Now I actually do not agree with this. I do not want anything to spawn randomly. that was a big issue in WOM. Unless there is certain event, or dissaster or whatever. 

There is enough to do on the map, and when you actually explore most of it, you have got AI to compete with. You are not there to fight with neutrals all the time. There should be time when the game shift focus from exploring and gathering, to heavy wars with AI.

I'm not sure what you're looking for here - this game is supposed to be about empires competing, not bashing monsters in the wilderness endlessly - there's plenty of other games that do that much better. I think there's already more than enough monsters on any given map - you can power up more than one stack of doom to high level by killing monsters as it is.

I don't agree with this either.  I do like the idea that lairs can continually churn out groups of monsters (with the main monster sitting near the lair)... but once the main monster is destroyed and its lair cleared, they shouldn't respawn.  I don't like the idea of random new lairs appearing either.

I think overall the world is too small an cramped.  Cities should be smaller, and there should be more open wilderness/no man lands between cities.  So that if I march am army to another town, its an big undertaking.

It's not about doing the quests forever or cleaning lairs forever, it's about those aspects of the game always being present, where the borders of your lands are always dangerous and you can't just ignore your cities that aren't exposed to other players because you never know when a new troll might move in and start wrecking havok. A game with monsters and treasures and quest should always have those elements even if they become diluted or sparser later on, the world should never be totally void of them. There's not enough to the warfare in this game to make it acceptable on it's own two feet IMO, the game needs the "ambiance" always present, going to war should mean dealing with invading armies and monsters running around in your back yard, at the same time.

I'm honestly surprised this isn't unanimously supported, I thought everyone else was having the most fun with the "RPG" elements as well. Perhaps it should just be another difficulty option, a new harder monster setting with tons of monsters everywhere and respawning lairs. I'm already playing on the setting with more monsters, on the largest map size, with less and less AI players every game.

I think a dynamic world event of monster spawns, level and quantity of which would depend on player power (level of champions, tech, etc), would be, well, epic! Not something that happens often to be annoying, but something that is a real game changer. I thoroughly enjoyed that craziness with GalCivII.

I would like monsters to spawn, but never inside your territory. But I think if you explore one area and kill a few monsters, but then leave that area alone, there should be new monsters there later. Not at a high rate, but they should be there. Your civilization is pushing back the darkness and monsters of the world, so they shouldn't just be gone forever anywhere but inside your territory. With cities and outposts it's not hard to expand your territory, so I would love to see more reason to do so

I think that if a wandering group of monsters comes into an empty, unclaimed area, it only makes sense that they would set up shop.  After all, you destroyed their former home.  If there is competition, then they should keep wandering.  It would lend yet another balancing effect to the uber hero stack.  You may have to split them up and have some lesser heroes hang back for defensive purposes.  I feel that after the map has been scoured clean it starts to feel pretty stale.  You can literally forget about large swaths of the map.  Why?  Because they are boring now.  That doesn't seem right.  Evil should still be lurking in the cracks.  Not random respawns necessarily, but part of the ongoing development of the world.  If you don't want lairs respawning in your territory, then make sure you intercept those homeless groups of creepy crawlies looking for a quiet place to call home.

what about this; an event that create a lair inside your territory with a nasty number of monsters that will storm your weak defended cities? Imagine if you put all of your effort to the front-lines against the enemy cities, then suddenly you got backstabbing by the monsters from behind.

This is exactly my point, you shouldn't be "wandering back" to defend your own territory, you should have defenses in place already to deal with this specific threat. You don't need champions or sovs to beat monsters, you can send the local garrison out to deal with them, and if you really hate tactical combat so much you can auto-resolve it.

Leaving entire sections of your lands completely void of defenders is silly and incomprehensible in such a world, but the mechanics currently support just that.

Err.. I didn't say my cities were undefended. The issue is that -unleveled- guardsmen/spearmen/bowmen cannot deal with the drakes/golems/undead that are capable of spawning in unexplored areas. Perhaps if the threats that spawned near/entered your borders were much weaker than those that spawned further away from civilized areas, or if unleveled units were much stronger it wouldn't be an issue. As it stands this detracts from other pursuits.

Solve one big problem and you wouldn't need to worry about having random respaws and such. The problem is that the world is completely civilized far to fast, and after that there's nowhere to explore.

One of the things I found most fun about the Fall from Heaven mod for civ was the fact that the empires on the map almost never ended up occupying all the land available. There were always wild islands or remote jungles you could send your hunters off to to try to find that last gorilla for your capital's menagerie. There was almost always that sense of the wild around. After the animals were gone the barbarian orc cities would start popping up, and after that some barb city would almost always build the dragons hoard. A couple of the mod mod did an even better job with this aspect of the game. The word just always seemed so wild, with new places to explore around every corner and often a good reason to explore. There were always hill giants roaming around somewhere and they provided a real threat well into the mid and early late game. There was even a faction geared towards exploring this wilderness with special explorer units and no upkeep based on distance to the capital.

It was one of the reasons I was so happy when Kael joined the team. I think FFH is perhaps one of my favorite games to come out in the last decade.

Elemental never had this magic. The wild just never felt that interesting, mainly because there just wasn't much variety. It was obvious from the first announcement of FE that they were trying to capture this sense FE. But unfortunately, FE doesn't really seem to have the magic either. I'm not sure whats missing?

- The lack of boats or any ability to have remote islands, this is actually pretty big. Entire world is open to everyone immediately, and entire world gets gobbled up immediately.

- No real penalty for empire sprawl. There is some diminishment of faction prestige as empires expand, but I haven't noticed much of an effect

- But the big thing is that the wilds were actually dangerous. If you sent out one of your first units in the wild they would almost certainly die. The life expectancy of a scout was around 10 turns. Here that is just not the case. Your first unit, your sov, can pretty much wander around anywhere with little chance he'll be killed, and if he is... blam... instant respawn in the capital (i've actually gotten myself killed on purpose just to fast travel back home to sell off loot). There's no real incentive to send out a scout other then your sov, because regular units can't pop goodie huts ... i mean unique locations or whatever the FE term for them is. So you end up exploring the wild with a stack of champions that essentially can't be killed by anything wandering around out there (barring a wildland, that I actually have yet to seen in any of the 5 games I've played). Where is the suspense? Where is the danger? Its just not there right now. 

- Atmosphere. One the big thing that FFH has the FE just still doesn't come close on is atmosphere. Now this isn't specifically related to making the wild feel dangerous but I think it plays a role. The atmosphere, lore, and backstory in FFH was simply amazing. It was dark, it was gritty, and it pulled you in and kept you prisoner. The factions were amazingly diverse. When sending out an explorer you really felt like you were going out into a living breathing world. You could role play adventures even with your generic hunter much better than you can with your uber customized sov in FE. Some of my favorite games in FFH where ones where I spent the vast majority of my time with a band of hunters with a few hawks exploring the remote reaches of the map. Where is the "Nature's Revenge" global spell that boost the power of all the animals still on the map? Where is the ritual that brings a new empire of demons into existence somewhere out in the wilderness? Where is lentum frigus that gives a permanent bonus to a couple of the empires if they're the one to find it first? All sorts of cool stuff that just isn't there in elemental. 

- Game mechanics. Bottom lines is that FFH was built on one of the best game engines with some of the most solid game mechanics out there, Civ 4. Everything worked well, everything was well balanced. Just not the case with elemental or FE. Tech progression is out of what with empire expansion. There's no real difference in terrain so it feels like you're exploring through space; where is the excitement that exists when you found the Remnants of Patria right next to yggradasil for the spot that makes an ubber city.

I really want to like FE, but there's just still so much thats lacking when you compare it to stuff like FFH or AOW:SM 

I don't agree with this, sorry.  I like the way the game shifts focus as a result of the static monsters, as opposed to having them constantly respawning or new lairs.

Initially, the world is a wild and dangerous place.  Your armies spend more time fighting strange beasts than other armies.  After several hundred turns, the monsters are eradicated or domesticated.  The world has been civilised and reclaimed.  Now, the focus is on the greater threat - the Kingdoms and Empires of the world.

Civilization IV has this aspect as well - initially, you fight again wild animals.  Eventually, the animals are all gone as the world becomes civilised and the focus shifts.
It doesn't make sense that a bear would attack my Tanks during WWIII, or for a Lion to say Seige to my 6000 year old, incredibly well defended City.

Same thing applies here, in my opinion.
As suggested, though, I'd gladly accept more during a random Event.  "Underground Spider Invasion" anyone? 

The caravans in FE will respawn in a few turns after being destroyed you know right? Its not a perfect system but its a lot better than WoM.

I hope so too, would be a great way for new and powerful unique lairs to spawn

I for one will never miss WoM's random resource/mob spawning based off techs, it just made no sense and really took away from the role playing aspect