This would be a pretty big change at this point but I think I agree.  The whole your-units-move-faster-in-your-cities thing encourages ugly city sprawl.

I suppose it all depends on how crowded a map will get over time.  If cities are covering 50% of the map, something is probably wrong.  I haven't played very much of Elemental or Fallen Enchantress yet so I'll refrain from posting until I know how it works in practice. 

I think cities should take up no more than the 9 tiles we gain resources from. Improvements should build up not out. 

They are not going to change the building system. I doubt it would even be possible for them to do it with the way the game engine was developed. At least discuss things which are plausible.

May just need two rings.  The current one for territory and a smaller one for building range.

I wouldn't mind that too but I doubt it will happen

I can think of only three practical reasons to micro building placement:

• Make a long and ugly city to help troop movement - cheese
• Form city for strategic chokepoint (such as walling off a pass between mountains) - valid
• Placement towards world resources so they incorporate inside the city proper - minor cheese

Can anyone think of others?

I remember rotating buildings in EWOM and trying to make aesthetically pleasing cities. A few built around hills and mountains with key buildings placed in certain locations made for some really cool 3d zoomed in visuals. Unfortunately this was the exception and not the rule.

Thus, I would like to argue to maintain placement of buildings because I think it's a cool feature but I struggle to find valid reasons to do so.

I put alot of thought into my city design, but I would gladly give them up in favor of a tighter design scheme. Autobuild should happen automatically and be intelligent, but placing the building is not an option that needs to be specifically turned off. I would like to know more about what the devs are thinking in this respect. 

I've mentioned this in another thread, however I think all that's needed is location bonuses for buildings, so that placement has some inherent strategy to it and requires some thought.  Instead of removing the concept, make it better.

So, for example, buildings are given a type - for example:

• Civilian
• Military
• Arcane
• Production
• Logistical

When two buildings of the same type are placed adjacent to one another, they receive a small maintenance decrease or small bonus to whatever effect they offer the city.  When two buildings of differing types are placed adjacent to one another, they have a negative impact.

So, placing a Civilian Building next to another Civilian Building means both buildings pay 5% less maintenance.  However, placing a Military building next to the first Civilian Building increases the maintenance cost of the Civilian building by 5% (to an adjusted total of 0% difference) and the Military Building now pays an additional 5% more maintenance.

The benefit is small enough that it's not worth dedicating hours to, however large enough that it could add up across a city.

For convenience purposes, when placing a Building the map should shift to an over head view and all Buildings colour coded to represent their type - showing maintenance adjustments on them - to speed up the process (Don't place Red buildings next to Blue buildings, etc.).

Thoughts?

I agree with ZehDon and would like to see the building placement stay but with something added to it to make it worthwhile. The buildings themselves really look nice and placing them is quite fun until you realise that it doesn't make any difference.

Another suggestion to stop snake cities (or at least make them a choice not a necessity) would be to increase the maintenance cost of cites that have too large an area per building (by this i mean the overall area of the city itself) - thereby giving an incentive to build in a circle but still making the snake an option if you really want to do it.

If they keep building placement it should be made more obvious that you're in "place building mode".

Hihglight the building maybe and flash a message across the screen or zoom in on the city.

Also when you have city icons turned on it's quite hard to place buildings because the city icon blocks a big part of the placement area. Would be great if the city icon was temporarily removed during building placement.

Yeah, I agree.  The snaky cities can be ugly, and have strange gamey properties.  Even if you aren't purposely manipulating them to fast-travel, they make it so you don't know how many moves it takes to go from point A to point B (not a great feature in a strategy game).  If you aren't manipulating them to fast travel or block a pass, then it's a pointless feature.  

sums it up quite nicely, lol

"placing them is quite fun until you realise that it doesn't make any difference"