At 0:30 in the video you can see that they finally loosened tile placement a little bit - you can place improvements diagonally from existing ones in that build. I'm glad I won't have to cram everything so tight anymore.

I'm diggin' this new direction!  Looking forward to diving into it a bit this weekend.

Is it just me or is it ironic that the hidden temple can't be seen?

I was thinking the same... lol

so we're not worried about being contagious anymore?

I'm not fearing city spam so much now as I am fearing city GLUT (spreading out so far all the cities are touching one another or nearly.) What's the use of pioneers when all you need to do is expand your borders?

That stuff all looks like a ton of fun! 

Pioneers probably become obsolete now. Except for founding cities, of course.

There are still building limits per city though no? So the fact that your influence can reach that far out resource doesn't mean you can build it if you don't have the build slots.

Looks great!

One thing I'd change is how borders look so very square. Would it be possible to make them look more curved? Or use a cross shape for influence like Civ4?

I can see this happening too.

Suggestion: make it so the cost of founding a city is increased the further away it is from the rest of your cities and especially from your capital. Some formula like this, with more balanced numbers:

cost of new city = [number of existing cities - 1]*50 + [distance to capital*10] + [distance to closest city*10]

and then use the outpost idea and

cost of new outpost = [number of existing cities+outposts - 1]*20 + [distance to closest city or outpost*10]

Different factions can have different modifiers of this, too, to add some differentiation in city-spam levels. Like the expansive and organized traits in Civ4.

SMAC comes to mind where factions like the Hive [despotic, ascetic communialists] were brilliant for ICS [infinite city spam] while others were accustomed to building very few, but high quality cities, like the Morganites [corporate, luxurious free marketeers].

To claim an area that would take forever for your existing city's influence to reach?

Aren't pioneers the way you expand your borders? I.e. Making more cities so you have more "influence squares" covering the map?

Hm.  Good job with the multiplier idea.  Very good improvement.  However...

From the looks of it, cities are very, very close to each other.  What does this imply?  This implied that the player will be effectively snagging every resource that is near them and that, by the end of the game, pretty much every square of the map will be taken by some kind of sovereign faction.

What I was hoping was that players would have to choose carefully where they would build their cities and, consequently, what resources they would be able to exploit.  For instance players, at the beginning, I would like the player to have dozens of good candidate locations for cities, but could only choose maybe a 10th of them before they run out of a means to support further cities (out of available food, possibly).  This would add a more strategic element to the game because players would have to choose between what resources they "wild spaces" that appear to be largely missing once players expand outward. 

Right now, the map looks like a mid to late game civilization match, which concerns me.

I hear a lot of people worried that cities are too close now, I dont think it is something to worry about.

Cities are not close to each other, boundries are close to each other. Which frankly speaking is how it really ought to work. You don't go to war with someone because they are two squares from your capital, you go to war with someone when they are 45 squares away from your capital, but rather 2 spaces away from your gold mine.

I think it also shows a very tactical vizualization of the progress of a player. You can literally see your opponents kingdom shrink while yours grows.

I think the only issue I have ever seen with the boundries are it helps me locate an enemy a lot faster than I think I should. Sometimes I don't even see any of their buildings but know exactly were they are.

I absolutely agree, I don't like this at all. Here is my reply in regard to this.

Yeah, I've suggested this a looooong time ago. Here is the topic about it: https://forums.elementalgame.com/366248

If you have some new ideas with regard to this, feel free to reply there.

*edit*

Eh, my ideas in that topic are kinda obsolete now. [Example: Essence shouldn't be required to construct these buildings. I am going to update the OP later on.]

I second that. 

The cities can get  to crowded/close to eachother.  I realize that this is a fuction of the changes regarding building anywhere w/in zone of control, which is a positive change....I don't know how to resolve the issue.   Will there be options for really large maps...and ones that have more wide open spaces and less choke points.   I also did not perceive any defensive walls for the cities. Will that be in or is that in the game already? Otherwise everything else seems to be looking good.

That's all Pioneers do now too. Found cities. 

It would be really really dumb to build your cities tightly together. Your best bet is to build fewer cities that are spread apart and connected by roads.

I should mention that since this video was taken that the min distance between cities allowed was doubled to 10 tiles.

Seconded. Wars start from boundaries and are waged to move them.

Contagious? You meant playing elemental is contagious? Now, I think I got some friends to hang around .

Being contiguous is what we were previously concerned about anyway. 

I like Tormy's Watchtower Idea.  Is there anything like this in the lastest iteration?  (see Reply #66 and its link)

Very good!!!! In this manner the world will resemble more a living world than before and helps stop city spam... very good indeed.

Good news!