they should at least abide by the 5-turn raze thing.  you should have an opportunity to recapture the city.

after the city is destroyed, though, the spot should become a spawn-point for those same monsters.  which would suppress any attempts at immediate resettlement.  any time a monster destroys ZoC (towns & outposts), the result should be a new spawn point for monsters.

That sounds like an awesome idea! A city razed by monsters becomes a lair and the tile remains fertile. Me like.

Sounds good!

I used to be frustrated by this, but I have learned to not disturb the monsters and I have also learned to garrison my cities.  This combination has worked well for me. I am currently playing a high monster game and I have yet to lose a city (and, now that I have roads, moving defenders into threatened cities has become easier).

The AI is not doing so well, however.  I am on hard (my second try on this difficulty setting) and all of the AIs are way behind me (when on my previous attempt they were all far ahead of me)

Create a weak scout and let the monsters follow it... I like it the way as it is tbh.

Plan ahead then.

On the other hand, mobs will not follow your weak scout to the edge of the world. They will get back to their lair if they get too far (approx. 5 tiles as I got it). All you need is time to get your main army there, and you get the time this way. It works nicely.

You say it is an "AI exploit", but I have to disagree. A pack of wolves or an umberdroth will try to kill the first living thing they see if disturbed. I guess you would not like to see Great wolf pack moving five tiles per round planning their attack on you next town, somewhere deep in your realm, using roads. That would be a flawless AI.

Do not build huge cities next to dragons. Do a fortress or a conclave, and do not build anything to increase the zone of influence. Do it only when you are strong enough to defeat the mob. A quick monument if your army is there, and as soon as the mob (e.g. dragon) is in your influence zone, you can weaken it with Freeze and all the other spells.

I play challenging+dense monster and I really like the way it works at the moment. Just plan your cities and their improvements.

You sir are more courageous than me, I would be afraid that I'd accidentally wake up that drake by autoplacing a building and expanding my domain that way.  Delicately placing my buildings so as not to disturb the local fauna is more micromanagement than I prefer, but whatever.

The real question is what would you do if a Strong army of Elementals showed up right next to Sandraka from the northwest, and attacked the next turn.  Would you have enough troops at this stage in the game to defeat them?  Could they get to Sandraka in time?  If you didn't, and the Elementals razed Sandraka to the ground you could never settle there again.  How would that make you Feeeel...  

Add to whatever frustration that would cause the fact that inevitably the AI would quick enough fire a pioneer down that road to the northwest and settle right next to the drake.  Then the drake comes for Fargan's Keep!  Raaaaaage!

Eh, I hear you - a lot of this is just luck like any other game and the fun is in doing your best to protect yourself against it.  I'm just saying that nothing nothing makes me reload and/or restart this game except when a giant stack of monsters razes one of my cities - either that says something about me, or it says something about the game.  Maybe both!  

Actually, I also reloaded once when I accidentally chose the wrong settlement type.  No idea how I screwed that up.

No army will come from the northwest, it is scouted.

There is one unfortunate thing we cannot control, this is because of the opponent AI: if they "activate" an open wildland, and those huge armies at the border start roaming around. This IS nasty, but you can always rush a weak scout to try to drive them away... back where they come from, sacrificing the scout.

About the settlement type: I recommend to rename and enter the specs for the town to avoid mistakes. 3 food (+2 orchard), 3 material (+1forest +1clay), 1 essence, city looks like: 551c.

What is your suggestion by the way? Monster raze halves population and the attacking monsters disappear to thin air or no razing at all?

You play the right way, MoM is also the best when played without saving/reloading.

edit: try to release some drakes in "enemy" territory with an outpost... fun:)!

I too do not like the fact a group of elementals or a dragon can come from no where and raze your city. Especially early on when your Sovereign is around level 6 or so, you can not do anything about it. I personally consider the tactic of kiting to be cheating, as it simply exploits faults in the AI.

A more sound solution would be to forget about making a 5 turn wait to raze, but instead have the mob trash a random number of buildings and base the number on the mobs hit points. And to this end, make it so the mobs are not tethered to the original lair as they have left it.  Once they smack your city around, they will begin to look for another place to call home, not inside city ZOC. If they happen upon another city on this search, they may hit that city also. But under no circumstances should any city become completely razed, as this is the reason why I'm so much against it. And this is due to what the OP alluded to, you may or may not have even 1 spot there to start a new city, and if so, always less yield than original.

This isn't true, kiting exploits having higher speed not faulty AI design. There is absolutely nothing you could do to prevent being kited by someone with sufficiently large speed advantage.

What I would be interested in seeing is (on max AI difficulty), some ridiculous speed monsters who kite you the player

I think you are talking about kiting in tactical combat. Everyone else is talking about kiting on the strategic map to lure dangerous monster stacks away from cities etc.

I too hate it when this happens, but I'm not sure if I want it completely removed as it does make the world feel much more threatening; though i don't see a lot of players on this forum that would be in favor of having it taken out entirely. In most fantasy strategy games I've ever played the monsters feel more like farm animals patiently and meekly waiting in their lairs to be harvested for their loot. I loved Age of Wonders in general, but the extremely weak and tame environment in that game is one of several reasons FE wins over it in my book (which is saying a lot for me). In FE the monsters are a real threat, especially in the early game.

I think the roving monsters are a very good idea, but one that needs some polishing. As someone else pointed out it makes no sense that a bear would conquer a city and utterly raze it to the ground. He is a bear! Why would he be interested in that?! 

Maybe monsters could have a "hunting" mechanism where once every so many turns a lair spawns a 'hunter' to go out and get food for themselves and the others in their lair. It would also spawn a hunter if disturbed by an adventurer or nearby city. If the 'hunt' is succesful (the hunter kills X amount of units) the lair should get some benefit (maybe XP or extra monster spawns). The lair should of course NEVER be left undefended as it currently often happens! What kind of creature goes out to hunt and leaves his young to be slaughtered and his lair to be trashed without a fight? That is utterly stupid for both gameplay and immersion perspectives.

The world would feel more alive if the monsters didn't feel like an "army" and would prey upon eachother as well. That would probably require increased spawn rates though as more of them would get killed. Inevitably a monster would attack a city, and if all the defenders die the city shouldn't be razed but get a "monster rampage", destroying a few buildings as it looks for citizens to eat. The city would then probably have a big temporary unrest penalty and a large loss of population as well. If sentient creatures attack a city it could get "raided" instead (% gold loss per turn until liberated), or even occupied (city becomes part of the monster faction). Cities from surrendered factions should also become part of the neutral monster faction IMHO.

Maybe that is a lot to ask for, and it is probably and extreme amount of work, but that would really improve the game for me!

As far as alternatives are concerned: since it's the salting of the earth that I hate most, I'd be content if invading bears knocked down every single building and killed all but a single survivor in a city, as long as they didn't fully raze it.  But that sounds almost as silly as bears burning down a whole city, right?  So here are some alternatives:

(1) 5-turn delay on auto-raze.  This remains the most faithful to the current state, but does give the player a chance to recover.  It is also the same delay players face when they want to raze a city, so it's not like this is a new mechanic we're asking for.  This option won't help you in the case of an early game dragon-out-of-nowhere, but should at least eliminate those infuriating mid or late game "oops" moments when you just didn't think that army could move that fast and there goes your second biggest city forever.  Plus, in some circumstances you COULD possibly crank your taxes up to High for a couple turns, rush some troops, and save the day.  So big empire-wide sacrifice required, but a compelling choice for the player.

(2) 50% destruction of buildings and population.  Also devastating, maybe even more devastating than the 5-turn delayed auto-raze, especially later in the game.  I think in Kael's Fall from Heaven it was like 90% destruction of buildings when a city was taken, which I always felt was a little severe - it would set back even the most developed city by centuries.  But at least the city was still there so I could retake it and carry on.  Also, since there's no "Barbarian State" in FE the bears would never actually "take" your city.  Instead they'd continue to wander around outside, periodically re-attacking the same place and re-applying the 50% destruction.  So unless you sent a relief force quickly, you'd still wind up with a handful of survivors living in ruins.  But again, at least the city would still BE THERE. 

There you go.  Two good options that would really make losing a city suck without inducing rage quitting, all without requiring any major new mechanics or coding (I think?  I made that up.)