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I made a mistake of forgetting about Admin strain getting too high (86% yikes!) in my capital city. I have two other cities and had to create a new one near some further out assets and lots of ruins around it- so i thought it would be a good site to put one down.

I then realized that newly created city needed to be zoned, so i did that, usually i take cities from enemies and it already has a zone.

It seems the admin strain is reducing (in Capital) about 2% per turn. I expected it to reduce dramatically within a turn or two because its administration. Like- hey we have less paperwork to do now, those assets are out of our administrative hands now.

So, does each city need to have a Bureaucratic office in order to do Admin efficiently? i have one constructed in the new city. However the new city i mentioned has some worker shortage, i am generating colonists per turn and placing them in that city as workers. So this Bureaucratic office is only producing at %34 currently. I am wondering perhaps this is affecting the Admin level in the capital city or perhaps it makes no difference if you have a Bureaucratic office in your new city and it just takes time for the Admin level to come back down?

Another question, other cities with high Admin Strain, does that affect the Capital city also? another city i have a Admin strain of 32% (need to deal with that next) or does this just affect assets within its zone production wise, which would still affect the Capital production wise i guess, since all food, metal and fuel produced is shipped to the SHQ right?

This Admin Strain has taken a big hit on my food production, so i have also been dealing with that, put a big halt in military operations as you can imagine.

A lot of folks seem to avoid creating new cities. I always fill in the gaps between conquered cities, aiming for all my cities to be spaced ten to twelve hexes apart. I then develop them all aggressively. The created cities always lag way behind, but this seems to keep administrative strain under control and, on large, long game planets, helps maximise recruiting and production. The 500 turn plus games turn into real management challenges, but eventually you get good at finding a groove. 25+ cities can be a load.

Edit: up to 42 cities on current medium world, with 40% of the VPs I need. No particular strain

Back to your post, you raise some great questions, the answers to which will help a lot.

Admin strain is not related to other cities or to bureaucratic offices (directly), it appears when there workers more than 6 hex from zone center. It increases slowly as well.

The amount of admin strain depends on the zone's ratio of asset levels within the 6-hex limit versus assets weighted by distance outside it.

Soar_Slitherine wrote: Fri Aug 12, 2022 9:18 am The amount of admin strain depends on the zone's ratio of asset levels within the 6-hex limit versus assets weighted by distance outside it.

Interesting. I knew about the 6 hex range limit, but I was never sure about how the strain was calculated.

I wonder if there is any merit to the idea of adding tech to be researched that links to bureaucracy building levels, combining to modify either the range or ratio resulting in improved (reduced) administrative strain. This would eventually cut down on city spam.

The whole thing about never building new cities made no sense to me, I think that came from people seeing that higher tiers of asset were more efficient than lower, but they never took the horrific Admin Strain penalties into that. At the same time, I've also learned the hard way not to overbuild new zones unless they're necessary. However, the very need to increase nation-wide QoL will ensure new zones grow fairly quickly if they're properly managed. As usual, what you need in one game might be drastically different to what you need in another.

The current administrative strain rating seems to be based on the previous turn's strain and the average of the strain (based on close and distant assets) of a multi-turn average. I noticed this when trying to alleviate a high strain in one city by transferring a remote asset to a nearby city with low administrative strain. Although creating a new zone to control the remote asset(s) is one solution, another way to reduce admin strain is to construct additional assets levels within 0-6 hexes. Logistics assets such as Water Reservoirs built in the city can reduce admin strain, but you may have to wait a few turns to see the full effect.