[Suggestion] Make Pioneers expensive as in BlackRainz's mod and provide a (possibly much) cheaper unit to build outposts.

from Elemental Forums

Also the AI will need to learn it.  I think it might be better if outposts were relatively cheap (except perhaps for OP Consulates - but then Seanw3's mod makes it more reasonable) while city-building pioneers were relatively expensive.  Also, please change the AI so it doesn't spam pioneers anyway, which is probably necessary even if the pioneer mechanic isn't changed. =)

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I was trying to make it so scouts built outposts (which is possible) but the problem is the AI won't use scouts to build outposts, they will still use pioneers to build them. I even changed pioneers so they couldn't build outposts but the AI still used them to build them. It may not be possible at this time to change that.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The AI does some poor things with pioneers. But I think their strategy often works because the wandering baddies aren't as aware or aggressive as they ought to be. A pioneer is an easy target, and the baddies ought to just jump all over that. As an alternative solution to pioneer spam, I'd rather see baddies preferentially targeting weak units, like pioneers.

But I agree that outposts are smaller than settlements, and that it ought to be cheaper to make outposts than settlements.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Like I said in the thread on the same subject a few posts down, I too favor monsters doing their jobs and patrolling their zones to discourage casual expansion, over taxing the player too much for simply doing what the game requires them to do in order to play the game.

Working to overcome the problem of a  monster for a reward of a new resource is fun. Overly punitive taxation on expansion in a 4X game is not, although there's certainly room for fine tuning in there.  Simple cost increases favor the AI on higher difficulty settings, and they still end up out-building you.

Also, as you said, the AI needs to become smarter about efficient building strategy over outpost spam, and poorly placed cities.