Get rid of it unless it serves some gameplay function. Currently the only real effect of building placement is so you can sprawl out your city to

1. Give you instantaneous movement from one end of a city to the other

2. Bring resources into the protection of city walls

No other reasons or gameplay effects, and in my opinion both of these are just cheese. Seems like having an iron mine inside your city should not be an idea situation, but in FE and EWOM that is exactly what you want.

And none of the cities are unique enough for it to matter on an aesthetic level. Almost every single one of my cities has the exact same set of buildings and look somewhat identical. So what if I was able to pick where the workshop went, it just means that its to the north of the identical city center rather than to the east. Big deal. 

I think since the code already exists leave it in, just maybe turn the default to auto-placement. Unless of course additional reasons can be implemented to make manual placement practical and serve gameplay, or widen aesthetics.

I prefer city build mode. The regular map placement has a lot of issues with placing building close to mountains. It wants to think I'm placing on the mountain.

Personally I like building placement and would never want the game to auto-place for me.

I don't really like the city zoom mode.  Whatever the default is, I'll probably just keep it off and go merrily on my way.

As for placing city building manually,  I'm ok with that too -- just be careful not to slip up with ports, watermills & lumberyards that seem to need to be in specific locations.

I started using the new mode until I noticed this option in the menu. Have been using it since then. But I like the two options. This is a case of "more options = good".

Don't take out building placement. I like that feature. Cities are kind of boring atm, and if you take out building placement they will become even more so. The issue with sneaky cities is an easy fix. Make the player fill out a four square group before they start a new square. I hope that makes sense.

just have an option to auto-place..

Keep it in and have an option to auto place sounds good.

I like the free view, but I wouldn't mind some colored underlay when placing buildings so that it gets clearer when zoomed out.

On the topic of buildings you can stretch your city far to the side in a stringy snake fashion, you can do this even with squarish late game cities by demolishing buildings on one side and building towards an area. This allows you to basically teleport your units over 5-10 tiles by abusing the city movement.

+1 to all this.

To answer the poll , if building placement had more gameplay function, I kinda prefer the birdseye camera.  As is, I auto place buildings.  

I know it's a little off topic but I really don't care for cross-city unit teleportation, or the wonky way it interacts with the city garrison and the awkwardness of moving units out of the city.  I feel like I'm not totally in control of the units, i don't know exactly where the city is or how many turns it takes to move from one place to another.

Indeed. Unit movement involving cities is a complete mess (the same mess it was in elemental for that matter ) It needs to be fixed.

I prefer zoom on, but find placing the buildings rather a pain and would rather have them autoplaced.

I do not use zoom.  I just select the building and hit the BUILD button.  Let the computer place it for me.  I have better things to do like raiding a lair.

[UI] I do wish I could double-click the building for auto-placement.

update: it's amazing how close this vote is, right now it's 39 for it on 37 for it off.  As I said before, the option will never go away. Right now I am thinking we will leave it off by default since the vote is so close. 

Also it's worth noting you can select and improvement and click the build button to have the game 'auto place' the building.  At one point you could also double click to place a building automatically, but that seems to not be working now.  I don't like the idea of single click building construction as there is pertinent info in the selection info, however, both of those are options.

update again: double clicking SHOULD be auto placing, verified this is a bug and it will be coming back in the future

@Kestral - is it possible to have the city auto-place and randomize the directional facing as well? Or do they all face one way? I'd personally prefer auto-place with random facing.

Although I like the zoom function for building placement, I seem to be having frequent issues with the camera not returning to default setting once I've placed the building. Now, I know I can readjust the camera manually, I'm just wondering if this is a bug and if anyone else has had the same problem.

I would rather the improvement just be added to the city visually. No grid, no placement. I like the idea of zooming in on the city, but maybe not on the world map. Maybe an actual city screen like Civ, MoM, or GalCiv's planet screen. I would love to see city's grow on the world map and be able to zoom in and see it alive with it's improvements, but placing the improvements serves no purpose. If there was some strategic benefit, it would make sense.

I like the City Zoom. It is not a key feature in the game. but it is nice to have.

To me, city build zoom view is only useful when landscape feature such as mountain are obstructing the view. Otherwise i do not feel like it really adds to the current city system.

I like the option---gives me more perspective.

Not entirely true. I haven't tried it in FE yet, but in WoM I once had a game where I seemed to be at war with EVERYONE, so to give me a bit of a breather I constructed a mountain range along the small stretch of land connecting one half of the continent with the other, and made a city that stretched across the only path I left. Stocked that with soldiers, and suddenly I have the gates of Sauron on my hands.

I'd usually choose off.

However, on can be usefull for correct positionning of buildings in large cities.