Victor Open Dev Early Influence Costs Question?

[Sprenk]

Influence is obtained in the Neolithic era by hunting and plucking curiosities. And the first outpost is dirt cheap (5 Influence). And, when you decide to switch to the Ancient era, the 1st city is free and instant. And it seems to be quite a bit cheaper to build a new outpost if it's territory touches a city's territory than if it's next to just another outpost (or not connected to anything). So far, so good.

So a couple questions follow, based on the assumption that, all else being equal, one should want to be efficient in how one spends one's precious, precious early game Influence:

1. Does it make any sense cost-wise to bother to lay out a 2nd outpost BEFORE one creates their 1st city? It seems quite cheap--but would it be cheaper if one waited? (The outpost can't actually DO anything besides creating itself, but maybe getting that 2-5 turns out of the way would be worth any influence cost?)
2. Is it indeed the CHEAPEST strategy in the Ancient era to wait to plant new outposts until they touch upon a city, whether newly created or attached? (I understand that there may be good strategic reasons to claim a key territory before then--but I'm trying to figure out the cost implications).

I should just start up a new game and test this out myself, but every time I start to play I get involved in the game and forget to be scientific (also, this might be useful info for other players?)

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Sprenk]

To answer my own question #1, I found that it cost 20 influence to purchase a 2nd outpost BEFORE making my 1st city. On the other hand, my 1st three outposts AFTER I made my 1st city cost 10, 20 and 30 influence (this is with all three outposts touching the city). Obviously, it's much more efficient to wait. (Wish I knew that before my 1st playthrough!)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

To answer my own question #1, I found that it cost 20 influence to purchase a 2nd outpost BEFORE making my 1st city. On the other hand, my 1st three outposts AFTER I made my 1st city cost 10, 20 and 30 influence (this is with all three outposts touching the city). Obviously, it's much more efficient to wait. (Wish I knew that before my 1st playthrough!)

And, at least in this Open Dev (I suspect all Numbers are subject to change before Launch!) it costs between 70 and 90 Influence to establish an Outpost in the Ancient Era in territory not touching your first City. That, I suppose, is to encourage you to 'settle' a contiguous Homeland rather than try to grab all the Good Stuff all over the map.

 

[Taefin]

Cuz then the AI will jump your new territory and put an outpost in between it and your city, and you’d have to figure out the demands system to offer a trade... I kept just accidentally giving things away, thinking we were making deals, and reloading autosaves and trying again, but just stopped trying after a few attempts.

 

[mitsho]

Yeah I felt it was a race to place the outposts and it shouldn‘t be. It‘s the same frustrating game as there is in civ with placing cities. I would have hoped that outposts of various factions could be placed in one territory (whoever puts down the mine first, get‘s the luxury) and when one of them is about to be attached or made into a city, it takes time and something to resolve diplomatically. As it‘s now, you then just demand it and if your might is great enough, you get it anyways.

But for the influence race (the op question is answered, right), while in Lucy there was a bigger more empty map to explore and settle, in victor I just bought wonder after wonder as there weren‘t that many independent people to dump influence into either. It was a bit frustrating. Need to remember next time to save up some for an early wonder.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Yeah I felt it was a race to place the outposts and it shouldn‘t be. It‘s the same frustrating game as there is in civ with placing cities.

What makes it more interesting, though, is that just placing an Outpost isn't enough. You also need to be able to defend the Outpost, because it can be destroyed by other empires even if you are not at war. And if it's destroyed, your Influence is down the drain. So you also need to invest in a military i order to get effective use out of your Influence-expansion.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yeah I felt it was a race to place the outposts and it shouldn‘t be. It‘s the same frustrating game as there is in civ with placing cities. I would have hoped that outposts of various factions could be placed in one territory (whoever puts down the mine first, get‘s the luxury) and when one of them is about to be attached or made into a city, it takes time and something to resolve diplomatically. As it‘s now, you then just demand it and if your might is great enough, you get it anyways.

But for the influence race (the op question is answered, right), while in Lucy there was a bigger more empty map to explore and settle, in victor I just bought wonder after wonder as there weren‘t that many independent people to dump influence into either. It was a bit frustrating. Need to remember next time to save up some for an early wonder.

Hopefully it's a product of the map presented for Victor, but this Open Dev seemed Crowded to me. By the beginning of the Medieval Age or earlier there were no regions anywhere that weren't already full of cities, outposts, or Minor Factions, so expansion became a product of military not Influence. Of course, this map also had an 'empty' continent, but you only got access to that after getting some deep sea vessels - in the Early Modern Age or Blind Luck keeping a Cog alive long enough to stumble onto the New World.

Which may mean that a 'Terra' type map in Humankind will have the same problem that map type has in Civ VI, being too crowded for anything other than combat conflict until you get to the New World.

I also noticed some really big regions on this map. I hope they can tone that down, because with the attachment option you can always expand 'regions' later, but so far at least, there's no way to take some sprawling region and divide it into manageable pieces for early Outposts or small cities. The idea that now a single city could block access to half a continent because its region extends 10+ tiles across a bottleneck simply exposes the problems with the Regions as an artificial map construct that results in artificial game situations.

 

[mitsho]

What makes it more interesting, though, is that just placing an Outpost isn't enough. You also need to be able to defend the Outpost, because it can be destroyed by other empires even if you are not at war. And if it's destroyed, your Influence is down the drain. So you also need to invest in a military i order to get effective use out of your Influence-expansion.

Right, maybe I played on a difficulty level too low since that never happened to me. Having just a single city though (since those cost a lot of influence) means producing units and getting them out where they are needed is though. I still believe the outposts should get names from the city list instead of the randomly generated region names though.

Which may mean that a 'Terra' type map in Humankind will have the same problem that map type has in Civ VI, being too crowded for anything other than combat conflict until you get to the New World.

That's okay though, if the AI really colonizes the new world. It's just not the standard game I expected here

I also noticed some really big regions on this map. I hope they can tone that down, because with the attachment option you can always expand 'regions' later, but so far at least, there's no way to take some sprawling region and divide it into manageable pieces for early Outposts or small cities. The idea that now a single city could block access to half a continent because its region extends 10+ tiles across a bottleneck simply exposes the problems with the Regions as an artificial map construct that results in artificial game situations.

Totally.

 

[Atlas627]

Crowded? I didn't feel crowded. I felt like there was a lot of dead territory though. That might not be such a bad thing if they can get the balance to be less of a yield-fest. Caring about the difference between fertile and barren areas would be nice...

I actually really liked that the regions shaped how you would strategically defend/attack/expand on a particular landmass. I'm glad it's not Civ, as that game already exists.