lvl 1 Bandits shouldnt raze cities.

Well... I can see your point... But It's sorta of a tradition. Never leave your early bases undefended in a 4X, what you ask is like an Rpg with no rat-fighting and NPC errands in the beginning 

so far i am finding the monsters and ruffians are actually a lot more threatening than the enemy factions (on easy). while i've not had anything this bad, i can see how it would suck.

imho, on the lower difficulty levels bandits shouldn't attack cities at all. the monster faction is more fun when it acts as a barrier to expansion and harasser of caravans/small units, rather than taking the offense.

i am of the opinion that generally, if a player can't (or won't want to) recover from something, or can't reload to a few turns before and avoid it, then it shouldn't happen, because the fun has died.

I wish bandits would raze cities. The AI of the 'creeps' is horrible - they usually just stand there and watch me do whatever; they are rarely aggressive and I have yet to see them take a city. I never leave defenders in any of my cities because the world is simly not threatening.

Brings up memories ... It used to happen to me when I was a Master of Magic n00b, in 1994 and 1995. 

I wish that after a city was razed, there would be the rubble and ruins of a city, which could then be built on for less than the original cost of building structures and the like. Right down to Supreme Commander's style of letting you place buildings anywhere in the rubble, but having interface clues as to where the structure was previously placed that could be rebuilt at a reduced cost. While I understand a wooden house can be burned down, a palace made of marble and stone is unlikely to burn so readily. In the beta there was also the suggestion that it should take more than one turn for a city to be ransacked. Personally I'd like to see that as well, if for no other reason than to watch the cities burn.

There was the suggestion that a cities population would be able to band together and form a peasant militia. Brad seemed to really appreciate the idea, so I was pretty psyched to see it implemented in game. It was disappointing when I realized the few peasants that you get in the campaign were all that has come so far from this intriguing suggestion.

My toughts exactly. Elemental is a PvE 4X at the moment

It would be convenient that when cities are founded they automatically have a peasant squad stationed within.  I think it would be consistent wtih common sense and fluff--I mean people aren't going to idly sit by while bears attack their houses, workshops, and arcane labs.  Otherwise, my cities just get attacked when there is no unit stationed there for defense.

"that patch of land now being completely and utterly worthless and unbuildable for the rest of the game"

uh... I think you can build on it after a few turns. You might not want to quit so soon if THAT is your problem. Like others here I don't usually use defenders at first (not until I can make at least groups of 3) but then, I also loose a lot of pioneers... basically from my experience, you must have rotten luck.

Then why don't you just train/send one peasant with a staff with the pioneer instead of four. Only takes three turns. When inside the outpost, the peasant will have 10 hitpoints, giving him a decent chance of defending successfully against such early attack.

If you want even better chance,give him helm and bracers as well. A peasant with 3 attack, 3 defense(standing on a 50% defense bonus square) and 10 hitpoints has a very good chance to destroy the bandit.

It's a good idea to always have at least one unit defending a city.  When starting a new city, that means you should send a soldier that can handle whatever you've got crawling around the map.

A solution, so the game isn't as utterly harsh on new players might be raiding-

Bandits can loot a city when they attack and take money, materials, etc. out of your coffers (a percent tied to their level). If you don't have enough to pay, they raze the city.

So, a bandit might take 12 gold and 6 materials when raiding that outpost, forcing you to train a peasant to guard it.

Problem with that is that, in my experience at least, early players don't have much in the line of reserves. So the bandit might raid and only get a single gildar or a single material, if he is lucky.

It would be nice, for a change, to play a medieval/fantasy themed game where people defend their homes. It not just makes sense, it would be refreshing. It would work like free units available for city defense only. Normally they wouldn't be of much use, but they'd do if there are city walls.

Bandits and monsters would serve as a barrier to expansion (as already mentioned) and would threaten resources, caravans and stuff lying outside the city walls. Only stronger bandits and raiders could actually destroy cities.

A real single bandit would probably sneak into the town, maybe clonk someone on the head with his club, and steal their horse.

Not destroy an entire civilization.

you could have a garrisson script, where peasants are automatically created to defend settlements when they are attacked. the only problem with this though, is that if the garrisson is strong enough to defeat the bandits, then why would they ever attack? could be balanced once the mid game comes around (ie, the garrisson is only capable of beating early game monsters).

Yea ... imho if a bandit wanders into town then you steal some gold from your treasury.

If an animal wanders into town you lose 1 building.

Large Beasts destroy multiple buildings

an Army of Large Beasts will destroy the city (probably)

... and an army of Bandits will "TAKE OVER" the city (not destroy it) .... (and any time you lose a city you should probably lose some gold as well)

This is very true and the same results are for every difficulty level because monsters have only one behavior... wandering.  Thus the monsters are all stuck wandering getting high and drunk without any purpose.  You only have to worry if they accidently wander to close.  Long ago I posted a list of different monster/AI behaviors: https://forums.elementalgame.com/337474  .  And from the entire list the only one provided is "wandering".  What makes it worse is the wandering has a range limitation effectively placing a chain on the ankles of those poor monsters.  What happened to the living world we all wanted where monsters have different goals/purposes such as guarding an area, seeking weaker things to attack allowing them the strong ones to increase in levels, monsters seeking others for breeding which generates stronger offspring, raiders purposely attacking our caravans, others offering to independently attack as mercenaries for gold, etc., etc., ??  While monsters bump into each other and increase in levels the monsters never heal thus most of them because easy prey for the gamer.  Instead were stuck with only wandering.     

The other extremely bad piece of only having wandering as an option is during map creation!  As a result us map makers will be seriously challenged for providing interesting maps.  Last I checked we can't even assign units/monsters to specific players in the editor!!  Last I checked we can't even provide any existing cities for a specific player in the editor!! Until the cartographers table(map editor) is improved(and repaired) we're not going to see any campaigns or maps with any depth. 

The problem is that once they raze a city, you can send another pioneer to found a new city on one of the ruin-plots, but the surrounding plots are still ruins, unbuildable, and useless. Hence any new city you found after that lvl 1 bandit razed the initial city, is extremely crippled.
So one lvl 1 bandit can cripple the heartlands of your entire civilization for the rest of the game, on turn 20. Now thats what i have a problem with

And remember i'm only complaining about this regarding the very first 50 turns of the game.

You should have built 2 or so Peasants at the very least during the first 20 turns. So this kinda your own fault. You are the one that left a city undefended, if you can't spare the 10 gildar and 2 materials to defend it then you got bigger problems then bandits.  Not to mention you shoulda escored the Pioneer with at the very least 1 peasant if not 2.  This is essentially 4x game 101 by the way. Its kinda just how these games are. The wandering monsters/bandits/barbarians (in civ) are there early game to put some pressure and unpredictability into the early game when empires are too weak to wage war with each other.

Lvl 1 bandits and wolves should make you fear for your life. The forest should be a place you most likely want to avoid, and not just a patch to grind gimp monsters for coin and XP.

Exactly !! The current monsters are way way tooo passive... my champions traveling thru a forest feel like they're walking thru a petting zoo.  I wrote this earlier, but it's so important I must say again:

What happened to the living world we all wanted where monsters have different goals/purposes such as guarding an area, seeking weaker things to attack allowing them the strong ones to increase in levels, monsters seeking others for breeding which generates stronger offspring, raiders purposely attacking our caravans, others offering to independently attack as mercenaries for gold, etc., etc., ??  While monsters bump into each other and increase in levels the monsters never heal thus most of them because easy prey for the gamer.

I rebuilt on a razed city, and while I didn't get my orchard back, I could build another lumber mill on the old destroyed one and another mine on the old destroyed one.

**shrugs**

I want more cities to be razed. Particularly if I didn't research fortifications, if I leave a city undefended, it's in hopes someone will come in and raze it.

Keep bandits razing cities, I like it.