Expansion cultures desperately need help. Their ability to steal territories is only viable in very specific circumstances and only because the AI has the intelligence of a sack of rocks. Any player will see an expansionist empire and say "lol no" to an open borders treaty. And like you said, scaling of the fame stars is bonkers. If you're getting those 3 fame stars in medieval and early modern, the game is already over.

Another cool approach could be that taking cultural or religious control of a territory could count toward era stars.

Expansionist stars being hard to gain makes up for the fact that if you are getting those stars, you are having an easier time getting the non expansionist stars, just with how territory works in this game. Its just better to maintain a larger empire. If you make the expansionist stars easier to obtain, you just reward this even more, to the point where everyone trys to capture as much land as possible.

Totally agree on the affinity ability issue. I don't currently think any of the expansionist cultures are inherently bad because they are expansionist. Assyrians, Persians, Franks, Spanish are all very good imo. Romans and Ottomans are not good, but that's because the roman LT is useless, as there is no army limit yet unlimited reinforcements, and the ottoman LT is extremely useless.

I think outposts should not have closed borders by default...ie you should need a “respect borders” treaty to keep another civ out of your outposts.  (“city borders” as the default, and “open borders” as the highest like now) That makes expansionists hard to block without a garrison.

8roomsofelixir wrote:
1. The "stealing territories" ability is limited in circumstances.

    When other players refused to give you open border, you cannot move units into their territory, thus renders the stealing ability useless.

    Moreover, when you are at war with another player, this ability is also invalid, forcing you to take their lands by force..

Agreed on this point. Based on Lucy build, this ability is very limited in its usage that such ability can only be done on outposts which have yet been turned into proper settlements/cities. It is also possible that other AIs (or even players) could send their army to those territories that we are about to steal too.

But regardless, I do feel it is very underpowered and hard to use overall. Expansionists really do need a total rework to make them more playable and enjoyable.

8roomsofelixir wrote:

To be honest, stealing others' territories - a.k.a. "All your base are belong to us" - is a fun and exciting playstyle, and I think the whole Expansionist affinity is roughly a fair representation of the land-grabbing empires in the human history. However, currently, there are two strong downsides of the Expansionist:

1. The "stealing territories" ability is limited in circumstances.

    When other players refused to give you open border, you cannot move units into their territory, thus renders the stealing ability useless.

    Moreover, when you are at war with another player, this ability is also invalid, forcing you to take their lands by force.

Yes. That was very frustrating in Lucy OpenDev game play... Even if all of the circumstances were properly set up, it was very easy to counter as well. Just one Unit, regardless of its type or Combat Strength, standing on the Administrative district could hider the entire ability of Expansionists...

I think something that would help would be to change closed borders to, gain a grievance whenever the other empire trespasses. In the case of Era Stars, all stars could be changed to require different things. For example, the 3 different science stars could be

1. Get a number of techs (same as before)
2. Achieve a certain amount of science per turn
3. Research the most expensive tech in the era

This would be far more radical of a change, and need serious balancing (either embrace that Era Stars in the same category are easiest to get together, or try to minimize overlap between same category stars).