The case for Expansionist civs.

[HalfLotus]

Expansionist is not popular, and is generally regarded as the weakest trait. I had a great experience with the English recently.
The scout found 4 huts. 3 with techs that I traded to other civs and stayed ahead in tech. And one with a settler. The settler came on my fourth or fifth turn, and was a huge boost ahead of the AI. I was playing Monarch where staying ahead is tough unless you do an early military rush.
I still prefer Religious and Militaristic, but the gains (esp. techs from huts) from expansionist were great.
I got tired of waiting until industrial and modern ages to have a good lead on the AI and press the offensive. I enjoyed being ahead in the early stages where it is almost impossible to build settlers faster than AI. This was the first game where I was in command from the get go. It was fun.
This is hardly a quantitative analysis. Just a case for the early game funness of expansionist. I dont know how often settlers come out of huts for expansionist. Does anyone?

[Lawrence of Arabia]

The expansionists scout does away withe the need to build 2 warriors

[dexters]

It also guarantees all goodie huts give you something good.

they tend to be useless in small maps however.

[jack_frost]

From my experiances expansionist is actually really good.

Aside from finding the best expansion spots (which is real important), and goodie huts (which give you a good boost). You also gain the ability to compete with the computer in making contact with other civs. If you do it well, you can position yourself as the most advanced tribe really early. You can also withhold contact between rival civs for sometimes a long time if your in a central spot and expand quickly.

But I really like the english due to expansionist/pottery/alphabet. Which lets you get granaries really early, and possitions you to be the first republic. The comination with this, and the above is great. PLUS you get your golden age RIGHT at the start of industrial which is one of the ideal times. Too bad you get a ship special unit - sometimes I have to start a war randomly to hit my golden age (its hard to find a boat to kill sometimes).

[vmxa1]

I still say that the huts you find with the scouts you would have gotten with a warrior. Maybe one less, big deal. Even with the scout you could go in a direction that is not the one where the AI is so you are not competing for huts in that case. Huts that are near you settlements can be made to give value without EXPAND trait. I send someone to the hut and if it is bad, I just reload and leave it alone. Eventually I build or expand to include it in a city and it always seems to give up good stuff. So far it has happen in every game.

[jack_frost]

huts are better for expansionist. Increases chances of goodies and not barbarians.

I've never hit a barbarian as expansionist, its very rare that its empty, and I've gotten more then one settler in a single game as expansionist.

Show me results like that as non-expansionist on emperor (hut quality is biased by difficulty), and maybe I'd agree.

And simply, you can grab huts the computer would have gotten.

[Badtz Maru]

I'd say that about 2/3 of the time playing Expansionist I will get one settler from a hut. More than once I have gotten two. Even one settler in the early game can be a huge advantage, and two will make sure that you are in the lead for the rest of the game if you don't do anything stupid, especially when you consider that you will also have a tech lead from the techs you get from huts. I always play on Huge maps, though. I doubt Expansionist would be worth much on smaller ones.

The fact that you never get hostile barbarians from a hut with Expansionist doesn't really mean that much to me, as I've never got them anyway. I suspect that getting hit by barbarians early on would often lead to a reload anyway. The money you get early on from huts is very nice too. People seem to think money isn't worth much in the game, but I think they don't play around much with their domestic adviser screen. Having a nice reserve of gold gives you lots more options - not only can you hurry improvements, you can buy techs from the AI (on Regent you can often get Ancient Era techs for well under 100 gold), you can buy luxuries or strategic resources, convince hostile civilizations to leave you alone, you can go into the red for several turns to increase research or to keep from having to make entertainers to keep your people happy - getting extra money early on can make the beginning phase much easier.

[fbitt1]

I almost never get tech from goodie huts with non-expansionist civs. I've built cities that included a hut in its radius with a non-expansionist civ, and out popped barbs.

On large and huge maps, Pangea, expansionist Civs get a great early start:
- Extra tech:
Can be used to get an early start on Wonders (for culture scores that increase over time.
Sold to the AI for gold
Traded for tech
- Early exposure of the map. Early contact, valuable world maps, selling contact between civs
- Extra warriors -- extra protection in frontier cities, fodder, etc.

I've found Literacy, Monarchy and Republic in huts, plus I get piles of money early.

With the right circumstances, that early lead can be maintained throughout the game. Your early, superior culture allows you to absorb cities culturally faster, block out the AI from expansion, keep them from resources, etc.

I think they are way under rated here. Allows for a larger variety of non-warmongering strategies.

[player1]

I like playing Exp./Religious combo on higher diff. levels.
It allows me to expand fast, increase culture and quell unhappiness.

Plus, Mounted Warriors ar VERY powerfull special unit.

[egovalor]

Originally posted by jack_frost
From my experiances expansionist is actually really good.

Aside from finding the best expansion spots (which is real important), and goodie huts (which give you a good boost). You also gain the ability to compete with the computer in making contact with other civs. If you do it well, you can position yourself as the most advanced tribe really early. You can also withhold contact between rival civs for sometimes a long time if your in a central spot and expand quickly.

But I really like the english due to expansionist/pottery/alphabet. Which lets you get granaries really early, and possitions you to be the first republic. The comination with this, and the above is great. PLUS you get your golden age RIGHT at the start of industrial which is one of the ideal times. Too bad you get a ship special unit - sometimes I have to start a war randomly to hit my golden age (its hard to find a boat to kill sometimes).

Here's a possibilty...I've found that if you stack ANY naval unit with a pirate ship (privateer), when the pirate gets attacked the other naval unit actually defends it (you still don't go to war, although I think you might suffer a reputation loss. The romans suddenly went from gracious to annoyed with me after throwing at least 20 ironclads uselessly against a "pirate greek battleship. heh.) Question: You think a "pirate" man-o-war that successful defends itself might send you into golden age? hmm. Try it sometime, I never play english.

[War4ever]

are you sure about more than one nomad per turn...i play standard maps and have never seen more than one nomad and never seen a nomad that didn't come out of the first hut.....!!!!!!

perhaps on larger maps this is the case......

the scout unit doesn't do anything a jaguar couldn't do......early huts are ok but if your on the warpath you will get your techs from the ai when you sue for peace...

militaristic religious is the way to go.....and play as the japanese....their golden age will come later than the aztec one which will come when the jaguar wins in combat as opposed to the samurai which comes around knights and when your well into a representative govt

the one turn of anarchy makes such a difference when your trying to conduct a war or go from war to peacetime......

as for religious....hehe that speaks for itself.... early war and early culture make a deadly combo

[vmxa1]

Barbs coming out of huts is great for a hoplite, instant vet or elite. I had it had twice and both regulars went vet and then elite. I do not need any extra from the huts anyway as you will get ahead sooner or later.

[War4ever]

exactly my point....barbs from huts are almost a blessing unless its the first hut and it overuns your capital without a defender..even then you only lose gold......

i find the scout useless....now that i rock at the game..... it was nice to have when i couldn't keep up to the ai....but now i just over run them so...... i would rather have militaristic and religious traits.....

[dexters]

Expansionsit civs as stated allows you to scout locations, and get goodie huts, which I believe gives you 100% non barbarian goodness.

I got 5 techs and 1000 gold on a large map as I simple sent my scout moving into new territories even as my Civ grew. People forget that it's not just the very beginning. If you're on a large map, you can go on for a good 100 turns exploring and finding resources.

I've used the strategy to effectively "camp" out at a resouce and deny the AI from ever using it. My scout also helped me discover potential threats early. In my current game, I found the Aztecs above me. With water cutting off expasion south, Aztecs would cut off my expansion north and I'd be stuck controlling a small peice of land. It was really the early discovery of the Aztecs that allowed me to move quickly to establish cities northward and westward and stake my claim on a larger peice of the pie.

The warrior alternative is feasable, but not optimal. It takes several turns to produce the warrior, and once it is produced it has only one movement point, compared to the scout's 2. Warriors can be effective a little later on even for expansionsit civs to protect resources found by the scout. If you're playing advanced difficulty levels on one of the larger maps, by the time your warrior finds an enemy Civ, it is usually too late, strategically, to change the course of your expansion to cut off any potential threats in the rival Civ's expansion. And even if you did try to change course, it takes an additional 5 to 10 turns to get the settlers where you want them to be, and while that is going on, the AI is expanding like map, and more than likely, moving close to you and taking sweet spots.

Nothing is worse than not being able to get your first 10 or so cities off to a good start. If you lack the territory to build them because you are getting boxed off, or the AI is taking all the good locations, you'll find yourself struggling to compete later on.

Part of the trade off in this game is that obviously you can't win every land grab,so you will certainly have to to let the AI build where you might not like it, but know you will come with an army later on and take it by force. But it is also important to keep in mind you won't be able to field that army if the AI expansion cuts you off from strategic locations, resources and the like. Thescouts give a great early warning for any player as to the appropriate strategic moves to maximize ones opportunities in the very early game. And like I said, you might find 3 iron mines up north, and you may want to rush settles up there to claim them, a discovery you might not have made untit later for a non expansion civ and you'd be stuck trading for it, or worse yet, the rival civ will send his swords man to cut down your Civ and you're finished.

[vmxa1]

All you say it correct, but as I said, I get most of the huts with just warrior or hoplite or whatever my unit is. I send them all over until I can go no farther and I seldom see the AI get many huts. I even find them very close to them. I get tech 8 out 10 times. The 9th will be gold and the 10th is barbs (not all in one game except on Huge). How much better do I need to do? The only time I had expansion I was on an Island (small one), real useful there huh?