Quality strategy gaming involves decisions and choices.  There should be factors that cause those decisions and choices to have weight and substance.

City spam and empire sprawl should be a strategic element.  There should be thought involved and "costs" tied to the benefits.  That is, you get more production, more research, another spot to build units, a blocker, or a resource or whatever when you build a city.  You gain.  There should be some offsetting factors that cause you to have to think about building cities other than just "build pioneer, plunk down city, gain."  There should be a balance that leads to decision making and strategy.

Choices and decision making make for more compelling gameplay.

Look at GalCiv2.  Expansion is tied to maint costs and global morale.  If you overexpand too much you can financially cripple yourself.  If you wreck your economy you fall behind for research and production which can set you up to get spanked by the AIs.  Not good.  So you have to make decisions and you have to be thoughtful about how you expand.  (There's a bit more too it, like how fast you develop infrastructure on planets you take, traits, and more, but the basic idea is that you can't just expand without thinking a little and making strategic decisions).

The game is more interesting because it forces you to think rather than just mindly spam and expand.

This.

Very well said, Voqar.

Just to explain what I meant by a fast ZoC breaking the setting for me...

Supposedly this is a dangerous world, crawling with beasts, monsters and bandits with nary a sign of civilization.  Enter your sovereign and a couple of people.  I don't see how a tiny town is able to dominate so much land.  I'm not talking about the current rate, which I think -- for me -- is great early on especially.  I want to feel like an isolated spot of civilization and feel like every gain in resources and every advancement is a triumph.  Take the example given of far-flung resources and city-spamming all the way there just to create a ZoC to make things safer.  That doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it's good strategy given the current mechanics.  Likewise, if ZoC expanded more quickly to cover greater areas, you'd eliminate the need for city spamming to protect the path from one resource to the other.  If those cities are gigantic and really have the population in them and the resources to control a lot of land, then great!  But if we're talking level 1, level 2, level 3...I'd say no, that doesn't make sense to me, either.  The paths to those distant resources SHOULD be dangerous.

So, perhaps I was a bit abrupt in invoking the premise of the game as a basis for game play, and certainly many people might disagree with me.  But two things I feel very little of in this game are isolation and fear, and I think the game ought to force me into experiencing both.  I want to wonder if I'm going to lose my sovereign trying to make it to another resource, to have to put guards along the path of a caravan or know there's a high chance I'll lose it.  Essentially, force me to make hard choices.  Civilized areas (towns, cities, etc) should be relatively small havens where you can rest up and feel safe.  Everywhere else -- going off to found a new settlement or simply trying to get between cities -- should be fraught with peril.  For me, then, city spamming currently provides some more resources, but it also provides increased safety.  ZoC increasing faster does the same.  I want to address the resource issue, but I also want less safety.  Hopefully my statement makes more sense in that light.

I thought I'd resurrect this thread to ask what people think of the new resource upkeep requirements for the money changer and the two basic research buildings? How is this affecting city spam in your games? I haven't had a chance to try 1.08 yet myself.

Spamhouse

Having a city built every 5 squares is the next major issue that should be addressed.  Not only does it suck the fun out of the game, it doesn't fit with the game concept.

I would like to see it cost 3 (or so) food to start a new settlement.  This would make cities be placed for more strategically and not just have one every 5 paces. 

Long thread is really long. I'll just toss my thoughts in here:

-New cities or pioneers need to cost more for every city you build. It should be balanced so that 5 cities is about normal, and more than that the cost starts to ramp up. The AI will STILL be ahead because it gets to cheat, but at least it will do so slower.

-Outpost vs. City. It's been mentioned before but here's my take:

A pioneer creates an outpost.

Outposts claim resources for the player, and resources within an outposts ZOC can be built on.

Outposts are capped at 10 pop.

Outposts cannot build city buidlings of any kind.

Outposts cannot produce troops.

When a player wishes to upgrade an outpost to a town, then they pay the "city" cost of the upgrade, which scales to how many cities you have.

This is way closer to what I think people expect out of a 4x game. Outposts as clearly distinguishable from actual cities. People expect a crap load of outposts since they're cheap and ultimately a defensive measure. Cities are where the real magic should happen.

I hope and pray that changes to the current set up are seriously considered. It is the single worst part of the game for me now (considering that some other things have vastly improved since 1.0)

Er, the AI is just as good if not better than the player at city-spamming. The only reason it isn't absolutely better is because it can't choose to focus on a tactic to the complete exclusion of anything else. Which players do. Which is why it's bad, for BOTH players and the AI.

There's definitely not enough diversity, not just in AI factions but in AI sovereigns, and in diversity of AI strategy. It's like they all do exactly the same thing.

What they should've done is match an AI with one core spellbook or two, a core tactical attack plan (horses vs archers vs heavy footsoldiers .. this does not mean ignore the other non-core units) .. special units that are available to each faction that give it a plus in its core ability (whether it's magical or not makes no difference to me), and match the sovereign starting stats to match the faction's core strategy (good strenth & dexterity for archers, movement & organized for mounted-centric strategy, strength & constitution for heavy infantry, wisdom & intelligence for magic-centric, research and knowledge for the "research" centered faction, the "finance" guys should make a beeline for mint of ruvenna), etc ...

Well, only reason why I HATE city spam in EWoM is that I have to conquer all these cities, and its annoying. If I start war past turn 200, I end up with TONS of unneeded, poorly placed and poorly developed cities from AI.

I think the amount of cities should be tied to your channeler's level...   Your supposed to have to channel energy to bring life back to the land to make cities in the lore so why not make them connected in the game...This would also make adventuring more worthwhile so you can level up to make new cities to grab resources.  You would get your starting city and then be able to create another one every 3 levels. You could have a trait of city planner that would let a channeler increase it to every 2nd level for those who still want to use spamming as a strategy.  Monster loot will probably have to be increased again to make this work.