Pioneers - Available too early....too cheap....

Another option: your prestige is the max number of cities you can found.  That way, city spam can be addressed without severely nerfing outposts.

Have Pioneers only build Outposts and a settler unit build settlements (unit available though civ tech tree). Monsters should be more aggressive vs outposts like they were in previous betas, thouh (unless they have Wardens).

Some of that seems a bit kneejerk. I suspect you just got a tough start position close to another AI.  Usually I get more of a buffer before I have to start clubbing the AI off my resources. But I play on large maps.

Right now Pioneers are vital, so you cant delay their availability, especially if you're playing on harder difficulties, where the AI will always grow their cities faster than you. Under no circumstances should they take longer to build, unless they significant alter their role, and reduce production burdens across the board. You're going to find your production queues are very congested in Beta 4, and you're not going to want those pioneers to take any longer than they already do.

Production capacity is vital in beta 4. I'd recommend against a starting city with a material bonus less than 3. Get a +production building up right away, and get Civics teched so so you can rush build.

All that said, the AI is  pretty spammy with those pioneers. They key is to curb that behavior without crippling the player as well. Theoretically they should really be gimping themselves building that many pioneers that early at the expense of infrastructure. But then, I agressively rush pioneers too.

Scouts would seem to be the logical outpost builders.

I thought much the same way for a while but after much thought I came to a different solution.

Give monster lairs a zone of control(ZOC). Make it so that cities and outposts can not be built within a monster lairs ZOC. The monster lair must be eliminated before cities and outposts can be built there. The game should start out with a monster protecting the lair and every x turns the monster lair would spon a new monster. The newly sponned monster will wonder within the monster lairs ZOC and will attack anyone that enters the ZOC. The original monster would always protect the lair until killed and the lair destroyed.

If this was implemented the beginning city and outpost spam would stop. The AI could make as many pioneers as they wanted and unless they have already cleared the land of monster lairs it would do them no good at all.

This would also make the initial adventuring/rpg element of the game much more meaningful.

Finally it would give players a real sense of a dangerous world that must be tamed before you can settle it. Every city and outpost you build would be an accomplishment that has its own story to tell. "I was forced to clear out two bands of trolls and then face a small army of the bastards before I could take out their lair. But it was worth it. I was able to establish this fortress in a key location. I am able to produce experienced armies right on Yithril's door step now. And to make things better Yithril has to go through this fortress of mine since there isn't any other way through short of creating a land bridge using earth magic." "You see this outpost..." Each game would become more memorable and interesting.

Since players choose monster density at world creation players would already have control over how much of the world would be covered in monster lairs and thus how much clearing would need to be done before cities and outpost would start popping up everywhere. In a real since player will be able to decide when the initial adventuring/rpg phase ends and the empire building phase gets into high gear.

I like this idea. You could even be a little less draconian, and make it so that if number of cities > prestige, then none of your cities grow at all (rather then the minimum of 1). 

Also, I think making level 5 cities better also would help alleviate this problem. If level 5 cities get crazy good perks/abilities, then expanding fast has the drawback of seriously delaying your access to big city goodies. 

Maybe if we did all of the above?

I don't want to see one playstyle enforced on people. You certainly shouldn't have to city spam, and I want the game to be playable with a single city, but some people *like* to eXpand in their 4X games. I want to be able to build cities, and prestige is a very low number for much of the game. I shudder to think of that as a cap, either soft or hard.

A lot of this seems like a bit of a kneejerk reaction to a situation in the OP that sounds a bit like an extreme example to me. It has not been my general experience in the game thus far, not that there aren't issues.

Yes, at some point the AI factions are going to come in and start building things where you dont want them to build, because you want that land for yourself. And you'll have to take those away from them by force, or diplomacy, or influence, or what have you. That's the genre.

But usually there's more of a grace period when you can grab  a chunk of land for yourself before that happens. If you really did literally get boxed in, and unable to expand right from the very beginning, either you got a tough map (it happens), or perhaps weren't being quite aggressive enough and got outplayed, if you'll forgive my saying so. Your post implied it was the first game you played with the new build.  Or perhaps its more of an issue on some map sizes, and not others, which is entirely possible.

There are certainly balance issues to look at in the coming weeks, and I have no doubt adjustments will be made.  I'm far more annoyed at having to play whack-a mole with all the encroaching outposts that start popping up on my borders about 40 turns in, or so.  I imagine the AI is equally annoyed at the rich chunk of land I aggressively claimed and my  obnoxious Manifest Destiny policy.

But I'm staunchly opposed to anything that will actually limit me to only one or two cities in the first half of the game, if I see an opportunity to make 3 to 5 good ones, and am able to to pull off the logistics.  I play aggressively in 4x games, and want to be able to do so, just as I want people to also be able to turtle up in a single big city, and make a go of that.  The tricky thing is to find a balance to supporting both.

Yeah the pioneer spam is annoying. Perhaps it would help if pioneers have an upkeep of roughly 10 gildar per turn. That would force the player to increase the taxes when a pioneer travels to the next outpost or city spot and it would reduce the number of pioneers that travel at the same time.

I agree that the main problem here is that monsters are currently badly implemented and don't stop expansion at all.

Also you could take a page from Civ and have towns cost a upfront gold upkeep. That way you could only afford to have a single town early game. You would have to wait until it leveled to build another instead of just spamming cities everywhere. Thus players would develop 1 city at a time instead of all in one huge rush at the start, and paying for those towns would require the opportunity cost of increased taxes.

A smart player doesn't just jam cities everywhere, though. Only the AI does that. Optimal building spots are few.  If I have 3 good cities I personally built by about turn 100, I consider myself doing pretty well, and fortunate with the map I got. Everything else is outposts. But if I see those sweet spots, I want to be able to make a  move on them without crippling myself.

I expect there to be tradeoffs, yes...sacrificing early infrastructure for a long term payoff. But a lot of the ideas I see being put forth here seem awfully draconian along the lines of "no, you cant have those cities", or "you can't realistically have those cities without crippling yourself to such a degree that...well, face it, you can't have those cities".

Also keep in mind, that as you move up difficulty levels as you get better at the game, the AI will likely have production and income bonuses. They will always be able to out tech, out spend, and out produce the player in the early game. So if you build in too many hard or soft caps built around income, all you're doing is crippling the player, and you're right back in the same situation with the AI out-building you.

All I'm saying is, don't cripple the player or fight the fundamental nature of the 4X genre to curb obnoxious AI behavior. I think it would be better to change the nature of the pioneers somewhat, and definitely better to increase the intelligence of the AI about optimal building.  And the point about monsters not currently doing their job to threaten early outposts is right  also.

After all, this is what the game wants you to do. It wants you to build pioneers. You have to build them to get the things that you want. Putting in too many measures that kick you in the balls for doing what you have to do isn't fun.  Having to outwit or defeat a monster to get at a tasty shard, *is*.

Monsters definitely need to be more aggressive against Pioneers and new cities.  You should be able to build a city within a monster's ZoC, but you will have to station trained troops there to defend it or the monster patrols will come for you.

Perhaps giving Pioneers a limit of 1 move per turn would make them more vulnerable to attack and reduce the "rush" aspect of the pioneer rush.  They are carying all the necessary materials to build a new city after all.  Paying a moderate support would also be a deterrent to keeping tons of them on hand "just in case".  The problem is if the AI still decides to add a Pioneer to every stack it will slow their armies down too much.  Escporting a pioneer to a predetermined location is fine, trailing around the map with extra pioneers thrown in is dumb.

On a side note, I suggest different monster types damage cities in different ways.  Bandits steal gildar from your coffers, smaller monsters kill or scare away your citizens, large monsters crush buildings.  Perhaps some add a negative spell effect.

Something does need to be done.    This is probably the single biggest problem with the current game.  

I like the ideas listed above.     Let's hope Stardock is listening.  I fully support trying them.

while i agree new (and eventually old undefended ) cities need to be targeted much more the point of pioneers being too cheap remains

i love more civ way of handling them making them much much more expensive

I tried making them cost 30 population too.  That way you can only build one at the start of the game.  The problem is that they are also used for Outposts, so that kinda kills outpost building and gives Pariden a huge advantage.

My personal opinions entailed:

@strager

• I agree that pioneer spamming is a problem, but forcing an empire to wait till there capital is Level 2 would cripple you're empire's growth and really make the early game BORING.
• That said, Pioneers could cost a little more resources to build....perhaps a gold fee aswell...to help deter spamming.
• Cities grow slow enough as it is. IF they didnt' grow while building pioneers, then presiege should affect each city individually...not the whole of the empire together.
• Again, forcing only 1 pioneer at a time would cripple growth as empires require them for both cities AND outposts.
• I could see that only towns be allows to build pioneers...but then you have a problem. You're capital HAS to be a town, or it's game over. That's not fair to those who wish to persue other strategies.

@Emperorjarin

•  I can't see this being a fair option either, as those that gain the most prestiege gain a massive strategic advantage. Prestiege would have to start at 3 and go from there for this to be viable.

@leeboy26

• I'm liking this idea a little better, though rather than creating a new unit to 'settle', FE should utilize a current unit that's not being touched in the game: The scout. Imo, scouts and only scouts should have the ability to build outposts. There cost and abilities should be adjusted to meet there new function. Pioneers continue to build cities, but at a slightly higher cost commitment, both in production and gold requirement. Now the question...will outpost spam become rampant? Maybe...depends on how they balance it...scouts need to have an importance in actual scouting.....then they find the place they like....and build an outpost to protect what they've found. Makes sense to me...

Those are my thoughts on the matter anyways...

I think increasing the distance between outposts would help reduce outpost spam.  It should not be allowed within 3 spaces.

Notes from the new build. We should probably try it out before we form an opinion on pioneers:

Fallen Enchantress 0.951 Changelog

That's only half the problem Bingjack. The other half is that you have to pioneer spam at the beginning...and it takes away from all the other stuff you need to do in the queue.

I like this part of your idea.  The spawning of monsters every x amount of turns might be too much.

Level 3 being better would work well enough.

Maybe pioneers shouldn't be buildable, but given at intervals based on prestige?

Yes, but my issue isn't that the AI spams settlements. My problem is that the AI is RIGHT to spam settlements. It is the optimum strategy. Making the AI play dumb by not building as many settlements as possible is not really a solution (at least at higher difficultly levels anyway, it works at lower levels).

There needs to be a bit of an opportunity cost to expanding too fast immediately. Maybe a fixed 2 gold maintenance cost per extra city would be enough (might need to be countered by slightly more gildar producing options from size 3 cities), I dunno, but something.

It's possible that making it imposible to settle near monsters might work by making the faction get strong enough to defeat the monster but it introduces even more chance (not only do you need to find good settle spots but you get a bit bonus if it is undefended/lightly defended) and I fear the AI might struggle with it, a human player is likely to be better at focussing on important complex goals like clearing the right monster bands to be able to settle.

Maybe. But I don't think I can make a clear call on that until monsters are behaving in the way they're supposed to in the game. They currently arent.

If monsters are patrolling their zone, and either killing settlers or destroying buildings, it may be that suddenly players are complaining they cant get anything built until midgame.

I just want to see that before I sign on for draconian measures like making Pioneers much more costly in the already congested production queue, or placing hard or soft caps on how much players are able to expand in a 4X game, if they are able to. Rushing is a viable strategy in the 4x genre, and should remain so. It just shouldn't be the *only* strategy.

Something else I was thinking while playing Pariden, is that Arcane Monolith( place an outpost with mana, instead of Production) should be available to everyone as a spell, but Pariden gets like a 50% discount on the price (spell cost balanced as necessary).

That way players with an abundance of mana, but limited production capacity (for instance from having only a single city) have an alternative to the congested build queues, and the need to build so many pioneers.