Uselessness of Expansionist Trait

[=DrJambo=]

Yes i agree that as the game comes the Expansionist trait is very variable in its usefulness and does generally tend to be weaker than the rest.

The idea of settlers with 2 movement is interesting and appealing, however, like all modifications to the game they have to be considered from the AI's perspective aswell, otherwise imbalance can be created. Remember that the AI always escorts a settler with a defensive unit, so theoretically a settler with 2 movement might be useless for the AI if the settlers are always being accompanied by a spearman per se.

I've looked at this issue in my Real Deal mod quite extensively and think i've come up with a very good solution. Basically, i've slowed the rate of exploration down thus increasing the usefulness of scouts immeasurably, especially since scouts are often allowed a free roam into other civs borders... I achieved this by setting back the abilities to exchange maps and communications. Map trading now comes with Astronomy and Communications trading with Navigation. Non-expansionistic civs now find it very difficult to alleviate the black unknown areas after encountering other civs' borders, unless they pay for RoP agreements.

Moreover, expansionist civs are also likely to encounter more civs than non-expansionist civs due scouts and their ability to freely traverse another's land. This will increase their trading potential due to the postponement in the communications trading ability and therefore give them a major advantage over the non-expansionist civs with poor communication networks.. Plus, when the ability to trade maps becomes available the expansionist civs' maps are worth a whole lot more given the amount of extra exploration done.

Bring on the expansionist civs now...It all works a treat.

[King of Rasslin]

Scouts should be able to make crude trails that the settlers can follow. Instead of allowing 3 movements like roads, they could allow 2 instead and can only be built on grassland, plains, or desert. An expansionist city should have its border expand slightly more quickly than non expansionist. I think it should expand at 8,80,800, and 8000 culture instead of the normal 10 culture and so on.

Expansionist workers should have 2 movement. That isn't as powerful as industrious 2x working speed, but it would make expansionist more useful. Maybe the scout can make the crude trail and the worker can improve it to a road in 2 turns instead of 3.

Most importantly, the scouting doesn't help if you cannot see the resources. Expansionist civs should be able to see iron, horses, saltpeter, oil, etc earlier than the normal ones. This would balance the trait totally, in my opinion. The only problem here is that the AI can do that anyway

I think the resource sighting would be the most useful.

[MiloMilo]

DrJambo, very good points. I would go so far as to actually rename mapmaking "boatmaking." Has anyone seen any remotely decent maps from before, say, AD 1500? Then disallow map trading until education or printing press or astronomy.

Communications, on the other hand... lots of people knew lots of people way back in the day. Maybe make it dependent on two techs from different lines, like polytheism and currency.

Doing this, plus making expansionist civs' galleys less likely to sink, would definitely bring it up to par with the other traits as well as make the ancient world seem a bit more ancient.

[=DrJambo=]

Milo, you still can learn communications and lots of them very easily... you just have to do it yourself by exploring (as it should be) and not just by taking another leader's word for it by diplomacy.

I don't believe it is correct that in the ancient age you could trade communications with another civ for a civ that you have no idea where they are or that they even exist......

[Pythagoras]

Originally posted by MiloMilo
DrJambo, very good points. I would go so far as to actually rename mapmaking "boatmaking." Has anyone seen any remotely decent maps from before, say, AD 1500? Then disallow map trading until education or printing press or astronomy.

Communications, on the other hand... lots of people knew lots of people way back in the day. Maybe make it dependent on two techs from different lines, like polytheism and currency.

Doing this, plus making expansionist civs' galleys less likely to sink, would definitely bring it up to par with the other traits as well as make the ancient world seem a bit more ancient.

I like the map restriction idea. Looking back on history I dont think the romans and the huns 'exchanged maps', that is the roman's knowledge of hun explored areas was minimal and not detailed. Perhaps one of the things that makes the age of exploration so powerful is that new discoveries were being documented at a rapid pace, and could be copied readily with a printing press.

The idea of settlers with 2 movement is interesting and appealing, however, like all modifications to the game they have to be considered from the AI's perspective aswell, otherwise imbalance can be created. Remember that the AI always escorts a settler with a defensive unit, so theoretically a settler with 2 movement might be useless for the AI if the settlers are always being accompanied by a spearman per se.

I set pioneer's defence to 1. I want to see how the AI reacts to that. The AI's usage flages to "terraform" "settle" and "explore"

[=DrJambo=]

once map trading becomes available then it would seem logical that civs you haven't got communications with could be contacted directly by visiting them... Then once you obtain Navigation it seems logical that one civ could exchange communications with another, now that they know how to traverse the oceans and have each other's maps, etc...

[kring]

Originally posted by Pythagoras

I set pioneer's defence to 1. I want to see how the AI reacts to that. The AI's usage flages to "terraform" "settle" and "explore"

Back in 1.17 using the multi to see if the AI would use some of my mods (some it did, some not), I set Workers and Settlers to 0/1/1, among other things. It was interesting to watch the Barbarians attacks against AI Workers and Settlers. I would keep warriors, etc. to protect my Workers and Settlers.
In this one game, I did notice that the Barbarians would head for an empty city instead of attacking a much closer Settler, even if it had no other defenders and there was a massive uprising going on. If you built a city with that Settler before the uprising was done, the Barbs would head that way with part of their forces.

[alexman]

I started a similar thread once, about the commercial trait.

The way I see it, expansionist, while not as good overall as religious, industrious, scientific, or militaristic, is excellent on some maps. In fact, the highest score ever recorded in Civ3 (64K+ points!) was done with an expansionist civ. (Granted, Aeson could probably do just as well with any civ, but he did pick the Iroquois for a reason). Have you ever used scouts to deny resources from the AI?

I do agree that expansionist needs a boost in the expansion pack though, and there are some great ideas in this thread.

Commercial, on the other hand, sucks at all map sizes (especially large), land mass types, and difficulties. Lower corruption in recent patches has made it even worse. It's almost as if you're playing without a civ-specific trait. If they fix expansionist, they certainly have to fix commercial.

[MiloMilo]

Yeah alexman, the commercial trait does need help. One thing that should happen is that standard corruption levels should be made higher again. Even then though, it's editable. Players can effectively delete a trait's bonus, which is not good. I think a simple, mild fix would be to give them half-price marketplaces and harbors.

[Ijuin]

How about this:

Expansionist civs, instead of getting the Galley, get the Coracle, which is able to traverse Sea squares without the Great Lighthouse. They also can build the Coracle from the start of the game instead of needing to research Mapmaking. The Coracle would be 1/1/3, carry 2 units, sinks in ocean, costs 40 shields. This unit makes the Expansionist civs more viable when they start the game island-bound.

In addition, Expansionist civs can build Aqueducts and Hospitals at half price when they become available, making the Expansionist trait useful throughout the game.

As for Commercial civs, give them the ability to build Marketplaces and Banks at half price. If this makes the Luxury-boosting power of Marketplaces too strong, then the Luxury boost can be moved to Banks instead. (It is rare to have more than four Luxuries before discovering Banking, however, so the one extra happy face you get from each of the third and fourth Luxuries with the Marketplace boost is not that big of a loss)

[King of Rasslin]

Marketplaces are too powerful to be half price. 2/3 would be more balanced. Banks would be 2/3 too. Plus, I think they are going to add a 3rd level bank, kinda like the research lab is for science.

So, Commercial would give slightly cheaper commercial buildings and a bigger corruption reduction than what it is currently.

Doesn't it take 4 gold to equal 1 shield in rush buying? Maybe expansionist civs should get 1.5 shields for 4 gold? Or maybe they should recover from pop rushing more quickly. I think +1 food would be a good idea, but that would be too powerful early on. But +1 food at size 3 would be too useless on deity, where it is dangerous to allow your cities to get bigger than 4. It's so hard to keep the people happy, maybe expansionist should get happier people?

[nato]

Wow alexman, I like your other thread ... I never realized commercial was so bad.

My last impression of commercial is from soon after the game came out, when everyone was raving about the French!

I think significantly cheaper granneries for expansionistic and slightly cheaper marketplaces/banks would be good ways to help out both traits. Cheaper buildings are simple, probably not too hard to program, and have precedent with religious, militaristic, and scientific.

Other ideas are more creative, and so more interesting, but they are also harder to implement and more likely to have unintended side effects. I really do like the one extra food for expansionist, but it would require some careful testing to make sure its not too powerful. Same thing for 2 movement Settlers.

King of Rasselin's cheaper rush buying for commercial is another clever idea from him. However, I tend only to rush buy in newly conquered cities, fringe areas, or military emergencies. To me better rush buying almost seems like a militaristic aid, not a commercial one. Still its a good idea ... maybe they could have a much better shield to gold ratio on Wealth?

I'm not sure I like expansionistic having happier people. I think it would be better for them to have a bonus that directly helps them expand, not indirectly. Also, I wouldn't design around Deity ... that is not meant to be the normal, balanced game ... things should be designed around Regeant/Monarch I think.

I think cheaper builldings may be the simplest, least breakable, most direct route, though more clever ideas are more interesting.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by =DrJambo=
Basically, i've slowed the rate of exploration down thus increasing the usefulness of scouts immeasurably, especially since scouts are often allowed a free roam into other civs borders... I achieved this by setting back the abilities to exchange maps and communications. Map trading now comes with Astronomy and Communications trading with Navigation.

WOW!! I made these changes Friday (maps with Astronomy, communications with Navigation). Outstanding! Gave a whole new feel to the Ancient and most of the Middle Ages eras. Playing on a 140x140 map, 16 civs, I (Romans) was locked on one continent with India, France, Japan with Egypt on a nearby island. Those were my only contacts until the discovery of Astronomy. Made for some very interesting maneuvering in the Ancient era (with Japan getting wiped out along the way). Unfortunately the French beat me to the other two continents, and suddenly they knew everyone and jumped ahead of me in techs.

As for the expansionist, it's been a mixed bag. The Zulu are actually winning the game (a first in my experience), and the Americans (who usually exit early in my games) and English are holding their own. The Russians and Iroquois were destroyed before the civs on "my" continent were able to contact them.

Anyway, much fun and thanks for the suggestion DrJambo!!

[Imp. Montezuma]

Originally posted by Stuie


WOW!! I made these changes Friday (maps with Astronomy, communications with Navigation). Outstanding! Gave a whole new feel to the Ancient and most of the Middle Ages eras. Playing on a 140x140 map, 16 civs, I (Romans) was locked on one continent with India, France, Japan with Egypt on a nearby island. Those were my only contacts until the discovery of Astronomy. Made for some very interesting maneuvering in the Ancient era (with Japan getting wiped out along the way). Unfortunately the French beat me to the other two continents, and suddenly they knew everyone and jumped ahead of me in techs.

As for the expansionist, it's been a mixed bag. The Zulu are actually winning the game (a first in my experience), and the Americans (who usually exit early in my games) and English are holding their own. The Russians and Iroquois were destroyed before the civs on "my" continent were able to contact them.

Anyway, much fun and thanks for the suggestion DrJambo!!

Good idea! AND change vice-versa both traits 'expansionist' and 'commercial'. Oh, change for accurace trade over seas from Astronomy to Navigation. Works for me fine.

[Jack the Bodiless]

...Heh. I also decided that Expansionist was too "random" (good on a large landmass, worthless if you start on a smallish island). And my "fix" was to give Map-Making to each Expansionist civ as a free starting tech (without the usual prerequisites).

Incidentally, some have suggested the Polynesians as a new race, and they'd surely qualify as "expansionist". But I'm wondering what unit to give them. An ocean-crossing "Great Canoe" would fit, but would it be too powerful? The ability to operate in Sea squares (but not Ocean) may not be sufficient, however.