I disagree Cities chould not be difficult to create. They are a tactical tool to be used to block opponets as well as create units and assiste in other civilitation development.

Nobody disagrees they are a great tactical tool.  The problem, though, is that your tactical tool can have a useful economic impact as well.  Your wall of 5 tactically placed cities also happen to produce 5 of every resource.  Instead of costing resources to maintain your border, you're actually generating extra resources.  A tactically placed fort city should instead focus on troop production, training and defense, not research.  Currently, this is a combination of "not possible" and "not optimal".

Personally it's not the aesthetics that bother me about city spam, it's all the tedious micro-management. It's very noticeable on a large map, where you end up with a LOT of cities. Either way though I agree that increasing the influence areas cities generate is a good solution, combined with increasing the pioneer city-spacing requirement by several more tiles.

There is a law in Great Britain (us Brits don't throw anything away) that regulates market places. A market place must be AT LEAST as far away from any other market place as a donkey can travel in one day. This was to prevent hundreds of markets popping up and ruining each other. Also, having a market was, of course, a priviledge for a town.

In Elemental we have all those tech trees including civics. There is nothing wrong with having a few hundred tiny villages, outposts (like, one family of people living next to some field) and camps. Of course, all sorts of laws might have to be rediscovered, so maybe the distance between cities that are allowed market places can be reduced over time (nowadays you find Tescos, Asda, Safeway and Sainsbury in any town, as well as at least one market place). So, with increased research you can at some point build a market in every city, if you want to. By that time you should have a few cities that have grown substantially because the other cities, being in close proximity to the one with the market, might have influenced those to grow.

You could also consider the possibility of combining cities that are in very close proximity. The city of Berlin used to consist of a number of smaller cities.

Personally, I'd like to limit community growth by limiting the numbers that the players can build.  Perhaps 1-2 mega cities, 3-4 cities, 8-10 towns, a dozen resource settlements, say.  And when they are founded, the player has to opt what sort of settlement it will be...city, town, village, resource settlement.  Each will have some benefit for the player and some penalty.  Cities need food but perhaps food can only be produced in towns.  Villages generate troops but cost no food, being self-sufficient.  That sort of thing.  It would create a landscape of variety and less micromanagement.  Ideally, each community would grow spontaneously, without player intervention.  And connecting the communities would become more important, since there would be an interrelationship between them.  Having those communications cut would then impact your overall economy, making raiding the enemy's rear a viable strategy for a change.

I don't think the zone of control is a problem, when you get to level 3 and 4 the zone is quite large.  An easier fix would be to make it so a pioneer cannot establish a new city within 10 or 15 squares (what ever the number is) of the farthest reaching point of an established city.  In the last game I played, the AI had a city every 5 or 6 squares.

The way I play is if there is a resource out of my zone of control but close enough that I think the zone will eventually grow to include it, then I just let it go til I reach it.  The AI, makes another city.  If you limit cities to every 10 squares or so then that would eliminate the problem.

I do not  support limiting city building.. it is as fair a strategy as the zerg is.. If i manage to build up a bigger empire that allows me to make elite troops that whoop on some ones butt.. then good on me...

however! the AI builds way to many cities just because it wants to link to resource with out considering growth of other  cities.. this needs to be fixed..

there is a suggestion about tweaking the population and time it takes to make pioneers that may help with some of this.

I do think we need to find a happy medium between where we are right now and slowing making new cities a bit.. once suggestion that I think has merit is that like caravans each city can only create x pioneers (be it one or more), I think this and not allowing a city to make a pioneer until it reaches level x (2 to start) might also be  a good way to go..

I also think that providing reasons to not make cities could also help this.. one suggestion (and I like this one) is specialized outposts. think of these as level 1 cities devoted to one task, military (please god we need forts), gold, metal, crystal and so on..

I can adapt to what ever comes along but forcing me to build less cities because I may gain an advantage if you do not is not an acceptable reason to limit my city building(unless of course your the AI that simply cant cope and even this disturbs me).

I hope what ever comes along has a toggle/slider so we can accommodate all styles of play.

No need to have a toggle/slider. Just make the cities have a cost (1 food). No need to figure out some convoluted solution when a natural one is available.

tl;dr

Because it's a post-cataclysm world, where fertile land is rare and resources are scarce.

Magic is powerful and rare, and only true heroes can bring life back to these lands.

This is the way - hero-centrism and resource-centrism with heavy magic influence - RPG is brought into TBS, and this is what Elemental is about.

such a rule already exists.. .but it's only 5 squares

merging cities would be interesting.. but impossible the way it works right now (can't build less than 5 sq away from a different city)

on the whole i prefer a few cities rather than spam..

Yes. More importantly it will make expansion more costly and tactical.

Currently cities will lose population, but they will not drop in tier. There could very well be a level 5 city operating at full capacity with 0 occupants. Go robots!

I was saying the ZOC is pretty large.  I am quite content at waiting for my ZOC to get there, if I don't think it will than I will build a city on the other side of the resource.  I think they had a unit in the beta that could set up a building to take advantage of a resource whether it was in your zone of control or not.  I would like to see that come back.

example:  A gold deposit is x number of squares away.  build a miner that goes and access the resource.  it could even let you select what city the resource benefits.  Than you put a limit on the radius a city can be built within.  This way you could have battles of a resource as well.