NorsemanViking, every one of your arguments can be easily applied to disabling tactical combat and troop design, because there are troop types that the AI cannot handle in tactical combat.

I'm sure that if I try a bit harder, I can apply it to converting Fallen Enchantress into a side-scroller with one button, as well.

The latter paragraph is an exaggeration.  The former is not.

Well, I think that there is an art to snaking, just as there is an art to troop design, and I know that I still agonized over city placement when snaking could get you a pier or a forest.

But these are all subjective.  I personally believe that snaking's main benefit is dominion push, and snaking to resources is a poor third, after quick travel. It's rather strange when the first two are OK, but the third is frowned upon.

Yes, but manual placement starts off so new players won't have any problems anyway.

Having manual placement as an option for people who really want it is reasonable, sure it can be exploited but it is only single player after all, there are already plenty of other ways to make your game easier or harder depending on which mechanics/build options you choose to exploit.

I'm afraid that we will not get into it.

From a "logical" point of view, not allowing sneaking makes the same sense as not having a roadbuilding unit. I mean, it is a decision from Devs. We find it arbitrary, they will state reasons for doing that way (or not).

If you need a forest to build a lodging camp...the city grows and now you have access to a forest! It is so hard to understand that mechanics...

I will complain, and bump every post I see related with it.

Why not? That's what SD has been trying to do with FE right from the get go. They had a huge debate on single tile cities versus multi tile cities back in, I think it was, beta 3. They decided on multi tile cities to give the player the rpg experiance of exanding cities. Why expand a city is there is ZERO point to expanding a city? Without snaking, might aswell role back to single tile cities and be done with it.

In any case, they already had the mechanism in place because when the redesigned city features first came in out beta 4, snaking did exist. AND IT WAS FUN. The entire purpose of the Manual Placement Option was for players to be given manual control in how they wanted their city to expand and develop. It was a very RPG feature and was very enjoyable to do.

Then it was taken away. Why? The arguement was that it was too powerful for a player to snake. The AI snaked too. In fact, the AI still builds cities in locations where they expect to be able to snake (at least randomly so) towards a river or forest tile. Now ALL those cities are being chosen under sub-optimal conditions since their full potential can no longer be reached.

I still think the answer lies in the Manual Placement Option. If auto-placement is active, deny snaking as the AI is not attempting to do so. If manual-placement is active, allow snaking, since AI is attempting to do so anyways.

Problem fixed. And 100% of players are very happy with their cake.

If this could be easily done, would be the perfect solution

Wow. Wish my wife would read this.

Agreed that extreme snaking isn't the answer. That's why we're hashing out ideas to limit snaking....like all squares in a tile must be filled before being able to build on the next square out....etc.

Also agree that it seems silly that you cannot build, in your ZoC, buildings that you should be able to build. 

It is silly, if they are silly mechanisms.

I would prefer it if it wasn't hard coded so I can change it with a mod.

Edit: Nevermind... I have figured out how to mod it back into the game.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/436856