The Pioneer Bank - problems with the city growth model

I agree there is a problem.

At the moment, there is a strong emphasis on having things that provide +1 growth. There are not so many of these anymore - Tower of Dominion, one of the outpost upgrades, and one of the Town levelup bonus buildings gives +3 growth. Sovereigns Call also provides a valuable +1 growth.

All the other 'growth' buildings are instead bonuses to food production.

To keep the current model, I would want to see a few more building options to provide +1 growth.

I would like to see higher end food building bonuses provide significantly more (see OP's comments about Storehouse).

Pioneers in production should count towards the total population, for food and growth purposes, until they are completed.

One of the suggestions to resolve the Pioneer Bank issue, which would also resolve one of the problems the AI has with a population cost on Pioneers, is to bind the population cost to the Settle action.  While it doesn't make too much sense from a realism perspective (you could say that people didn't move out to the city unitl the pioneers built it, I guess), it makes perfect sense from a game perspective.  It would also allow for an alternative cost to constructing Outposts, as people generally don't want to spend 30 population just to build an Outpost.  The trade-off would be that losing a Pioneer in transit (to monsters and such) would no longer cost you the 30 population, but I don't really see that as a problem.

+1

I really think scouts should build outposts for free.

Scouts just look at things.  They don't build things.  Having them make outposts would be weird.

Solution to pioneer bank.  Cap on pioneer units you can have at any time= (sovereign+number of cities)/2.

Solution #2- Pioneers produce global unrest.

why pioners can't drain resources on completion and if there is no resources at time of complition it just set on hold or canceled???

best way to reset timer each turn as long as there is no resource. 

Why not scrap the pioneer population requirement, but have a growth penalty for a set number of turns on all cities above level 1 when a new city is founded? This could be explained as emigration to the new city.

On a different note, the current 5 levels of city are boring. I rarely get a city past level 2. It should be 10 levels with most cities at least reaching level 5.

Another way to solve pioneer bank issue: During Pioneer construction reduce food by 30. Those 30 food will be returned once the Pioneer is built or cancelled.

That way constructing Pioneers don't result in additional growth during construction. Additional growth will only come after construction.

it just shoud drain food on completion and result in no unit or production reset if at moment of construction there is no population to drain.

everything else is overcomplication at brink of bug.

just imagine that you added pioner as last position of 999 turn build order, soo you want penlty for entire lifetime of town just cos some pioners are in building grid? 

The pioneer bank is still alive and well on release.  I hadn't even heard of it before trying the game, but it's a pretty easy bug to stumble upon.

if you rarely get a city past level 2 (which I don't know how, because it's so easy to get them to level 5) , why would you want to raise the city level to 10?

Say the current city levels are (they've been changed but I'm too lazy to find what they are now):

Lv 2: 50 population
Lv 3: 200 population
Lv 4: 400 population
Lv 5: 800 population

Then instead have

Lv 2: 30, Lv 3: 60, Lv 4: 100, Lv 5: 150, Lv 6: 250, Lv 7: 400, Lv 8: 600, Lv 9: 900, Lv 10: 1200

(this is a quick example not a thought out level proposal),

then you are going to get lots of cities with high levels. With lots of levels, each city can specialize in a very specific thing, much like you do for a hero.

I really wish they would get this fixed. It is such a ridiculous imbalance that it is hard to believe it still exists.

it's  just an exploit when you queue several pioneers to artificially boost growth. a single pioneer in the queue hardly matters.

it's not an urgent problem since it's easy to avoid the exploit. if you want to cheat, there are easier ways to do it, if you want to play fair, just don't do it. sure they should (and probably will) fix it eventually, but it's hardly a game breaking issue.

I don't think it's just an exploit to increase growth. There's also the odd phenomenon that it makes more sense to pump out a constant stream of pioneers from a level 2 fortress with a very small food supply than from a large, overgrown city. The city has stuff it gains from pop increase until level 5, but the fort couldn't care less. Every time pop hits 30, it should build a pioneer. That will keep it in constant +3 growth with no harm done, since it will never reach level 3 anyway.

ok that's a fair point. it's not directly related to the "queue 10 pioneers to keep the level 4 city at maximum growth" problem, but could probably be changed/fixed with the same solution. don't know if it's really a problem, though. i mean, adding 10 pioneers to the queue is obviously a chesy tactic to exploit the mechanics, since you don't actually want to build those pioneers but only want to reap the benefit of the side effect of adding them to the queue. using a weak food location for a dedicated "pioneer pump" isn't on the same level of "cheese". it's more a case of "clever use of game mechanics". but that's just my opinion.

I meant ridiculous as in silly, not overpowered. It is just such a strange thing to have in the final release of the game. And it is about as clever as using ctrl+k.

I really think scouts should be consumed upon building outposts for free.