every monster lair should have a ZOC, if the player or the AI inveades the ZOC, the monster chase them, this adds a lot of interest to the first part of the game, you have to consider either bulding a strong enough army to loot the lairs, or to build your first city, then when you have enough place, expand you empire
monsters rampaging impose a pace to the game, without them it would be almost a sandbox
finally you can choose monster density in the options
I don't think anyone is complaining that the monster AI is better (which it is) or that they don't have a ZoC that works properly (they do, and it's great). The complaints are that monsters are coming from out of nowhere early in the game )because their lairs were being destroyed while they were off it) and they destroy cities before you could have a prayer of being prepared.
In my most recent game, I saw an Umberdroth come barreling from out of nowhere (I had scouted at least 15 tiles in all directions and not seen any) towards my capital city some time around year 170. This was still FAR too early for me to have tried attacking an Umberdroth, and I would not have even gotten close if I'd seen him. I think, however, he was intent upon an outpost past my capital, because I destroyed it and the turn after he beelined back out.
I'm not certain exactly what the AI does with homeless monsters, but it seems to randomly select a faction feature somewhere on the map, and make for it at full speed, to die at the hands of its defenders or crush it utterly. Range from the lair's original location seems to have no consideration.
Combined with the AI's new VERY aggressive looting of lairs and goodie huts, the Lair guardians' newfound aggro makes it common for the AI to go loot a goodie hut near really tough monsters, pull them off their tiles, then move around them to break their lair.
Stupidity10 has it right. Lairs should never ever lose their guardian. They should spawn creatures to roam the world at a rate commensurate with the current turn and their creature strength. Which is to say Weak lairs would produce wandering spiders or bandits with relative frequency starting on turn one. Death Demons would not start kicking out troops at all until mid game, and not often until late game. This would maintain the nice monster density and wilderness threat that the "I totally play on Hard and find it Easy" people keep talking about loving while eliminating the infuriating and random quirk of monsters losing their lairs and punishing the rest of us. PLUS, we would have access to a wider and deeper pool of XP from the hostile environment, as well as more encouragement to try to clear out monster dens near our cities.
