Are they spawning when you research Adventure techs (some unlock previously hidden resource nodes), or just at random?

Are you still seeing new shards spawn on save/load under 1.06?

It's called TIBERIUM. Nod will soon be there to get you!

No seriously, I think your problem is that EVERYONE is researching the Adventure techs, not just the player. This is also my theory on why the monsters are also getting so powerful so quickly. If your playing a game with the full amount of computer players then eventually everyone will research the Adventure techs and expedite the problem.

In the beginning of the small game, for example, three players research Adventure. Monster rating is increased by three, no big deal.

In the beginning of the large game, though, eight players research Adventure. Monster rating is increased by eight fold! Suddenly HUGE armies of spiders, bandits, and goblin dudes are running around when we've still got spears and padded armor.

Now consider the impact of late game shard research with a full set of players. Going to have the same problems.

I hate to say it but I think you guys need to either slow down or reduce the number of shards discovered or put a cap on them. Also, consider slowing down the monster spawn too while your at it, please.

Yes I had all of the computer players, but still when the last set of shards appeared, the last computer sovereign had 0 cities and was walking on the map alone....

Also when other players research more resources, are these new and extra? I always thought that all players get a common set of those, so the only reason to research the techs would be to be the first one to grab them.

1.06 still has this problem.  Or, in my case, started having this problem.  In my current game I have no less than 14 shards under my control, with three more currently being built upon.  Six more are visible from my borders.  Unfortunately, I cannot provide a screenshot to prove this, as every screenshot I take ends up being a 1680x1050 black rectangle.

As with the OP, this happens most often when I reload, but have seen it happen between turns.

I've gone and tried a game where I had a few cities, saved at a point quit, then loaded, new shards appeared (2 earth shards each near a citiy) so I decided to test it, so I basically, saved, quit, loaded a few times, each time new shards appeared. In someways it's annoying but in other ways fun due to when you go back on and load a save theres new areas that you are battling the AI over to get control of the new shards.

2kyro

OK I tested v 1.06.  A fire shard appeared 2 squares from my first city at turn 48 after a save/reload of the autosave file.  It is so early in the game I do not have the ability to harvest the fire shard.  All of my research has been in Military.  I think that confirms the bug still exists.

Thanks for the acknowledgment this is a bug.  I've been running into this issue a lot.  An area of the map that had two shards at the beginning of my last game, ended up with 12 shards by turn 80!

I've also encountered other weird issues related to loading saved games, for instance on one save, sometimes when I loaded it, I would immediately get the message that the Kingdom of Altar had been destroyed, and sure enough, all the cities belonging to Altar would just be gone, yet their influence ring would still be there... then I could load the game again and Altar would be back, then I could load the game again and Altar cities would be gone again...

Similar issue with my food resource disappearing and reappearing on loaded games.  I can have a global food resource of 7 when I save and quit, then when I load that game, the global food resource is at zero!  Even though when I inspect the individual cities they still say they are producing the right amount of food, the global resource says zero.  When I continue to the next turn, the global food resource goes back up to where it should be...

Hopefully these "Loading Issues" can be ironed out.  They are obviously quite problematic.