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).

Scouts would seem to be the logical outpost builders.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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

Fallen Enchantress 0.951 Changelog

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

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.

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.