I kind of wish that it wouldn't spawn things that your faction can't use.  In a recent game, playing kingdom, a warg resource, and later a darkling resource spawned right next to my capital.  Maybe they could change the game so I could build on and harvest those things (but not use them) and then sell or trade them to an empire faction.

What does this say that even extremely devoted players of the game, people who are playing the beta, people who are contributing on the forums, etc. cannot answer very basic questions about mechanics from a new player?

I think elemental has a huge amount of potential, but the fact that many of these questions are still unanswered (unanswerable?) is a little ridiculous. Unfortunately, I can't offer any better answers. Rayres, I wish you luck. I think there is a great game waiting within Elemental somewhere; however, it's going to take a lot of time and patience to get there. 

However, I will say that there is hope. The developers at Stardock really do care about improving it. I'm willing to stick in there until they do, contributing as much as I can to making this a good game.

Its possible that if there is water within that area that it will actually spawn much further away, same goes for the initial 2 Inns that seem to be default at your starting point. I'm not sure if this is how it actually works but I've noticed it happening when I start a new game and I spawn nearby an ocean. Enough of the quests are broken and I don't really want the game to end on a quest of mastery as I dream one day of getting beyond 200 turns so I usually don't use that tech line for much else beyond spawning more resources. Honestly I'm not a big fan of spawning resources and prefer the Civ style, though I don't think it would work with Elemental as you might build over resources which causes a real dilemma here.

As for influence, its also a bit mystifying to me but I believe its a stat that aids in increasing your Zone of Control along with your city size itself. I don't think it directly increases your zone of control like + 1 influence = +1 ZoC. I haven't attempted modding the game yet but answers may be within the code if anyone would like to enlighten us.

I'm assuming you're running 1.09v (a beta version anyway)

1. I think it's a little iffy right now. The others have replied to this, and as far as I know they are right. I find that you have better luck with them when you have a larger ZoC.

2. No, it can be larger. Some building increase influence, but it's from the building's center, not the city. If you already have a large city, you may not notice it (also, some of these buildings take a few turns for the ZoC to update). Grow your city. The higher level city, the more your ZoC expands out.

3. Yes, although some of the techs don't. It usually says in the description, but not always. Also realize, when you research techs that spawn things on the map...you're not the only person doing that. Thats why sometimes you'll see things pop up when you can't use them.

4. In the beta version you make money off your population. Taxes. So, the faster you grow your city (build housing), the more money you will make (which kind of leads into question 8).

5. No. They are always good. *Shameless plug* However, in my mod Adventure Content Pack, I add more goodiehuts, some of them give you nothing, some are traps, etc.

6. I'm not sure that it does work to be honest. If it does, it's too small to notice.

7. They don't. What you have for abilities is what you have.

8. Prestige is simply how many people are attracted to your city per turn. As far as I know, there is no limit.

•    Heya rayres; welcome to EWoM. I see that lots of others answered you, good to see. I'm wondering what version your playing since the dynamics are very diferent between version 1.09e and all the current beta's.

• Every Hero I have created has the area of influence bonus talent. I love it since im such a greedy git. That ability will simply allow you to claim any resource that is adjacent to a tile occupied by a building  conected to your city (or sometimes only when all 4 spots in the tile are built on, not sure why). So you can build your city to snake towards resources to gain control before you would be able to if you solely relied on the cities area of influence.
• Regarding the TownHall, the influence gained by your city takes time to generate. At least thats what it appeared to be like. One thing I noticed was when I built a townhall at the end of a long snaking city; after a few turns the city would have 2 bulges of influence at either end. Looked very strange & yes, I did spend some time trying to make very large cities spanning miles & miles. ^^
• Anyways, the above is from my time ages ago playing version 1.09e as a Kingdom. Been testing out each beta as it comes out & switched to Empire for the last while; so regarding the townhall I'm clueless how it acts now in beta. But the influence ability seems to work the same, allowing you to grab some resources nearby ealrlier.

PS: Sorry it took ages to answer... been playing the latest beta foe the last 16hours testing out all the changes I could notice for the Empire. And let me say.. wow... building a lvl 5 city has come a long way. Well need some sleep, sure another beta will be ready when I wake up.. lol. And feel free to ask anything else, anytime, someone will answer youa t some point