First of all, I agree it's an unbalanced fix as implemented in the current incarnation of the game.

However, I have found a way to mod it into usefulness. I simply made the adventuerer's guild NOT limited to 1 per faction (you can build one in each city). I also made the adventurer's guild give 3% of a level per turn (governors who make levels governing? gasp!) so that every 34th turn a stationed champion would make a level. But most importantly, I made the adventurer's guild give a 5% (cumulative) discount to champion recruitment costs. So, if you built 20 adventurer's guilds... champions would be FREE. Of course, by the time you can build 20... it's likely not an issue anymore. However, if my changes were in the base game.... champion costs that increased with number of champions would be OK. 

On a side note... I believe that the Adventurer's Trait should only give 50% discount to champion recruitment costs. Steal spirit is fine. If you want to slaughter your heroes to keep your costs down... you should be able to do so. Evil bastard.

Here's what I changed it to (in CoreImprovements.xml):

<ImprovementType InternalName="AdventurersGuild">
    <DisplayName>Adventurer's Guild</DisplayName>
    <Description>Champions gain 3% of a level per season when stationed in a city with an adventurer's guild. It also reduces the cost of recruiting champions by 5% per adventurer's guild built.</Description>
    <RequiresCity>1</RequiresCity>
    <BarredTerrain>River</BarredTerrain>
    <BarredTerrain>SwampTerrain</BarredTerrain>
    <PreferredTerrain>City</PreferredTerrain>
    <PreferredTerrain>Category:Land</PreferredTerrain>
    <PreferredTerrain>Forest</PreferredTerrain>
    <Prereq>
        <Type>Tech</Type>
        <Attribute>Recruiting</Attribute>
    </Prereq>
    <LaborToBuild>540</LaborToBuild>
    <GameModifier>
        <ModType>StationedUnitStatBonus</ModType>
        <StrVal>UnitStat_Experience</StrVal>
        <StrVal2>OnlyChampions</StrVal2>
        <Value>3</Value>
        <Operator>%</Operator>
        <Provides>Champions gain 3% of a level per season when stationed in a city with an adventurer's guild. </Provides>
    </GameModifier>
    <GameModifier>
        <ModType>Player</ModType>
        <Attribute>AbilityBonus</Attribute>
        <StrVal>A_Recruiting</StrVal>
        <Value>-5</Value>
        <Provides>-5% Champion recruitment costs</Provides>
    </GameModifier>
    <AIData AIPersonality="AI_General">
        <AIPriority>5</AIPriority>
        <AITag>CommandPost</AITag>
    </AIData>
    <ArtDef>Art_AdventurersGuild</ArtDef>

</ImprovementType>

And this one illustrates DsRaider's point in post #67:

As of 1.29 I looked in the TerrainTypes.xml and here's what I saw essentially:

fertile land and river land contribute 1.5 units of grain to the area around them. (So if there were two "fertile" tiles you might see 3 grain somewhere between them.)         Fertile (2 grain)     Plains  (3 g)     Fertile (2 g)  

forest contributes 2.0 material to the area around it.

base essence is 0.15 from tiles, with extra added from certain resource features nearby.

 If you just boost those up a bit... all of a sudden the yields look much nicer all around. It's not a matter of "materials and essence crowding out grain". There is no max total. They just all have very low values contributing into the mix and thus the likelihood of a decent spot becomes negligible.

The stardock team is trying to address this by increasing grain and materials buildings to give a larger multiplier to low base yields, and I support this change since I've never reached the end of a city building queue. However, the problem might not be in the generation algorithm, but rather the low base inputs, especially on map selection which isn't temperate (no rivers, few fertile spots).

 Having messed around with it, I've found 2.0 grain, materials unchanged, and .60 essence pretty friendly, but IDEALLY there would be 3 selections for each resource at map generation. (Essence low, normal, high) which substitute in appropriate values. *shrug* We'll see where they go with it.

It's important to note that there IS a MINIMUM total (grains+material+essence) for a tile to show a yield and be able to be settled. One way to keep "city spots" a limited resource, but still be workable is to increase this value to whatever your threshold of pain turns out to be. If a 4 yield total (130) seems ridiculous then 5 would be your minimum, etc. Personally, I like this around 7 (232, 241, 331, etc).

Update: Reviewing changes made in ver 1.291 I see that some more changes have been made to increase yields. These changes are nearly the same as what I'm using, and should help people having trouble with bad starts.

Quoting mqpiffle, reply 76

First game I load up with 1.921:



Do you seriously think this is fun, Derek?

I mean just look at Ceresa, she's like "WTF?"

This have been my average start since I loaded up 1.291, and I would prefer more than 1 tile to choose from. Thank you
And whats with the woods being Unsettleable? I can't seem to get any location to build a Lumbermill these games >_<

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Has the pop cost for building pioneers been removed in 1.291? And if so, why??? Pioneers now seems to cost 30 gold instead. Never saw this up in the changelog.

If you increase resource yields slightly then you can nab a good spot with access to a forest, and it may open up more tile choices.

Also, in ElementalDefs you can change MinValidTotalTileYield to something lower than 7.

Myself, I've gone the other way, increased it to 8 and messed around with the resource yields.  Because I love more resources, and so does the AI.

As for the meantime, install the "Snaking" mod, which allows you to snake and build on forests and rivers.

Instead of lowering the Accuracy penalty of Blindness by 25% the spell should have a duration of 3 turns.

+1

Seems backwards....in a world where there are few fertile zones because of the cataclysm, sure seems like those zones should have yield tiles.

This one definately needs a revisit. Random tile yields just because is not going to add to the game...

I totally agree....I wouldn't play this game. Ctrl-N is going to be overused I think...

I started a game this morning where there was no place around me to settle, then came here and saw this.  Never knew about ctrl+n until I saw this post, but after playing around with that command this morning, I'd advise against using it anyway.  I believe there is a memory leak with that command, because if you keep using it, eventually you run out of places to build at all.  When you start a game and there are X amount of spots to settle it must remember those x,y locations and if you ctrl+n and your new map has one of those spots flagged as unsettle-able then it remembers that.  For the heck of it I did ctrl+n about 30 times and then moved around the map and there were no places to build, and 4 factions died to monsters.  Great if you want to do a sole survivor map, but not overly challenging as long as you avoid roaming monsters.

I've had Ctrl-N starts happen at most 5% of the time, but that means nothing around me at all, which is a bug in my eyes, usually happens with mountains around.

Your new tile generation system makes no sense. The new generator softcaps nearly everything at a total of 9 yields per tile. Also it seemingly just randomly pulls tile yields from nearby tiles at random and then ignores the rest. In this scenario the best city you will ever come across is probably just a simple (3/3/3) city. Your old tile generation system was fine it just needed some tweaking not a complete overhaul.

I've been building a mod to create more varied tile yields, and create areas where there is a possibility for 'epic' cities to occur, should the proper circumstances occur of course, the picture below shows one of these places. I figured this will help kill the mundane advancement into enemy territory, just claiming waves of useless cities, as well as create the need to fight for and secure tiles/cities at these locations. This would also introduce a sense of wonder as one explorers the world, and stumbles upon these cities/locations. It will also help to eliminate the 'if you've seen one tenth, of the map you've seen it all' effect. However, the new tile yield system really messes that up.

This is a picture of how your old system generated a map. In my mod poisoned rivers give bonus production and essence. You can see that tiles next to the poison river all have essences. There is no cap at 9 yields per tile. All tiles around the Life Essence have at least 2 essences. Monuments give 1 production and essence, so the spot between the monument, and the poison river has another material, but doesn't give enough essence to bump up the tile to 5. Overall it makes sense what tiles should get what bonuses. Below is the same exact spot generated with your new tile system.

Very confusing as to why certain tiles right next to certain elements do not receive bonuses. Some areas just become unsettleable.  Everything is caped at 9 or less tile yields. So the tile generator just seems to pick 9, or less, things from nearby tiles and ignore the rest. Makes for some rather boring, uninteresting, and inconsistent cities. You will often leave players walking up to certain elements and leave them wondering why X element has no effect on Y tile(s) next to it.

i just played this game for the first time in a while (just on normal) and the pace seems a little quicker and for me, more fun overall.  I was going to fight Yithril just because (I was Tarth) but I had to act quickly to defeat Capitar who was building magic towers and then move my forces across the map to fight Resoln, also building towers.  meanwhile yithril started attacking me again on my undefended flank.  i haven't looked whether or not this is the case, but maybe "You're building towers" should be a negative relationship modifier for the ai; I consider it an act of war if they aren't my ally.

I could deal with a few more settleable tiles to choose from (I was playing on a temperate map), but overall i like the feel, not sure it was luck of the draw though. some matches are just more fun than others. I'd like to pacify my enemies so I can tale that lost city, Deocornys.  I hadn't seen that wildlaand before, looks like a lot of fun.

Maybe time to take away the unreleased tags?

With the release of Patch 1.3 I'm having a few issues. 

This may just be my personal taste, concerning character movement on the strategic view. Why the incredible increase in phase? Should have been optional in my opinion. Because now it just looks like you wish to avoid any sort of animation and moves back to the old fashioned, with no animation whatsoever. 

Note, I am well aware there are, but it's so fast, like was it really much of an issue before on Patch 1.2. 

Secondly, probably just need to start a new map, but that's also frustrating, I had a good go at one of my games, and now halfway through I'll have to end up starting all over, because it's all become a mess in my old save. Resource locations that used to be there are now lost. And some are so useless now that I've kinda lost all my initial strategy. 

I'm really liking this game, but this new patch ain't exactly receiving my approval. 

Pioneers cost gold instead of population. It's not in the patch notes. I was quite liking the dynamic of them costing population.

In my first attempt at a new game 1.30, the tile yields are looking much better. 

BUG: the diplomatic ultimatum of withdrawing from neutral's lansd resolves in my units retreating to closest border NO MATTER WHAT I ANSWER!

If I answer I want war, shouldn't I be capable of staying in place where I was?

No list of "Fixed issue where AI settles on top of ressources, outposts n stuff", so I guesss this was neglected onece again.

I would think that the tile the AI settles on would be related to difficulty setting of that AI.

Nope, this is working as designed. If you start a war and you are within the enemy border you will be tossed outside of it somewheres. This is to prevent EXPLOITING the AI diplomacy and friendship feature. So, you'll just have to get used to it.

Oh and therefore NOT A BUG!

Those days are over now they cost gold and they will have to tweak and nerf some things now so they aren't overpoweredly built. I already found taking the wealthy trait (get 500 more gildar from the start) I can churn out a couple of them with money alone and then build another in a handful of turns.

I think the wealthy trait should just be an adjusted gildar per turn increase and a below the limit amount that a player would be able to RUSH a pioneer out in the first turn or so. Then the pioneer spam would be back down to a reasonable level.