A district is a single claimed tile that you zoom into and lay out by hand. The world map is where you decide where to expand; the district is where you decide what that ground actually does.
The building grid
Each district opens into an interior grid of cells. Districts are typeless: a tile becomes industrial, agricultural, residential, or mixed entirely from the buildings you place on it. Buildings have different footprints and can be rotated to fit.
Ownership is automatic. A district belongs to whichever city’s territory the tile sits in, so capturing the land captures the district and everything on it.
Roads
You lay roads on the interior grid, and roads are the production switch. A building only works if it is connected to a road; a disconnected building still stands, but it sits idle and produces nothing. Roads also speed up the workers who carry materials to your construction sites.
How you interact with it
You claim a tile, drop into its grid, and place buildings and roads to shape its output. A district near forest becomes a lumber hub; one full of shops and markets becomes an income engine; one packed with housing raises your population ceiling.
Why it matters
Districts are where the city-builder half of the game lives. The same patch of claimed land can become wildly different things depending on how you build it, which is what lets you specialize each tile far past what a generalist city does on its own.
This article reflects the game in active development and will change as systems evolve.