little sound (0.05). Stained glass fits into one.

Wall finishes and curb appeal

Each face of a wall can be finished on its own, from the Decorate tray's Walls tab: the paint tool finishes the side of each wall you can see, so a wall between two rooms can be different on each side. Any finish goes on any face; some are usually for inside or outside, as their cards say. A face with no finish keeps the style's own. Finishes cost by the metre of wall, one face at a time, and taking one off is free. A listed church's outside has to stay as it was built.

Finish	Side	A metre	Looks	Notes
Butter yellow paint	Either	$60	4	A warm, sunny yellow.
Cream paint	Either	$60	4	A soft cream, kind to old plaster and candlelight.
Dove grey paint	Either	$60	3	A light, neutral grey.
Dusty rose paint	Either	$60	4	A muted pink, warm in a nursery or a parlour.
Navy paint	Either	$60	5	A deep blue: striking on a door wall or a chancel's east end.
Sage paint	Either	$60	4	A quiet grey-green.
Sky blue paint	Either	$60	4	A pale blue, airy in a plain meeting room.
White paint	Either	$60	3	Two coats of a clean, warm white.
Plaster	Inside	$180	4	Smooth lime plaster, left in its own warm white.
Clapboard siding	Outside	$280	5	Painted wooden boards lapped one over the next: the white country church.
Wainscot	Inside	$300	6	Wooden panelling to a chair rail, cream plaster above.
Stucco	Outside	$320	5	A smooth lime render, warm and weatherproof.
Oak panelling	Inside	$480	7	Oak boards from floor to ceiling: a vestry, a library, a chancel.
Red brick	Either	$650	6	A veneer of red brick laid in running bond: the colonial church's face.
Buff brick	Either	$700	6	Pale yellow-brown brick, laid in running bond.
Dressed stone	Either	$1,100	8	Squared stone blocks in courses: the look of a cathedral's walls.

Curb appeal is half the finishes on the walls' outer faces and half the grounds (trees, flowers, a fountain), the grounds with diminishing returns. At its best it brings 15% more newcomers.
A worship space with finished walls lifts everyone by up to +0.02 a service, and weddings by up to 0.15.
A playground pleases families with children under 13 (+0.02 a service).

Architectural styles

Colonial brick: Calvary Baptist, a plain carpeted nave with pews, a pulpit, a communion table, a baptistry, and a grand piano.

Gothic: Grace Lutheran, a stone nave with pews, an altar and communion rail, pulpit and lectern, a font, choir stalls, an electronic organ, and a sacristy.

	Colonial brick	Gothic
Description	Red brick, white trim, clear windows, and a plaster ceiling at an ordinary height: the American meeting house. Cheap to build and to heat, and acoustically plain.	Stone, pointed arches, and a vault high overhead. Expensive to build and to heat, and it rings: an organ and a choir sound glorious, a band turns to mud.
Ceiling	3.2 m	9 m
Wall cost	×1	×3
Heat loss	×1	×1.3
Wall absorption	0.06	0.02 (rings)
Window light	1.0	0.8
Formality	0.4	0.95
Looks	5 / 10	9 / 10
Suits	Baptist, Pentecostal, Quaker	Catholic, Orthodox, and (less) Lutheran

After each service, a style moves everyone by up to 0.06, by how close its formality is to the tradition's: 1 − 2 × |style formality − tradition formality|, scaled to ±0.06. Gothic (0.95) is nearly perfect for Catholic and Orthodox churches (1.0); brick (0.4) is close for Baptists (0.33). A Gothic nave also has nearly three times the volume to heat, and loses 30% more heat. Refacing an existing building costs half of building its walls new in the style. Wedding couples from outside book formal, handsome churches, so Gothic draws more of the $2,500 weddings.

Lots

A church stands on a kind of lot, which sets its size, how many neighbours it has, and how many people walk in.

Lot	Size	Land price	Neighbours	Walk-ins	Description
Urban	40 × 32 m	$900,000	1.6	×1.3	A corner lot in the city: dear and tight, with transit at the door. Many neighbours, many passers-by.
Suburban	64 × 48 m	$250,000	1.0	×1.0	A lot on a residential street: room for a church and its grounds, with neighbours on every side.
Rural	96 × 72 m	$60,000	0.3	×0.7	A country lot on a two-lane road: plenty of land, cheap, and few neighbours to hear the bells. Few people pass by to walk in.

Neighbours scales how much noise costs you with the people next door (see The church in its community). With a peal of bells, relations settle near 0.22 in town, 0.4 in a suburb, and 0.61 in the country. Below 0.4 the neighbours complain and new construction is refused planning permission. Extra land to the east or south costs the lot's price per square metre.

Climates

The climate sets heating and cooling bills. Change it in Church → Church.

Climate	Heating degree-days a year	Cooling degree-days a year	Like
Midwest (the default)	3,525	420	Chicago
Southeast	1,520	1,030	Atlanta

Heating costs the volume × the month's heating degree-days × $0.0018; cooling, the volume × cooling degree-days × $0.003; electricity and water, $0.90 per m² of enclosed floor a month. In the Midwest a small 114 m² church pays about $447 to heat in January and $3 in July. Only floored space inside walls is heated.