Au Mod: The Expansionist Trait

[Aqualung71]

It's clear from the polls posted in the strategy forum by kobo1d that the Expansionist trait is considered far and away the worst trait.....and needs to be in expert hands to be exploited to its full potential. It is very map dependent, and the usefulness of the Scout all but disappears after the very early game.

One simple way to improve this trait is to make Granaries half-price. This would add some power and make it more attractive to human players, while also providing expansionist AI civs the ability to grow faster, which is what this trait should be all about.

Thoughts?

[Ision]

Half priced granaries would make them WAY over-powered. Besides, I do not think that you can edit the game in order to affect the CIV traits.

Ision

[alexman]

I think the expansionist trait is one of the most powerful traits in the game, actually. For sure the most underrated.

Even if you do not exploit your trait to its fullest potential, you can at least scout the area around your starting location and determine the best city locations without sacrificing much growth. Missing that wheat tile near your capital can actually slow your growth by 50% in the beginning of the game. Finding that luxury before the AI claims it can save you lots of gpt towards entertainment. Finding that great second city location early can allow you to build a road to it and plop your first settler there immediately. Realizing that you are stuck in a small island early can influence your research choices...

Traits with early advantages like Expansionist, Agricultural, and Industrious are so strong because the early bonus gets multiplied as your civilization grows. It hardly matters if a civilization gets no bonus after the ancient age, if the early bonus has done its work.

[ducki]

if you do not exploit your trait to its fullest potential

I think this is one of the reasons folks seem to underrate Expansionist.
That, and playing on maps not suited to it - while some will restart Ag civs until they get fantastic river starts, I don't think you see as many folks setting Expansionist up on Large maps with large landmasses.

That said, I think a quick read of Aeson's "On Scouting...." might help change some minds about the trait, or at least show how to more effectively use it.

With C3C, I think traits like Industrious and Military are not nearly the leaders they once were.

[Aqualung71]

I know there's not much support for this - I made this suggestion on the basis that the AU mod is to partly help balance things, and not necessarily only for players at the top end of the scale.

Anyway, I looked in the editor and thought that if I flagged the expansionist trait for the Granary, just as Libaries and Uni's are flagged for scientific, it would give half price Granaries. On checking later it didn't seem to make any difference. Does anyone know what these flags are for?

[alexman]

Yes, for city improvements, they are for what you think they are for, except that they don't work for traits that don't already get some sort of half-price building.

For Great Wonders, they set the Golden Age triggers.

For Small Wonders they do absolutely nothing.

[Ision]

Alex,

Even if you do not exploit your trait to its fullest potential, you can at least scout the area around your starting location and determine the best city locations without sacrificing much growth. Missing that wheat tile near your capital can actually slow your growth by 50% in the beginning of the game. Finding that luxury before the AI claims it can save you lots of gpt towards entertainment. Finding that great second city location early can allow you to build a road to it and plop your first settler there immediately. Realizing that you are stuck in a small island early can influence your research choices...

Traits with early advantages like Expansionist, Agricultural, and Industrious are so strong because the early bonus gets multiplied as your civilization grows. It hardly matters if a civilization gets no bonus after the ancient age, if the early bonus has done its work.

A perfectly accurate and concise summary of Expansionist as a triat. (my favorite trait).

Bravo-

Ision

[lockstep]

If one wanted to slightly enhance the expansionist trait, it should be possible to replace the settler with a settler-like unit that has 2 movement points. This would allow for somewhat faster city founding and also would permit limited movement of the starting 'expansionist settler' without delaying your first city.

[alexman]

2-move settlers have high exploit potential as combat units, especially combined with railroads. 1-turn wipeout of an entire empire, anyone?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
2-move settlers have high exploit potential as combat units, especially combined with railroads. 1-turn wipeout of an entire empire, anyone?

Ironically, if we somehow convinced the AI to space its cities a little tigher, 1-turn wipeouts would become pretty standard in the Cavalry/Railroad era.

[joncnunn]

One notable but minor exception: A Small Wonder marked as Militeristic can be started or switched to under a mobilization. Those without that flag can not be started on switched to under mobilization.

Originally posted by alexman

For Small Wonders they do absolutely nothing.

[Mad Bomber]

The best way to enhance the expansionist trait is to give the scout a defense of 1. This at least gives the scout a little hope of staving off those barbarian ambushes (or play on a sedentary barbarian map). If this is done then the Inca scout should be reduced to a 10 shield unit.