Even the “barren” and “boring” deserts are dangerous
Having just come from working on War of Magic, the second title in the Elemental universe is a lot more intense. The world is filled with “stuff” right from the start. A lot of the stuff is good. Some of it, not so good. Every tile matters.
Every tile matters comes into play in a big way when you decide to found a city. With food now a local resource, your cities have to feed themselves. You can still build a city anywhere you’d like but obviously if you build in a desert or wasteland that city isn’t going to thrive. And since how fast you build things (or train things) is based on production which in turn is affected by population and local resources (rather than a fixed set of turns) it matters a great deal where you put things.
At a basic level, the source of conflict in Fallen Enchantress is that resources are scarce and someone wants what you’ve got (or vice versa). And those resources are derived from the land itself.
And the land is not your friend.
