Expansionist - I've seen the light

Hi.

Last week or so there was a poll thread about worst trait. Like most other players, I woted explorer as that's the trait I've felt least useful.

But Warpstorm argued fiercly for the explorer trait, so I decided to try it, so I played only expansionist civs for a while, and always built one or two additional scouts before building anything else.

And I never looked back. This gave me a head start that no other trait can come even close to. In my last game (started yesterday) as Russia I have popped the following from goody huts: 2 warriors, 3 settlers, several amounts of 25 gold and the following techs: Bronze working, iron working, construction, mathemathics, currency, alphabeth, philosophy, the wheel, ceremonial burial, horseback riding, mysticism and polytheism. That's 12 techs.

Granted, expansionist isn't as good in all situations. It's better the bigger continent you start on and the higher difficulty level you play, but now I think that on average there's no trait that can beat expansionist. I think a lot of players will get a nasty surprise against expansionist players when PTW comes out.

Actually, the expansionist trait will only get more powerful come PTW. Knowing where your neighbors are is good for early warmongering or early defense planning.

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
Hi.

Bronze working, iron working, construction, mathemathics, currency, alphabeth, philosophy, the wheel, ceremonial burial, horseback riding, mysticism and polytheism. That's 12 techs.

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That's also extremely lucky.

What were you playing. huge map 2 civs?

Pillager, that was lucky, but not extremely from my experience with expansionist so far.

I was playing on a huge map, but with max number of civs, all terrain settings random. I have met 7 other civs so far, and discovered most of this continent, so it is not a pangea map.

The most lucky part of this game is that only one of the other 7 civs on the continet is expansionist, and that civ started on the other side of the continent. This way I got to gobble up most of the huts on the continent as the non-expansionists seems to leave most goody huts alone.

The only special thing in this game is that Im playing an OCC (one city contest) game. So if I had played a normal game I would probably not have gotten all the three settlers from the goody huts, but then I would probably got another tech or two instead.

TNO:


I fear expan will have to be cut down to size for PTW

after that is said and done... if we all did the same Expan thing it would cancel any chance of dominating others.. i too use a scout to fine goody huts..and other Nations.. only a true Newbie would be crashed beneath our feet

Originally posted by Pillager


That's also extremely lucky.

What were you playing. huge map 2 civs?

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That's not extremely lucky. That's a somewhat normal case on Huge pangea maps with a moderate amount of AI's (about 8).

My computer can't handle huge maps once I get to the modern age, so I wouldn't know

Grey Fox, this wasn't a pangea map though, but a continents map, and with max number of AI civs.

As stated above, what was lucky was that there was only one other expansionist civ on the continent - which was less agressive with its scout, so I guess I got to pop 90% of the goody huts on my continent.

If you build enough Scouts, you can be quite succesful.

Yes Grey Fox, that's the important lesson about expansionist. Earlier when I played expansionist civs (I usually play a random civ) I didn't take advantage of it and didn't build any scouts at all. The lone starting scout didn't find overwhelming much and I concluded that expansionist was crappy, and stayed away from it.

But playing expansionist without building another scout or two ASAP is like playing religious without building temples and cathedrals, or militaristic without going to war - you don't use the trait's power. That's what I did wrong, and I suspect a makority of players still do since expansionist is still considered the worst trait.

What about the this objection: On emperor and above, with the AI-to-AI trade rate at 150 or 160, some (probably not all) AI civs will be close to you in techs even after you get all the ancient techs from goody huts. So, this idea continues, you could have almost the same techs by buying them anyway, and you could pick religious, industrious, or commercial instead of expansionist and still be at nearlt the same tech level.

On PTW expansionist should be good.

Originally posted by sumthinelse
What about the this objection: On emperor and above, with the AI-to-AI trade rate at 150 or 160, some (probably not all) AI civs will be close to you in techs even after you get all the ancient techs from goody huts. So, this idea continues, you could have almost the same techs by buying them anyway, and you could pick religious, industrious, or commercial instead of expansionist and still be at nearlt the same tech level.

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Yeah, but with Expansionist you don't have to waste all that saved up money on Ancient techs...

sumthinelse is partly right - on higher levels I find the Ais catching up extremely quick. But: I do have a solid financial base to stay on par until Feudalism adn Theology. Then, they start to pull ahead because i run out of money and it takes a while until i can research fast tech-whore.....

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
I fear expan will have to be cut down to size for PTW

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I agree.

But then again, I don't plan to play that many multi-player games anyway.

That was my thread, and I too hated expansionist. Like you, I was talked into giving it a try. I always play random, and drew America in my very next game, so I was all excited to give the 2 scout method a try. I built my scouts, and within 6 turns, my two scouts had explored my whole tiny island, popping one goody hut which yielded one warrior.

I quit.

I'm still waiting to give it a try.

Expansionist will always (and has always) be my favourite. Can't wait for the Vikings. I won't mind starting off on a small piece of land a couple of times in exchange for the larger amount of times I'd start on a continent.

The value of the expansionist trait is directly tied to the landmass size that you are playing on (after all, more land means more huts to pop and a larger map to explore). On large or huge/pangea/60% water maps expansionist civs will have the chance to get an enormous early lead from which they never look back. On small or tiny/archipelago/80% water maps expansionist civs will get very little out of their scouts, as billindenver described above. If you are playing an expansionist civ, you can give yourself an advantage by playing on a larger map size with more land to explore. Their value against other humans will largely be determined by the map size again, although a settler from a hut could badly imbalance the game in the expansionist player's favor.

I also would mention that getting 3 settlers from huts is highly atypical. That only occurred because the game in question was a OCC game; in order to get a settler from a hut, you must have fewer cities than the average of all other civs, which obviously is unlikely if you keep getting settlers from huts. The freebie techs are not atypical at all though for a huge map; Bamspeedy got all of the ancient age techs from huts on a huge pangea map before 2500BC once.

Originally posted by Sullla
The value of the expansionist trait is directly tied to the landmass size that you are playing on (after all, more land means more huts to pop and a larger map to explore).

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True. I thought of another approach with the expansionist trait involving beating the other civs to mapmaking on a map with many continents, but that plan may fail miserably, depending on the size of my starting continent, distance between the continents, and of course the order that techs appear from goody huts and luck. I concluded that too many things could go wrong.

Huge world, panageia with a really big continent, is best for expansionist.

Hmm this is strange... I find that the amount of good huts you obtained was tremendous to say the least....

Note I am not saying the expansiont trait is bad, in fact it is good.

However you said you got over 15 good huts, and none of the yielding "empty/nothing"? What about map gains? That is well above average for expanionist.

I would say "average" on a large map would be about 8 good huts with maybe 1 settler. With perhaps 1 reload to improve situtation. 1 settler, about 4 techs, 1 gold, 1 nothing, 1 map