I've noticed problems with the terrain deforming spells raise and lower land. I use these quite a lot and 75% of the time they don't work. When I cast the spell and the mountain disappears, most of the time the game will not let me move my troops into the now-empty space which is the whole reason I cast the spell to begin with. Also, I think things have changed in version 1.08, I cannot cast lower land on mtns in areas under influence of other AI kingdoms.

Having a high level spell, say "create fertile land," that creates a wheat field in an otherwise open ground square would be a great idea, especially since there is a lower level spell "desolation" (or is it called "desert") spell that allows players to destroy resource tiles.

If the designers really want to keep the original design theme (or game background story, whatever you call it), then they need to have the rarity of food resources tied more closely with spells. IOW: various levels of "fetiile land" type spells that are required to add more food resources to the kingdom before the kingdom can grow. (50 cities should require a lot of extra food). Right now, the "story" doesnt' really match the "gameplay" which doesn't really match the "economics". There seems to me to be a bit of a three-way disconnect here from my POV.

Not at all. Your starting location is seeded with some basic resources that you need to be competitive. Right now it's a gold mine, and a fertile land. I think a tech library too, but that has a longer seed radius. After the initial starting point, expansion is all free, you can build cities in empty spots with no resources, or you might find a great spot that has what you want.

While I agree that shards shouldn't be seeded at starting location (it gives too much incentive for a rush strategy), I don't think the special tile system itself is a problem. Having an economy based on these makes you adapt to your surrounding and alter your gameplay as you explore. However it does have the problem of making the game a bit too luck dependent. A certain faction might have a great start and end up very strong, which might seem unfair in some people's eyes. I personally don't have a major problem with it, since I see it as a challenge. This is more of a factor in multiplayer games, where balance is more of a concern, but I'm not too big on that, so I'll let someone else comment.

Nah, the best way would be to have the faction make that by default (via faction abilities). You can come up with some weird explanation for it, but this way people won't be rushing for capitals to take over said resources and grow x times as powerful in the process.

I agree with Terraziel.  If the Capital city founded by your sovereign comes with a building that produces one of each resources, you wouldn't have to seed resources at the starting location. 

It would solve another problem as well:  seems that the zero upkeep and fixed production of the initial buildings (market/study/lab) were to guarantee you could get your civ off the ground.  With the updates, now they each have a small upkeep to try to address the city spam, but it didn't work.  The real way to kill the city spam would be to make all these buildings resource MULTIPLIERS, rather than producing fixed amounts. 

Combine that with tying troop production ability to population tier, and...

a city with no resources or population would be officially useless. 

Well by starting resource we're talking like 2-3 food/gold/tech per turn, so it doesn't matter a whole lot later on when you're in a serious war. It just makes sure you don't get a double reward for rushing. You still can to take an AI out, but you don't grow twice as powerful for doing it.

If you make cities too hard to capture, you end up rewarding a turtling approach instead. Can't fight someone evenly? Bunker up in your city when he comes for you... Although this happens to a certain extent now, the first strike/range advantage makes it not a great idea. If you were to say reverse it, and give defenders the ability to go first, you'd find that people will never attack (declare war and wait for him to attack you).

They might be better off putting in some cheap one-per-kingdom buildings that are available very early in the game that give bonuses like +5 gold / material / research / food etc.  Then lack of special tiles near the starting point wouldn't be a big deal and they could stop worrying about it.

IIRC, most factions in Galciv 2 had one or two such buildings.

I have to agree.  I like looking around a bit for a good starting position and rarity of resources.  I am still for some type of slider to make the resources even harder to find.

I Like this... Say  a Structure That is the center of the city- and only the city you found with your sovereigner.  That gives 3 Gold,3food,3mats ,+1 mana  a turn.

If this is city is taken over the stucture is destroyed, and can be rebuilt in a city if your sovereigner is there.. But at the cost of one Essenc - 

Call it Sovereign's Bond or such...     

Yes, that is how it is now, and I fear that adding shards to this current mix would just make it worse. Turning all the spawned resource into a default building doesn't change this at all. Giving defensive bonus and spawning peasant militia only means a rusher needs exactly x formula before he starts a rush, it doesn't make the rush any less powerful or rewarding. Grab one capital and become twice as powerful, grab two and you just won.

As for your point regarding the "first city" being less powerful... is that a problem? Because I don't see one. Why should your first city have tons of resources as a given? All that does is devalue your other cities. The capital should only be valuable because it was built first, and thus probably has the highest population, and at a higher level with more bonuses.

I really love how the special tiles change up the game and increase the replayability dramatically.  Being able to upgrade any tile ..well quite frankly, would be a boring snoozefest of uncomprehendable magnitude.  With each game comes different stategic decisions based on the resources at hand and nearby you or, more interestingly, nearby your enemies or, more interestingly still, nearby your friends. 

My view is the resource tile should not be a nessecity (other than a farm land to get going), but rather a location that is very important such that it can change the course of the war. For example, if you have no goldmines you should still be able to get the general buildings and field an army capable of defending your nation. If you own one to X you can build the good buildings (Ereog's Tower) and be able to defend and invade the next realm over. With X or more you can afford wonders and hire lots of the best units (dragons and well equipped units/heroes). In otherwords goldmines would be the differnce in being able to function and being RICH. The same would apply to other resources.

What would be intesting would be to add 15 or twenty extremely rare tiles that don't have a game-breaking impact, yet are interesting in other ways, for example:

diamond mines/rubies/emeralds/platinum: worth 1.5/2/3/4 times as much as a gold mine

tea leaves, fig trees, wall flowers, 4-leaf clovers, prairie flowers, anything else .. can be traded on caravan routes and are worth some amount of money (economic bonus) to the city that trades them.

Cave site, Raptor nest, troll bridge, shard sites ... should have increased monster spawn & presence near these tiles

lotus flowers, mandrake, eye-of-newt, bones-of-demon .. provide some kind of non-game-breaking spell bonus or perhaps mana-increase for units housed in the town they're linked two (say mandrake harvesting gives spellcasters +2 mana regeneration if stationed in the city for the whole turn [thus 3 total: 1 base + 2 mandrake] ).

There's a whole lot that can be added to the terrain to make things more colorful & interesting without being game-breaking. Tying some of these to adventure tree would make that tree more worthwhile & interesting too.

Also, we have spells that raise & lower mountains and oceans, why are woods exempt? There should be a cut forest or arson spell that can burn down sections of forest in order to plant more cities.