Would this make the scientific trait more useful?

[Hurrying Heinz]

Industrious, Expansionst are the best traits. You can send your scouts all over the place and get a head start on techs. (granted that you don't start on an island) Industrious is good because it means you can build more roads faster, so you can connect your cities to luxeries/ resources faster and can move your units faster from place to place

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Actually I feel that to make expansionist truly equal to the other traits, it might be good to have one or more of the following abilities:
all units get +1 mp
all exploration and settlement units are 1/2 price.
all improvements which speed population growth are 1/2 price
all units treat enemy roads and RR's as friendly
all units ignore terrain effects on movement

Obviously giving the expansionist trait ALL these characteristics would be unrealistic, but a couple of them, or one of the most powerful ones (like the last one) would go a long way to bringing expansionist civs up to par!
Anyway, just a thought!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[monkspider]

Good thoughts Lurker, I think that Expansionist does need a lot of work. Hopefully it will be addressed in the XP. The absolute main problem I have with it is once the game's intial turns are passed, you have nothing else to look forward to!

[Hurrying Heinz]

all units get +1 mp
all exploration and settlement units are 1/2 price.
all improvements which speed population growth are 1/2 price
all units treat enemy roads and RR's as friendly
all units ignore terrain effects on movement

The problem with number one is that then all of your units could retreat against units of the same age, which means that you would be invincible. (Yesss!! I am Invincible!)
Point 2 seems interesting because it is a characterist of expansionist civs to have many explorers/scouts and to found cities everywhere. 1/2 off settlers would be ok as long as its 1/2 its shield cost and not its pop cost.
Point 3,4 doesnt seem like an expansionist sorta thing. Dont know why
I think point 5 would be too unbalancing. Its too good.

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I happen to like scientific... cheap libraries are great.

On another note, exactly how much does commercial actually do for corruption? It seems like anything battling corruption would be great, but what is the actual factor?

It increases your optimal number of cities by one (read: it does nothing). That's why I said it was on the verge of useless. I think it's funny how people have often gone on about how great it is with a Commercial civ, how they can have huge empire now and those outer cities produce more than one shield, etc. Alexman's study proved it does next to nothing for corruption, which just goes to show you how easily can find what they're looking for.

[dunk]

Commercial is good on smaller maps where an additional number to the Optimal Cities is a bigger deal.

[statusperfect]

Commercial is good on smaller maps where an additional number to the Optimal Cities is a bigger deal.

That does not make it more blanced. It's just another thing that should be changed. It should be relative to map size or maybe a % of you cities.

[Random Passerby]

The best part of Commercial in my opinion is the starting tech: Alphabet is one of the most expensive baseline techs and gives you a wicked head start on the lucrative Writing branch. That's really its biggest advantage, and unfortunately that's not much; expansionist, for example, will on average net you most baseline techs pretty quickly (this is an average, mind you; if you're stuck on an island it won't do much at all, but if you've got a nice huge landmass with sparse competition it will often earn you the entire ancient era for free). Still, I think half price marketplaces/banks might be a bit much, especially if harbors and airports were added to that list as they likely would be; half price courthouses would be pretty balanced in my opinion, although it wouldn't be as intuitive.