I see a lot of open areas for doing more with content already in place that doesn't add much if anything to the games learning curve. New stragic layers that don't add much difficulty to learning the game are always welcome, but I see some spots for making use of the current system by making more choices matter more and keeping the choices relatively inuitive.

1. Give each starting location a different benefit, so players are not just choosing their favorite city, but they are choosing a different perk that comes with that office. It could be that the office gives a little more money per turn, allows 1 bonus healing at offices, 1 bonus sample collection at offices, or some other small global perk. Perhaps maybe make the more centralized choices like London and Cairo have the slightly weaker perks because with the movement system you already gain a slight advantage of starting in a centralized location due to the new movement system.

2. Do more with field offices. Several people have suggested letting you make new hires at any office, sniper__prime has suggest allowing offices have a risk to be destroyed with level 3 infection. I think also you could allow bonus sample collection at offices and bonus healing (separate from the global perk I mentioned above for starting location). Thematically it makes sense too.

3. Make the choice of where you heal matter more. I did suggest this already but now I have some solid ideas. You could allow 1 bonus healing if you heal at an office, and a percentage risk of not healing (or healing less) based on the infection level in the city you heal in. (This makes sense that you can't take a breather very easy in a city where there is work to do and also makes sense that it would be to easier relax at your company office where there is treatment and relaxation opportunities and people to take over your job for a turn). Alternatively, or in addition, you could have a percentage risk applied if the infection spread or increased in the city you healed in. (this makes sense because if there is suddenly more work to do in the city you are trying to relax in, then you are gonna get called in to work. This last part of the suggestion would require healing to not happen instantly, but there to be a clear healing phase after the infection phase.

4. Do more with the lab screen. Allow different traits to take different sample amounts and/or research times, and in addition to affecting certain events, add a perk to each trait that would make thematic sense, that way you can aim for a specific bonus. Make the better perks be on the harder-to-research traits and make everything as thematically appropriate as possible. In other words, you wouldn't have a perk give you more max health because it doesn't make sense that researching a part of a virus would give you more health, but what does make sense is to reduce damage done by the virus, to slow spread or intensify rates. Perhaps move all damage reduction, and infection slowdowns as trait research perks instead of tech tree perks.

Keep in mind many of these would require balancing changes. But I am not worried as much about balance at this point in early access. I'd like to see the fundamental systems of the game get improved a bit more. But clearly if you are going to do things like increase the available amounts of infection rate slowdowns or add to the amount of income, some rudimentary rebalancing would be appropriate at the same time.