Idea on stopping pioneer spam

from Elemental Forums

I was thinking about it and why not make Pioneers cost gold> If the pioneer costs about 200 gold to produce (or perhaps 150 depending on what is a better balance), the early game isn't going to be filled with spamming pioneers everywhere and you can settle at a more interesting pace. I mean, pioneers should require gold anyway because setting up an outpost or settlement must require funds for supplies and such, it isn't the same as producing a soldier which just requires the materials for armor and weapons and such.

 

I think this will solve these three issues:

1) The pioneer spam (early game it will be slow, middle game it will be something that can be done at a fair speed but there will still be spots left, and late game it will be easy to produce pioneers but not many spots left.)

 

2) Gives more use for gold which by mid game isn't as necessary. I am easily producing 60 plus gold a turn and my taxes are on low ( I built a lot of important gold buildings but still not difficult to acquire gold mid to late game)

 

3) Gives more strategic depth to taxes. You may now need to go to high taxes so you can get some gold to produce a pioneer. 

 

Anyway, these are my thoughts on it and I will see if I can mod it this way and see how it works out.

13,398 views 22 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok well just modded my game, I tried putting in 200 but when i got in game it cost 600 to create the pioneer. I realized that putting in 200 in the txt file would multiply by amount of men so I changed it to 50 ( which means it will cost 150 gold to build a pioneer) as that is a nice rounded number, otherwise it would be a weird number since you cant get exactly 200 if multiplying by 3. I will see how my game goes.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

You will need to change the priority the AI has for training pioneers to cope with the change. The AI doesn't look at the cost and think it is too expensive. It looks a the AI Priority and uses that to make a queue. At least that is how it seems to work. 

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

but even if the pioneer is a priority, it wont be able to produce it without the funds. Wont this in and of itself stop it for the most part>>

 

Are AI priorities something that can be changed> What file>

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm interested in how this works out.   Will this give the pariden spell too much power when they can "spam" outposts with magic?

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I am all for Pioneers costing money to product and Upkeep.  My question is there a difference between a 3 man Pioneer or a 5 man Pioneer ect?

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BlackRainZ, reply 1
Ok well just modded my game, I tried putting in 200 but when i got in game it cost 600 to create the pioneer. I realized that putting in 200 in the txt file would multiply by amount of men so I changed it to 50 ( which means it will cost 150 gold to build a pioneer) as that is a nice rounded number, otherwise it would be a weird number since you cant get exactly 200 if multiplying by 3. I will see how my game goes.
End of BlackRainZ's quote
 

 

How did you end up modding this?  did you give the pioneer design some equipment that costs 50 gold?  Or some other way?

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Your idea is interesting, another possibility is to copy Civ4 and add a significant upkeep cost to cities. This way you couldn't afford too have many low level cities and would have to develop them 1 at a time.

Quoting Murteas, reply 7
How did you end up modding this? did you give the pioneer design some equipment that costs 50 gold? Or some other way?
End of Murteas's quote

Pioneers use a different base unit then other designed units. You cannot give other units the settle ability. Only units designed off the base pioneer unit have the ability to create outposts or cities. So I imagine he just added the gold cost directly to the unit. Of course you would need to do this for every races pioneers.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I think they could get rid of a lot of the city spam by:

1:  Make all the "whole empire" bonuses "one per empire".

2:  Make more "whole empire" bonuses, especially for level 4 & 5 cities, so there would still be as much overall "per empire" bonuses, and there would be more motivation to build big cities.  Or else increase the bonuses from the existing bonuses

3:  Eliminate the 3-turn minimum build time -- again, makes big cities desirable instead of nerfing them and favoring lots of small cities.  This has been requested elsewhere.

4:  Maybe also partly undo the recent change that makes outpost improvements take time in the city building queue?   Perhaps make them take half time and justify it by proclaiming that half the work is being done by the original pioneers who built the outpost and the other half done by laborers from the city.

5:  Tweak the AI to recognize the advantages of fewer bigger cities.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

It is a very easy thing to do. You just add the requirement to each pioneer unit in the coreunits file. 

 

Add this:

 

<ProductionRequirement>
<Type>Resource</Type>
<Attribute>Gold</Attribute>
<Value>50</Value>
</ProductionRequirement>

 

The value you put in there is for an individual. So a unit of 3 will be 150 gold. 5 would be 250 gold but pioneers aren't ever in 5 man groups i believe. They don't need to be either.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Krax would be OP- he could spam 4 pioneers early and get 5 cities while everyone else is on 2.

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah but I can change that easily. I will make it so that it only starts out with an extra 150 gold. Which means they could potentially be able to get an advantage (by being able to produce 2 pioneers early if it does not recruit any heroes) but this means that is actually a useful trait to take. I doubt many people take the extra gold trait.

 

What do you guys think about that> Or should I do 300 gold extra>>

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

The only issue I can see with this are those sovereigns that start with 1k extra gold.  They would have a huge advantage as claiming land/resources early is the most beneficial way to play. 

What I would like to see is your first city reaching a requirement (population limit?) of some sorts to create your first pioneer.  Then another requirement for your next and so on.  This would make you develop your capital first before setting out and finding new lands while simultaneously giving you the opportunity to clear your surrounding lands of the lower level monsters that would go after your pioneers.  

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Instead of putting up a requirement before you are able to create pioneers or cities, I think settling new cities should be tied to a high gildar and production cost, hopefully nothing that hits outposts in the same way.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Solymer, I modded it so that factions can't start with 1000 extra gold, they only start with 150 extra gold. 

 

Kongdej, I am trying to find a solution that we can do until they fix it on their own somehow. In my opinion, this is a simple solution and I think will work. I might even increase the amount to 300 gold for a pioneer, at least for myself.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

I have another idea on slowing down pioneer spam (through modding) so let me know what you think.

 

I was looking through the files and there are actually AI setting for expansion in the early, mid and late games, so these could be edited. I could make it so they do not care that much about expanding in the early game, perhaps more so in the mid game and then even more so late game, or some other configuration. What do you guys think?

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting BlackRainZ, reply 15
Solymer, I modded it so that factions can't start with 1000 extra gold, they only start with 150 extra gold. 

 

Kongdej, I am trying to find a solution that we can do until they fix it on their own somehow. In my opinion, this is a simple solution and I think will work. I might even increase the amount to 300 gold for a pioneer, at least for myself.
End of BlackRainZ's quote

Can you make it so cities is an upgrade from outposts? :S

Would work somewhat as I imagined could help the problem, if the upgrade to the outposts costed 3-6 turns of extra production and meaby 20-50 gildar.

Not too happy about nerfing the "Wealthy Ability" myself, its pretty... Meh. As is already, gives a nice starting game, but if its nerfed its a waste of space :D

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

What do you mean cities is an upgrade from outposts> Do you mean you want to lay down outposts which can later turn into cities> This might be possible.

 

The wealthy ability is still very useful because you will be able to expand more quickly, essentially that is the idea, but I am still playing around with it.

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

A small basic fix I think would be to increase the min build time to so 5 or 7. Piooners aren't like other units they don;t get worse over time.

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top

I am trying something different. I am editing the file that determines how important expanding is to the AI (priority of it) So I am lowering their priority for expanding in the Early and middle game and I will see how it affects them. If it doesn't work well to my liking, perhaps I will increase the build time of pioneers (or how much production is required to build them so it takes a long time.

Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Murteas, reply 5
I'm interested in how this works out.   Will this give the pariden spell too much power when they can "spam" outposts with magic?
End of Murteas's quote

 

IIRC, the magic outpost spell has a mana upkeep.   They will still have an advantage, but you could say mod that to 2 or 3 mana per turn instead of 1.  That way it's not unlimited.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

There is no mana upkeep for the outpost spells as far as I can tell, but it does cost 50 mana which can be hefty.

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Supreme, reply 21
IIRC, the magic outpost spell has a mana upkeep.   They will still have an advantage, but you could say mod that to 2 or 3 mana per turn instead of 1.  That way it's not unlimited.
End of Supreme's quote

It's only a flat 50 mana cost, no upkeep required (same as with other outposts).  Pariden outpost spam is already pretty effective once you get a decent mana income, and with the changes suggested by the OP, would make them far and away the most expansionist-happy faction in the game.  If you REALLY want to limit the number of cities in the early game, why not make faction prestige the max number of cities you can found?  Keep the growth limit for prestige so you still grow more slowly if you decide to take all your neighbors' cities, but tying max cities to your prestige, you quite effectively limit city growth in the early game (when your sovereign should be out there gaining levels), and would much more effectively accomplish what prestige was implemented for in the first place.