There is a new mechanic in Beta 4A where there's a penalty if a city isn't connected to the capital via the zone of control.

I wonder if something like that might be beneficial for resources.  I *personally* prefer using the ZOC because it represents the area that is supposed to be reasonably safe -- you've civilized it.

I think it's kind of strange that an outpost 20 tiles away from the tied city can receive resources and labor and construct stuff just as fast as an outpost that is 4 tiles away from the tied city.

Concerning the ZoC gap between the outpost and the tied city, how about a % check (starting at 0) every turn that increases per uncivilized tile between the outpost and city ZoC. This would simulate the route being unsafe and unreliable for transport. If some random monster eats the caravan bringing the materials to the city, all physical transported material (iron, crystal) from that outpost is lost for that turn.

Maybe you could have the shortest route calculated between outpost and nearest friendly CITY ZoC. Each untamed tile for that route would have a % increase based on the tile type, say 1% for plains, 3% for desert, 5% for forests, 8% wastelands or something like that.

Looks like it would be a lot of work for something not so serious to the gameplay. But I do hope something is done to contrast distant outposts vs. nearby outposts beyond reinforcements.

('-')y

Zone of control whenever you build a buildign that increases it (Town hall, Monument), or when you upgrade your cities to a town (city choice lvl 2).

Also the Zone of Control shapes around from each corner and angle from the city, so the bigger and more spread the city is, the bigger zone of control.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

ZoC is increased by population milestones. It can also be increased by buildings. 

On the other hand, guerrilla warfare is much more refined when I can hurt your economy by breaking your supply lines between cities. So now you can't reinforce a city and its economy is hurt by my attacks. Add a slight gildar bonus to pillaging resources and we will really have a nice game for me. Of course when MP comes out it will increase the number of rage uninstalls, but it's a price we must be willing to pay. 

well, my take on this is that the zone of control represents the combined military, magical and political means a sovereign has on controlling the world around his territory. Resources are funnelled into towns, monsters walk out of your territory if they feel weaker than you, attack you if they feel stronger, and ai's ignore you and plop an outpost down right in the middle of your territory (jk on that one, but it fees that way).

It makes sense for settlements to send out a zone of control, but outposts and monolith's are problematic in that they have no inherent means of defending themselves, and can't be easily garrisoned in the current system nor do stationed troops get a bonus on outposts (although there is the outpost upgrades now).
so the outpost becomes merely a sort of capture the flag point - but i don't think the game mechanics really reflect that.

perhaps you could change the way wages are calculated so that only units not in a town or garrisoned in an outpost have to pay wages. Of course you would have to rebalance the idea of town militia, but then you already have to do that anyways. The option for wages in teh field might mean that people have larger standing armies and you could reduce the gold production values of economies to better control it. There are several ways you could handle gold in that situation, depends on how much you want armies moving around in the field..

EDIT: directed at frogboy, i think the main issue the OP has is that there is no mechanism for stealing from the ai's and slowing down their economies through warfare and dirty tricks. it's either declare war to  raze things and take over towns or casts spells on cites to lower their production. There aren't any other options and no thief style of hero options, as an assassion is a more specialized type of fighter to deal burst physical damage.

Hmm, okay.  I'll have to test that.

In the game no. In the XML, yes. I would have posted the specifics, but I forget where they are. Could be Elemental Defs or some other obscure place. Might even be in Core Improvements on the cityhub.