The big problem here is that a pioneer claim that it costs 0 gold to found a city, when the actual cost seems to be about 100 gold.

An annoying add-on is that unlike everything else in Elemental, you can found a city without having the necessary gold in the treasury.  This lead to a situation where I was almost 100 gold in debt, with an income of 1 gold per turn (the only available money resource being just outside my border, and my border not able to expand until I spent money to build housing...)  I don't think the player should be able to screw themselves like this so early in the game.