New Zones

[ladner]

How best to manage new zones? It seems that when I make these they become hotbeds of unrest, even spawning rebels. They become difficult to make happy through QOL improvements since low number of workers production. I have figured out how to colonize, but overall there doesn't seem to be the rate of return.

If generated steady population growth they would probably snowball.

This is a fantastic game, so many layers of complexity. Have close to 100 hours in according to steam and still feel like a complete newb.

[fibol]

Jack up worker salaries, get governmental qol buildings going (probably as first priority), invest in private economy.
It's pretty expensive, and I usually try to only make new zones for mines or other resource sides that would induce administrative strain otherwise and then only get them to lvl2. There is the school of though I heard about spamming low level zones everywhere for pop growth, but I never tried and don't know if it is still a thing.

[Burnrate]

I usually save up strat cards that give private investments for new zones. Always give some private investment and build qol buildings right away. Make sure they have emergency food available and a military unit on the city helps as well. Using a fate card that vies a school or some other qol building is super helpful as well. I usually only use those for new zones as well.

[Thrake]

You need to actively recruit colonists to send there.

Getting qol up through private buildings should indeed be your first priority as it will be the main issue to keep happiness up and once it's down workers don't want to work so you can't man qol assets to make people happy. Also avoid to split the city from an unincorporated zone as it will inherit the local culture.

Level 1 or 2 cities shouldn't be troublesome with all the level 1 public qol assets though it always depends on your civilization score. I avoid private assets there to be more manpower efficient. It's too slow to build up at 50 qol every two turns anyway. So mostly there are as many people there than I need workers.

I don't think salary has a big impact as the happiness scales compared to private salary... Which also scales on public salary. It seems to draw in more migration to the city... But why pay when you can get colonists for free?