Pioneer spam is the biggest problem of this game at current version. I really don't think forcing AI to build less pioneers is the solution to this problem; it will only makes game easier since spamming pioneer no tomorrow is literally only viable tactic for early to mid game.
I thought about it, and thought about solutions like making pioneers expensive (like 150 gold per pioneers), unkeep or hard-coded limit on the number of pioneers and other things.
Then, when I was searching for position for creating city (good food with prod/essence), I realized the real problem lies on population being completely irrelevant resource in this game.
Currently, this game defies common sense. Only because of based on tile yield and buildings, a city with population of 10 can make things and train units much faster than a city with population of 200. This happens because MAYBE (yes, big maybe here) other than gold, pretty much all resource generation is decided by largely tile yields and buildings.
And because resources are mostly generated by yields and buildings, having 'more' of them is only viable way to increase resource generation, that means... more cities to build more buildings and take tile yields.
Thus having 4 cities with 10 population each is FAR better than having just 1 city with, say, 400 population with exception of gold production. But alas, since things take SO MUCH TIME to build stuffs, players normally play this game with 'none' tax, completely eliminating the population advantage.
These facts above heavily favors pioneer/city spam, even more so than Civ 5 (the game witch I absolutely hate due to city spam and stupid 1tpu). This really needs to be fixed because the game is not fun at all to anyone trying to compete with AIs. Here are suggestions.
1.) Get rid of 'tile yield' and bring back population as primary resource. With magical(?) yield number, the game defiles common sense. We are talking about civ-game, so for basic stuff, the game at least to follow real-life example (like.... more people working things create in faster phase... just how easy to understand and implemented?)
2.) Improvements from buildings should be all percentage-based from populations except food and rare resources. Primary resources growth, production, research and gold should be completely percentage-based, not hard-coded number. So actually a city with 400 population can outproduce 4 cities with 10 population.
3.) Keep the prestige as main initial factor for growth and keep it as global. This means, a number of cities should not affect the overall population growth AT ALL. In 4x games, 'positioning' alone is a huge incentive for spamming multiple cities already, there is no more need for more advantages for having multiple cities.
4.) Other than min-distance requirement, players should be able to build cities anywhere. Finding a good position is really annoying/stressful and sway the game difficulty too much just based on starting position. With a game using randomly-generated map, this is just bad idea. That said, there should be some penalties for cities built on harsh terrain, but other than minimum-distance requirement, please bring back the flexibility. With three suggestions above, there would be not much incentive for making multiple cities other than positioning factor, which will be also diluted by outposts.
5.) And please, separate unit production and building production. With recent add-ons, cities are already chocking up with making buildings all the time.
can you auto place the pier when the founding square is not adjunct to the river? Because I have no problem placing piers except in .952 it doesn't seem to let me when the founding square is not on the river, but the city has grow to the river.
I really, really like the idea of some sort of small consistent bonus on leveling up, on top of the special building choice. Major thumbs up, I'll be passing out karma for this one.
I really, really like the idea of some sort of small consistent bonus on leveling up, on top of the special building choice. Major thumbs up, I'll be passing out karma for this one. Sorry for double post!
After watching many LP videos of Civ 5 and W:MoA, I think that the way that E:FE handles pioneer spam with the creation of outposts is fantastic. Fewer over all cities while still getting access to much needed resources. The outpost mechanic needs to be adjusted and fine tuned, but I am really starting to understand the idea behind them.
i like your idea.this could work something like:level 1 cities have 3 gildar maintenance cost
level 2 cities have 1.5
level 3 and above have 0
I don't really like the city maintenance cost idea. To me, towns are supposed to create income to support units, not the other way around. However, outpost should definitely have an upkeep cost - which increases as more of them are built (so, the first outpost could cost 1 gold, while the fifth - 5 gold).
I sense that arguing for pop-based effects is a lost cause. However, there's still a lot to do.
I think a more complex tax system is also needed. First of all, buildings should cost maintenance, this way gold will be much more needed. To counter it, basic tax should be higher. Then it is necessary to make having any tax rate other than zero viable. Unrest should rise with distance to capital more than from taxes.
Then there's the issue of heroes vs. units. The former cost zilch, while recruitable units are expensive to upkeep. We can't do anything to the sovereign obviously, but other champions' maintenance should rise sharply as they level up.
I don't like the city maintenance either, would be killing on the starting capital
I love the general city level bonus as stated earlier by Sean, good idea +1 Karma to u;)
Also love the wildlands 'forbidden to build' zone (this as building cities, which are then razed by monsters makes the tiles useless - land is considered barren)
One possible implementation would be one square per difficulty rating (making areas around dragons into blockades of 3*3 or even 4*4 squares as it should be)
I noticed that placing an outpost inside of a forest tile can reduce the materials in city settlement spots, another good reason to at least make the outposts more difficult to place.
Unfortunately city spam issue is an old problem of Stardock. I tried to play their GalCiv game and once I figured out at start I should be doing nothing but colonizing like crazy I quit and uninstalled the game. Games like Birth of the Federation were much more superior in this department (you could spam colony ships but new planets were near useless without terraforming which took 20+ turns; also the minor races part of the game gave another option to colony spam, usually a superior one depending on which race you played).
Even Sword of the Stars handles colonize spam much better by giving you serious economy/production penalty for each additional planet you get early on.
In Civ games I never felt I needed to grab as much land as I can early on, actually unless I had a really aggressive neighbor I could invest into getting my starting city developed a bit before thinking about building settlers especially since building settlers would stop population growth.
FE needs to fix this before it comes out of Beta.
Expansion needs to be prevented by angry monsters, not gildar. You have to include in your solution something that can be incorporated into the AI. Increasing the economic penalty makes the AI expand and get hurt by it. It doesn't stop the AI from doing it. We should be pushing for harsh monster aggression and an AI that groups up an army with pioneers.
I don't think pioneers should cost more money. I think Outposts should have a cost. They should cost materials and time. The fact that they are just instantly constructed is the part I don't like. If it actually took some resources to construct an outpost, they would not be spammed as much. Placement would become more important. Especially early in the game.
I also think the settler-spam-problem should be solved by the monsters in the world, not some more or less complex penalty. I come to think of the heroes of might and magic series, where there always was a Monster blocking your way to get to the next pile of goodies. Obviously the world of Elemental is much more open an free to roam around, so the monsters really need their zone of control. Preferably in a way that they occupy their own habitat. I imagine a forest filled with wolves and spiders, attacking anybody that tries wandering between their trees (maybe even fighting each other from time to time), but staying away from the open planes surrounding them. I really like the idea of a slower expansion with more planning which monsters to get out of the way.
I really hope the dev's step up to the challenge and find a way to curtail the pioneer spam. If there is one thing I dislike in games it is being forced to rush things. Imho it does not belong in a tbs game, especially not at the beginning. It removes strategy and kills immersion. IMO there are three things that need to be done to drastically improve this part of the game:
There's no dynasty in FE? That was so cool in WoM. It was so simple and fun and you always got a sense of satisfaction seeing your sons walking in their father's footsteps and also becoming assassins Too bad...
Also, just to be on topic, I think a simple solution to the whole city problem would be to make each city level something to be desired and really increase the power of the city in some way. In that sense, the instant buildings you get to choose when leveling up should give really powerful bonuses to a specific area. The way they are now, they're just dull and insignificant, you just don't care which one you choose because they don't do much anyway. Also there should be more ways to further increase production. And I guess asking for governors is too much, right? It's a huge pain in the ass to manage conquered cities when you're on a killing spree.
About the pioneer spam, just think at GalCiv 2. Regarding the outposts, just give them a gildar cost so you can't build too many at the start (starbase modules cost). Regarding city spamming, just give big gildar costs to undeveloped cities, where your capital is of course the exception (think how colonizing too many planets at the start will ruin you in GalCiv 2).
You might want to go back and play it again. There is no cost to rushing planets in GalCiv2. The best strategy was always to rush as far as possible and not build anything until the population reached higher levels. The only cost was linear ship maintenance. The economic growth was exponential.
Somehow, every game that has colony spam issues suffers from the same thing. Using manufacturing to create new population out of thin air (without actually using cloning).
That all being said, I disagree with the main assertion of this post... especially as of beta 4.
You can't just settle everywhere you want, you literally can't. The land must first recover from the cataclysm before you can settle in new locations.
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