Looking and some gameplay footage it doesnt seem like improvements have an upkeep cost which leads to player rolling in cash and buying out a lot of buildings in the same turn for each city

If this is indeed the case, it is likely only due to the beta but just to note: they dont seem to have upkeep :)

Players should be discouraged from building all the buildings in all the cities as it leads to a great deal of micro-MGMT and make all the play-troughs similar to one--another

This was also an issue in EL towards the mid and late game as well as in ES2 to the point where I mostly got bored buying out improvements in a large galaxy before I actually won the game - should be avoided :)

Districts should definitely require maintenance, not sure about infrastructure though, since that tends to favor the mega cities.

Both (any building really) should need some maintenance except if they generate income else the player is motivated to build all in each city which increases overall output of the city

If there is no cost of buildings, there is no downside except time for building all cities tall

Can confirm that there are no real maintenance on any of districts nor types of infrastructures.

Krikkitone wrote:

Districts should definitely require maintenance, not sure about infrastructure though, since that tends to favor the mega cities.

I am in same opinion here. Districts should definitely be given some sort of maintenance after being built. (Preferbably money) Based on Lucy build, the only maintenance we had to pay for each district was -5 instability.

Infrastructures? Maybe not entirely needed to impose maintenance on them, because...
1. People are likely to build them all anyway regardless of maint cost.
2. Cities with large number of territories would benefit more from these due to economic of scale.
3. Merging cities (not territories) would make infrastructures in one of cities disappear anyway resulting in some waste. So players need to think a bit hard whether doing so would be a good idea or not in favour of macro-management in mega-cities.

Can cities be merged here?

We can merge existing cities, yes. However, that option needs a certain technology in later era though, and the cost for doing so is big depending on size of cities.

Waper wrote:

Infrastructures? Maybe not entirely needed to impose maintenance on them, because...
1. People are likely to build them all anyway regardless of maint cost.

This is bad right? If everyone wants to build all buildings everywhere there is no decision to be made

Might as well spawn the buildings in all cities automatically after research is done to save the micro-MGMT

Alternately the player should have interesting decisions to make what hte focus of each city shoudl be: resource production, unit production, culture, religion etc...

Also consider: if all cities are trying to fulfill all roles, conquest is less interesting as you cannot cirple an empire by taking some of their monetary or cricial resoruce centers

Zolobolo wrote:

This is bad right? If everyone wants to build all buildings everywhere there is no decision to be made

Might as well spawn the buildings in all cities automatically after research is done to save the micro-MGMT

Please allow me ask you this first... Do you know the actual difference between infrastructures and districts in game here?

Waper wrote:

Please allow me ask you this first... Do you know the actual difference between infrastructures and districts in game here?

Infra seem like standard improvements to a city like buildings in CIV, EL or ES2. No limit to their number, and each can be built in evey city once researched

Districts seem like the districts, and resource extraction camps in EL only with less restriction on where they can be placed within a region

Havent seen anything on merging cities in the streams but if such a mechanism would exist, all improvements would logically be summed up with redundant versions lost as all the other games onyl allowed for a single improvement per type

Zolobolo wrote:
Infra seem like standard improvements to a city like buildings in CIV, EL or ES2. No limit to their number, and each can be built in evey city once researched

Districts seem like the districts, and resource extraction camps in EL only with less restriction on where they can be placed within a region

Havent seen anything on merging cities in the streams but if such a mechanism would exist, all improvements would logically be summed up with redundant versions lost as all the other games onyl allowed for a single improvement per type

Okay? Seems like you misunderstood them then. Please allow me to tell you by using EL as comparison...

Districts (HK) = Borough Streets (EL)
- Can be built as many as we want and there is no limit of how many we can.
- No depency on pop requirement to build any districts. (In EL, I recall we need 4 pop for allowing +1 Borough Street limit)
- Only cost of -5 stability per each district and no other maint cost

Infrastructures (HK) = City Improvements (EL)
- Can be only built once per city
- No maint cost

Waper wrote:

Districts (HK) = Borough Streets (EL)
- Can be built as many as we want and there is no limit of how many we can.
- No depency on pop requirement to build any districts. (In EL, I recall we need 4 pop for allowing +1 Borough Street limit)
- Only cost of -5 stability per each district and no other maint cost

Infrastructures (HK) = City Improvements (EL)
- Can be only built once per city
- No maint cost

Seems like we are thinking on the same thing then: Districts are less restircted districts from EL and infra are improvements from any other 4x like CIv games, EL or ES2: once researched van be built once in every city

Now the improvements usually have coin maintenance fees to restrict their amount somewhat - this does not seem to be the case yet but for sure will be coming to the final game

What I am saying is that both in EL and ES2 I found that these improvements trigger a buyout frenz from the plaer starting from the mid-game when you already have 8-10 cities. With 10-20 imprvoements per city at that point and lots of income, this is a huge micro and the only decision left is chosing which one to buy out first

This is a problem in my opinion as the player is dong repetitive work withouth interesting decisions but if they dont do it, the AI gets into an advantage

How to combat that? some optins could be:

1. Increase upkeep cost compared to EL and ES2 - not sure if this can pan out thouhg with early eras as the necesseraly get relatively cheaper over time due to income creep of faction economy

2. Assign some other limiting faction such as moral, pollution, or whatever else penalty which effectively functions as a flexible limit to their number. This is soemthng CIV has experimented a lot and it always failed as never turned out as a fun system so can safely suggest not do go down this route: I am afraid that stabiltiy is something like this and it is too late though

3. Limit overall number of improvement (and have them scale with era so they dont need to be replaced with new versions) - This is something Rome 2 has tried and though the system wasnt fleshed out well it did garner some folliwng and by Empire Divided it fledged into a really fun system

So my proposal is: Have some coin upkeep cost (fairly sure it is planned alrady of course) AND limit ttheir number to a fixed number of city slot

Districts can still be unlimited as far as their nubmer goes (if the region has still hexes) but the infra improvements could be limited to a number of 4 (just like units in army) with each era icnreasing this by +1 plus some rare techs and faction bonuses allowing for even more

If this system is balanced well, there is even no need for upkeep anymore as that doesnt scale with mid to late game empires anyhow :)

The result should be a simple limitation which is visible straight from the buld menu and leads the player into consdiering which city should focus on what: farming, minging, culture, research, military or combine one, tow or even more of these resulting in cities that are not that effective in any of them?

When occupying a city from midgame onward you also wouldnt get a long list of buildings to browse through (and likely no one really does) which also already have only low level bonus and are not that relevant anymore - cities would have personality, quck to see production differences and not be a mishmass of everything like before

Another option might be limiting amount of infra improvements to pops like Rome 2 and while I like that system a lot, it could be an issue in games where pops can actualyl decrease like here

I am not thinking on training soldiers as that can simply be not an option if no pop is available but events when city pops decrease: starvation, events, conquest

If there are no such effects though and pop cannot decrease (except when training units) it might be a valid limiting factor

You could also just increase the production cost of infrastructure (no need for a maintenance cost)

Krikkitone wrote:

You could also just increase the production cost of infrastructure (no need for a maintenance cost)

Wouldnt recommend it: For one, production cost doesnt scale with resource income increase over time

More importantly though: it would slow down early game (first two eras) if infra production cost is increased which goes against the balance of previous games form the publisher to have a much more rapid production turnover then in CIV games (which is arguable a good thing and needed for a combat heavy game like this)

Zolobolo wrote:

Krikkitone wrote:

You could also just increase the production cost of infrastructure (no need for a maintenance cost)

Wouldnt recommend it: For one, production cost doesnt scale with resource income increase over time

More importantly though: it would slow down early game (first two eras) if infra production cost is increased which goes against the balance of previous games form the publisher to have a much more rapid production turnover then in CIV games (which is arguable a good thing and needed for a combat heavy game like this)

Each individual infrastructure has its own cost.  increase the cost of  layer infrastructure but leave base infrastructure the same.  That said I can see a role for infrastructure maintenance..if it is charged on a per territory basis... to help balance mega cities.

Krikkitone wrote:

Each individual infrastructure has its own cost.  increase the cost of  layer infrastructure but leave base infrastructure the same.  That said I can see a role for infrastructure maintenance..if it is charged on a per territory basis... to help balance mega cities.

Arent higher levels of infrastructure costing more production already?

Do you know what happens if a higher level of infra imrovement is built? Does the lower level variant disapear from a list showing all the constructed infras as well as its effect and onl the effect of the new improvement is applied or does the old one remain as well and they stack up?

The downside of building buildings is not building units to bully the AI with. And a big army can do a lot of damage and grab a huge load of fame on its own.

I disagree with the need for more upkeep. Once you build really tall the Stability is quite noticeable while the district yields hit diminishing returns - I tested a full production build and a third of my districts needed to be Commons while each district I placed basically did nothing but occupy my cities so I could end the turn. Wide builds already feel strong, no need to push it further.

I too think further upkeep is unnecessary, with the current scaling of production. And while money upkeep would give a reason for me to use the market quarters, which I tend to not use a lot, I do remember getting very, very annoyed with that kind of upkeep in ES2. Only my capital had enough time to get through all the basic infra until turn 150, so the problem of players not paying attention to what they are building will be rare. There are, of course, snowballs, for one of the cities in which I absorbed two cities and two territories seemed to have a surplus of production, but that was more due to the map giving me a territory with nothing but mountains, rocks and woods(?). It is not, necessarily, a bad thing to have strong cities with lot of and varied infra, as long as the AI is able to achieve the same.

Don't underestimate by how much districts increase the industry cost for further improvements. As it stands, you really don't need to nerf districts any further. Though I'd prefer gold upkeep over increased production costs, I don't think such a drastic change will be made before release.

Playing the current opendev I get the feeling that the intended cost for infra is the time it takes to build them

Districts cost stability and units cost pop but if you have lost of money you can buy all the infra for each city no matter how many are available

There is a limitation that each one can only be built once (unlike districts) which can also be taken into account

I am not sure how this all is expected to coem together: in my last playthrough I have built practically 0 infra: districts were more then enough

If they had upkeep cost they would definitively not be worth it but as is I could just buy all of them from mid-game onward... not sure what the concept is and how to address its balance

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

Don't underestimate by how much districts increase the industry cost for further improvements. As it stands, you really don't need to nerf districts any further. Though I'd prefer gold upkeep over increased production costs, I don't think such a drastic change will be made before release.

A gold upkeep cost might be better for the current balance of the game than the increased production cost of districts now that I think about it. With how amazingly gold scales into the late game having upkeep costs would keep production more in-line with it. There is an issue that arises from this however and that's by reducing production costs, you also reduce buy-out costs, which may have the adverse effect of making money even stronger than it already is, instead of balancing it. We're already so far into development like you said but it'd be an interesting experiment.

TravlingCanuck wrote:
The great thing is that both approaches seem to work.  I've gone district-heavy and ignored infrastructure, and gone infrastructure-heavy with few districts.  

Maybe that is the goal - I just cant tell even after having played a dozen games now

Sometimes it feels like you can runaway with districts (especially after having built at least one wonder already) but infra can be bought up in a single turn towards the mid game and with no furhter cost to anything

If I would have to hazard a guess I would say that the game might be balanced around a combination of production time and buyout costs

Pop and stability are there yes, but they only seem to be a limitation on player prgoress in the early game

@TravlingCanuck 

Never too late to make changes, just 4 months ago they had that new population growth system, I think they should experiment with district upkeep. Maybe increase the base cost of districts and later era emblematic districts?

Based on the early game play era's we had, I don't see a need to add a maintenance cost to the districts - perhaps that opinion will change for the later era's - but I saw it more as the maintenance was already being included behind the scene.  Many of the districts outputs were pretty low / not very impactful when first constructed but did improve as population and other infrastructure were created to support them.  
In these early era's it makes sense that the population working the district is performing the maintenance and upkeep - and that is reducing the total output that would be otherwise available.