[0.95] FE - Not a post-apocalyptic magic wasteland anymore?

That bow is awesome! But the quest does seem too easy.. Got two in a short span of time once myself. Then again, also got two squads of uber archers from the "village elder wants weak bandits killed" quest, and boy did they roll over my opponents with minimal effort.

And yeah, the world definitely gets utterly crowded way too fast. Hopefully that'll change, because as it is wildlands feel kind of... redundant.

I agree, maps are terribly small...and wildlands (that most of the time don't work properly) take up at least 1/4 of the map. On a "large" map, I'll be lucky to set up 4 cities and some outposts. 

Also, I tend to find the randomly generated maps are hideous most of the time, so I'll normally play on the 'pre-made' maps...which are smaller :/

"I can't make a buch of cities, fix it!"

"I can make too many cities, fix the city spam!"

"There's too many things here, its crowded, monsters, other AI, there's no room!"

"It's too empty, the worl dis bland and boring, fill it with interesting things!"

Can't please everyone...

Thank you for contributing to a more peaceful world!

except they CAN fix it...it's called map size....except all the map sizes they have right now are small regardless of what you choose...

blame the memory limits of 32 bit OSes

Unless there was some technology to alter how dense these things are...  

I would at least like the option for the density of land on which I can settle.

That's true. But if the argument is between empty and full then there is room for a compromise. Probably more productive to try to find that compromise than to shrug at the fact that people don't agree.

A lot of the reason it used to seem so empty and bland is that it was. It had no vim. That's not as true as it used to be. It's considerably more inviting now, and it's a shame you don't get much of a chance to explore it. I'd love to help, but I'm not really very clever. Something about monsters, probably. They're not very monsterous anymore.

True, besides maps now a days feel twisted. I rather miss having large plains. too many obstacles forcing chokepoints. its good for defense, to a point, but it makes for a boring game.

I think the map generator needs some love.

Stardock is wise.. they'll add a few different map types ala Civilization before release.

I think the city spamming is encouraged by the wussy monsters that don't attack anyone.  You used to have to carve out a place for a new city because building near monsters would invite invasion (which it should).  Now you can plop down a city beside a strong monster group and they do nothing or run away.  I know people whine about aggressive monsters, but if they aren't aggressive, then they aren't really monsters.  If the monsters acted like they had a reason for doing what they do, a lot of these issues would be solved.  Of course, it would introduce other issues, like teaching the AI when to avoid monsters and what to do about them and not get stuck in a pathing loop, but that is why Stardock gets paid the big bucks

Wow. That's unfair. I run 32-bit and don't have any problems with the game, even on maximum settings.

As to the topic on hand:

I agree, FE fills up fast. You need to pioneer spam quickly in order to claim your turf. Increasing the monster difficulty on the low end, and decreasing the monster difficulty on the high end will balance that out I think...

Ideally, and imho, your empire should consist of 4-7 cities by mid game. Those cities shouldn't be easy to aquire. Afterall, we're carving a nation out of a cataclysm here. But I do think we should be allowed to carve out that nation eventually.

I really like the map-gen that I've been getting so far. I've seen in other threads and have experianced it myself that sometimes you get totally jipped for settlable land...needs a big of tweaking. However, overall it's pretty good with your empire able to settle 2-3 cities over the first 30-50 seasons. I like that. Shows that your empire is growing.

Also is important the get those city queues running. Too many queues and you have too much to do...too few queues and you're just hitting 'end-turn' all the time.

Overall, the most memorable TBS games I've experianced over the years resulted in an empire of 7-12 cities.