I wouldn't say it's a bug - it's more a design feature. Basically, new buildings have to be placed near the old ones, and diagonal placement doesn't guarantee that.

But why can't we build "in advance" ? It would be good to be able to plan things like that :

CHHH

(C = city, H =hut) instead of being forced to wait for the first hut to be built to be able to place the next one.

A gameplay reason? To avoid

X

  X

    X

      X

        X

etc.

Distances. With only orthogonal placement, you have to be close to special locations. I think they want to avoid squid-like cities.

Beg pardon, but how is a cross-shaped expansion pattern (Scott's apparent notion of "adjacent" tiles) substantially different from an asterisk-shaped one?

If anything, it's a worse aesthetic and gameplay offense because it is the worst of both worlds: a rule determined by the geometry of basic map grid elements (squares vs. hexes, etc.) combined with arbitrary simplification of the relationship between those basic map units.

Even though I've sort of picked on the snaking thing in other threads, I really do have sympathy for, if not academic expertise, in the question Scoutdog raises in reply 8. I just want a 'solution' that's both fun for most players and pretty (logical) for us extremely picky types.

Me too. I was rather fond of squid cities.

I vaguely remember the old hex vs square tactical map talk, but I don't see why getting more accessible tiles with a diagonal is a problem for city building; the size of the keep is a fundamental limit on town size, so having no diagonals just seems like an unnatural limitation, especially given that idea that Elemental population centers should be more 'organic' than TBS cities have been so far.

Not for me in the betas so far; it all depends on whether that tile I'm interested in is on a 2, 4, 6, 8 path or a 1, 3, 7, 9 path, and that seems sufficiently randomized so far.

I put the shudder quotes on 'organic' for a mushy stack of reasons, mostly related to how the game will motivate players to behave and not about how a mature city might look either on the cloth map or in 3D view. The "cities with holes" thing makes me want to digress into 'realism' talk, which isn't very important to how I feel about the pop site UI so far (real cities grow around and acquire 'holes' for all manner of reasons). The whole bother just deepens my desire for a garrison/work-camp option in addition to current town-founding.

Gah. I don't want a rational explanation for my preference, supporting or opposing it. It's just plain weird-feeling to see those diagonally-adjacent tiles and not be able to use them. Probably yet another instance where I'm a 'bad' player because my RPG head tends to trump my zero-sum-gamer head...

Diagonals also cause interesting problems for city walls, which are currently rather odd.  Medieval era cities were typically much less squid/snakey than modern ones just because of the need for walls.  It takes a lot less wall to enclose a square than it does a squid.  It's also better for transportation and infrastructure reasons.  If "across town" means a days walk then some services will be hard to get to.

Elemental's approach to cities is pretty interesting, but it raises several interesting questions that we might need to address.  Just when is a unit really "in" the city?  Can enemy units destroy buildings without invading the town square (or whatever we call that initial city square) or are garrisoned troops considered to be everywhere in the city?  Does the Sov or other units really need to be in the town square to rest/heal?  Does anything special happen when cities interlock or otherwise become just a giant urban sprawl?

I suppose I should just make a new thread for this actually.