Neutral cities

[Catwalk]

I agree that neutral cities are inherently unbalancing and a large random factor. On the other hand, I do think they're an interesting challenge in the early game. They produce raiders (which can be potent with revolting raiders enabled) and more importantly they block your expansion.

Radical idea: Neutral cities cannot be captured, only razed.
They're still well worth capturing for the easy XP, gold, terrain and threat reduction. This way you're also forced to capture wizard cities if you want access to additional races, that's a huge advantage and with neutral cities you even get them well developed. It also allows you to balance Inquisitor better.

Other changes:
- Change neutral city size to 6-10
- Remove the growth cap

[zitro1987]

I'd be careful of 'armorer's guild' and 'wizard guild' for any race (raiders, too friendly to whoever conquers them, especially early in game) unless neutral popultion is more than 10.

[Seravy]

Radical idea: Neutral cities cannot be captured, only razed.

While this would certainly solve problems, I don't want to limit every single game to no more than 5 races - the ones each wizard started with. Aside from lack of diversity having negative effects on gameplay, it's also bad for flavor reasons - mercenaries of races that got erased the world can still appear and this is way more apparent if 9 out of 14 races are gone by turn 100.
(Myrran races would be hit especially hard, with only one Myrran wizard, only 1 out of 5 Myrran race can exist in a form players can access each game, and on normal difficulty with no Myrran wizards, having access to Myrran units would be impossible aside from hiring mercenaries)
Although not frequently played, fewer then 5 opponents would be ever more boring, with 1 opponent limiting the game to only two races total.

I'd be careful of 'armorer's guild' and 'wizard guild' for any race (raiders, too friendly to whoever conquers them, especially early in game) unless neutral popultion is more than 10.

I'm not worried about Wizard's Guild too much - while Magicians are a great unit, such a city is pretty hard to overcome for the human player. Armorer's Guild might be more of a risk, but Orcs are the only race who can get one - and at 10 population exactly as you suggest. (note the quoted code uses "AG" for alchemist guilds as well as Armorer's Guilds - if the line says magical weapons, then it's for alchemist guild.)