Cities destroyed early at Novice difficulty

Ive had this happen too, on normal.. I just rage and start over.
Ive stated it other times in this forum that bandits (and critters) should never raze an entire city, its silly how 1 harrison ford can destroy an entire city, rendering the terrain useless for the rest of the game (the rubble cant be built on).
It makes no sense, its annoying when it happens in the first 50 turns, doesnt add anything to the game, and isnt fun.

Either that or just have a simple limit, any npc groups with 2 or more members can attack a city, but a single dude cant.
I'm all for having a sense of danger and stuff, but when it cripples you in the first 10 minutes, forcing you to restart (or resume crippled for the rest of the game), whats the point?

this is because the AI factions tend to go straight for adventure tech very early on, often as the first thing they research, and they all do it. The more AI factions you load up, the sooner monsters start popping out way more powerful than you can deal with. I have managed to survive into the 500-600 turns stage of these games several times lately to see what happens as this ridiculous issue matures, and I made another thread attempting to address the issue: https://forums.elementalgame.com/396208

I'm apparently not the most articulate person in the world, and the way I see things isn't necessarily what others might see, so please keep reporting on this issue and its various facets until the AI starts to make some sense. Don't forget to have fun!

I have never seen this at all. When the AI goes for the adventure tech it should not give you much trouble (at least not in my games). If you research the tech that makes your units group into 3 or 6 pr, then you should be able to handle anything. If you are empire then Darklings should tide you over anything.

Pick (or make) a faction that can use bows from the beginning.  ~40 gold and whatever else is necessary and you have a single cedar longbow unit that does 7 damage from afar.  Can handle anything for the first 50? 100? turns from the getgo pretty much.

The game is too difficult in general on novice.

In GalCiv2 on the easier settings, you could take your time, do research, build up your colonies, and only then start to deal with warfare. Here it must be dealt with at the get-go or you're going to be smashed. On novice.

How many turns in is this? I think you got a bit unlucky, the random mobs usually leave my cities alone and maybe pillage a resource node once in a while. In any case, build more peasants for your early defense and scouting needs. You can pump them out quite quickly and they are cheap. If you are under pressure, get the tech that lets you build squads and then build some squads of peasants. That should be more than enough for your early game defense needs against random monster attacks.

WARNING: doing this may spoil the game for you, but if you want tips, here ya go:

Start with a kingdom faction (easier to start), use a sovereign with organized (for extra cheese), make sure to build your capital near a tech library. Don't try expand like crazy and leave your cities practically undefended, just stick around your main city, build up your city and a few conscript (upgraded peasants with staves) just to get everyone off your back for having no military. The quickest way to getting strong units is to go straight for catapults, this takes just 4 tech in the warfare tree (Logistic -> City Defense -> Seige -> Catapult). Don't bother with building generics units until later on when you can pull out vet lord hammers squads/company. Research Production (in Civics) if you don't have a material resource nearby (and build the Great Mill), then research 4 levels in exploration adventuring tech for the resources (gold mine, 2 food source, another gold mine, ventri mines), now you are set for resources to build your military. Pump out catapult, stack them with your sovereign for faster movement, declare war on the nearest guy and smack them in the face with boulders, take all their cities, kill their sovereign. It was nice of them to build those cities for you wasn't it? Rinse, Repeat, Win.

Empire strategy is very similar (their catapults are even stronger, lol), it just has harder mats requirement (and no Great Mill) so you have to set that up.

So complicated...

The organized bit is spot on though.  I just imbue every hero I come across and poof...  When you drop 10 attack spells on the enemy in a single round, they die.

The specific city-kill I encountered was exceptionally early; I tried again with each of first few cities recruiting a group of 4 Observers as soon as they had the population to do so.  I'm not fond of warmongering, so although Kalin's strategy has its charm, I prefer trying to expand (and perhaps get lucky in blocking an opponent's expansion).  psychoak: Imbuing every hero -- doesn't your sovereign have a hard time getting up to where s/he has enough essence to cast the more powerful spells? or do low-mana spells suffice for this strategy?

You can use the catapult strategy while building your own cities as well. They make excellent defenders in particular because of their slow map movement (which is why organize is so extra cheesy with that strategy), They are also very easy and quick to get comparing to most of your other units, since you have to research not only the needed weapons, but also party/squads/company and experienced/veteran/elite. The only reason you don't want to expand too early is to get the maximum effect out of the adventuring tech spawning resources inside your influence. You basically want to wait until your city grows to level 2, and research the first 3 resource tech to make your capital a major food/Gildar producer. Once that is done, you can expand however you like. Just be warned that doing this will usually make your military so dominant that if you don't declare war yourself, no one will do it on you (unless you play on ridiculous - which you aren't), so the game might get boring in that sense.

As for your question about the imbueing strategy, it is more complicated than what psychoak would like to indicates, basically you still need to set up a gold production (to hire heroes in this case), so you still research adventuring to level 3 for the gold mines. Then you have to run around hiring heroes with that gold. Sometimes you get lucky and have lots nearby, sometimes you have to research the hero techs yourself. Then you imbue them, and level them in battle (usually using bows, so you have to research that or start with the trait). On level, pump full essence on your sovereign (so you can imbue more heroes) and essense and int for your heroes. You don't need a ton of essence, usually 10 is enough, you can build essense buildings to boost that later. The main problem is mana regen not the amount you have. If you can get to city level 5, you can build the tower of erog and that will make this strategy work really well. Until then though, you end up using bows a lot.

I'm obviously not using bows and catapults enough!  Are you saying a single catapult is enough to protect a city?  After my bad experience I started making stacks of 4 low-levels (Observers), which so far have been enough at the low difficulties I currently play at.

Put it this way, a single catapult is usually enough to take out a wandering troll party (sometimes with 300+ rating). They are certainly much much stronger than 4 Observers (heh). Although since they are pretty cheap to maintain (comparing to squads and companies), you might as well put two in a city (once you have the resources) just in case you get unlucky and roll low. The only real problem with catapults is they need a lot of mats (and some iron), so you have to be prepared ahead either by seizing mat nodes, or researching production. Spamming cities and building workshops is usually an option too, but not if you're having trouble defending them.