Originally posted by Leftcoast:

I prefer security over having to deal with raids. So I tend to take an island or peninsula so I am not looking at moats and walls.

I do like the raids, however, I feel the game needs a balance tweak for fun here.

I would like to be able to find bits of iron earlier in the game. Not enough to where you could easily grind for gear, more so that it's possible to get the stone cutter earlier in the game. Add more incentives to build stone walls and less incentive to moat and earth wall things.

I would second that and perhaps make it to where the stone cutter requires bronze instead and only opens up foundation peices. A upgrader similar to other crafting benches would require a Iron ore upgrader and then that would unlock the other half of the stone building such as arches ect.

Here we have access to stone building work earlier but not all at once!