Just brainstorming, but one thing that might be a possibility to see that not expanding the grid would not be an issue, would be to go 'micro' for a level. For some reason, probably since there are a few parallels between the two, the "Doozers" on the late Jim Henson show "Fraggle Rock" come to mind on occasion when playing this game. lol On that show the "Doozers" who were these tiny little creatures, much smaller than the "Fraggles" whose world they inhabited, would just build and build and build never stopping for anything, and would even getting sick if they stopped building. I remember one episode, in fact, where the "Fraggles," which loved to eat the "Doozer" constructions as a delicacy, stopped eating them and the "Doozers" all left because there was nowhere else to build. (ahem) Then once the "Fraggles" started eating them again the "Doozers" all returned to build again.
I wonder if it might be a good idea to infuse "Doozer" technology on the people of Elvenar (or something that won't be a copyright infringement) and have some of the smallest buildings you have designed yet
but still keeping the per square production ratio going in the same direction. It would be quite a challenge, one meant for an advanced player, to have a level where the houses, workshops and factories are literally as small as they were in the beginning of the game, if not even smaller, down to a square or two. This would once again force
alot of building of the 3 main production buildings to match the outputs of their predecessors and would create the need for more road to connect everything. It would make for a much longer chapter and wouldn't need to expand the grid or create a second page that people would constantly need to go back and forth between with reloads. Then when that chapter is done, you can go back to the size of the buildings that you had before which, in turn, will again take some redesigning for your city to accommodate again. I retold that story also because you could potentially design a situation where players would have to "build" or "create a portal" to something that would then "consume the many 'Doozer' constructions" so that you could build again but that wouldn't be necessary. Just an idea to throw out there since it is inevitable that you'll have to stop expanding the grid at some point but don't want to stop what Elvenar is all about. Hope that helps! Keep up the great work! More importantly, Happy Holidays to you all!