Yeah, I agree. You encounter the same problem even just while you're building the improvements. A resource outside your city will build its improvement quite happily. But a similar resource that is connected to the city will be added to the city's build queue, meaning its construction will be delayed (sometimes quite significantly) by real city buildings that you're already constructing, or by other resource improvements.

The game really shouldn't be penalising you in such an unfortunate way, because the current system incentivises completely counter-intuitive behaviour like trying to carefully snake your city building around such that it doesn't touch the resources, which is basically an even worse manifestation of the city snaking that occurred in the very early betas. Basically, if it's a choice between having nice pretty city shapes and actual sensible gameplay, I'd much prefer the sane gameplay, the way it worked in the late betas. But really there's no excuse for not having both.

Actually there's two huge benefits. The first is that it can't be destroyed without conquering the city. The second is all those +% economic buildings you can build within a city start affecting it.

Ah, this explains why some of my cities ran out of space so early on.

I've had two things burned down, one by bandits and one by an enemy caravan that was passing by. Yes, a caravan burned down my mine, the popup actually described it as a "gang of caravans" which I found hilarious.

Is the city tile size arbitrary or are there ways to increase that number? My first city in my first game ran into those problems of running out of space and couldn't grow beyond size 3. It was a WTF moment for me. Anyway, I think what I will do is build a 1 tile radius around my farms from now on, just so they are protected and yet not connected. Man my cities are gonna look funky with the giant gaping hole in the middle. I'd have to think this will be fixed at some point though.

Are people really running out of space due to the 50 tile limit? I haven't run into this problem yet and my capital was getting pretty big last night. Any way, if it's really an issue, seems like the easiest solution would be just to raise the limit to 60 tiles or something? Might even be somthing that you can easily mod yourself in xml file.

So the sensible thing to do is actually to build your capital a square or two away from the starting resources. That way you can build away from them without having to snake around them.

Hmmm, I did not know resources couldnt be burnt down if they were 'connected' to the city. Wish I had! Id've given up a few slots to stop the damn bandits from killing my gold mine every dozen turns or so. Had to eventually park soldiers on it.

But I do agree they shouldnt force you into some counter intuitive building strategy without at least making it plain the benefits and costs, which they currently do not do.

Also, question: Do bonuses 'stack'? Say, if I build walls which give a bonus to defense, if I build TWO walls, does it stack?

Easily.  Alarmingly easily.  If you end up with several resources in range and you build houses to level your town, you'll run out of tiles fast.

Well, I completely disagree with you and I also fail to see any reason to bring up "other games" - whatever that refers to.  In any game like this the choice to build or not build is yours, as is the choice to specialize or generalize.  Gameplay should not force this - it should be your choice.

Specializing cities should be a choice, not forced.

You can easily have several resources nearby in a good city spot.  Of course you want to use them.  Many resources appear later, so no matter what you do you could easily get a lot of resources "in" your city and if you need to intentionally avoid them to keep tiles free for buildings, that is just stupid.  There is no other word for it.  You also, thru research, unlock the ability to build a TON of buildings and with all the resources you have you can easily build them without pick and choosing.  And on top of that, you can level your cities - so of course you want to level your cities, which requires a LOT of tiles of housing.

There is no logical reason by cities should be limited in how many tiles they occupy unless it is tied to some kind of civic tech - that would make sense, that you have to research stuff that lets you grow bigger.  There is a ton of stuff you can research in the game so logically tying tech to growth would fit.  Or tie it to influence.  Tie it to something.  An arbitrary limit is just flat out stupid.  The only thing that should ever firmly limit the size of your cities is running out of land to build on.

If you want forced specialization or limits on number of towns or sizes of towns, the way to do it is to reduce the resources you get, not have artificial limits.  In my games, I have so much material, easily amass gold, etc - I can build anything I want to build.  Building leads to more building as you jack up the resources with bonuses from buildings.  The game design itself encourages building up and growing.

Regardless of whether the mechanic is good or bad, it should at least be consistent.  Either building on a resource should always cost the city labor and improvement slots or it never should.  Having it only happen when there's another improvement adjacent to them doesn't make sense, and encourages counter-intuitive decisions like deliberately avoiding building towards resources to spare yourself the cost.

Agreed

So that's why a lot of my cities suddenly became unable to build more buildings. I really hope they make this more obvious in future patches as I had 3 smallish cities that couldn't build any buildings and I was completely mystified as to why as the UI doesn't tell you, it just grays out the building options.