I think this is a good idea especially if the resources pop up when you have researched the tech to use them as the city placement might be less than optimal.

Guard Towers and Watch Towers might be useful without this as the fog of war can hide an attack.

i think it is better to require a city, since there are always settelments around resources (where do the workers + families live? ect. ).

I think you have a wrong impression what a city should be. I think it would be good to have a city development tree:

-mining settelments

-population / administration centers (trade /sea trade)

-military garrisons / castels

-outposts

-minor communities (farming)

each city type should have a purpose and should exclude other options, with a system akin to this you would get a unique and realistic kingdom.

Originally I thought so too, but now after playing for a while I think it should stay as it is.

It is going to be a big part of making city placement very tactical. You want to be able to expand to as many resources as possible.

I just realized that I can build town in range without using essence -___-

In fact I just changed my mind : building "mining towns" will be really fun ^____^ But we still need waypoint for roads in order to create the road you need to avoid that nasty forest ...

I like this idea, maybe little colonies of people would start flocking there but not enough to be deemed a city. maybe storehouses and perfect pillage points would develop in the area. You know, for those of us who want to go raidin' . Good idea, Raven!

I would agree that we need to be able to develop resources outside of the cities. Making the city boundaries meander around to get resources will look very strange. A snake city sized 15x1 seems very unrealistic.

I would apply some type of factor to reduce the production of resource facilites that are far away from the cities they are conected to though. Similar to the way asteroids are in galciv 2.

In fact, if you have reclaimed the land near a min eyou can just build a town near it without using essence, then construct some hovels and the mine and leave it as is ... it's exactly what you meant : a mine, some folks around and that's it.

Try the following : build a city far away from the mine, wait to get the reclaimed land, then go build a city ... you build the mine and voilà !!

In fact, I would like to have the ability to build structures from a city without being connected to the rest of the city.

You would just have to open the nearest town's UI, then select the mine, put it, and a road would automatically being built.

Instead of having cities like (T for Town, --- for roads, X for buildings)

having cities like

A lot of those calculations that are derived based on city numbers can be influenced by the size of city though.  A small cattle farming comunity of 1200 will have a far smaller impact on your overal city count (which shouldn't merely be a base number but an average of sizes, territory covered and buildings created) than a massive metropolis of 100,000... which would enable players to have good reasons to have small farming and mining villages (which also make typical adventuring locations).

Seems to me that there should be a difference between "city" and "settlement". Have settlements be built by settlers, created at cities (much like traditional TBS games), and cap their development at 2 large squares. That gives you enough room for one resource and some stuff or two resources.

Settlements do not reclaim land the way cities no, nor are they are versatile or productive. If a sovereign feels so inclined, they may go, follow up with a settlement, and infuse it to turn it into a city at a later date.

I approve of the strategic benefits of not requiring full cities to develop resources, especially for those who wish to play the one-city overlord sort of sovereign. why waste your essence on those weak little mortals? Let them go scrape out a living in the hills for your glory.

indeed, cities require essence, and settlements are small villages built by settlers, anywhere on the map. Only cities have prestige and produce things, as well as spread "reclaimed land" from their city centers.

Indeed, Large cities, require essence, small cities for resource aquisition or farming, don't officially produce anything other than raw-resource, mana node, or food, (dont build buildings or units), don't require essence, and are instead built by population consuming settlers inside a "real" city.

A strategy could even be to ICS tiny settlements in order to ship 2 squares of food apiece to a large super-city ... which I don't mind since the main factor will probably be relative prestige value anyways ... and that extra population could end up emmigrating to someone else's cities if you aren't careful. Perhaps settlements could also be tax payers ... although they would not be centers for education. Now, if a settlement was a center for a secret experimental laboratory, that would be acceptable (improvements to allow scientists to directly grow the raw technology score), but anything inside the settlement would be unheard of.

This strategy tends to lead the question about road development, walls development, and fort development. I think that a military unit (or special military unit with shovel) should be able to build roads, walls, guard towers, and Fortresses.

Walls and Fortresses, especially Fortresses, are Incredibly expensive to build (gold-wise?) ... and maintanence is pretty regular on well-built roads, forts, and guard towers. Anyways, while maintanence keeps from infinite road spam ... expensive walls and forts encourage the player to only build them when/where it is needed.