Half of the year ago, I was playing vs AI, and had a map with New World. So, I had two cities (the capital one) on main continent, that had around 3-4 territories attached and enormous amount of districts. But as soon as I colonised the New World, I put there several cities, not even build as much districts, but attached lot of territories, and soon outcome of each one overpassed the main cities. So, on that moment I thought that best strategy to attach as many territories as you can. But, this week I played already with humans, and the most powerful player was the gamer who build as many cities as he can with 2-3 territories attached. I tried to play with AI after and noticed that attachment of 3-4 territory increases production cost at 1,8-2 times which means that now is better strategy to keep cities with 2-3 attached territories and build there districts. So what do you think about best strategy for now, am I missing smth?

The cost of districts scales with number of districts (including administrative centers and extractors). So as a general rule, only attach if you're actually getting something that justifies the price hike. It's often better to leave resource-heavy territories as outposts (though I personally find this asinine so I have it modded to not count extractors in the cost scaling). The main benefit of attaching (outside of "per administrative center" effects) is more space to build, specifically borders where you can put 2-4 EQs together and then clump around them to exploit adjacency bonuses. Since both district cost and pop food consumption grow exponentially, multiple smaller cities have a higher ceiling than one large city and the main reason to merge (especially in the New World) is to not get too high above the city cap.

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:

The cost of districts scales with number of districts (including administrative centers and extractors). So as a general rule, only attach if you're actually getting something that justifies the price hike. It's often better to leave resource-heavy territories as outposts (though I personally find this asinine so I have it modded to not count extractors in the cost scaling). The main benefit of attaching (outside of "per administrative center" effects) is more space to build, specifically borders where you can put 2-4 EQs together and then clump around them to exploit adjacency bonuses. Since both district cost and pop food consumption grow exponentially, multiple smaller cities have a higher ceiling than one large city and the main reason to merge (especially in the New World) is to not get too high above the city cap.

Very good explained. I hope in the future attaching territories will by more logical.