Byakuren wrote:
If your productive farms / factories / etc are outside the city you will need to factor in transportation costs (time) into how to conduct your business. And so on. The economy is more complex with .ore expensive transportation.
Perhaps. But transportation cost is also a factor when accessing shops. If the customer has to walk a long way from the place where he needs the materials to the shop and back then there might be nothing left for the shop to gain - it's already too expensive to walk there; spending money would be excessive. It's much cheaper to gather the materials or to switch to cheaper materials. Or just skip building entriely - nobody will ever come there, so you might as well build in singleplayer. Plots around the starting point certainly get more valuable. They'll be available for the first player who gets able to grab the land. And that's it then.
Byakuren wrote:
Basically, cheap lateral teleportation is an enabler of antisocial / middle of nowhere gameplay, not something to prevent it.
That may be entirely a question of what you define as "social" behaviour in a game. For me, that means that players can interact and cooperate. Share nicely created detailed buildings, but do not waste huge amounts of land around the always valuable spawn with huge production sites. Let spawn be a place where people meet - and home a place out there where ressources can be gathered and machines run without harming others.