seems to me the only reason there is city spamming is because that is the only/best way to get access to certain resources.  Frankly, I think the issue would be resolved if there was a minimal distance between cities  (this would be very large) and then rather than build a city next to a resource, the pioneer could build a resource outpost/camp that would work or gather the resource.  You would then link a caravan to it so the closest city could benefit from the resource.  That would solve the city spamming and add a new level of challenge since the resource camp could be taken or the caravan destroyed all together.

 I agree with this. As an example, in my last game I founded two cities and in the course of exploration encountered Gilden who DoW'd me after I wouldn't cough up some gildar. I took him out, but now had 11 more settlements to deal with; most of them little hamlets within 4 spaces of eachother.

I agree wholeheartedly. I really enjoy EWoM.  I see it going in a very good direction under SD's development. 

However, I imagined a world that was an "after the holocaust" type of place:  A vast wasteland.  It is too easy to generate food.  I know many players ask SD to add more food.  Irrigation was added.  Mods add food (fisheries, for example). BTW, I use fisheries, and i am happy players make mods to implement their vision of what Elemental's world may be like.  I like the variety, and I marvel at modders' ingunity! 

But, in vanilla, it is just too easy to build cities, and cover the world with them.  The AI does, so we must!  (Hence, my adding fisheries.)  My suggestions:

Make the food resource lower.  Enforce the food ceiling.  Living units consume food every turn.  So do draft animals, and mounts.  Starve a settlement's population that has negative food.  Yes, people (beings) die. Food caravans maintained constantly, bring in food from a 'settlement' with a surplus, OK, but the caravan also consumes some food and water. No free lunch (smile).

Fertile soil is useless without water.  Perhaps water might be added as a resource, (or whatever) and used to tame the urban sprawl? Yes, we have oasis, but functionally, they are 'farm land' and not water. 

Building a pioneer unit (if these continue to be designed to start a new settlement) also consumes food - as does maintaining it. It needs to eat and drink while wandering the wastes looking for the rare, elusive, source of fertile soil that also has water (AND water).   Making and sending a pioneer unit should be a major decision, and a major risk.  Unless you have already scouted out a suitable site, secured it, etc.

And yes, some sort of garrison for outposts (mining, temples, libraries, shards, etc.)  that is totally dependent on a REAL settlement that has water and grows crops would help achieve this 'less urban spam' model.

BTW, implementing something along the lines of what I suggested above would introduce several exciting possibilities. Raiding parties (to steal food) might become a viable tactic.  The only damage such raiders do, if successful, (against a poorly defended settlement) would be to grab some resources and run.  Raiding a caravan does NOT destroy it.  Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg?  (You want the caravan to continue the run, so, later, it will get more food, water, stuff, and you can raid it again.  Hey, its delivery!

Raiding as a policy of one SOV towards another.  This might be the natural state until a treaty is signed.  Well, my first thoughts on this.  Hope it contributes to the discussion so we can help SD develop this area. 

I do not like city spam. I wish the resources where actually clustered together better.  If you have resources out in the wild, you found an outpost.  It doesn't contribute food, instead it drains food, and oh yea, no more global food.  If you want cities to have food, they need trade routes/caravans, and if those get killed a long the way, your city just took a major hapiness hit. Now you have a mechanism for a siege.

Or something like that.

Well, in fact the land should revive itself with magic. It should be logical that, if your sovereign and your faction tech level are high, it should be easier to find ressource (food, metal, ore, crystal) like in MOO: the first tech you got is exploiting ressource on planet, after you terraform and after you "deep mine" the planet. I think you should be able to do something like that with your land. Add some powerful magic (lvl9-10) with the masterspell book (require some research of course) that add some ressource or be able to transfer some of your essence to "revive" the land. You could have some spell that "connect" your sovereign to the land and see it change as the sovereign gain power. My 2 gildar .

I agree that city spam is bad but I'm not sure distance is the correct way to limit them. I'd rather a combination of negatives but not sure of best constraint. At first I was thinking the limit should be cost/maintainence if population is below a certain level or disease factor if cities too close but these don't feel like the best method.

A city should be a resource center; place to earn money and train troops but if you have too many cities resources should be spread thin causing the city to falter and fail.

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I think one reason we see city spam is it takes (too?) long for sphere of influence to expand. Perhaps this should progress a bit faster and if two cities sphere collide one will eventually be swallowed by the other. In a sense this limit the proximity of cities but not in the artificial manner of "you can't build a city here". Also fewer cities should grow faster (perhaps global population growth that is then distributed between cities?). Of course there is the decision of what happens when one city swallows another....

not sure it matters... I started a game yesterday and now have a surplus of like 30 food.

Probably the caravans need to be nerfed before food restrictions really matter.

^ This. As long as caravan "generates" food, any attempt at using food for maintenance purposes will backfire, as people will build more cities just to get the food.

The problem matching the whole "after the cataclysm" theme & reduced food is that this doesn't match well with the idea of a "kingdoms" & an "epic" scale. A small number of people wandering around trying to survive would not be the basis of a kingdom, a tribe or clan maybe but not a kingdom which is a degree up or larger in scale.

Ultimately, it would be up to the dev to design a game which either closely matches the "theme" or not. If I was the game designer, I would design the game "I wanted to create," to hell with what others thought .. but that's just me. Closely matching the "cataclysm" theme would require significantly less people & an almost impossible city spam. Cities should be limited to only food sites. This would mean less people, lesss heroes, less military, pretty much less of everything.

Or, discard the "cataclysm" theme, which is pretty much the way it is now and allow for larger expansion, baby booms, city-spam, larger military units including 8-man & 50-man squads (suggested in another thread).

Which is it going to be? .. Having both is not realistic unless you increase the magic factor, and that wouldn't work because everyone (except the AI) would be casting that "luscious farm" spell and increasing food production worldwide which would result in baby booms & city spam, wow, right back to where we started. 

Well, my opinion is you should check WHY people city spam. I'm not sure myself because I only play at normal difficulty rigth now and on large map I only have about 10 city by the 600 th turn(don't know if it's city spam but it's not close to 50 that I red on other thread).So, first know why people city spam and then think about something to compensate. Maybe they spam because they can't have access to ressource fast enough. Solution: add outpost (or trade market or distribution center near ressource). They city spam because they need people to make strong army? Solution: add more people for your city. They city spam because that's the only way to have some sort of bonus for tech/arcane with study/arcane lab(this is my "why") Solution: add some more building to produce bonus for these thing.

Basicaly, if you just cut the city to cut city, it wont be viable. If you cut down the number, increase the importance of each city so they can be viable by themself and be prosper with fewer. I like the idea of a "finit number" of people that you can have in your empire/kingdom at a given time. If you spread with too many city, you won't be able to grow into beautiful/large lvl 5 city (by the way, lvl 4-5 city should be "stronger" if you cut down the number of city). That sould be a decision: lot of small city for a quick start or fewer city with strong economy and army for the middle/late game. That's my opinion. The idea of maintenance for a wide spread empire is good too.

Well, with 1 food and the current caravan system that wouldn't change much.

However, if the first outpost would cost 0 food, the 2nd 1 food, the 3rd 2 food...

It's a completely arbitrary limitation that doesn't make any sense in game  (*)  but it would create a "dimnishing returns" scenario where you would eventually have to decide between building another outpost or razing a less important one... or to sacrifice population capacity from one of your larger cities.

I dunno which exact increase works out best. Maybe 0,5 per outpost is "it". That would just be another number to tweak.
Ideally this would be something you could adjust when creating the game.
Some players do enjoy games with 60 cities so what's wrong with allowing an increase of 0 per outpost?

Just one slider to scale the city spam from low to high.
That would please both factions of players.
Personally I prefer fewer cities but I'd like that to be a competitive strategy, which is a no go if the AI jsut keeps spamming and grabbing every resource it can.

With the City Spam slider I'd force myself and the AI to use fewer cities...

(*) Everything can be reasoned if you really want to.  The more outposts you have, the more hands the rather limited food goes through... and the more hands are involved, the greater the chance of some of them being rather sticky...

Yes, please! I also wouldn't be heartbroken if caravans generated gold, exclusively, and not food. Doesn't food as a global resource kind of model distribution through trade? How would caravans increase global food supply? I've never understood this.

Thanks for the tip!

Also, it would be nice to be able to assign a stack as a caravan escort that automatically followed the caravan.