you can add more essence by upping shard density and world resources.

There is a typo here. should be:

Fortress (+1 Level for Train Units)
Town (+1 Zone of Control)
Conclave (+50% Research when Idle)

Agree on the idling.   SOme of these level up bonuses should have been wonders instead of bonuses, especially on lvl 5.

When my cities have expanded into a forest, it has unlocked logging camps for that city.  In contrast, for piers, I remember only being able to build them when a river directly faces my city (four tiles).

I have used the "research when idle" bonus in the early game when I did not have much hope that the city would survive long enough for anything I built to have greater value to me than that research (when my cities were being gutted by the queen of spiders).

It is currently the 8 tiles surrounding your city only. If a forest touches your main city hub, or on the diagonal you can build a logging camp same with a pier at present. (Unless you download and use my snaking mod).

@hareamao: Fixed, thanks.  Death of copy & paste...

In my current game I have everything turned up to max.  But the landscape seeding is still pretty random, it has to do with the stamps they have on template.  Perhaps they should update the stamps so each one have some a decent tile or 2 for city (Civ V has some pretty good setup for their map generator, I wouldn't mind seeing some of that terrain balance over here).  Also, there is also a particular tile that change from 2 essence to 4 essence after I kill a storm dragon... not sure if that is intended.

That makes sense, thank you.

1. Depending on the map there have to be N tiles between cities' original tiles. (N = 6 for large maps)

2. There have to be three non-city tiles between the tile where you start constructing a new building, and the nearest city tile. 

And these the only rules.  So you can really abuse them, and end with cities touching each other.

Yes, when it comes to finding loopholes, you can do worse than ask me to do it...

In the picture, Conclave II was founded after the eastmost building of Farmlands VI was commissioned, but before it was competed. Then I rushed a few buildings in Conclave II, while delaying the completion in Farmlands VI, until Conclave II got sufficiently far away.  The resources got linked later.

As a result, I ended up with two cities that are exactly one tile apart, so that I could travel 13 tiles for 1/4 move. 

I liked the post, we nedeeded the city progression info, so thank you.

About essence, I find hard to decide. If we got little, it sucks. But if we have much more (for example, ecomental mod), then the essence loses its preciousness and exclusivity.

Using snaking mod can allow to choose tiles with essence and a bit more of production (with some luck too in the map generation for a close forest), so using this mod will help a lot in what I think is balancing the game (IMHO).

I would suggest a uncommon (but not too rare: at least 1 each around 100 turns should work fine) event that created +1 essence on a random city, and a rare one that created +2 essence.

I'm starting to introduce small mods to certain aspects, as the vanilla still gives a lot of playing. Recommended mods I use:

- snaking cities. I disagree with dev's concept in city expansion: if a city expands to a forest/river, it should be able to build pier/logging camp. I don't care AI balance in that aspect.

- River bridge. Same. The idea of expanding a city across the river is very attractive.

- Huge maps. Now I'm playing medium maps with many AI, but I've played huge maps untill I got bored with the game extension (we need a Diplomacy Mod to give flavor to the late game)

- Mod Manager. I think this will be a must, once mods increase in numbers and compatibility.

There are big conversions, that introduce many changes, so you will have to try one at a time...

- Stormworld. Add many changes, so you may like some things and not other, but it is modular, so I recommend to give it a try.

- Master of Affliction. Unfortunately, not played it yet, but it seems very interesting too and it is in my list of "pendant to try".

And many more in the Mods forum

Interesting... as I usually turn every option up to max/dense.  The enchanter trait really helps city, as +1 to essence is pretty nice to have, especially when you unlock the higher tier city spells.