Is it a good idea to make 3 types of pioneers?

2: 5 population seems too low. I would say 15-20 pop.

3: Why? In my games, I always see AI pioneers everywhere...are you sure they settle less than human players?

AI doesn't plan city growth. Human player can rush his city to 2 level and then quickly produce 2 pioneers. Human player wisely casts spells which increase food and growth of a city. Human player settles on the best tiles. So AI should have his own "knowledge" of how to survive against wise human player.

On higher levels, the AI has extra tile yields and bonus growth and production. But don't let that stop you from creating a mod and try and see how it works out. Cheap pioneers might work better than those bonuses, I don't know.

Why not set a prereq to prevent the AI from building pioneers until the city is level 2. That would mean the AI will never create pioneers from a city level of 1. I think that would be a good mod for this as well.

But to make a unit that only builds outposts seems a little unnecessary at the moment.

I don't think I would make any pioneers that build outposts only if they still make me lose 30 population, even if they cost less production.

Now if they only costed 5 production and 5 population, I would definitely make those.

I make several outposts as it is now. There are plenty of times when I reach population max on some of my cities and so I just build a pioneer instead of leaving it maxed out. There are some cities that have a growth of 5, and so 6 turns population is recouped...don't really see the disregard to pioneers costing 30 pop to build an outpost.

I guess I value elegance pretty highly.  I would rather there not be a difference if the difference isn't one that is going to markedly change play.

I think I would still do everything pretty much the same if I could make a pioneer for 5 production and 30 population, because the most important cost remains intact.  I would rather not waste the UI space in that case.

The 5/5 outpost only pioneer would dramatically change the way I play, though, and it would therefore warrant UI space.

Better have one type of pioneers, the ones we have today, with the same cost. Give them the road building ability and remove automatically generated roads from the trade tech. They could also build the outposts without being lost afterwards, but it should take at least 10 turns, where they had to be defended from monsters potentially. Make some rules for max distance from outposts to avoid spamming, and allow outposts to be turned into fortresses that can hold a garnison if the pioneer improves it another 20 turns. This worker action should also cost abit of money (100-200G), so it was a hard decission to make.

This way pioneers would have an increased importance, and also more strategical flavour. Do I build that city at once, or use my pioneer for some road/outpost building first? Do I have the troops availble protecting my pioneer workers, or should I use my troops for exploring, quests or clearing nests?

With more naval stuff introduced in the game pioneers could also be expanded on With more abilities, like building harbours at the coast, and Connect them to cities via road for instance. They could also potentially be turned into Fishing boats when entering the sea, and then be used to harvest sea ressources. Endless possibilities here.

These ideas would really improve the game when it comes to building up your empire, and add alot more planning and strategy. Harder decissions to ne made every turn. My hopes goes for an expansion pack bringing us this + naval stuff. The huge kind of expansion pack improving on the huge potential this game still has. 

I would second giving all pioneers the road building trait and removing automatic roads from the tech tree.  I've posted about my gripes with automatic roads before.  Sure, it would diminsh the Mancer faction bonus, but I think that roadbuilding should be a universal trait.  As it is, I only play as the Mancers and roadbuilding is one the reasons for that.

I also like the idea of another unit for building outposts, but I would call it an engineer instead.  Make it costs quite a bit in production but have little or no population cost.  The engineer could have roadbuilding too.

Great idea! This would surely help AI. But technically there could be a problem. There are 3 type of cities of 2 level. What <prereq></prereq> should the unit use? This will need some testing, but the idea is right.

I like some ideas, they also need testing and now I don't know if they are possible.

The idea of auto-roads imho is a great help to AI. Yes, human player loses some creativity in gameplay with all roads that are created automatically. But being a great help to AI auto-roads are the great feature of the game. If it were possible to allow auto-roads only to AI and human player would need to build roads manually - this would be brilliant, but I don't know if this is possible.

That's a really good point.  It hadn't occurred to me that the AI would probably be really handicapped if it needed to build roads.

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This is not quite what is needed. AI should wait until 50 population (2 level settlement), then produce pioneers one by one, if there were at least 30 population, AI should build them. <Attribute> should be something like city level and <Value> not less than 2. There are some buildings that require type of settlement, so there may be 3 types of pioneers - one for each type of settlement... I can't think of an elegant solution.

i like the idea of outposts being built by a different unit than settlers.  Perhaps a military unit?

Leave pioneers alone please (at least for human players). If anyone seriously believes the cost is too high for a pioneer used to build an outpost, then don't build outposts. For those of us who recognize the value of outposts, the cost is reasonable.

Also, please leave automatic road building alone, too. This is one of the great features of the game that cuts way back on micromanagement.