Elemental Forums
Did they get rid of essence? I see none on the map when placing settlements. Further confirmed by the fact I cant cast city enchants without a scrying pool first.
There are still areas with essences. You might have had some bad luck with the map generator. I founded a city earlier with 3 and my second one had 2.
All my starting areas have had essence. Before LH it was still possible to get a starting zone without any essence. Stardock's solution is, rather than code in balanced starting zones, to hit Ctrl-N if you don't like your starting zone, generating a new game with the same setup but different map (assuming you're using a randomly generated map).
Part of the problem is the cap on yield total. A tile can only have a total of 9 resources. So you might find a 4/3/2, or a 3/3/3, or a 2/4/3, etc. essence seems to be the first to sacrifice. Gone are the days of clearing a stamp to find that one glorious city location with 4/5/3. Join me in asking them to put this cap in the XML so it can be modded!
And where is that request so we can join? 
I think every starting tile should have always at least 1 Essence, because the player can use Ctrl-N, but the AI can not use it and has a disadvantage.
I see it. Great! 
Word.
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