I put both on ridiculous

I think it is by design. While the settlement is free, you need to produce pioneer (the price could have been higher) and protect it with units. Those units for protection cost money to, more over, they consume money per turn. So, unless there is some resource, there is no reason to build settlement, even if it is free.

The resources, however are quite rare - you need to find them, clean up monsters around, and protect from somebody else making the settlement first. In some sense the price of the settlement is not when you settle, but in everything else.

No i dont think that the settlements are supposed to be free, coz one of the factions has as perk that settlements cost less.

Thx for the replys guys.

I do think that settlements should cost as they did in the beta. Its just more fun that way, and i hate the idea of pumping out pioneers to massproduce cities.

I would not go so far, but how about second city 100g then 200g then 400g etc?

I would like to see a Resource cost for founding a city (50 gold, 50 Material, 10 Metal) and a Mataince fee per city that goes up by the number of cities you have (First city costs 1 gold per turn, 2nd costs 3, 3rd costs 6, 4th costs 10, fifth costs 15, etc...).  I believe this would slow down expantion and stop city spamming.

Sammual

The AI is supposed to be better today after the day 0 patch. I'm sure Brad will keep tweaking the AI until it is excellent. I agree, currently it is far to easy.

I always take royalty - it gives all your cities a +1 prestige bonus which lets you rush population and get the world improvements first. The sov's location makes no difference for it.

I feel this is a huge step forward from Gal Civ 2 - once brad gets the AI working well that is.

I agree there should be a cost for building a settlement - might actually stop the AI from spamming cities over every square inch of the map too.

they need to re-introduce the cost of cities. They removed the city costs at the same time they reduced your starting gold (you used to start with 500! then it went down to 100. <: )

It would have been near-impossible to get a second city up if it cost 400 gold. I think a mix of materials and gilder is the best way to do it.

50-25, for your second city. Each city after that costs an additional 50 Gilder (but no more materials). Unless a city covers a location of particular military position, 50-25 + cost for pioneers + cost of protection should more-or-less balance out the 1 gold, 1 material, 1 arcane, 1 tech you can get in return. If you "rushed" your second city, then tried to make your third city actually "good" then you'd have to shell out 100-25 for it... something that could take a bit of time.