Judging by comments on the forums, there are still some significant issues with map randomness that can greatly affect the difficulty of the game for the player - if they luck out with lots of good resources nearby, they can start powering up fast - if expansion is blocked by lots of dangerous monsters, they're basically screwed (time for ctrl-N).
So here's my proposition - upon gamestart, before placing resources or monsters, divide the map into a series of "difficulty zones" - I shall call them Starter, Weak, Medium, Strong, Deadly, and Epic. This should end up looking like a topographic map - Deadly zones surrounded by a band of Strong-zone, etc. Wildlands can be placed in Deadly and Epic zones, then monsters and quests are placed in each zone corresponding to difficulty - Starter zones would only have Wildling Lurkers and the like, Weak zones would have assortments of bandits, mites, etc, going up to Epic zones with Dragons, armies of Drakes, and so forth.
Monsters would be much more aggressive - attacking nearby improvements and cities at first sight, but with a catch - they'd be restricted to zones within one increment of their base difficulty. Namely, bandits could only move in Starter through Medium zones, a standard Ophidian army could only move in Medium through Deadly zones, etc. Quests could also be placed in zones corresponding to their difficulty, to encourage being prepared to embark on them.
And of course resource distribution could be tied to zone difficulty - Starter and Weak zones would have a modest supply of resources, but the densest sources of Shards, Crystal, Gold, and more, would be found inside Epic zones where you would have to clear hosts of fearsome monsters to have any chance of keeping an outpost or settlement intact. This would result in a different set of strategies depending on the map draw - with lots of weak zones nearby, you would launch an early expansion campaign to claim them all before pushing further, whereas a Sovereign looking at more dangerous nearby zones might focus on leveling up an elite force to get earlier access to dense resources.
Just a note - these zones wouldn't be directly visible to the player, but the combination of smooth zone boundaries and a look at the monsters within should make it readily apparent.
So, would this proposition help with the scaling issues this game has? Any ideas how it might be improved?