Two ways to build on resources

from Elemental Forums

Question 1:  How many of you prefer to...

... build the resource the normal way, taking 4 precious city squares

... send out pioneers to preserve precious city squares and/or use distant resources, at the cost of the pioneer's own expense, 1 unit of population, and the reduced benefit (example for those who aren't in the beta -- it takes two shards build-on by pioneers to get the benefit on one shard in the city)

 

Question 2:  What do you think of this rule?

 

I personally usually use pioneers where I can.   Might change later spaces in cities become less hard to find. 

And I think things like mines & farms logically belong outside the city walls, so I wouldn't mind rule-changes to favor using pioneers.  It just seems more logical to me to have cities take less space and focus in "urban" activities like research, manufacturing, commerce, etc, etc.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Currently the game does not "take away" any of those remote resources you send your Pioneers to. Nor do you benefit from those resources until they fall inside the actual min. distance from a Town, currently 4 Tiles I believe, so it makes it hard to actually tell what "costs" will eventually be incurred to take and hold those remote resources.

Thus the cost of Pioneers may be quite high if you find yourself near an aggressive neighbor who thinks those resources should be his and not yours. (assuming we can "take over" a pioneered remote resource of course) ;)

So here is a possible compromise.

If I build a City, then any resource tiles within its min. boundary consume only 2 tiles, and any Resource that a pioneer is sent out to, outside the min. tile # (as is now) will consume 4 Tiles and always consume 4 Tiles, even after your nearest City eventually either snakes out to it, or you drop a new Town, thus placing said Resource inside the min. boundary of the new Town.

Otherwise, be it a smart AI or a another human player, running out with pioneers to hold a resource, until a City can be dropped, just to milk that resource, could become a do or die strategy.