that also does sound good, it's been already suggested but I'm not sure how easily the AI can be taught to handle it so late into development..

I'm sorry but what is the point in this thread.  The game is single player not multiplayer(thank god) so there is nobody playing against you gaining an advantage.  If you don't like snaking then leave auto on or leave off and use some self-control to manually place buildings but not snake. 

I like snaking!  There I said it I'm coming out of the closet!  So quit trying to rain on my snake parade!

(gathers legions of Juggernauts to turn anti-snakers into cannabalistic sushi)

Sorry but it is not flawed design.  This has been the nature of city design since the start of the Elemental series.  The flaw is the AI not being capable of good city design or even placement after all this time.  Currently, the AI is bad in both city and outpost placement as it unleashes hordes of high level monsters.  Fortunately, for the AI, the monsters don't attack their cities very often or as the player you could just sit there and wait for the monsters to win for you.  Though, I still get a giggle out of turn 2 announcements saying so and so civilization was destroyed (because of bad city placement).

You must have an enhanced city building version of the game because I can't snake my cities "ad infinitum".  I have only so many structures that change the cities boundaries the rest are upgrades which have no effect.  I do not see snaking as any sort of exploit when it was designed that way.  As for "gaming the system" I've never understood that being a negative thing.  It is human nature to manipulate the systems that surround us to achieve maximum benefit; it is not breaking the system it is simply making rules work for our benefit.

Sorry again, but it is willpower that stops you from doing something that you can but think is wrong .  If you think snaking is wrong because it gives you an unfair advantage then it is wrong for you to do so just because you can.  Actually, most of us play sub-optimally because were just not very good .  Having said that there are plenty of 4x and wargamers & rpg players who play a game sub-optimally because it may be more fun or challenging to do so.

Having tried to respond to all your points what it really comes down is having fun since it is just a game.  I find the current system fun and you obviously do not.  I have no problem with changes as long as I can mod it back.  I already plan on modding the way piers and lumbers yards work, if it is possible, as the current design makes no sense to me.

Cheers and if you live in the US have a good Thanksgiving

My two cents:

• Appears biggest gripe is current vanilla snaking won't allow building river or forest improvements if a river or forest is not in one of the tiles immediate to city hub. Parrotmath's mod fixes that, might be a great thing to put back into vanilla.
• I don't reasonably see how the devs could ever program the AI to use proper snaking to take advantage of the map
• I like the current system. You can have it auto, do it manual, w/e floats your boat. I've done both. I like snaking when I want to grab a key resource, make a wall at a chokepoint, or get the rare urge to place my buildings facing a certain way, etc.

So in short, leave it the way it is but consider allowing the building of forest/river improvements via snaking. I find that to be the happy compromise. The player does get an edge over the AI because again, I don't see how the AI could ever be programmed to manage it. But the edge to the player is, in my opinion, immaterial, especially considering the other edges at play...

Here's an edge the player has that is not immaterial - proper usage of strategic spells, especially offensive. I'd rather the devs work on that than this issue. Just my opinion of course.

cities costing 0 mp really needs to go, that should be an easy and welcome change.

I'd be happy to try a system like parrothmath suggested, where building far from the center is more expensive hammerwise. since you're essentially getting most of the utility of a ZoC building, it seems only fair that you have to pay a comparable cost.

also town hall could use the +zoc and get -15% unrest, then add another upgrade to the monument for +1 ZoC. that you can still get the unrest bonus if you don't want the ZoC effect due to monster lairs.

Tuidjy suggestions are precisely what I like, 1 and 3 are exactly what I would like to see.

Building bridges (do you mean allow cities to build across the river, or do you mean built as a consequence of a road passing through a river)

You can already snake a city across a river (if it started at a river), it just takes time and money.  I want to make to possible even if you did not start at a river, and to make it look good.

Sometimes a city of mine reaches a river, and that's it.  It cannot grow, and whoever exits it gets stuck.  It's stupid.

A city with a river passing through should be lovely

I agree that 0 mp movement is a feature of snaking which really should go.  Unfortunately...

Since the beginning of the WoM journey this has been repeatedly asked for.  I think that there are (unsolvable?) problems with the way the game engine deals with movement.  (Another one is the loss of movement points for units which enter the same location as other units with less movement left.  So moving an army with 1 mp left through a city reduces the mp of all units stationed in the city to 1 mp.  Wtf?)  The developers have been trying to workaround these problems.  My understanding is that they can't figure out a way to get rid of 0 mp multi-tile cities without a rewrite of the engine... and that they don't want to go there. 

Trading all the beauties of multi-tile cities for this is not a good bargain.  Your mileage may differ...

Naughty Kumquat. 

But zero movement points simplifies the process of mustering units out of a city.  Between the auto-placement of newly created units and the rendering of armies, and the scale of the game, I do not see how this could be made to work.  The active city defense mechanism (where you attack units adjacent to your city) would also radically change.

Just discovered this thread!

I really don't like crimsongekko's idea of limiting building improvement to your original ZoC, this would leave a ton of resources not exploitable.

This game is still only SP, so basically if it annoys you just let the auto placement do the job for you. This is hardly what we can call an advantage over the AI.

I totally agree with this opinion, and again thanks to parrottmath we have solutions for these now.

Ofc if devs thinks it's a flaw and they "fix it" I do hope they will allow some snaking to be done for us to be able to connect ZoC, grab resources and such.

A good earth magic specialist could fix that mountain problem for you...