Hey, just telling you what I think, and I know I'm not alone in this. I so far like the game, but I not going to fanboi out and like everything just because. Calling out a discrepancy isn't being cynical.

Hay a lot can happen in 100 years. Look how far we have come in the last hundred years. Besides 100 years is about 3-4 generations which would mean most people alive would only know of the appocalypse through stories from thier grandparents or great-grandparents.

Also it seems people are thinking of inns as if they are tourist stops. But really most in those times were simply resting stops for travelers going from one place to another. Even lands with bandits and thugs would have inns as they sometimes need a place to hang their hat and get a meal. They use fear and intimidation to keep the inn keeper quiet and most likely extorted money, food, and etc. from them. After all smart thugs know it's better to shack down a constant mark rather then simply kill them.

Not all inns were big like we think of hotels and motels today. Or the large city inns/taverns you see in the movies which are large enough to house to bar room fight scene as well as being large because they are in a city and have more customer. Many are more like the bed and breakfast type places you might find if you go traveling down the small roads and small towns across america.

Besides the size of the bar/inn the old westerns are also a great example of how lawless areas with thugs can still thrive somewhat. Even when rival gangs duke it out they tend to leave the inn keeper go since he's the one that can get them more food, beer, and so on. Plus there is the added bonus he cleans up their "hang out" after they smash it up.

Lastly they are natural meeting places because you can rest there was well as get food. They are often along routes that see a bit of traffic, otherwise they would have to close down. Thus people looking for passing merchants, passing mercenaries, or passing heroes in our case, hang out in the inns. And anytime there is a place people gather it creates commerce and thus they thrive.

In all honesty I think it makes sense that small inns and even shops would turn up fairly soon after the apocalypse as they would be centers of commerce. Either directly or indirectly by a more formal market place setting up right next to it.

I just think of them as small villages.

Well you can have a non-existent, half-assed setting like in most other strategy games or you can have a believable setting with inspiring lore. Wasteland inns in the middle of nowhere in a destroyed world clearly do not belong to the latter. Even though some people in the beta don't seem to be too bothered about them or even defend their existence for a reason that eludes all logic.

Inns belong to a later stage in the game where cities have been rebuilt and there is trade and travel between them.

Perhaps once someone discovers the "Pub" tech then they show up? Perhaps the quests are when you build a pub in a city and they show up at random times. It does seem odd there are NO cities anywhere in the beginning, but there are inns all over the place.

I would like to see minor city/states instead of inns. They have there own economy, armies, etc. If once could be lead by the ferocious squirrel civ in GalCiv2 that would be awesome!

Inns can be better set up. Rather than have so many of them, maybe have inns be permanent parts of the map like resource patches. That way, if a player builds a city near an inn, they can get a bonus from them and also get quests every now and then automatically. In general, I think having inns, estates, and other quest locations be a permanent part of the landscape would be more interesting than having them disappear after a quest is completed.

Yeah that also. If the quest hubs are going to be temporary, have it make sense for it to go away once you complete it. Right now these inns are real immersion killers IMHO.

Well, I'd just like to point out that Randomly Stumbling across a Den of Spiders, and fighting them to get the armor ... best quest so far.

Is that in the beta? 

although yea, I liked the Sloth Demon in Dragon Age.