After having numerous games effected (I was going to say ruined) by sudden rampaging of super mobs through either my or AI territory, I decided to start a game with monster denstity set to sparse. And I have to say it is the best game I've had to date. It'd be easy to chalk this up to a case of "to each their own" but I really like the idea of a reclaiming a monster infested world, but something seems to go very wrong (in a not fun way, for me at least).
Some of the factors that contribute to the non-funness (again solely in my opinion):
1 - There's so many super mobs you almost can't help aggroing them. This can make some starting locations almost unusable
2 - Possibly associated with that. The AI is really bad for aggroing the monsters with city/output building.
3 - It can severely curtails your strategic options, almost to the point of nothing you can do but restart. This would be ok if it was the occasional outcome but this happens more often than not. My little spear or axewielders just cannot kill some of these monsters that can oneshot them.
4 - Ruined cities cannot be rebuilt.
I hate to make a post like this and not offer suggestions but I'm not sure that to suggest. Definitely the AI needs to be more careful about not aggroing monsters. Maybe super monsters should not rampage as much... perhaps destroying the structure or army that aggroed them and then going back to sleep (until the mid game).
Another possibility would be to have an option between sparse and normal.
I definitely think ruined cities should be able to rebuilt. Since the number of spots that you can build a city is limited this can be a death blow to a kingdom as it can put them hopelessly behind the power curve. Note, this effects the AI and players.
