[0.95]Outpost & Resource Assignment Thoughts

It's something about the system I really dislike. The new city system is supposed to reward specialization, and yet resources get assigned to cities that arent designed for production, forcing them to chug along to build a single shrine. The production queues are far too crowded for that as it is.

One solution is to make it like in Gal Civ 2, where Starbase...I mean outpost upgrades are built by constructors, I mean pioneers. That would allow you to determine what city you want to spend production to upgrade them, and reap the benefits. But they're trying to get away from Pioneer spam, I guess, while ironically forcing me to build outposts all over creation to get roads someplace or to claim resources.

I kind of just wish it was as easy as clicking on the resource, and selecting the name of the city you wanted it assigned to from a drop down list, of reasonably nearby cities.

Wow. never knew that the resources were directed to the nearest city, despite the outposts affiliation.

I have assumed, and I think it's a fair assumption, that the resources be directed to the outpost, and the outpost ships those resources to the city it's linked with.

To that end, outposts should be able to change which city they are to be linked with. I don't think they should be able to pick any city in your empire...perhaps just one of the closest 3....though this would mean that if you built a closer city later in the game, it would be possible that you are required to re-assign your outpost because it's current link is no longer available. Harder to program I think... so maybe just be able to link the outpost to whatever city you want. Maybe have a limit to how many outposts can be linked to a city based on the cities level?

Also still think that scouts should be responsible for building outposts, as there is currently no beneficial reason for building scouts. Currently it's pioneer spam and while the cost for pioneers is set about right, you have to build too many of them.

Just some thoughts...

I still think pioneers are too cheap, I can easily mass-produce them and spit out cities and then outposts, the fact that the game is made for city spam "forces" me into this.

And I use scouts in the early game, to locate new city locations, mostly as Magnar though as slave units with scout = awesomely cheap scouting unit.
That said, probably a good idea to make a scout unit upgrade that cant go onto slaves, that enables you to build outposts, instead of forcing that job unto the pioneer which is basically why we cant limit pioneer construction any more, due to them also being the key element in outpost spamming.

I don't like the idea of putting pioneers into outposts to upgrade them, rather Id see outposts be put onto one city, be restricted in the amount of upgrades it can choose, and have some set range from a city it can be placed (13 tiles +1 tile per map size for example). Then if you want to relocate an outposts home city, you will get a list of all cities, or have to click on a  city within the said range.
(Also prevents silly outpost grabbing of everything that isn't even remotely near you own territory with either pioneers or worse, Paridens "Outpost Spam" spell

I would really like to be able to redistribute where my resources are located as per "Bingjack's" suggestion, meaby I need to contruct a trading post in the city most close to the resource, or the outpost controlling the resource, but I had 1 city with 12 material due to it having 4 clay pits nearby and being 4/4 in itself... I dont think im EVER going to need 12 material in ONE city compared to sending out 1 clay pit resource to each of my cities with 2 in base material.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej