The major thing is: If the monster has an opportunity to attack my town, they should immediately every time. Or never. That way, I won't bother expanding by them without proper precaution.

I think the knights shouldn't attack towns. Everything else sure, they can avoid the knights, but towns no. They are too powerful for an early game roaming monster that destroys towns. bc they are roaming you don't necessarily know you are building a city in their territory. Not unless they warn you before you try to build the town. Come to think of it, if it does warn you, it might be cool if you had the option of paying them tribute when you build the town to not destroy it.

Maybe I haven't played the game long enough to have enough knowledge for a judgement.

So, I don't know whether or not the knights are waked up like every other monster? If yes, I don't see a problem per se. There where deadlier monsters in my games (normal difficulty) so far.

But I've seen them wandering around without "weaking-up-trigger", if I remember correct. If this is true, the knights should definitely spare cities and maybe outposts, too. After all, they are not  supposed to be stupid roaming monsters, but honorable knights, you might ally with later in the game. Or am I wrong?

If you want to go into the extreme, they might possibly attack only AI's and players units! Like this, the player has to be careful, when moving around pioneers and weak stacks, but don't need to be afraid about resource improvements.

The knights would have a totally different charakter and gameplay value than all the other monsters. I would like this!

The strategy is not spreading cities like wildfire and hope for luck with monsters, in my opinion. 

I do as follows (challenging, dense monsters):

1. Recruit nearby champ

2. Clear out area nearby starting city to avoid local resoruces being attacked

3. Find a place for your second city so that its influence will not overtake any huge monster lair. Keep focus on clearing out as much as possible.

4. By now someone big will often declare war on you. Get one or two cities from them and you are going

This does not describe all my games, but is a general template for me.

Tips:

If you are near a hoarder spider or other lair that spawns, then you are ok if you have a city nearby (not an outpost). If the spawn eventually always attacks your cities, then this will help you level any champ/unit that you place there.

Ignys gives lots of exp. A lair spawing them is great.

Since many monsters will follow you, there is sometimes a possibility to lead them towards enemy areas.

If you produce a few units, have a sov and a camp, then it is not long until you can survive pretty nasty monsters.

My most important tip:

The enemy wildlands (green borders) can give insane amounts of exp. Enter, fight and withdraw to neutral land to heal and upgrade. I did this yesterday before going to war, and had level 7/8 normal units with my sov. That army took two cities with pretty heavy defense.

My last game was almost exactly this strategy, worked great until near the end when I accidentally triggered the Shrill Lord near my second city and was duly punished for my arrogance in moving my champion away. But there were no KoAs in this one (almost all the monsters on the map were elementals, with a few ogres thrown in), I think part of the OP's problem is that the Knights range quite a long way from their lair and can swoop in on a city from some distance away - as well as being fast and strong enough to make a mess of low-level champions and units.

I've seen them both guarding their lair until "activated" by a player's ZoC, and "patrolling" a wider range. The latter might actually be them chasing down an AI player, of course, I really don't know, especially since I've seen them "guard" AI cities at other times like other monsters sometimes do.

Also, I have to add that I really like them and am glad that they're in the game - but have also learned from experience that they're one of those enemy units that can seriously mess up your start, since rather than guarding their lair and sending out weaker spawns, they just go on a rampage.

They're a 3-man unit with totaling 33 attack, 24 defense, and 69 hitpoints, armed with spears.  A decent midgame unit, but if you're caught between one or two of them on turn one, you have to ctrl-N due to their almost Mite-like aggressiveness.  Seriously, I hate those guys.

Totally an unfair assumption about the OP. I wonder if that is a stereotype of your generation.

That's all fine and good, but it sounds like from your post you are not running into them at the start of the game. If you see them somewhere around turn 1, they don't present a challenge. They end your game, no matter what kind of strategy you employ, unless you metagame for them with tremor.

Please keep that in mind when you hurl personal insults at the original poster.

But I do see them some times around the 1st and 2nd turn. More often it is between 2nd and 8th turn. Perhaps I was a little harch but I'm am so sick of this attitude in the gaming industry  of making everything easy because some people can't handle a challange in games.

Can you provide us with an example game start that turns an impossible encounter with KoAs into a challenging encounter within the first 20 turns?

Kalin,

We are only talking a little bit of map scripting to save the players time restarting. Yes, the burden is on the developer. I've seen your past posting history and I expect 0 rational discussion from you when you feel the developers are being criticized, so let's agree to disagree. I think the burden of building the map should fall on the developers, and you think it should fall to the players via ctrl-n. I like burgers, you like tacos, have a nice day.

sigh... code to keep the knights in "check"

something along the line of ... defend my "base", stay within 10 tiles of it, if i hit my border then return to base.

see its not that hard.

chase someone for 3 turns, if i don't catch them, return to base...

stop whining about hte people complaingin about how the knights are ruining their games. They have a valid point. There shouldn't be ny reason for the knights to target your first town in the first 20 turns of the game. Don't give me this "entitlement generation" stuff, I'm older than that and i have ADD - i know very well how to keep impulsiveness under control.

Hopefully with the monster coding change in the version being released today the problem will be solved. I'm glad the devs listened to what was being said.

Okay wait, what the hell is that suppose to mean? If you have REALLY seen my posts, then you would know that I have always acknowledged that map generation still needs work. That doesn't mean I'm not realistic about where monsters can be placed. A little bit of map scripting? Have you seriously looked at the map lately? Due to memory limitations, the map size isn't super large... and there are many people who thinks that players are being placed too close to one another as it is. There's very little room where you can put "strong" monsters that would not be near somebody, unless if by little, you mean, don't put any strong monsters at all? Then sure, I'll agree to disagree with you. I like having some challenging monsters around. Good day to you.