A Solution to Mindless City Spam at the Start of the Game
Elemental Forums
The goal of ending early game mindless city spam but retaining the ability to build vast empires is what this post and my suggestions herein wish to accomplish.
Some people may disagree with me but I see the initial mindless city spam phase of the game as a bad thing. Here is my reasoning.
First off it detracts from the exploration phase of the game. You should be sending your hero(s) and explores out and exploring the land, clearing monster lairs, uncovering loot and generally doing the whole role playing thing. You should have the opportunity to fully explore the surrounding land so that you can make better strategic decisions as to where to place future cities. As is you simply have little to no lee way. Taking even a little bit of time to explore before doing the pioneer spam could ruin you since your neighbor may take the prime locations while you are trying to see what the surroundings look like. There is no give either spam or lose land.
Second off it should be a valid choice to either focus on building up a city or two before expanding farther or expanding first and then developing. However you are basically forced to expand first every time. Why? Because the AI spams pioneers and gobbles up all available territory quickly and you are forced to do the same if you want to survive. More cities means more production, more research, more build cues, and so on. Spamming cities is far more beneficial then detrimental. Not to mention the fact that there is a limited number of city build locations and he who takes the best locations first has a huge advantage over everyone else. As is you are basically forced to build pioneers and spam cities and outposts as fast as you can because if you don't you will quickly fall behind and it will become increasingly difficult to catch up.
What do I suggest?
First make pioneers cost a lot more production and a lot more gold to hurry. If it were to take say 25 turns for a city that was just establish on a two material tile, 20 turns on a three material tile, 10 turns on a four material tile, and 5 turns on a five material tile it would then become a strategic choice. Please note I am only suggesting that pioneers have their cost increased not anything else and that as you increase your cities production the turn cost would naturally go down. This would make you choose to either build a pioneer first or to instead build a building or two, a unit or two and then a pioneer. The benefit of building a pioneer first is that you can get a second city faster. the benefit to the second choice is that you will have a more developed city that can produce pioneers faster not to mention the fact that you will have more explorers to play with. This could make establishing your capital on a four or five material tile quite beneficial if you want to more quickly produce pioneers at the start of the game. This will punish mindless spamming at the start of the game unless you have lots of money to spend or your starting city is located on a four or five material tile.
Second add one more long term penalty in addition to decreasing prestige per city with each new city established. The number of cities you have will increase your unrest in all cities by 10% times the number of cities you own. This will make unrest reducing improvements and governor hero's of great importance to large empires and will add another drawback to mindlessly spamming cities as fast as you can. You can still build a large empire but building it too quickly will hurt all your cities and your empire as a whole. It may also force you to make some interesting strategic choices. For instance there may be a very good location to settle between you and another player. Do you make a pioneer as fast as you can, build a city and accept the extra unrest penalty for your entire empire? Or do you try to develop your existing cities a little more before establishing a city there and accepting the unrest penalty and hope the other player does not establish a city there first? Or do you take the militaristic approach and continue to develop your existing cities while building some military units at the same time with the intention of taking the city the other player establishes there when you are ready?
If my two suggestions were to be implemented it would make mindless city spamming at the start of a game a very bad idea. But it would not prevent anyone from building an empire. It would make the beginning of the game far more forgiving and would allow for more exploration and development of existing cities before the expansion phase of the game. You could expand your empire at a fairly fast rate at the expense of all your cities having higher unrest and lower prestige thus lower production but you will also have more territory and more build cues, or you could expand slower and have lower unrest and higher prestige per city but less territory and fewer build cues. As your cities gain more prestige and unrest reducing improvements, enchantments, and governor heros a large empire will have great benefits and few drawbacks. The goal of ending early game mindless city spam but retaining the ability to build a vast empire will have been realized.
) at the AI being able to settle normally right next to umberdroths and obsidian golems.