Okay, something needs to be done. The AI isn't being dumb, but the pioneer gameplay spam is very annoying.
Elemental is supposed to be rebuilding in a cataclysm, but all I see is a dense urban world of warring tribes. Doubling the cost of pioneers would be a good start. I want to explore in the game, but the only way to do that and not lose out on every inch of ground is to explore with pioneers so you can immediately plop down on any good empty spot of land. Maybe split pioneers into two sorts. A cheaper one that can become an outpost and a more expensive one that can become a settlement or an outpost.
As a 4x game it needs to have less expansion and more exploration. Currently I have to give the game just 3x and it just isn't near as fun that way.
Agreed, TorinReborn ! Good Example & Good Call !!
Actually both Master of Magic and Master of Orion also took part of your population when sending out a "settlers" or "colony ships". In Master of Orion you could also send additonal people using transports.
I don't think this will address the issue of spamming completely because most of the time the pioneer is used to set up outposts. Outposts also need costs--money, material, time. If you want to add a small population drop to the parent city. I agree with that as well.
Um guys... it already does take population from the city. Whenever you train a unit, you lose the number of people equal to the unit size, and when you disband a unit, you gain people equal to the unit size in the nearest city. That mechanic has been in the game for ages. Right now, the pioneer is set to be a group of 3, so it always take 3 people, and of course gives 3 to the new city. Before, when you could build them in larger groups it would take more people and drop more in the new city (the reason they made it 3 is so that players don't waste people on outposts). Honestly, a couple of people isn't going to change anything, because the problem is that you're usually growing way faster than that... and half the time your city is sitting at pop cap (which is part of the reason why people spam cities).
If you want to address pioneer spam, look at why people do it:
1. Pop cap (Population controls research and also production, having more pop is always better. Since the cap is reached way too easily, people are practically FORCED to expand.)
2. Production queues (to be able to build both infrastructure and troops)
3. Territorial control/denial (mainly to claim resources)
Adding some more "people cost" to pioneers isn't going to change any of these things. Most of the time, my main city (where population is important) is busy building buildings, and I use an expansion city to pump out units (pioneers). Do I care if it cost 10 or 20 people from that city? Not one bit. If you make pioneer take longer to build, it would just mean more expansion cities will be dedicated to pumping them out. It's not a fix to pioneer spamming, it just makes pioneer spamming take a bit longer, and yet... all the more important (if you do it well, you win). What you have to do is either address the reasons for the pioneer spam, or provide an alternative to it.
I think your indication of cities topping out on growth too early is spot on. Nothing else to do to increase your PRODUCTION or your RESEARCH (both of which are linked to population). ESPECIALLY since there is no base tile that gets you to a Level 3 city (which is where all the really good research and production stuff starts to become available), and the same number of techs will get you a level 3 city whether you are on a 3 Grain or a 6 Grain spot.
Combine it with the prohibitively large "anti-city" bubble making rapid outward expansion a necessity to get your research up to unlock the production potential of your existing cities.
Now, I see a lot of these issues being addressed in our next big Beta, so I don't think it's worth getting too horribly worked up over, but I do think on a fundamental it is a combination of player response to AI (have to get any available spaces first because AI will take them all otherwise), and a necessary response to the "research hump" that opens up level 3 cities and therefore the legitimacy of fewer-city gameplay.
Yay mal yay, you see the light .I have for a long time with elemental thought the research to gain more food per grain is a must have, and must have technology is in my mind bad design, if there is technology I have to research just to start the game I get annoyed, and I either have to expand really really rapidly or get a tonnage of food techs, (or both ).
This is the main reason I await beta 4 in my agony I hope they will have fixed the startout pace compared to midgame and lategame pace, and I hope they will make research scaler at a slower pace, so the game won't be designed around acheiving the first 2-3 tiers of each tech, and then the game starts.
That said, the point where the world is filled with cities and outposts at time of getting all tier 2 techs is WAAAAAY too early, and the world is filled at the middle of early game, compared to Civilization which limits my building of cities and landgrabbing by a happiness reduction, While there is prestige that limits my growth that does nothing to me, since I will have massive production boosts by extensive city building and massive expansionistic tendences, the fact that I can easily raise prestige to 3 by researching 2 technologies, and when cities levelup to lvl 2 I can build an inn makes the prestige system a poor barrier, and population will go In boom with a proper city spam.While I can win the game with 1-2 cities, that is due to the AI being easy to trick and counter, not because it is worth building 1 or 2 cities compared to massively spamming cities all over, and then start spamming spear troops with your new massive production, even better is it when you have water tech so each city is a small mana shrine due to meditation, for extensive spell abuse
Sincerely~ Kongdej
Admittedly, I didn't think the problem was so simple until I noticed how brutally hard it is to get Level 3 cities while under military pressure (needing to push up the warfare tree). Then I started counting. It wasn't until I got a 5/3 spot with wild grain next to it (for 6/3!) stalling out before level 3 that I realized that tech was an absolute requirement.
I agree with you about required "options" being weak design. In a game about choices, every time you make the player unable to compete without a thing (hard barrier) or give one option a massive and significant advantage over the others (soft barrier), you are essentially saying that the game must be played a specific way or "you don't get it".
I quite like how hard it is to get cities to level 4 and 5. Getting cities to level 3 where the interesting choices are sucks bad. Fortunately, we get a new system soon, so its not worth bitching too hard about.
I think city spam is less of a problem on ravaged/desert maps as there aren't many places to build on in the first place - with dense monsters too it can be a real challenge to get 4 cities up early. It makes the pop caps even harder to deal with but I prefer less cities on the map compared to an urban sprawl. The friendlier maps get on my nerves with loads of settlements.
I'm also looking forward to the cities beta as it needs developing
Sword of the Stars did not take much population to make colony ships it is the massive costs of developing new planets that slows expansion in that game.
Do what Europa Universalis did. Keep Pioneers the same cost as they are now. When you put the first one down you create an outpost as it does now. However, if you want to make it a city you have to keep adding Pioneers until the pop get to be a certain size, THEN it becomes a city. In Europa Universalis the pop you needed was 1,000. So the player (or AI) can decide it that outpost location should be a city or not. If so then pour the resources into it to make it into a city.
Of course in Europa Universalis Coloneists were granted based on the laws and type of government you had. You could not produce them at all. The same mechnic can be used here too. When the 1st city gets to x pop, a Pioneer pops out. You could have building that you could build to accelerate this process. Or maybe a trait that could help.
If not produced automaticly due to some trigger, Pioneers should not just take resources to build but populations as well. Because are you not taking people from one location to another? This would also limit the ability to build as you are reducing the pop of on city to increase another one.
Just some ideas that have worked well in other games. See no reason they would not work here as well too
Ohh.. I'm going to try that.
Thy already do. The problem is that they only take 2 population to produce, don't prevent your city from regaining population while building, and enable you to use your prestige again after you reduce your population off the growth cap which you hit too early. There are in fact, many factors outright encouraging the production of pioneers.
I wonder if you can use pioneers to add population to a city that has hit its growth cap to continue growing beyond its food supply...
It checks regularly if you have more pop than food, and if you have it kills off the excess population (Try using gentle rain on a city, then dispelling it)
as with the turkey leg you can buy at the shop you should beable to buy different types of boxes like for out post only enough wood for said out post but for a city make it crap loads of cash just an idea...
Really like this idea. This commits you to exploring OR expanding.
Fortifying your exploration is very key early game and it doesn't make your scouts useless later on.
Settlers are gobs of peasants moving to a new location to BREED....not fight; move slower than scouts but build settlements.
Again, really like this. Hope FE plays with this idea.
How about this: Outposts can only be built on resources or specific squares. I know that may sound silly, but let me explain.
It seems to me the main intended purpose of outposts was to enable people to get resources without placing cities everywhere. Cities are only able to be placed on specific areas of the map. This limits their spread. But, to make up for that, people are placing outposts everywhere. So how about we limit outposts in the same way as we limited cities, by only letting them be built in specific places?
So to retain their function and stop spam, we let them only be built on resources. If a bigger change was willing to be made, outposts could only be built of unique squares ("Abandoned Towers" or something), and controlling these squares would give you large sections of the map (perhaps 5x5 squares or so) that encompassed several resources. That would completely change warfare, with players suddenly waring over outposts as much as cities. This could also enable outposts to upgrade to offer bonuses to the area and land (pluses to mana generation from nodes, increased iron and gold from mines, extra food from plants or animals, resources are unpillagable, ect).
So what good does that do? It lets wilderness stay wilderness by preventing people from building on it. It gives players a new target to wage war. It limits outpost spam. And, with careful placement programming, it prevents the annoying habit of building outposts close to other player's cities and outposts.
A few things I would like to add about the differenciation of the outpost and the city:
First, I would limit the number of resources that can be picked up by a nearby Outpost. An outpost is a defensible position. It should not have the same capabilities of resource collection compared to a city. This would give the added complication of building a city for the resources....or building an outpost for the defense. Spamming outposts to pick up every resource in the area seems overkill, and you should have to make stategic decisions as to what resources you want to use......else build a city to utilize all the resources in that area.
Second, I would also place 'too close' limitations to outposts, mutually exclusive to that of your cities so that you cannot build a 'wall' of outposts. Again, for strategic, choosing the best location for your outposts would become a large part of the game (ie: to block that pass or to gain access to that resource).
Lastly, building resources should take a passage of time to complete, limited to one at a time. I'm fine with queuing them, but it shouldn't be instant.
I'm not keen on artificial hard limits for outposts that would be so annoying, especially having 'too close' limits. In some cases the only way to collect a resource is through an outpost as the resources are on rough terrain. If the issue is people and AIs building outposts like crazy well then maybe they should have setup costs, say 30 guildar and 5 pop.
People talk about it being a defensive building but it is basically just a watchtower and a beacon so it's not going to be a defencive bastion maybe they should have techs and options to upgrade it to a fort?
outposts should just cost 5 gold to put up, and 0.1 gold per turn upkeep, nothing restricting but you wont spam them because youre silly... meaby 0.2 turn gold upkeep, thats my thoughts anyways.
We will see where they are at come Beta 4, but yeah. I think making Outposts cost to build, cost to upkeep, and have significance other than simply collecting resources would be about the way to go.
Come to think of it, it would be kinda nice having the upkeep mirror their distance from the nearest city. Bases on the outskirts of Atlanta are much cheaper to maintain than bases in Antarctica. Might help provide incentive to slow the outpost sprawl and create more contiguous empires.
I hate the pioneer spam. There is no longer the 'feel' of fighting your way into the wasteland and carving out a place to live.
my most recent game i got out pioneered with amazing speed. If you do not scout with pioneers.... the AI WILL Hose you on cities....
example. 5 grain 3 material 2 essence GREAT my first expansion city.. oh look that amazing tile has a death dragon right next to it... i THOUGHT it would be safe until i can clear that dragon. but alas the Tarth AI settled that tile, right next to the dragon.. that did NOT attack that city... ok its a beta there will be bugs.. (that placement blocked my on the south, so i moved north) On the north side i found VAST fields of settle-able land...so i crank out a pioneer (turn 20) and right before i move it north.. 3 AI cities pop.. 1 .. 2 ..3 again blocking off my north.
had to restart an other wise promising game because the AI ignored defense and land grabbed without thought or concern of monsters.. game was over before it began....
This greatly reducing my game enjoyment..
What if it took so much gold to settle a new city (50 gold or 100 gold)?
I routinely observe the same. Hopefully Brad will update the AI to better use beta 4's features and this simultaneously.
This.
I agree. Pioneer spam isn't going to help, especially since they cost so bloody much, take so long to build, and hold up the queue on other things you should be doing.
It seems that Stardock wants to include 'Scouts' in this game too....to which are completely useless: You have heros for that job. Unless I misunderstand the utility of scouts, all they do is...scout. They don't do quests, pick up items, or fight (well, they die trying). So...there too, why spend resources, time, and queue space on these units?
I recommend a solution that solves (I think..maybe..needs testing) both pioneer spam and the need for scouts. First, cut the price of scouts in half....such that Pioneers take about 10 turns to build and scouts take about 5 turns. This would greatly increase your desire to build scouts instead of pioneers. Now you need a reason why: Have scouts responsible, and consumable, for building Outposts. Continue to have pioneers responsible, and consumable, for building cities. You have have sufficient reason for wanting scouts to roam the land....looking for suitable resources to capture and utilize. You now have accpetable use out of your pioneer....expansion and procreation.
If pioneers are also meant to be the scouts, then merge the two units into one and be done with it...but the problem here is that a low costing pion-scout would still be spammed and a high costing pion-scout would take to many resource and queue time to invest in.
Yeah, those magical dragons like all the good essence locations. It's a real pain...even more so if the AI doesn't have to worry about them. I read it in another thread and really liked the idea, so I'll re-iterrate:
Have monsters have there own 'zone of threat'. If that zone werre breached, the monster takes it upon himself to rid the zone of the intruder...and then RETURNS to his starting location (which we can call 'lair'). This elimates high-powered monster roaming, as they are zoned by there lair, yet allows the weaker monsters to still roam early game as they don't have a specific lair to be attached too. In addition, different monsters could have different zoning criteria....maybe a dragon likes his space and doesn't want anyone with a 5x5...maybe the obsidion golem doesn't mind people walking by, so long as you don't build something within the 3x3. Clicking on the 'lair' should despite and explain the zoning details to the player so that they can work it into there overall strategy.
Overall, AI hasn't been focused on in beta 4. I think Frogboy even said that it's still using beta 3 AI....tatics have been updated....just not strategy...
So, right now beta testing needs to be done with the 'exploration' and 'expansion' aspects of the game..even 'extermination' to some degree. 'Exploitation' has to wait until everything else is fine-tuned. ( I also offered in another thread that 'experiance' be added to the list so that this becomes the first 5x TBS game. Experiance being the RPG element...questing, cutscenes, interactions, dynamics, plot, and storyline.)
Still shaping up to be a great game though.
It's good to see this conversation is being revived since (at least according to the latest game I've played of Beta 4) pioneer spam is still problematic.
In the game I just played I had to effectively outpost and found cities over my area that I wouldn't have normally done to block off other computer players that were sending in pioneers and refusing to talk to me when I went to demand that they remove them. As the OP originally stated, it does reduce the immersion and changes the narrative of the game quite a bit.
I'm not sure what the solution to it is, but I think at some point, mediocre settlements need to punish the player. Right now there is no downside to players plopping down a settlement any spot they see. The growth hit alone is not enough to discourage the activity, it is easy enough to buff up growth via spell, building, consulate outposts, etc, to not make it a significant detraction from a player making that "choice."
My solution: tie number of settlements to a fixed amount. I'd suggest limiting the number of players settlements to their faction prestige. It actually already looks like it scales quite well with game pacing (albeit I anecdotally looked at it for one game) so this would require little rebalancing of the prestige mechanic to be effective. It also forces players that want to expand fast to forgo magic and warfare research in favor of civilization for the prestige boost. That makes it a strategy with risks (fast expansion with weak troops to defend it) and potential rewards (potential late game juggernaut once the settlements get developed). Additionally, this idea fits with game play, if you have a less prestigious faction, chances are it's going to be hard to convince settlers to found a city in the big bad wastes.
Tying it to faction prestige is a pretty good idea.
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