Caravans are so cheap that I haven't been sweating the monsters killing them too much.  I've come to think of them as my Monster Early Warning System (M.E.W.S.)...

Of course, you do tie up your training cue for three turns replacing them, but that hasn't been too big of a problem for me, as I usually don't have enough resources to crank out some other units as fast as I'd like.

It'd be nice if a 'assign escort' feature was added to Caravans, though!

I'm not seeing any monsters spawning inside my ZOC's, though, although they do wander in.  Keeping my cities tightly clustered, so the city ZOC's overlap, seems to help.

A game slider that controlled how frequent the monsters appear would be nice.  That way, those of us who get a kick out of monster hunting can set it high, while others who don't want to be bothered can choose a lower setting.

Actually, there are MANY reasons for not having a spawn frequency slider. For starters the game will be much harder to balance. The tech tree, the pacing, build times, AI and a whole bunch of other factors are all tuned for a specific spawn frequency. By introducing this slider, you might end up playing matches where the entire dynamics of the game our thrown out the window.

In this kind of environment, strategies cannot develop. How can you apply a strategy you've perfected in one game to another when they have different slider settings? Essentially the player ends up learning nothing between games.

More important however is the fact that sliders like this distort feedback to the player of how well they are doing in the game. If I'm not a good Elemental player and I lower the spawn frequency slider and start winning again is it because I got better or is it because I didn't have to deal with monster aggression anymore?

From a design perspective, Elemental is complex enough as it is and introducing another gameplay dimension in a game that still isn't remotely balanced would be a disaster.

None of these arguments hold water at all in my opinion. Balancing is not a problem. There would be a standard value to balance against. If users wants more or less than standard in their games its their problem. 

Apply perfect strategy? What? In Elemental you adapt to circumstances. There is no perfect strategy. It will vary in each game.

Distort feedback? This is just crazy talk

Sorry if I appear rude here, but I want the slider and your arguments are just weird to me...

And what would that standard value be? In the middle of the slider? The very end? 3/4's of the way in? How will the player know what the standard value is? These are tough questions which may not have answers given Elemental's complexity.

Perfect from the player's point of view - not perfect in an objective sense. If you cannot create, develop and enhance a strategy from match to match then you're playing an arcade game and not a strategy game.

That's quite all right. The concept of a balanced and rewarding game is foreign to many people on this forum.

Turn 20.

The single peasant I've been able to train is killed during a battle with a single bandit.

Two more of the same kind of bandit await outside my city.

Then an army of spiderlings marches off map, that is 2x the strength of my sovereign and Janusk.

It marches straight to my only city and kills my sovereign and Janusk.

Turn 20.

Game Over.

It's like Stardock is determined to make creeps so irritating/numerous/difficult than no one will play with them enabled.

Zero level creeps shouldn't have higher attack than ANYTHING you can get without basic war research.

Monster armies shouldn't form immediately at the start of game.

And....honestly....players should not be used as the pointer for where monsters spawn. Now that the AI is functioning, there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT THEM EXCEPT FIGHT. They spawn on top of you and immediately attack. No warning, no chance to react, nothing.

To tell you the truth, monsters were more "fun" when they were stupid, at least compared to right now.

Regarding the 'game balance' issues with having a monster spawn slider (or multiple sliders if you also want to control how quickly the tougher late game monsters make appearances).

Yes, the 'default' position of the slider should be where the game is balanced.  Those of us that choose to deviate from the 'game norm' understand that we do so at our own risk.  Some of us like that extra risk and living on the edge!

And the slider 'default' can be linked to game difficulty (so normal difficulty has 'normal' monster spawning, while difficult level has 'difficult' monster spawning.

Some players genuinely hate monster hunting and there is an option in the game to remove them during setup.  Other players don't mind occasional monsters, so they should have that option, if they so choose.

Some of us like eeking out our existence in a dangerous world where the monsters are as much or more of a threat than the the other kingdoms/empires.  Let us live the dream/nightmare!

Now, in an online game, at that point ALL players have to live with whatever difficulty is chosen.  But what goes on in solo games really should to a degree be left up to the buyer of the game.  If Stardock can tailor the Elemental experience even further for varying tastes, so much the better.

If we were bragging about our high scores, and these were 'tracked' by Stardock, that'd be another matter.  But since each Elemental game is unique, and since we aren't posting our high scores, our individual game settings are really only relevant to ourselves.

There is an older game (the Warlords I, II, and III series) where, on custom maps, you get to choose how many cities, bonus sites and ruins appear ingame, how many landmasses the game has, as well has how many 'dice' are rolled in combat (to reflect whether you think quality or quantity should be the bigger factor in combat).  There is no reason Elemental shouldn't have some or all these options eventually, in my book.

Looks like the only way to make everybody happy is to have a mob spawn slider in options.

I see mobs as good because they give you an opportunity to level up, and having lots of them is fine.  But I can sympathize with people who see them has getting in the way and distracting from the main strategy game.

Maybe a compromise would be some good loot drops so that they wouldn't be as onerous.