Help with expansionist trait.

[Park Ranger]

I keep reading how great expansionism is, all the free tech and extra settlers, but inevitably my experience falls short (way short!) of reaching the Middle Ages before 10 BC. I've never got more than one settler from a hut (and yes I know about the conditions for producing settlers), I've never seen this free city thing that comes with PTW, and I think ONCE I got 3 free techs. Typically I build 3-4 more scouts right away and a couple more later, and I don't think my search patterns can be any more efficient.

So what am I doing wrong? I want this "5 free techs and a settler too", that would be nice!

BTW, my games are typically on standard and large maps, random opponents and max. competition, monarch or emperor level.

 

[Shabbaman]

Well, you could have gotten three techs without expansionistic anyway.
It's not easy providing help without elaborate info on your playing style. Maybe you should try to set your opponents on 'non-expansionistic' civs, so you have less competition popping goodie huts.
Main issue: play expansionistic as a bonus through popping huts, but don't neglect to play the game the same way you would have done if you weren't expansionistic. So, expand, explore (with additional units) and invade.
I don't know which civ you prefer, but combine expansionistic with another useful trait such as religious, scientific or industrious, and not with militaristic.

 

[metalhead]

3-4 scouts? Not enough! Try 8 on Standard, 12-15 on Large. Build nothing but scouts in between your first few Settlers, only stopping to build a warrior if you need MP. What I usually do to maximize hut popping, is I send out the first few scouts in more or less a straight line (each in a different direction), while always trying to A) move each scout twice per turn, and B) end each turn on a hill/mountain. After I've built 4 or 5, I start sending out Scouts to uncover the jungle/forest areas that my first Scouts bypassed. This way, I am more likely to snag farther huts that I might have otherwise missed, as well as huts in jungles that the AI often overlooks. I usually get 3 free techs on TINY maps, and on Large maps, I often get 6 or more.

 

[Scyphax]

As far as techs go you get a random tech that you are not researching.
So if my top prioritory is monarchy I will research any thing else except those techs that lead to monarchy. and I normally recieve from goodie huts Warrior Code and Mystism faster that I can reseach them.

I always trade for techs (I try to use cash) even if it is a low priority for me as this means if the next hut contains a tech it is more likely to be the one I want badly.

I try to explore the area around other civs first as Civs like the Indians or French often leave goody huts next to their borders.

The worst enemy of an expansionist civ are other expansionist Civs - sometimes I decide to trade with and then kill their scouts, sometimes I try and have one of my scouts stay just in frount of them. Once or Twice I have managed to block them up in dead-end pennisulas.

Even with raging hordes there is a grace period without barbarians so I don't worry about defence initially but create 3 extra scouts if on Pangea.

The most important thing is for scouts to cover ground - I usually leave the jungles till last and each try try to move 2 tiles and if possible end on a mountain to get a good view. I take the view that travelling allong the coast exploring lots of useless sea so I explore inland first before the coast.

Just as important as the techs are the contacts and great map which you can trade for more techs.

I did not know there are conditions for producing settlers I just thought good huts contained random stuff.

 

[Park Ranger]

Originally posted by metalhead
3-4 scouts? Not enough! Try 8 on Standard, 12-15 on Large.

Well, there you go. So I take it you don't bother with a granary in your first city? Do you still try to get a first settler out in between scouts, or wait a bit longer? I'm always thinking I must found my second city by 2800 BC absolute latest...

@Shabbaman - been trying all this with the Vikings, maybe that's just the wrong choice. My early game style is admittedly suspect if I should be getting 3 techs without expansionist trait. With the non-expansionist I'm lucky to get three goodie huts at all before the expansionist AI's pop them all.

 

[Mazarin]

There's a great thread about scouting at Poly...I strongly recommend reading it as it really improved my performance with expansionist civs: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68531&highlight=scouting

 

[Galcador]

Originally posted by Park Ranger
I've never got more than one settler from a hut (and yes I know about the conditions for producing settlers)

What are the conditions for producing settlers?

 

[Stapel]

Very curious too!

 

[col]

Off the top of my head - you can only get a settler if

No settlers
No settlers in production
Your number of cities < or = the average number of cities per civ.

and then its by no means guarenteed but you can improve the odds from zero.

 

[Globetrotter]

In my current game, i'm playing Egypt on Deity, huge, all civs, so i am Religious + Industrious. I started the game as though i was expansionist.

Just pumped warriors and discovered the hole continent and made all needed contacts, and got 3 techs + 1 settler from 8 goody hut explored (guess i got lucky to find 8, but most of the time i would beat the AI to the hut by one turn)

Had i scouts, things would have gone faster of course. But you do not need to be expansionist sometimes to get the same results... I feel you just improve your chances being expansionistic...

 

[muppet]

With expansionist I typically produce 2 scouts then 1 settler to take advantage of the trait. On an experimental game once, my 2nd. city did the same thing. I end up with 6 scouts before my first warrior ever got built!

I've restarted the same huge map game more than 6 times one night just to experiment and found the trait to be very luck dependent. Sometimes you get extremes. Tech after tech and settlers... the next thing you know, you're researching feudalism before you've founded your 4th. or 5th. city. Sometimes it's been only warriors and maps.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Globetrotter
ust pumped warriors and discovered the hole continent and made all needed contacts, and got 3 techs + 1 settler from 8 goody hut explored (guess i got lucky to find 8, but most of the time i would beat the AI to the hut by one turn)

Had i scouts, things would have gone faster of course. But you do not need to be expansionist sometimes to get the same results... I feel you just improve your chances being expansionistic...

You don't say what you got from the other 4 huts you popped, but you were extremely lucky if none of these were barbarians. If you were expansionist, then those barbraian huts would be something else instead - possibly techs.

I find that on the higher (emperor - deity) levels, I don't even dare to pop the huts I see early in the game unless I play expansionist. The chance of seeing three barbarians is pretty high, which will normally lead to the death of my warrior, and some unpleasant problem in my nearest city.

When expansionist, I don't have to fear this and can pop all the huts I find immediately.

 

[Aggie]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
When expansionist, I don't have to fear this and can pop all the huts I find immediately.

Even with a settler or worker.... that's also a bonus.

 

[Scyphax]

If I have the pottery I sometimes build a grainary.
I will always build grainaries (when I have pottery) for river cities.
I usually time my first settler to appear when I hit a pop of 4, 5 if I am connected to a lux.
The info on getting settlers was very useful and explained when playing OCC games I get lots of settlers - which I send to join my one city greatly increasing my shield production.

 

[Park Ranger]

Tons of great tips thanks folks. Play a bunch of games last night, trying to find as many huts as possible just to see what gives. I learned a lot in the last 24 hours including:

1. "Pangaea" setting with 70% water still means sometimes you are cut off from some (or much) of the land by sea...I never knew this!

2. When trading tech, Pottery at first is not worth much but by around 3000 BC if you are only civ with it becomes super-valuable. Best I did was Masonry and a handful of coins for Pottery.

3. With settings at max for number of civs, there just aren't that many goodie huts out there. On Standard map with 8 civs despite using best scouting advice posted here I still couldn't get more than 8 huts max, sometimes only 2. This despite having 6 or more scouts off in all directions before 3000BC. Turn the competition down to 4 civs, and bingo! Huts everywhere, at least 6 within 3 scout-turns of my starting location.

4. Still not getting the kind of results from huts others glory in - most I got was 4 techs. Far too often I'd get maps which were redundant with my army of scouts out there.

5. Switching from random opponents to all non-expansionist opponents had no effect on the number of huts I found.

6. Out of 60 huts popped over 10 games, never with settler built or in production, I found 3 settlers and 1 city.

7. Playing expansionism you get a great world map!

My feeling today is that exapnsionism's strength lies less in the huts themselves and more in the knowledge and trade value of your map. Despite all the great advice, I'm left feeling that the goody hut advantage is very luck-dependant and hence unreliable. Also it seems that perhaps more so than any other trait (even scientific), the value of expansionism depends on how many other expansionists there are...not because of goody huts, but because of the trade (maps, tech, and contact) and map knowledge advantages.

Thanks again to all who took time to offer wisdom (so many pearls!)

 

[Globetrotter]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
You don't say what you got from the other 4 huts you popped, but you were extremely lucky if none of these were barbarians. If you were expansionist, then those barbraian huts would be something else instead - possibly techs.

2 huts gave me nothing, and two did pop barbarians.
i did get lucky on this one two, because my Zulu neighbor had a unit next to the hut i popped, and shared the fight... my warrior survived with 1hp
as for the second hut i that gave me barbarians, it was the last hut i popped, and my warrior did not survive the slaughter

But i do believe that if i restart the same game, i will never get the same lucky results...

 

[Scyphax]

From the information in this thread I decided to prebuild settlers.

First I build scouts and a grainary.
I start to build a temple.
I wait until the temple was almost half built (the right number of shields for a settler).
When exploring I leave two goodies huts unopenned.
These goodie huts where in good locations for cities.
First time I tried this a settler apeared.
The second hut is a back up incase the first fails.
Then I swapped my temple for a settler and now I have 2 settlers.
I tried this twice and both times it worked first time without needing my backup huts

 

[Aggie]

@Scyphax: your example shows that expansionism is a powerful trait. You should maximize the benefit in the beginning because in the middle ages the advantage is gone.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Park Ranger
4. Still not getting the kind of results from huts others glory in - most I got was 4 techs. Far too often I'd get maps which were redundant with my army of scouts out there.

Here you see a link to an old thread of mine, where I played a OCC game on a huge map, max civs, everything random, except me being Russian.

I started on one of the two continents, with only one other expansionist civ. I built 2 or 3 additional scouts only, but managed to get: 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.

So you're still have some way to go before you get everything you can from expansionist.

 

[metalhead]

I would say that an Expansionist civ is served much better by forgoing a granary and building nothing but scouts in your capital, with the exception of settlers. You do want to build your first settler ASAP, and then you can focus your 2nd city on being a settler factory, while building nothing but scouts and settlers in your first city. Note that on Emperor and Deity levels, your second build in your capital should be a warrior for Military Police, and after that you'll want to time your settler production so that your city doesn't reach size 3 and go into disorder. You should try not to use the luxury slider this early, as you will want all of your gold going toward science, or in your treasury.

Another tip I always follow to increase my hut finding - scout the shores. For some reason, I always seem to encounter more huts along the coastline. Therefore, when one of my scouts hits the coast, I usually stick to it in one direction. I can cover the maximum amount of territory on the map this way. Also, always send an early scout, preferably one of your first 3, to the closest pole - AI scouts tend to ignore tundra for the first thousand years or so, and you can often grab most of the tundra huts if you get there early.