[lowfighter]

I guess it can be a matter of compromise between the autopop speed and the manual placement. Then, no matter how good a template is after you fly a bit over the map you'll see the pattern repeating. So it's good anyway to have the pattern broken by manually inserting a small number of larger objects as you said to personalize this and that town or village...There's also the possibility to break the template pattern by randomizing similar buildings after the autopop has populated the map... I think either Zipzapp or Zuti came with such a randomizing program!

Good tip. Main buildings are always in the center of town.
This same method could also be applied to other large buildings which might appear in unlikely places from autopop. But it would be more time-consuming to populate those larger buildings and defeat the purpose of making a template. It might be easier to just delete them after autopop has populated.