Is the "Expansionist" Civ Ability a good idea?

[- Groucho -]

I realize it's too early to tell for most of them, but "Expansionist" seems like a lame ability to me. It's two effects (better goodies and an extra scout to start) seem either too easy to counter or unbalancing.

The extra scout is a pretty lame bonus when compared to others. An extra scout equals a few turns of added production at one city and a few turns of added exploration. Almost all the other effects give a game lasting bonus which will eventually outstrip that production bonus (eg. the religious nations will get way more bonus production after they've built religious buildings in a few cities). And though the few extra turns of exploration does give a head start on finding huts, in my experience who finds the most huts is far more dependant on being lucky with the random placement of the huts than on having a few turns of extra searching.

As for better goodies, that sounds great but it just magnifies the already troubling wild card of the goody huts. Randomness sucks in a strategy game when it gives a positive boost to one of the players. Why? Because it is unfair - it rewards luck over skill. Negative hits are better (though not perfect), because if one player takes a negative hit, all the other players are still uneffected, so they continue to balance each other. Luck isn't really being rewarded over skill in that case because everybody but one person benefits from the event, skill or no skill. So while, it is unfair to the unlucky person, it isn't unfair to everybody else.

If goody huts had an equal balance of good and bad things in them all of this would even out but there is a reason we don't call them chaos huts: they contain a disproportionate amount of good stuff. The Expansionist civ ability makes this even more skewed and thus rewards luck over skill even more.

Which really sucks in a strategy game.

IMHO, of course. What do you think?

[tniem]

I think it is a pretty good bonus when used in conjunction with another ability.

Having a scout out there gathering huts that have an increased advantage can have a huge effect on the game. As the player gaining huts with new techs, other units, or even an advanced tribe could give you a quick start to get you going. Plus having Pottery, and the granary, from the start allows you to have your cities grow faster and have a more stable population.

Germany and England should be able to use this ability with commerce (Alphabet) to quickly get MapMaking and spread over the globe. As well as having lower corruption as the nation spreads over the globe.

Americans should also be able to use the faster Workers with the spread to unify the nation and build tile improvements faster to feed the growing population.

All of these civs could be off to quick starts with the expansion ability and especially the Brits and Germans could use this advantage to also take advantage of this to quickly get MapMaking and Philosophy and taking an early lead into the rest of the game.

[General Ludd]

I think expansionist is potentially the best bonus, the scout is deffinately not for a 'mineral bonus' it is to take advantage of the huts right from the start, so while other civs are busy building their warriors and settlers, the expansionists will be scouting out the globe, geting huts, resulting in many cities, technologies, money, and whatnot.

Also, they will meet other civilisations earlier on, which will allow them to start trading resources and technologies, and will also allow them to form treaties and alliances early on, or - of course - conquer.

Though, persoanlly I have to agree about the huts, I never liked them that much, and I always played with them off in SMAC (well, just a few around the landing zone, which was nice)

[Urban Ranger]

"Expansionistic" is potentially a devastating ability, depending on the density of the goody-huts and similar factors. It is an ability that favours rapid early expansion and a more warlike attitude. You have to use the stuff you gathered from the goody-huts early on before the "Scientific" or "Industrious" civs overtake you.

[barefootbadass]

I don't think you can say now that the expansionist civs will have a useless bonus unless you get really lucky. It does take skill to properly use early scouting. Plus, we don't know how huts will compare to huts in civ2(do we? I haven't read anything about huts in civ3) They might just give a little gold sometimes and a unit occasionally. tech advances might be rare or nonexistent or barbarians more common. I think the extra exploration early on will have snowball effect in development that will take skill to maintain as an advantage.

And luck was always a significant factor in civ2 at least on random maps. In many(but not all) cases, a poor starting position could be overcome with sufficient skill. I don't think the luck inherent in random multiplayer maps sucked at all, it was all part of the fun.

[Laszlo]

Originally posted by Echinda
I realize it's too early to tell for most of them, but "Expansionist" seems like a lame ability to me. It's two effects (better goodies and an extra scout to start) seem either too easy to counter or unbalancing.

Aren't those views kind of contradictory? How would something so unbalancing be considered a lame ability?