Agree with your post, about the only race which can explore is Tarth, which makes sense with the master scouts attribute.   You cannot afford early game to not build pioneers, so pioneer spam needs to be overhauled.  Hopefully the new city building/management will allow for an overhaul of the pioneer/settlement mechanics.  You end up being forced to build pioneers, which the key to having strength in the game is having a high population, it does not seem possible to just have one city.

GoC

I, too, agree. I reckon it will be addressed in the next city-based Beta stage tho. Personally I would have thought two outposts per city and a new 'Settler' unit obtainable through the civ tree would help this (Pioneers for outposts, Settlers for Cities).

Playing with a single huge city is more fun than spamming them at every turn imo. I have to take the enchanters faction perk and basically wall in every a.i. I find to have any chance of actually exploring before it become turf war ffa. Really annoying when the a.i. just puts cities and outposts wherever they want angering all kinds of monsters who then rampage across everything within miles.

I have no problem as long as it takes less time to get one really huge city. My concern is simply the pace of the game slipping further. They have said someting about adjusting city building so we'll just have to see. I personalyl want to see some buildings be constructed in a single turn, inns, pubs -- the little buildings... a season is ample time to build a pub even in the middle ages or a post apocolyptic world. What would you say to the idea of settlers/pioneers increasing city growth? This would be a nice alternative to spaming, and both could be somewhat viable - some factions are more or less intended to be landgrabers though, so city levels might need to do a little more than they do currently to boost this idea. 

Um yeah it is fun.... i used pub as an exmaple - (they could just change season to month) (but it would still seem slow) - there a bigger and better and latter tech buildings that all require and increasing number of turns -- this isn't what i propose to change, but basic small buildings, should take one or two, 3 at most turns. IT is seriously quite tedious waiting so long to get something that has such a small benift. I've played turnbased strat games where buildings take one turn, and others where buildings take upto two dozen (M.A.X. (or for fantasy: Age of Wonders 1&2), both can be fun, but its more a case of fun puncuated by long periods of boredom. Not everyone wants to play sim-city if you get my meaning. The quicker tier 1/less useful buildings are built the sooner, cool units and beneficial buildings can be built => faster gameplay => more fun. Unless you really do like spending 15 - 20 turns running round with a maximum or two squads of men and champs. On my current game i spent the first HALF of the game with just the champions i could recruit and whatever units i trained to save my cities from monsters by the skin of the teeth -- literally.  IT was not fun. Breaking the Magnar spirit and getting a massive tribute WAS FUN, but took, a long time, a very very long time, like two days. I estimate this current game on a medium map with three opponents will take another one or two more, but at leas not i have some good units and i'm Halfway through the tech-tree. Build/Research time needs to line up better with unit movement - a guy can cross the continent in less time than a workshop can be built, or the egg-heads figure out it actually is a good idea to educate future generations thus speeding up research finally - this is nuts. 

Personally I find the early game too frantic and fast, I want it slower.   Spit out your first workshop in less then 10 turns (if you pick a good location and have earth magic).  After that you get your lumber mill and it's off to the races.  Research is paced a little better but still almost through the entire game you are getting new stuff every 10ish turns.  Currently there is no reason to not build everything everywhere, the build time is meaningless most of the time.  Less then half way through the game I will have absolutely everything built in all my cities and I have nothing to do except churn out armies or leave the production queues empty.   Actually I'm frequently forced to leave the production queues empty because I just don't have the resources to build useful armies. 

The pioneer spam is a bit much.  Last game I played I had to start a war at turn 15 because someone else built a city on the only viable spot within about 15 tiles of my starting location.  Of course the wars go a lot faster that early

I am also not a fan of the pace of play at the beginning.  It doesn't feel like rebuilding an Empire as much as it is a race.

As far as Pioneers, I think they should cost more, and it should cost materials, gold, and 10-15 turns to build an outpost.  Right now you click outpost and poof, it is built and done.  Everything else in the game takes time to build, why not the outpost.  If you add all of this up, I think you would control the pioneer spamming.

Agree completely with OP. 

Pioneers are way too important to cost so little.

I think the Original Poster makes some good points here ... and I can see at least a partial consensus emerging in the replies above mine

I do think that Rishkith's first suggestion (to double the cost of all pioneer units) is a BAD idea, especially as it would impact the human player.  As dalekdan pointed out (Reply # 7), there is a risk that this would slow early game play to an uncomfortable level.  Admittedly, getting the balance just right, in this area, might be tricky ...

On the other hand, I do think that Rishkith's later suggestion (below) is an excellent idea:

Its funny, how such a seemingly small thing, can make such a big difference ... but clearly it does, and the FE Devs need to tweak this, until they get it just right! 

They should have two ques. One for buildings and one for units. This would speed things up a bit

They tried that. It sucked. Ferociously. With the fire of a thousand suns.

Removed nearly all opportunity cost from producing buildings or units, allowed players to nearly instantly outstrip their economy's ability to support an army, and created a perception of wasted production because of queue downtime.

I, for one, am glad the Unit Queue is dead, rotting, face down and stinking, in a pile of all the other bad ideas, Like Aliens:Resurrection and Star Wars:Episode One, and Duke Nukem Forever.

I agree completly pioneer spam is probably by far my number one complaint with the game at this time.

Ive only been playing a little bit but would selecting bigger maps and fewer opponents help? changing the pacing setting?  I haven't tried these personally, I'm still just trying out each faction with everything normal to get a feel for how the game works.

If more changes are needed, should monsters prioritize attacking settlements and secondary cities more and your main city less so you can't spam as much but don't get taken out right at the beginning?

Perhaps more defensive structures could slow things down by taking up resources and build times, allowing you to hold a smaller number of settlements.  If you try to spam economic settlements, you could leave yourself open to being attacked (allowing players to loot cities could encourage you to defend what you have).

Hopefully beta 4 will help some of this.