It feels a bit odd having every city be the same general size. It would be fun to have a wide range of city sizes in one map. Perhaps even building spawns that make sense, like industrial/tower buildings only spawning in >4 size cities.
Did you check options for city size? Or world gen?
But I assume you’re asking for something different.
Let me try to explain a bit clearer. Having one map contain cities of different sizes. For example: you spawn in a small rural area containing nothing more than residential housing and small town businesses. Just west of that city is a large industrial city with houses and the things you would expect to find there.
Huh. Yeah, I guess the huge citys and small towns can be considered those.
+9001 Agreed, I think (or at least hope) that eventually there will concentric cities, with rural areas/small villages on the outskirts and gradually getting denser and denser till you get to a big metropolitan middle.
At the moment though, it might be possible to do some a broader mix of city sizes, with the city size number being the top limit.
I think that, at the moment, the game need more agricultural areas, Farms are somehow rare, I would love to see enormous farmlands extending for sectors, instead we get that sterile field tile, with nothing on it except some spare strawberries and poppy flowers.
One potential improvement we’ve been looking at is having a min and max city size option, rather then just a size one. That would allow you to have varying city sizes.
As for more realistic thing (with outlier towns on big cities and such) that will hopefully come about as part of the regional type code eventually, though it still needs some definite work. 
It would be very cool to have a first year survival strategy of gathering wheat, corn, etc from the countryside, with lots of wildlife spawns, and then famine on year 2.
You could also add some city parts and small towns completely liberated from zombies and under control of a faction. Not from the start of the game, but maybe they should appear after a year or so on newly explored regions of the map.
The NPC’s would need an overhaul for that though.
Working factions with NPC controlled outposts that have decent interactivity would make the game feel so complete. We can dream…
Sounds perfect
[quote=“i2amroy, post:7, topic:4696”]One potential improvement we’ve been looking at is having a min and max city size option, rather then just a size one. That would allow you to have varying city sizes.
As for more realistic thing (with outlier towns on big cities and such) that will hopefully come about as part of the regional type code eventually, though it still needs some definite work. :P[/quote]
Sounds brilliant!
Maybe adding different spawns for different sizes? Low sizes would have more abandones stores, more farmesque stuff. Maybe even wells and other little town stuff, while big cities would have banks, apartments, etc.
They’ll need vehicles. Lots of vehicles.
mad max: dda
this
I did a search for “metropolis” and this thread came up.
I think Cataclysm should have an option of either spawning in a large metropolis type area, essentially concrete jungles that take a lot to escape from, or perhaps it could be an optional side-game like the current “Defense” mode or the Dungeon Sprint mode in Crawl. Essentially, my thinking is a “Dungeon Sprint” like side-game, were you spawn in a city like Manhattan during the initial outbreak, and your goal is to get out of the city alive or possibly wait it out over the course of a few months. Z’s run around, kill NPCs which then turn into Z’s, mayhem everywhere, lots of cars jammed in the streets, messed up subway systems and underground tunnels, tons of shops to loot, high rise buildings with 100s of floors, etc. Maybe you have the optional side-quest of locating your spouse and family before escaping.
i all so like the idea of a min and max city size 
I am pretty sure that a more powerfull mapgen code is a design goal already.
I am excited for the ideas in this thread and I wish I could contribute to the creation process more than the person-with-viewpoints process!!
[quote=“i2amroy, post:7, topic:4696”]One potential improvement we’ve been looking at is having a min and max city size option, rather then just a size one. That would allow you to have varying city sizes.
As for more realistic thing (with outlier towns on big cities and such) that will hopefully come about as part of the regional type code eventually, though it still needs some definite work. :P[/quote]
Great, this would add a lot more diversity to a single game. Maybe it can be so that the min and max sizes are rare while the average sizes are encountered regularly.