I had a particularly horrid start that game, didn't spawn near any gold resources while I think all 4 neighbors did, so they were bleeding me dry for extortion.

Well, to add a different perspective to this thread, I'm actually enjoying the aspects that the OP disliked.

I started out at the very south west edge of the map, on a rather isolated slab of land surrounded by water from three sides. Having had enough resources to found 4 cities in close proximity to one another along the coastline, I found the only entrance to my empire was through a large forest, mountains on either side of it, and completely chock full of spiders and brigands.

This was not only an excellent defensive barrier which I started out with, but a great source of mobs to level up my army with, and after exploring the forest, had a clear pathway to the central mainland, a very large, barren wasteland, which in my opinion serves the 'dying world' idea perfectly. However the coasts and edges had far too many resource nodes, more iron and materials than I could build pioneers for.

In fact I had such an abundance of resource nodes, after researching just two-three resource adventure technologies, my capital city was providing 40 points of food. Farm, pumpkins, and bees, plus 3 cities in close proximity providing a massive overall trade boost.

I had about 7 or 8 cities before I went to war with, yes, Krax. However game just got patched to 1.6, so I'm not continuing this world.

I do feel the world is a little on the small side for a 'large' world, but I'm pretty sure larger maps are possible. Partly because I personally feel the cities themselves take too much space on the map. In fact in my games, I establish my cities in such close proximity, the distance between them is no greater than the two cities themselves, and before I know it, my kingdom looks like an urban sprawl if enough resources are close together.

Haven't ever got far enough to get a good look at the overall continents created, but I haven't ever found myself bottlenecked or otherwise was forced to take down 'railroad' paths around mountains or forests. Perhaps you just got unlucky with the seeds in terms of resource scarcity and impassable terrain.

A huge map with no resources is pointless.

The experiences some people are pointing out clearly don't match mine, but there are also some inconsistencies in some of the arguments that the current setup is working.

But that's neither here nor there.  The maps should be bigger to allow more cities.  The AI shouldn't start so close to players.  And the maps could really use a LOT less wasted space for the little territory we do get.

I'm starting to realize that this game just isn't going to be what I hoped for, even when the bugs are gone.

Sometimes you get large areas of desert or forested hills or whatnot with no resources around at all. In other words, large wastelands that aren't really worth a city except for some non-economic strategic reasons (e.g. teleport landing pads).

I read these threads and I wonder if I'm playing the same game as other people.  I'm not exactly sure how the game creates its maps at this point but it seems like some people get one kind, some people get the other.

In my games (I've played a few short ones per patch version, and at least one long one per patch version) I tend to either spawn next to a good set up of resources, or pretty much nothing, which means I'm starting horribly slow. 

My 1.05 game I had 3 food resources next to my Sov at the start, and a Library and another food in a good 2nd city location, but no gold mine until my third city - the game was painfully slow ... hitting end-turn many times in a row until the mine was build, and then again to get enough gold to purchase little things.

I never spawn near AI.  In my big 1.05 game I was literally through a snakelike mountain pass (with no resources in it) before I ran into the AI.  Three minor factions and 3 major ones so far, in that tight area.

The AI never declares war on me, or goes on the offensive.  The minor AI Sovereign has 0 movement, never builds, never expands ... it simply levels up its city and accepts the "freebie" defensive unit, and cranks out children.  Therefore, I marry their best daughters to my sons, then bulldoze them and raze their city (it is worthless, I can't figure out if it can be upgraded .. I don't think it can).

The enemy major faction AI makes a couple small stacks of 4-5 decent units and some city defenders, but they get bowled over by my Sovereign's stack of doom by the time I actually get to them.  I rolled over the fallen in 3 turns because they had 5 huge cities with minor defenders and two little stacks of 4 or 5 units that would have been scary if I didn't just shoot them all dead with arrows before they even got to me.

Friendly AI builds cities at weird places, they were (in my 1.05 game) building in that snakey mountain area in front of me that I ignored because there were no resources.  ... or worse ... they build one square past my border to grab a resource I was waiting to get when my city expanded, and push back my area of influence.  (This infuriates me, and makes me wipe out all my AI 'friends').

It seems in my games the AI ignores me, fights each other (at best), and I just walk around and build cities wherever.  I was up to about 15 in my 1.05 game and I got bored (and 1.06 came out).

----------

Question: Do we, as of 1.06, still get XP for units that flee battles?  I had the wife of a sovereign run from the fight where I was killing off her family.  I attacked her to kill her after, but first round of combat she ran .... and I got full XP.  I tried the autocalc ... she ran from it.  I tried about 12 times to fight her and she always fled, and I always got XP ... leveled the whole stack of units a couple times chasing her back to their town, and finally just offed the sovereign to get rid of her.

----------

I almost feel like the game just doesn't know what niche it wants to be in or how it wants to be played.  There are so many different types of gameplay going on, and none feel rightfully finished.  Maybe the game just has very rigid ways of playing, and some of us are just good at breaking it by doing things we've learned to do from other titles in the genre (build a big stack of doom like in MoM - with mostly ranged troops, summon lots of ally units, etc).

ive gone 100's of turns and have seen one real faction, and one neutral in a large map with every other faction in game

Very good point and I have often thought the same.

Love the game, but there is always room for improvement.

to the ones complaining of mountains, there is a 'lower land spell'

I have to ask. When you started a new game, did you make sure it was set to large? I know it's an obvious question, but gotta ask.

Also, are you sure you weren't only on 1 island? The large generated map I played was absolutely huge. Far bigger than the biggest uncustomized map in Civ4. As I mentioned earlier, the civs were spawned around the same side of the map, but the area where 4 of the civs occupied were only about 25% of the total map (and each civ had roughly 4-5 cities each). It could be the map that generated had islands or continents and you would need to use boats to reach the others.

If you zoom out as far as you can go and try to scroll as far as you can in any direction, eventually the cursor will jump once you reach an edge. That should give at least a ball park of how large the map is. Once I had cleared the borders of the map I was playing on, I zoomed out and could not fit the entire thing in one screen. In fact I think it took 2 or 3 screen lengths to see the whole thing at max zoom.

Anyway, just check to make sure that you aren't just on one continent as that may be misleading of the size of the map. I'm hoping for more map controls in the future though. Being able to cycle through which type of map you want, how far the civs are from eachother, and other things like that.

maps are quite larger than civ4, as frogboy had once posted:

In Civ, you can found a city anywhere.  In Elemental, it only makes sense to found a city next to a resource square.

Plus, food and/or gold serve as a severe cap on population.  You can only grow food from a limited number of tiles. 

The maps are small, barren, and poorly generated. 

What? 5 Cities on a Large Map?

That makes no sense, in my Large map, I was able to build 10 cities before my borders met with another faction (including minor factions). take note that I don't have more than 4 or 5 opponents.

I had this opinion, but when I took a boat and went around the world.. my opinion changed a lot.

Not true,

For Empire ANY built city is good, for you can get 1 Mat, 1 Gold very easily in each town. If you run out of food, no clue how you do that. Just build caravans from ALL of your towns towards the capital, and you'll end up with some crazy 500% food bonus, so you'll be fine. And if you are still low, just cast a few Nature's Bounty and you'll be set. Ideally also cast Nature's Bounty on your capital, as it seems that the +1 is processed through the modifiers.

Also, since Elemental takes a certain direction that no other TBS game has in the past. Terrain is a little bit trivial, I believe this causes a bit of confusion towards some players, and leaves some thinking that building a city anywhere else than next to a resource is useless. (Taking example from Civ series, it's sure a good idea to build a town near a major resource, but it doesn't mean that building a town anywhere else is pointless)

I really don't believe that to be true, I actually try to cram as many cities as I can in my territory. Not only is it a good way to prevent the AI to build some small town in between 2 of your distant cities, but it also gives you 1 caravan per town to send to your food production city, and it also helps cover the land with your influence, so that monsters stop spawning "in" your empire.

Hope this helps a bit,

V.