Finally

I have been attempting to mod a lot of stuff in the map generation system with a lot of frustration. I can send you a wishlist of stuff that should be in the map generator or in the way the map reacts with the game.

I would like to see at least some city consequence based on the surrounding terrain... I realize that terrain can be altered and that's fine, but I think the terrain spells should be much costlier and have more options like creating forests, swamps, deserts, jungles, grasslands, steppe, canyons, and unique bonuses/penalties for each one. That way it would be advantageous to select certain city types depending on your strategy, especially in the early game making it crucial to decide which terrain you are going to settle. I can think of bonuses like food, metal, prestige, gildar, production, unit bonus, movement bonus... or what about terrain related bonuses for troop types?  Gain bonus in battles that have forest in the strategic map, for example... there are so many possibilities for terrain here it's a shame they're not put to better use as a design element.

Individual tile based resource collecting is kind of dangerous imo, because I always hated how in civ you eventually make the whole world like a giant interconnected city with an improvement on every tile, what a clutter. I would be happy with say maybe you can choose a few tile/terrain based improvements for your city based on available terrain, like 1 per city lvl... trouble with tile based improvements is its a tedious grind to fill in each tile with an individually unremarkable improvement.

Having roads from the start make the world interesting?????

I do not understand this at all.Very strange statement.

I think that what he meant was it would bring the world more alive, because the lore was a post "apocalyptic" world and before the cataclysm there was civilisation. But, right now we dont see any of the vestige of the ancient civilisation exept lost library and the like. Be able to see some road, ruin and other would bring some "life" to the map.

I would be in favour a few city ruins, but not "you can't build a city unless it's on a ruins or else your city sucks". I think it would be more fun if the ruins were haunted, or infested with monsters or something. For that matter, there should be different kinds of territories already controlled by creature factions and denizens of the wastelands. Much like the ZOC for your city, there should be a ZOC around certain monster spawns where you cannot claim the land until the spawn has been defeated. Obviously some will be much more challenging than others, and some will have bonuses in their territory that can be claimed afterwards.

As far as rivers go, I think they would be OK just as a visual thing, they would help with ambience, but to really shine they need to be given some interesting mechanics, like a scout unit travelling more quickly along rivers. Tactical battles should gain some advantage with a good river defense. Rivers could be used as a bonus trade route between cities, making them more valuable. If boats ever become useful rivers might inherit some extra use there. Special locations found only along rivers could make them more interesting, for that matter special locations in any terrain type would be great. Terrain based monster spawning / wandering would seem logical too.

Some talk about forests in another thread, reminded me, that in earlier beta versions of the game, you had to build lumber camps on top of forests to get material.

Why was this removed actually? I can't remember a reason for that.

Also, wouldn't the reintroduction of that be a good idea?

In forests, lumber camps for materials. In rivers, fisheries for food bonus. At mountains, mines for a bit of metal or quarries for material too. Etc.

I always thought such a thing would make maps interesting, without the need for percentage bonus, which are much harder to appreciate since they don't have a direct impact.

Read a lot of great ideas in this thread.

It had been suggested that the different types of tiles (forest, plains, etc.) each provide specific things to the nearby cities, like in the Civ games. Why not go a step further? Instead of fixed attributes, have the various tiles use a spread that is randomly generated (within specified parameters) when the tile is generated in the game start up. For most "rolls", the differences would be not to great, about 50% or less. But leave a small percentage chance that the tile could be extraordinarily good or bad in some way or even in several different ways. This would make the maps more dynamic and interesting and I don't think such a change would be too hard to program into the game (that's only a guess).

Another way to make maps more interesting is to add additional tile types and additional things that can be found within those tiles. Like plateaus with cliffs at their edges, coastal tiles that have a reef, that kind of thing.

Also, maps could be both premade types and random generated, the player being able to select which they want to use during the initial game set-up, kind of like how it's done in the Civ series where the premade are scenarios and the random is the basic game.

I think a great map can provide very interesting "ambience", but ambience and game play are often pretty far removed!

The OP here talked mostly about ambience, which can always be touched up.  But, games with good ambiance and uninspiring game play don't last very long on hard drives.

If somebody wanted to get fancy, they could start out with a 3x3 square that gave certain bonuses, followed by a 5x5 square that folded in other bonuses (probably on a "average % basis", rather than a "x per tile" basis) as the city got larger.  This would lead to some interesting trade-offs as players evaluated short-term and long-term city positions.

BUT, doing that this late in the game feels like a pretty dramatic design decision.  I can't imagine that this wasn't considered a long time ago.

If only there was a game that could combine BOTH! Hopefully, that is what Elemental will become above anything else.