You need to find food resources.  But I think we'll need to make this more obvious.

The land you revived is good enough to live on but it's too marginal still to produce a lot of food.

  Alright cool ty Froggy. So it is set up that way., I'll have to admit I am sure I am a big fan of that (like I said that could be gamebreaking for me personally) but I won't sit here a scream that you are all wrong lol. But the idea of having to hunt around beyodg mabey the first 4 turns for an ideal city location irks me. It just really goes against my ingrained nature of not losing time on my cities. Even in MoM or Civ games if it took me more than 5 turns to drop a city I generally started over. I just considered the lost time to valuable to sacrifice due to a fluke of random map generation. and while alot of people will probably say 5 turns doesn't mean much. Anybody who really plays this genre knows that these games are generally won or lost in the first 100 turns.

  May I ask though when magic does get implemented are there plans to allow the use of magic to create more arable land for farming. I think that is a work a round I could deal with as it will allow me to at least get a city started and then know that shortly I will be able to improve it.

LOL ty Gorstagg, but yeah I know. Been here since beta 1, the single garden is a new change that has just caught me by surprise and not really liking it . But as I said above i just can't see any good reason not to even not get a city started immediately. It is all about the exponetial growth curve. If you start a city on turn 30 while your opponent started a city on turn 2, you should lose. At least if your opponent doesn't suck so bad that you can come back from a deficit like that.

So the idea of having to spend 10 or possible 20 turns hunting down an ideal start city spot is just so counter intuitive to me that I am having a hard time wrapping my little brain around it.

  Well I am willing to take it on faith that will be the case come release. But a little more explanation as to why would be greatly appreciated.

   From where I sit and my experience so far. You really lose nothing from founding the first city (with the possible exception of some gildar). But in the long run you lose a tremendous amount from not. Let me elaborate on this point.

What you lose from NOT founding a city immediately or close to that.

While you can recruit heroes that add gildar and research. You will fall behind to those players who not only have heroes but also buildings in resource production and research.

You don't have access to the store and considering the starting equiptment of most heroes, even the adventuring ones compared to the general level of nasty's running around. I have found starting adventures to be a tad bit wanting.

You lose access to being able to train troops. And mabey I am wrong but I have found 5-10 trained peasents to be a much more comforting companions in my battles than adventuring heroes. Combined with heroes also this makes for a force I feel can actually handle whats out there. But missing either side and I feel a bit underpowered.

Now I know we haven't really seen much of adventuring and almost nothing of diplomacy or magic. And if you can pull off the balance then it would be truly a herculean feat. And I will be the first to bow at your feet as the ultimate developers. But as it stands now I can only base my assumptions and critiques of your predeccesors in the genre and my experiences in Beta 1 and 2. So again I am just having a hard time wrapping my litle brain around how you intend to pull off this miracle.

If heroes can upgrade there skills on level up then a hero could generate more research than an entire city.

Maybe inns could give you quests OR let you buy new items. Or a new tile where you can purchases things ?

With magic you can summon powerful units. The only problem is shards. There need to be a "pioneer" spell that would let you cap shards you encounter and spell to protect them (because you don't have any army).

I hope not. I find the research heroes much to strong as they are atm.