Suggestion - special pioneers just for outposts

I recommended to give Scouts a usefulness to the game by making them have the seconded ability of building outposts. (and eliminating pioneers from being able to do so).

Yes please.

Except that outposts generate population through consulates. Removing the pop cost for outposts would undermine the purpose of having a pop cost for pioneers at all. I love scouts. I always produce one or two immediately. Extra vision range and full movement through rough terrain makes them perfect for revealing the map quickly so I can plan ahead.

Agree. Scouts should not be able to make outpost - it would be too easy and too chip (presuming scout is not gone after making outpost).

Consulates appear late in game, way too late to justify costs of early expansion. Playing on high difficulties with dense monsters i find myself not building outposts anymore - cost is too much, and risk is too big. Especially if you are forced to leave some lairs unmolested for xp farms.

You'd have the scout consumed when making an outpost.

Consulates don't appear late in the game at all. It's the third rung in the cheapest of the three tech trees. You could choose not to research it in the early game but I don't why you would do that - the first half of the civ tree is filled with super cheap techs that are all about getting the power snowball rolling. I have always picked up roads to outposts as a fairly high priority tech (especially if I have Arcane Monoliths) and Consulates are on the way there.

As long as pop is supposed to be any kind of limitation then being able create a population generator without spending any pop on it would be a pretty comical game mechanic. I'd rush Consulates (you get +50% growth on the way too) then build a couple outposts right there at the city, no need to put them out in harm's way - they would just be free people factories after all.

First problem: you mention Arcane Monoliths. This spell, again, becomes automatically overpowered.

Second: outposts should not stuck. If they stuck, then you can abuse it - you build so many of them that still you can have pioneer/turn (with good production) without using any population (so we have original problem). Furthermore, are you saying that all the building which give growth boost are funny mechanic as well? Should they cost population too?

Third: consulates become must-technology, if you want expansion (and in expert above you must expand to win). I do not like to be deprive of choice, i like choices and various strategies. 

Fourth: they should be price for outpost in population. But 30 is way too much.

Fifth: i think pop cost for pioneers was intended to fight city spam, and not outposts. Now if you do not have consulates and very high growth in cities, you have no outposts. I am not sure it is intended.

Sixth: third rung is not close. First is, or second. If you are playing focusing on army/spell it means late game.

First: I like roads to outposts regardless of whether I have arcane monoliths. Do you mean pop cost on outposts makes arcane monoliths overpowered? They were very powerful before by allowing roads to be created with mana. Unlike outposts they cannot be upgraded. You think they are overpowered now? Maybe you're right; I'm not sure yet.

Second: "Outposts should not stuck." I don't know what you are trying say there. I don't know what you are asking with growth being funny. It sounds like you are saying if I don't like free outposts I must hate all growth mechanics. That is not the case. I couldn't decipher this paragraph so I can't really speak to it.

Third: Consulates are not necessarily a must have if outposts cost pop to build. If outposts are free (in terms of pop) then they become a must have. It's a free lunch something that should never be in a strategy game because it's a no brainer.

Fourth: 30 pop isn't much. Whether the pioneer founds a city or creates an outpost the value of pop isn't great in the game currently so this is a pretty soft limitation to start with, making it cheaper would invalidate an already weak limitation. Once I've gotten a city to tier 2 I don't even care about it's pop; the levelup bonuses are nice but most of the value of a city is unlocked when you choose the tier 2 type. Having access to all of the special buildings in a Conclave/Fortress/Town is the bulk of the benefit to me.

Fifth: Outposts secure resources and reduce unrest by connecting city borders; they are mini cities and an important part of expansion (particularly with the new unrest penalty). The wording of the second half of this point isn't clear for me - I think you may be suggesting eliminating Consulates. I agree this solves the problem, but it solves it by taking away a choice and leaving us with less to think about and plan. I would prefer to avoid removing decisions/simplifying the game when practical. I don't think free outposts add anything to the game so I don't think it's worth removing something to get them.

Sixth: The warfare and magic trees are so much more expensive than the civ tree that this is not a valid comparison. Warfare vs Magic or some balance between is a real budgeting consideration but the early civ tree is too cheap and effective to just ignore until late game. Perhaps third rung civ doesn't seem like "early game" because we used to be able to spam pioneers carelessly. If the intent of the pioneer and unrest changes were to slow down expansion then I think it's fair to consider one of the cheapest techs in the game to be an early game tech. 

You seem to be saying the pop cost on outposts is too high because you don't get the tech that allows outposts to generate pop. You don't want to get the tech because you want to research something else. But isn't this a valid choice with benefits and costs for either course? It seems like a good thing.

Ok, couple of clarifications.

Outpost were never free. You had to pay for them by making pioneers, instead of making something else. I am not for free outposts, i am for decreased price.It is the same thing with other buildings, and troops etc. If they do not cost population it does not mean they are for free. Regarding conclave - if it does not cost population - in your words "It's a free lunch something that should never be in a strategy game because it's a no brainer". I understand that you also want to remove heroes improving growth and all the buildings that improve growth (unless they cost population). Following that we should not have building that provide guildar and yet does not cost any guildar, nor we should have buildings that provide mana and yet does not cost any mana and so on. This 'no brainer' idea of yours require profound reform of current game, we just have too much 'free lunch'.

I was not clear about 'stacking' outpost/conclave. If you have 6 conclaves, as you suggested, you have +6 to growth. I am not sure about it, but if it is a case, then i consider it a bug. Such strategy should not be valid, it is more the abuse of a system. When conclave do not 'stack' then you have just +1 growth, which cost you 30 turns to get back. In this case, whether you have outpost/conclave does not really matter much.

I understand also that you think leveling cities is unimportant. Well, we disagree here - and it is a problem with design. Leveling cities (all the more that we try to limit spam) should be fun, or just remove it.

I agree outposts are very, very important, hence should not be expensive. That was my point. Now you can afford outposts when: you have good number of cities established and leveled up to second level. Since pioneers are so expensive, they become rare, when they are rare, you are forced to build city rather than outpost. Strategically speaking, that's the way. There is just way more profit from the city than from the outpost. Once you have all cities you want to build then you think about outposts. I do not like it much.

I never used to spam 'pioneers' carelessly. Play insane and every decision matters.

And finally, here is the point where we truly disagree. I think the plan was to slow down city spam, not expansion. When i have now free shard 6 tiles from my city, i know i will get it in a middle game, even though it is so close to my city. Why? Because i am not going to waste pioneer till i have no other option. Hence i can have lots of cities span through continent and yet not have all this singular resources connected. Paradoxically, i am spamming cities now more than before

The whole point of pop cost for pioneers is to slow the rate of building cities. Cities are so important because, yes, they produce pop, gold, research, production - and now we have to pay pop to create new cities. They are already tightly limited by available settle spots where outposts are not limited to settle spots. You are trying to say I should be against city improvements because they don't have various costs. They are city improvements. Cities are not free at all. It does make sense in these terms to move the pop cost from the outpost to the consulate itself. I have no idea if that's a practical solution. Charge the connected city X pop for building a consulate? This would work as a solution for me.

My case is that getting free pop from outposts without paying pop for them undermines the only reason for adding a pop cost to pioneers in the first place - to slow the rate of city building. Removing the pop cost from outposts isn't just decreasing their price it is changing the nature of the cost. If the cost were moved to the Consulate then there's no problem though.

Stacking...gotcha. You don't really need to stack it on a single city though. 1 Pioneer per turn from one city or 1 Pioneer every 6 turns from six different cities is just as good.

Paying 30 pop to gain 1 pop/turn is not abuse it's the current design. Should it be changed? Perhaps, but it is valid. Do I create an outpost/consulate putting me 1 pioneer behind now because I'll get more pop later? Production cost of pioneers are irrelevant. The value of a new city or outpost is too high to counter with production cost. No one wants to wait 30 turns (or whatever) for a pioneer to build even if it is worth it strategically.

I don't think that leveling cities is unimportant and I do like the bonuses but ticking 2 gives me the special buildings and most of what I'm ultimately going to gain from the city. I think all it would take to stop me from letting a village hit 2 then steal back all their pop into pioneers is if the upgrade chains like herbalist>apothecary>alchemist etc had level requirements on the structures and this applied across the board to all upgrade chains. It's a big change though.

I seem to have offended you. Able to make Pioneers carelessly = Pioneers use to be very cheap to produce not you have poor decision making skills. That's a wording issue and I apologize for any offense though I don't think you should have assumed I was trying to insult you.

I used the word expansion to describe empire expansion i.e. city spam. How are you spamming more cities now? Are there more settle spots now or did you just not settle on the available spots before? Do you like to only build a couple cities and secure all resources using outposts? Is this why you don't want to spend pop on outposts and why you're building more cities now?

Assuming military victory, it's just settle all spots till all spots are settled then start taking cities from the AI until victory screen, right? Any resources that are not connected cost outposts. You do have the choice of spending the required costs of hooking up resources now with an outpost or waiting until border expansion eventually hooks them up without the need for an outpost. That is another valid choice that we didn't have to make before because Pioneers were so inexpensive to produce.

There are a lot of old threads about this topic.  I think that if they were going to change it, they would have done so by now.  Then again, they do keep changing the cost of Pioneers.

Plutonium:

nope, you do not offended me Nor did you insult me, and i think i did not claim being insulted, i was just trying to make a point.

I have a feeling, that b/c of my language skill i am not understood. I will try to speak from different perspective.

Right now every pioneer I produce goes for a city till almost a middle game, when all the spots are taken. Before i had a choice, now i do not have, if I want to be effective. Pioneers always are used in this order cities->outposts->roads/others. Before the change, I would often sacrifice a pioneer to have an outpost in good place, sometimes i would have 2-3 cities and 2-3 outposts at the same time. In my most recent game i had seven cities before i got my first outpost. Thus, I think that i expand the same way as before, taking any free spot i can, but the proportion between number of cities/outposts is skewed. Since i think the intention of the devs was to slower city building and not to destroy the balance between the number of cities to outposts, i proposed those new units just for building outposts for a lower cost of population. This way you have choice, and it does not speed up city building, since conclaves are later technology and also since their bonus is not so significant anyway.

There is a lot of old topics whether pioneers should cost population or not, but those topics, as far as i know, happened even before outpost were introduced to the game. I can be wrong though.

That makes sense and the new mechanic does create some uncomfortable decisions (which I still like). Now that I really understand your position I'm surprised you didn't like the suggestion to move the pop cost from creating the outpost to only if the consulate is built...?

Maybe pioneers could build outposts over several turns (say, 5?), but not be consumed by the process?

From the 5.1 Change Log.

Pioneers cost gold instead of population

I like it a lot - for now gold has basically no use

I am sorry - i am not sure i understand it

There are a lot of those, too, but there are a lot of threads suggesting a change to the way Outposts are made.  Some people have even made mods to add an Engineer unit that builds outposts and roads.  It's even discussed at length in current upcoming patch changelog thread.  There are many threads about Pioneers costing too much to just make an outpost, and there have been many solutions presented, none implemented.

One of the suggestions I made a couple months back was to make the outpost cost 1 of the Pioneer's 3 people.  So, a Pioneer unit could then make 3 outposts or 1 city (the Settle option would cost all 3, so if you made an outpost, you couldn't make a city with that same Pioneer).  I don't think this solution would be implemented, though, because it would probably be a lot to code.

In another thread, one of the solutions I liked was to change the Settle action to cost 30 population, and the Outpost action to cost something else (maybe 30 gold).  I posted that idea in the changelog thread, but I stole it from another thread.  There are a lot of threads.

Sorry, missed those.