lol, yeah, at the moment it's not obvious what is and isn't balanced as so many important aspects are either not in, AI, Magic, and Adventuring Techs, and others are not properly balanced or refined that there are all sorts of things you can do to achieve success of some sort.

Yes I agree on both statements.  There are times when people perceive a game to be bad when in fact they are simply playing the game badly.

First of all, I'd like to say that I have generally been a "careful city placer."  In the games I've played my first inclination is always to see what it is available around me and based on that I decide on whether I would be better off moving to another spot.  As such, in the most "serious" game of Elemental I've played so far I avoided the "garden spam" by seeking out food resources.  I managed to find that spot with the Oasis, the Orchard, the Farm, and the Bees, and I was set.  So, I'm not someone who is complaining about the garden spam, as I've yet to experience it.  I planned on starting a game not next to a food resource just to experience it, but each time I restart I seem to be right on top of one.

Now, from what I understand the game is not simply a strategy game but also partially a role-playing game.  As such, one of the things that makes the RPG aspect more fulfilling to me is game world which appears to resemble a fantasy setting.  In a fantasy setting I imagine a world where there exists a mix of city sizes.  There would be some outposts, some humble villages,  some prosperous cities, and some huge capital cities.  My fear is that if you allow essentially unlimited food, in the form of gardens, every city in the game will eventually be Level 5.

Now of course this might not be true, maybe there will be a diversity of city sizes regardless of unfettered access to garden building.  Even if it is true, this sense of game atmosphere might not be worth loss of strategic depth (if there in fact is a loss of strategic depth) by removing gardens.  I suppose everyone will have their own opinions on the importance of these sorts of things.

In any case, I'm still looking forward to 2A.

Exactly.  In a completely different game, Civ 4, you could be likewise handicapped if you were to start in the middle of the desert or on the middle of an ice sheet.  It doesn't happen (by default) because the pre-packaged map generators don't allow for something so grossly unfair to occur.  Much like in your example I hope that my starting location wouldn't be so grossly unfair compared to my opponents, where I'd have to spend dozens of turns hunting down a single food resource, where they just start right on top of one.

I just don't know what, by release, a typical map will look like, and how many food resources we can expect to find on average.  I'm sure this will take some tweaking and balancing by the developers.

look, personally i think that a settlement should get along just fine without having to find special resources within the game.  now, i don't think that city should be able to become a powerful food outputting city until level 4 or 5, IF you choose to make that city specialize with special food type building/merging/adjacency.

if you can secure a special resource then fine, that city can be something really special.  and also a target for an enterprising player as well.  this is the way it should be.

however a city should be able to build farms and just get by at the earlier levels.  i would say that if you had 3 average level three cities and do not have any special farming tiles you should prob have on average around 10 extra food.  this is enough to start another town if you want to, or perhaps use the extra food to specialize a town or 2 to something like being able to output troops quickly, or mine iron.

this is where the balancing should be.  food, should be just enough to where out of 5 settlement, maybe 2 can be specialized for your plans.  that is unless you found that excellent food special tile in which you might use a single town to supply the other 4 with the necessary food to specialize.

Unless your Sov and crew can personally produce all the research and spell points you'd need the pure Gandalf mode won't work so well.  And right now you can only recruit people who are within your border, so a town is required for recruitment.

And yes, one shouldn't be able to steamroll -- unless you've (not You 'you' -- I mean the generic 'you' ) been careless and not built up ie the steamroll is preventable and you just didn't play smart to defend against it.

If they don't prepare for it then I don't see why not. Much like rushing in another game. If your sovereign sits on their butt in a city all game and you don't train any adventurers up or build some really powerful defenders, then you will lose to that strategy. If you counter their strategy though with sufficient protection, then they have nothing to fall back to. So it's a gamble.

I would imagine another likely counter to that is a very magic focused sovereign just nuking and debuffing the crap out of the warrior based sovereign.

It is a very strong exploit the AI cant do nothing against. If you are somewhat lucky in recruiting some strong heroes, even 2 or 3 units in a city cant stop them.

So is Ogre Battle and HoMM, you can't build any cities in those games. Not all strategy games have to be the same. Civilization and FfH are the games you play to build 50 cities, I was drawn to Elemental because they talked about how the game was based on building a much smaller number of cities.

I wasn't talking about rushing, I only mentioned it as an example of a strategy that could decimate an unprepared player in any game. I was talking about spending a few hundred turns just running around questing and killing stuff to turn your character into a monster.

If you take your sov and a few nearby champions and head straight for an enemy city on turn one, they could have built up a large number of peasants and recruited more champions than you by the time you slowly work your way over there. That's assuming you don't die and get wiped out on the way there. Or of course they could have left their city totally undefended and that's their loss. BTW, taking a sov's last city isn't a game over, they can just build another city somewhere else so at the most you'll set them back a few turns.

Becuase it's not a problem. Do you really think the map generator is going to allow for such grossly unfair starting locations?

I hate gardens, especially as they are right now. With no limits on them, you could build a city all the way up with just them if you wanted to. And if you wind up with more tiles in the end for doing so, that's the correct thing to do.