One of the more confusing game mechanics in EL is "how the bejesus do I level up city districts?" It's not explained well at all in the current state of documentation, so here's all the details I've discovered from gameplay and from the forums:



(Caveat: This is all accurate based on my observations (as of 0.4.5), but I may have mistyped something or some such. Please let me know if anything in here is inaccurate, or is hard to understand the way I've described it).



Borough Streets / Districts:



These are what you build to expand your city. For simplicity, I'll call a hex where you're build a Borough Street a district (although I think Amplitude may only consider them "districts" once they've leveled up?)



Districts have to be adjacent to your city center or to a district you built previously. All production in hexes adjacent to the new district will be added to your city. Additionally, the district hex itself will get +1 science, +1 dust, but -1 food (of course if you're the Broken Lords, or the food production in that hex is already 0, then the -1 food doesn't matter). More importantly, your city will also take a -10 hit to approval for each district you add.



Districts increase in cost with each successive one you build onto a city, and require minimum population levels. For most races, the progression is as follows:



First additional district (2-hex city): 150 industry to build. City needs at least 2 population.

Second district: 300 industry, 4 pop minimum.

Third district: 450 industry, 6 pop...



You get the jist. Each additional district costs 150 more industry to build than the last, and requires another 2 population before you can start it. While the industry cost gets pricey, the real limiting factor is usually going to be population. Population costs in food (or dust, if you're playing the Lords) goes up geometrically.



The Necrophage are an exception - their districts cost half in industry, and only require one additional population per district. So the Phage can build cities twice the size of other races for the same investment - which is a huge racial advantage for them.



Leveling Up Districts



Okay, here's where it gets interesting...



The first few districts you add to a city won't do much for you, beyond claiming more production hexes - let's call those Level 0 districts. You can snake those all over the map if you like, but each one will give you that -10 approval hit. Soon enough, that's gonna hurt. However... when a district is adjacent to four (or more) Level 0 districts, it will become a Level 1 district. The leveled up district gains +3 science, +3 dust, +4 influence - and your city gains +5 defense and +10 approval.



Additionally, if you build up your city to where you have a district that's adjacent to 4 or more Level 1 districts, that becomes a Level 2 district. A district adjacent to 4 or more Level 2 districts becomes a Level 3, and so on. Each time a district levels up it adds the bonuses listed above - so for example, a Level 3 district would provide +9 science, +9 dust, +12 influence, +15 defense, and +30 approval to the city (in addition to the base production in the hex).



In terms of game play implications, the net effect of all this is: When you first add districts to a city, the approval will go down. However, if you build the city in an efficient layout, you can add later new districts without losing approval - and eventually, you can start to gain net approval from city expansion, in addition to the (considerable) additional production from district levels.



Efficient City Layouts



Since the mechanics of leveling up districts seems designed to encourage compact, non-snakey cities, you might expect the most efficient city shape to be circular - or rather hexagonal, since EL is on a hex map. However, in my analysis hex-shaped cities aren't very efficient at all. It seems to me that there's two main sources of inefficiency in city layouts: outer districts that are on a corner won't be able to level. Additionally, if your city layout uses more than 4 adjacencies to level up a given district, that's also inefficient.



The end result is, you do better with cities that minimize corners and have a compact interior. Based on all that, the two best layouts I've come up with are the triangle and (for want of a better term) the stick.



Triangular City Layout



This is the most efficient layout if you're going to keep your city fairly small. A picture is worth a lot of blah blah blah, so here's how triangular cities work out.



I've color coded the districts as follows:

L0...yellow

L1...blue

L2...green

L3...red

L4...purple







For the smallest triangular city there with 3 districts per side, you've added 5 districts, with 3 of them up to level 1 - for a net of -20 approval... manageable.



For the 4 district per side triangle, you added 9 districts. Three are level 0 (the corners), but you have 6 L1 districts and one L2, for net of 8 district levels. Net, you are -10 approval.



The 5 district per side triangle needs 14 district builds to achieve. The 28 population requirement is going to make a city of this size very difficult for most races - but since the Necrophage would only need 14 pop they could build a city like this by about turn 100 or thereabouts. 6 L1 districts, 3 L2's, 3 L3's... 21 total district levels after 14 district builds, for a net of +70 approval on the city and huge amounts of science, dust, influence, and city defense.



The 6 district per side triangular city would be late game even for the Phage to build... and many regions wouldn't have an open patch of ground that big. Still, if you completed a city like this, it would take 20 district builds and yield 35 district levels... +150 approval, etc.



Not too shabby - and yet...



The Stick City Layout



A squiggly-snaking a city isn't going to be efficient, but a frozen snake works out very well. A 'stick' layout of a 2-district wide linear city starts out slightly less efficient than the triangle, but soon surpasses it. A stick city will have 4 L0 corner districts at the ends, while the triangle has only 3 corners (so says Dr. Obvious). But the stick is very efficient in the interior, only using the minimum 4 adjacencies required to level up each district. The stick has other upsides compared to the triangle - it gives you more adjacent hexes per additional district, and (unlike the triangle) each additional added district after #3 will cause at least one district to level up. Additionally, in most regions a stick layout will be easier to find enough unobstructed hexes to scale it up.



Here's how the stick layout works out, using the same color coding for district levels:







That shows stick cities up to 13 built districts, which is about where they start to surpass triangle cities. 13 built districts yields 18 district levels.



Now, there may well be other efficient city configurations that I simply haven't thought of. If so, please post them

An example of a Necrophage triangular city, 4 districts per side...

Good guide ! I was finding the stick layout simpler to do without intensive planning ahead, I'm glad it's a borough-efficient one too.

So you can basically begin a snaking city and when approval problems come, you just "freeze the snake" and begin to level up those districts.

Niateph wrote:
Good guide ! I was finding the stick layout simpler to do without intensive planning ahead, I'm glad it's a borough-efficient one too.

So you can basically begin a snaking city and when approval problems come, you just "freeze the snake" and begin to level up those districts.

I'm glad you found it helpful As for backfilling districts to turn a snaked city into a linear stick city... that will work, as long as your snake hasn't wandered out of that two-wide line. Linear cities will lose a lot of their efficiency if they're over two hexes wide.



In most cases I think you'll gain more benefit by building on to either end of the stick with each district you add, rather than backfilling later. More than simply keeping your city approval high, the income from district levels really adds up. The influence is particularly nice - with cities designed to maximize district levels, you should have enough influence income that you can skip influence techs completely.

Impressive guide! Many thanks for this!

Very useful, thanks for sharing. Was experimenting with this myself.

I wonder if a two hex wide "snaking" (not necessarily straight) city wouldn't be the best compromise between land coverage and district level?

does the city have to be at the center of that triangular district design in order to receive the approval and defense bonuses? same applies to the stick. if the actual city center has to be at the center then i know it would apply to the stick. would have to be in the middle. i'm just wondering cuz it would be nice to be able to offset the city center to take advantage of some early techs with ocean/inland water bonuses.



im guessing yes. being as it does have center in the description. and it also says something about district level and city level as if they are 2 separate things.

I don't think so - check the screenshots - the city center is at the very tip.

BlueTemplar wrote:
I wonder if a two hex wide "snaking" (not necessarily straight) city wouldn't be the best compromise between land coverage and district level?

Unfortunately, any time you add a turn to a linear city, you add another corner. Since the corner isn't going to be adjacent to enough districts to level up, it disrupts the cascade effect that makes stick cities so efficient. I'll illustrate with two cities of the same size (16 districts plus the city center). One has a single simple turn, the other does not:







The strictly linear city has 28 district levels, the Florida-shaped city only manages 18.

lawlbotsama wrote:
does the city have to be at the center of that triangular district design in order to receive the approval and defense bonuses?

The city center can be anywhere, and your districts will level up the same way. In the example triangular city screenshot I posted, the city "center" is located at the bottom corner. On the other hand, there are those quests in some of the racial quest chains that require you to level up a city center.



One thing to watch out for... some other threads have said leveling up a city center won't give you the +10 approval the way that leveling other districts will. I confess I haven't paid enough attention to this so I haven't observed this myself. Hopefully that's just a bug that will be or has been addressed?



Personally, I don't see any reason for the 'city center' to be treated any differently from other districts. If you're in a big city, would you have any idea which spot within the city limits it was originally founded? Would you care? If there's game mechanic reasons for there to be a specific City Center hex, then we should be able to move it to a new hex with a build order.

I know the city center requires 4 adjacent districts to level up, and the districts themselves require 3, so that's something to consider, and might skew the levels a bit. That said, very very enlightening analysis here. Many thanks @j.a.paisley.



This answers a lot of questions that I simply hadn't taken the time to analyze myself yet.

marceror wrote:
I know the city center requires 4 adjacent districts to level up, and the districts themselves require 3, so that's something to consider, and might skew the levels a bit. That said, very very enlightening analysis here. Many thanks

Happy to help. From all I've read, and observed in practice in the game, all districts require 4 adjacent districts of X level in order for that district to level up to X+1. Then again, if you can show me where a district has leveled with only three adjacencies, that would certainly be a game-changer.

You could be right. What I claimed to "know" I actually read here:

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
2 population required per borough, 4 boroughs to level up a city venter, and three adjacent Burroughs to level up a city district

Perhaps that post gave bad information.

I think some informations are wrong.



when a district is adjacent to SIX Level 0 districts, it will become a Level 1 district. With 4 adjacent its doesnt works at all, the district is still lvl 0



Get a look on screenshots to the author, only discrit with 6 adjacent gives the bonus.



(I said something stupid here, j.a.paisley says 100% wright, check next posts)

necropadict wrote:
when a district is adjacent to SIX Level 0 districts, it will become a Level 1 district. With 4 adjacent its doesnt works at all, the district is still lvl 0



Get a look on screenshots to the author, only discrit with 6 adjacent gives the bonus.

Um, no. Perhaps you're looking at the hexes adjacent to districts which are earning income - you don't need to build anything there, you get that for free when you build a new district. But to level up a district, it needs to be adjacent to 4 or more other districts.



To better illustrate that, here's screenshots from a linear city. There are four Level 0 districts, two at each end of the line. If you look at the 2 districts in the foreground/bottom, the one on the right is adjacent to 2 other districts, and it remains L0. The one on the left (with 1 ind, 3 sci, 5 dust) is adjacent to 3 other districts: it remains L0, also. But all the districts within the interior of the stick are each adjacent to exactly 4 districts, and therefore all have leveled - and the closer they are to the center, the more levels they gain:















And here's that triangular city I posted earlier, but now it has grown from 4 districts per side to 5 per side:

" Perhaps you're looking at the hexes adjacent to districts which are earning incom "



Oh god yes thats what i was doing^^ ! Thank you bro u save my day. I feel stupid now^^ caus i believed a district was the 3 hexes and i tried so many ways to level up districts but of course with my mistake it didnt work^^

Thanks again, going to edit my early post

This thread should probably be stickied. It does a very good job explaining a game mechanic that, while interesting and creative, is rather convoluted to figure out without some sort of a guide. Particularly, it wasn't ever clear to me that I could also level up districts. I thought the level up concept was only for the city center, so I had not even bothered to build a lot of boroughs, thinking they were going to spoil my approval rating.

marceror wrote:
This thread should probably be stickied. It does a very good job explaining a game mechanic that, while interesting and creative, is rather convoluted to figure out without some sort of a guide. Particularly, it wasn't ever clear to me that I could also level up districts. I thought the level up concept was only for the city center, so I had not even bothered to build a lot of boroughs, thinking they were going to spoil my approval rating.

100% agree.

An excellent essay and great diagrams - great work j.a.paisley!



Definitely a resource worth preserving admins!

Very nice write up. Took me a bit to realize that it's only the single hex that evolves into a district (and is part of the tool-tip). Thanks for the all of the work and nice graphics!



How do we get this stickier? Is there a mechanism for requesting?