Midgame and Endgame Expansion

[Zanteogo]

The poll results confirm what has been said for a while now, that something should be changed about pioneers and colonists, but it doesn't mention making them available earlier specifically. The people suggesting a buff are not talking about having it earlier, they are talking about having more buildings. Some people including myself would like to have them available earlier. I still see a difference there, thus why I suggested a modified poll.

I didn't vote because I think just making them stronger is a mistake. If we add too much then raze and replace becomes the go to strategy. It's gamey as heck having fully formed and fully functional cities in an instant. It also makes puppet and annex super weak options.

I however don't think both units are "fine".

Both are hardly used. Sometimes they are, I get that, but hardly for regular "normal" settling. They just come too late for that.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I didn't vote because I think just making them stronger is a mistake. If we add too much then raze and replace become the go to strategy. It's gamey as heck having fully formed and fully functional cities in an instant. It also makes puppet and annex super weak options.

I however don't think both units are "fine".

Both are hardly used. Sometimes they are, I get that, but hardly for regular "normal" settling. They just come too late for that.

I like this idea, but how early are we talking here? Nudging Pioneers back to something like 'Compass' would most likely be trivial (settler units can't cross ocean until 'Astronomy' anyways), but having them unlock in 'Classical' feels way too early thematically.

 

[CrazyG]

It sounds to me that pioneers get some use but colonists don't.

Perhaps the pioneer could be an early medieval era unit, and the colonist could take the role of the current poineer.

 

[Stalker0]

It sounds to me that pioneers get some use but colonists don't.

Perhaps the pioneer could be an early medieval era unit, and the colonist could take the role of the current poineer.

That could work. I agree that when Pioneers come out, on certain maps I do find use for them...you get the "after Astronomy" expansion phase that you can use pioneers for if you are smart with them before the final land grab begins.

But Medieval would be an interesting time. While most settlement is done by now, there is still usually land left. And if these pioneer cities got a bit of a surge in power, it would create an interesting strategic dynamic (settle early, or delay a bit and then settle with extra).

 

[ElliotS]

Honestly maybe settler costs and buildings should just scale per-era, or even based on # of techs unlocked, and they should have a really high GPT cost to keep around to prevent the build and upgrade strategy. (Maybe 2 GPT per era?) Obviously it would make it nice to build one just before going to a new era, but the gains would be less than they are now and so the good play would have a reasonable reward.

I would also say they should have a "town hall" building that is set when settled that gives +1 happiness/production/culture per era past ancient, starting in medieval. (So 0 in classic, 2 in medevial, 3 in ren, etc.)

That would give them less power-spikes and just make settling more intuitively good. It would probably help the AI who are less good at timings than the player, but would also just be a nice QoL update where it's almost never a bad time to settle if you've got good land worth having a city on available.

If you could silently upgrade them with # of techs unlocked it would be best tho imo. Each tech past a certain number (I don't want to buff early/mid classic era settling) could either add a building, a yield to the town hall, a point of movement to the unit, a point of vision to the unit or a pop to the city. (Well, we would need to lay out all the upgrades that come with each new unit and spread them out, there might be plenty of blank techs.)

This would really make trying to time the settler much less useful and make the act of "should I settle this good land now?" much more intuitive. (Which I generally think is a good thing. It's both flavorful and good for gameplay that settling a city on good land is worth it at any point in the game IMO.)

 

[chicorbeef]

I think we should keep it simple, Pioneers/Colonists should just cost less. The biggest deterrent from using them is the simple fact that I often don't want to drop what I'm building to focus on them. Building a Settler and upgrading it is a good workaround, but they should be cheap enough that you can just hardbuild them (maybe make them like diplo units so that settler unit costs scale with era, starting in Medieval so as not to disrupt the current early game balance). I don't think spamming Pioneers is too big of a problem, since the amount of space on normal maps is limited.

Also, I feel like the colonist could come at a better tech-what about Railroads or Steam Power? Biology is just too out of the way for the kind of empire that wants Colonists.

 

[ElliotS]

I think we should keep it simple, Pioneers/Colonists should just cost less. The biggest deterrent from using them is the simple fact that I often don't want to drop what I'm building to focus on them. Building a Settler and upgrading it is a good workaround, but they should be cheap enough that you can just hardbuild them (maybe make them like diplo units so that settler unit costs scale with era, starting in Medieval so as not to disrupt the current early game balance). I don't think spamming Pioneers is too big of a problem, since the amount of space on normal maps is limited.

Also, I feel like the colonist could come at a better tech-what about Railroads or Steam Power? Biology is just too out of the way for the kind of empire that wants Colonists.

I think keeping it simple leaves a bunch of problems on the table we can fix. Doing exactly what you said would result in:

• The units still coming too late (Medieval expansion is really in a bad place IMO)
• The cities still sucking and being culture and happiness sinks
  
• The build and upgrade strategy still being very powerful and exploitative.

Those are all problems I'd like to avoid, and think we can if we don't settle for simple and go for the gold.

 

[azum4roll]

Unless you're playing a pangaea-style map, there should be places worth settling in Medieval.

I think we should disallow upgrading settlers and make pioneer cost only scale with number of pioneers created.

 

[chicorbeef]

I think keeping it simple leaves a bunch of problems on the table we can fix. Doing exactly what you said would result in:

• The units still coming too late (Medieval expansion is really in a bad place IMO)
• The cities still sucking and being culture and happiness sinks
  
• The build and upgrade strategy still being very powerful and exploitative.

Those are all problems I'd like to avoid, and think we can if we don't settle for simple and go for the gold.

So, for Medieval expansion....do we want to buff medieval expansion? It doesn't fit thematically for the Pioneer unit to be in the Medieval Era, and I think it would fit better if the Medieval Era is where you war over established spots, not settle new land. I understand that civ doesn't have to be a perfect representation of reality, but I don't see why the Medieval Era needs to be a continued era of expansion, either thematically or gameplay wise.

As for the cities being culture/happiness sinks. Well, this is for your empire to resolve, Pioneers do start with additional infrastructure and population to catch up faster, but giving permanent bonuses exclusive to pioneer/colonist strategies feels somewhat gamey. Your choice to expand should be based on your current situation and the decisions that led up to it, I don't think there need to be any inherent bonuses to pioneer expansion other than a faster start to catch up faster.

The build/upgrade strategy would be slightly nerfed on one hand in my proposal because it would be harder to build Settlers in the Medieval Era because their costs scale, but would be buffed on the other hand because it would be easy to upgrade it into a Pioneer. I considered making it straight up impossible to upgrade Settlers, but then the AI might have built Settlers and have nothing to do with them (or use them to settle weaker cities) and it could cause problems.

I think (not sure exactly how this works), right now, upgrade costs are based on a formula that calculates the difference in Production requirements between the base unit and the unit it upgrades to. If it's possible to not use this formula and instead set the upgrade costs to be something high, like say 800 , that would nerf this quite a bit. Otherwise, I think we could just leave it, I mean right now it's possible to upgrade an Emissary into an Envoy for basically no cost and I don't think that is too unbalanced. There is opportunity cost for rushing banking to upgrade Settlers to Pioneers ASAP.

 

[CrazyG]

I'm fine with them costing less and the pioneer staying where he is, but I really think the colonist should come earlier. The suggestion to move him to railroad is really good, its also thematic.

 

[Stalker0]

So far looking at the poll, there is some interest in adjusting the pioneer, but not overwhelming. That said, it looks like a good number believe an adjustment to the colonist makes sense.

 

[Stalker0]

So, for Medieval expansion....do we want to buff medieval expansion? It doesn't fit thematically for the Pioneer unit to be in the Medieval Era, and I think it would fit better if the Medieval Era is where you war over established spots, not settle new land.

This is an interesting perspective and one I had not thought about before. For the more history buffs on the forums, is it fair to say that "expansion" in the Medieval era is noted more by conquest than new settlement?

Again, gameplay does not have to equal reality, but if the two align its all the better.

 

[azum4roll]

Railroad colonist sounds good for the remote settling for coal. The cost would need to be scaled down as well.

 

[bonniepbilly]

It seems that the answer to this thread will be impacted by the answer to the thread on penalty per city, discussing wide play. If we make wide play easier, it will also boost late settlements by pioneers and colonists, right?

However the question on their best timing remains valid for sure. Would it make sense to have pioneers available at Astronomy (or on the way to Astronomy, for example Compass?), so we could at least have them cross oceans quickly?

 

[bonniepbilly]

To clarify my previous post, we are comparing 3 options:
1/ not settle/acquire new cities
2/ settle a new city with pioneer/colonist
3/ annex a city

In the other thread, we are talking about buffing option 2 (by reducing the scaling cost), but not option 3 (through for example a courthouse penalty to offset the reduction on the scaling cost). So we would still need to make sure it doesn't promote a "raze and replace" strategy by comparing options 2 and 3 before buffing pioneers/colonists on top of these changes.

 

[ElliotS]

So, for Medieval expansion....do we want to buff medieval expansion? It doesn't fit thematically for the Pioneer unit to be in the Medieval Era, and I think it would fit better if the Medieval Era is where you war over established spots, not settle new land. I understand that civ doesn't have to be a perfect representation of reality, but I don't see why the Medieval Era needs to be a continued era of expansion, either thematically or gameplay wise.

Because the AI will expand in medivial if there are good spots to settle, and if it's not a good idea to do so then we're causing AIs to cripple themselves in a manner that spites players who would want to expand at a point where it works well.

I don't know of some drought of new cities during the "medieval era" that could justify it gameplay wise either. If you look at the list of the largest cities in the world Tokyo, Shanghai, and Mexico City were all debatably founded in the medieval era. 3/10 of the top ten largest seems like a fairly impressive figure.

I think that it's best gameplay-wise and historically to make expansion good at all times that you can do so without overextending.

 

[Stalker0]

However the question on their best timing remains valid for sure. Would it make sense to have pioneers available at Astronomy (or on the way to Astronomy, for example Compass?), so we could at least have them cross oceans quickly?

this is probably the lowest impact change that is still an improvement. Generally expansion at this phase in the game is over water, so the tech that unlocks that ability also unlocks the new unit makes a lot of sense to me. This would still speed up the expansion as you don’t need two tech routes to do it...but it’s not as invasive as rolling it back to medieval.

for colonist I would pick the tech that reveals coal (what tech is that again?). Realistically at this point in the game the good spots are taken, so it’s really about securing strategically valuable cities more than yield valuable ones. So the idea of coal, the first late game strategic, “kicking off” the last expansion phase...makes sense to me

 

[ElliotS]

Honestly maybe settler costs and buildings should just scale per-era, or even based on # of techs unlocked, and they should have a really high GPT cost to keep around to prevent the build and upgrade strategy. (Maybe 2 GPT per era?) Obviously it would make it nice to build one just before going to a new era, but the gains would be less than they are now and so the good play would have a reasonable reward.

I would also say they should have a "town hall" building that is set when settled that gives +1 happiness/production/culture per era past ancient, starting in medieval. (So 0 in classic, 2 in medevial, 3 in ren, etc.)

That would give them less power-spikes and just make settling more intuitively good. It would probably help the AI who are less good at timings than the player, but would also just be a nice QoL update where it's almost never a bad time to settle if you've got good land worth having a city on available.

If you could silently upgrade them with # of techs unlocked it would be best tho imo. Each tech past a certain number (I don't want to buff early/mid classic era settling) could either add a building, a yield to the town hall, a point of movement to the unit, a point of vision to the unit or a pop to the city. (Well, we would need to lay out all the upgrades that come with each new unit and spread them out, there might be plenty of blank techs.)

This would really make trying to time the settler much less useful and make the act of "should I settle this good land now?" much more intuitive. (Which I generally think is a good thing. It's both flavorful and good for gameplay that settling a city on good land is worth it at any point in the game IMO.)

Does anyone have an issue with this concept or idea other than "too complex" or "too different"?

 

[Zanteogo]

Does anyone have an issue with this concept or idea other than "too complex" or "too different"?

I don't mind it in concept, it just needs to be handled carefully else we have a year of slowly fixing it while dealing with unbalanced and broken games.

My fear is that if it's done wrong, raze and replace becomes the go to strategy. The balance between raze/puppet/anex is close to be perfect. It could use a couple tweaks but it's way closer than it used to be.

Not a massive fan of the "town hall" idea, not totally against it, but it basically makes cities that reach the same development better if settled later in game. Which is counter intuitive.

Replacing the settler upgrades with a slow increase in settler cost and power as you progress has potential. It's basically what we do with diplomat units, just way more complex for settlers.

How I would do it:

Gain 2 buildings from the previous era, gain all buildings other than defensive building from eras before that. Production cost increases by 25% per era. Only units made in that era gain the ability. (So stockpiling settlers won't work)

Edit: also cities start with 1 extra population per era and one extra tile per 2 eras.

Seems ok to me.

 

[Stalker0]

So the poll closed yesterday. While it wasn't a huge number of votes it was actually more than I see on many polls. Here are my thoughts:

Pioneer

55% of the votes thought Pioneers could use a boost. That is not an overwhelming endorsement, so I think if any changes should be made, they should be subtle. Based on hearing people's thoughts so far on the thread, my recommendations would be:

1) Move Pioneer to Astronomy
2) Reduce its build cost

So quicken the ability to make them, and align them more with the expansionist techs that happen at that point in the game. Simple and easy.

Colonist

With the colonist, there was a stronger push at 85%. So I think we could make more radical changes here.

Ultimately my thought about the Colonist is....its never going to be a productive city, not really. Its just too late in the game to make that work. So realistically, I see colonists used more as a forward base or strategic resource camp. I also liked some of ElliotS's thoughts about giving it base happiness as a boost. So digging back up on an old idea, here is my proposal.

1) Colonist is moved back to Steam Power (aka when late strategics start coming out)
2) Colonist automatically get a Walls and Castle. Colonist also gains +2 happy at base.
3) Colonist has the option of becoming a Puppet city when founded.

So the idea is this. If you want a colonist city for yields, by all means go for it. But if your just looking to claim some key land, or snag a strategic, without shooing yourself in the foot.... then make it a puppet. You'll have a bit extra happiness so it won't be a happiness drain, it will make a small amount of "free" science and culture, and will get you a strategic resource...at the cost of the gold maintenance. This seems like a reasonable thing to do at this stage in the game, that allows "guilt free" expansion, but its still expansion that isn't going to suddenly have you drowning in new yields.

I also added in the Walls and Castle to ensure the city is not deathly vulnerable (honestly its still pretty damn vulnerable without an Arsenal but that's a more niche building). This is important as with the puppet option, you may not be able to quickly get those defense buildings going like you can with an Annex.