Ideas before concrete
This is where a run stops being a map and becomes a plan. Laboratories open one branch at a time, and every unlock quietly rewrites what the other four districts are allowed to build next.
Over two hundred technologies sit across five eras, and no single run reaches all of them. The district makes you pick a direction early and live with what it closes off.
Every technology has prerequisites and a running cost, and funding is drawn from the same pool as everything else on the council budget. Opening a branch is therefore a decision about the next twenty minutes of play, not a button you press when the bar fills.
Closing a tier moves the whole city into the next era: new buildings appear in every district, old ones become upgradeable, and a handful of policies you were relying on are retired. Era changes are the loudest moments in a run, and the district is where you decide when they happen.
Research speed follows education levels, wages and how heavily the rest of the city is working. A city running flat out produces less science than a slightly slower one with schools in the right places — which is usually the argument that sends players back to redraw the residential zones.
