Zone creation question

[licker34]

So I started a new game and ended up surrounded by no one and nothing, my usual tactic of bum rushing someone wasn't going to work. That meant I had to do something that in `30 hours of learning to play I had never done before. Create my own zone.

Functionally, I understand the process, however what happened in the game? Made no sense.

First zone I built a bureaucrat office about 8 hexes away from the capitol. No problem, after a turn or two I got a new zone with what I assume now was population from the SHQ? I had no colonists anyway. This zone did it's thing for a while, but then I decided I needed a 3rd.

This is where it got weird. I picked another site in the direction where my military was going to be engaged, chose another bureaucrat office and then decided I also wanted a truck station so I added that into the hex. No problem, but again, I had no colonists anywhere and the hex was in the 2nd zone (not sure if that matters or not). I waited a turn, no zone. Another turn, no zone. Checked the hex, sure enough, the two assets were built, but apparently belonged to zone 2. That shouldn't work right? I tried the create new zone button, but it was greyed out, I did produce some colonists before that.

Eventually I built a solar panel farm in that hex with create new zone and I got a new one.

So, I'm confused about this process. Did I find a bug of some sort? What did I do wrong? How should one go about creating new zones in general?

[Twotribes]

to build a city you click a button not on right now so cant remember where it is think the main right screen middle a flag. Must have some infra there I usually build a truck stop then build the city on the truck stop. You can recruit colonists from you existing cities.

[licker34]

Yes, but you can also check a box on the construct screen to let you build the asset with a new zone, which is how I built the first one.

When I did the same thing for the 2nd one (or I think it was the same thing) I got the assets built without a new zone, which should not be possible since you cannot construct government buildings outside of a city.

[Twotribes]

True report as bug and send save to vic

[Fritz1776]

You need 5 PP and a tile no closer than 5 spaces to another city, and an asset on said tile. Then you can create a zone with the "new zone" button. If there is no asset you can construct one and check the "create new zone" button in the upper right corner of the construction screen.

[KarisFraMauro]

The thing I'm having trouble getting my head around with zones is when to create new SHQs. With every new zone? Some? None? It's something to do with logistics probably, since that's one of the trickiest aspects of the game so far, for me at least.

[Twotribes]

You only need a new SHQ if the first one can not supply the cities you have. Usually that means because it is cut off somehow, like by mountains or the planet is so large that your net can not carry that far.

[Philo32b]

I would avoid creating a new SHQ unless absolutely necessary. It adds a lot of complexity. Beef up your truck and train stations at your original SHQ city, streamline your roads/rails, making sure you don't have too many unnecessary split roads/rails. (You can destroy roads/rails you don't need, or just flag them to be ignored by the AI.) I've had pretty large empires with just one SHQ. If you do set up a new SHQ, make sure it is self-sufficient with cities feeding into it to support its own troops.

[KarisFraMauro]

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind for future games. Things seem like they're kinda almost sorta going okay in my current game, which definitely means disaster is lurking right around the corner.