Zone City Upgrade pros and cons

[Jdane]

Would you help a fellow whose brain has gotten a little lazy?

I'm wondering what are the pros and cons of upgrading a City's Level when the opportunity arises.

From a quick skim through the manual, I'm assuming it's situational. If the public Assets' levels in the city are still lower than the City Level, upgrading the latter can probably wait.

If your Population's growth is not solid, you would run the risk of seeing it drop below the threshold and lose a City Level and the PPs invested in it.

A big City Level is also good for attracting more Free Folk, but isn't it detrimental for Quality of Life?

At any rate, I thought maybe you considered this already and formed a better, more synthetic idea on the topic that you might want to share.

[Naselus]

QOL level is local QOL points/city level, so yes, it reduces QOL. It allows you to build higher-level assets within the city tho, which means more BPs from offices, more IP from industries and better worker output efficiency. So if space or population are constrained, upgrading is more valuable; if they're not a concern, then you're probably better off adding another city instead.

[shi4stone]

I was surprised when DAS Tactis in his rule of thumb out right just say never upgrade, but later i found out that it is a trade off you have to weigh
- QoL drop
+ higher level asset and thus more efficient production
+ higher level cities attraces more pop according to the manual

[zgrssd]

Pro: Public and Private Assets can go to a higher level.
Con: QOL Sub-Levels = QOL scores/City Level.

Note that QOL is not a reliable way to improove happiness, but that is a understandable mistake to make:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4830533
It will still have a negative impact to upgrade your city and a positive if you add QOL buildings, but it is no a lasting effect.

QOL's primary purpose is to dictate a cities Civilisation Level. And I am not that big of a friend of a high Civilisation level myself.

[Soar_Slitherine]

If a city is very wealthy and uses the funds to boost its quality of life, less well-off cities in your regime might start suffering worker happiness penalties because their QOL is lower than the regime average. In that case, the decrease in QOL from a city level upgrade might actually be a good thing.

[Jdane]

Thanks for your input, there are some good points being made that I hadn't thought of.

[shi4stone]

i wish a higher level city can increase the range where it can manage without admisntrative burden, sort of making playing "tall" a viable option