Dynasties

Expansionist line

The Expansionist line raises your city cap, makes the Pioneer cheaper and has you build a Yurt in place of the Farm. It is chosen at match setup and stands for the whole match (Getting started).

Its effect

• City cap +1
• Pioneer cost -1

The two effects point the same way: both widen the road to a new city. The third part of the dynasty is a building: the Yurt, which takes the place of the Farm (below).

City cap

The base cap is 6; playing the Expansionist line it is 7. The cap effect is the cap and nothing else: the minimum distance between cities (4 hexes) does not change and the founding conditions stay as they are (Cities and population).

Pioneer cost

The Pioneer's cost grows with the number of cities you own (Pioneer). This dynasty takes 1 production off that cost: with a single city, the Pioneer comes to 2 production instead of 3. The discount shifts the whole curve down; the increase each new city adds (1) stays the same. The cost never falls to zero or below.

The cost of a Pioneer in the queue is read again every turn from your city count; the discount is part of that reading, and there is no separate preview calculation.

Why one cap step is this broad

A city opens several score items at once: the city itself, its region and its population (Territory and score). A region grows from radius 1 to 2 once population reaches 3, so even a late city can still grow before the match closes if food reaches it. That is why a single cap step gives more than a single number.

Using the cap is your problem

The effect does not give you a city, it gives you permission to found one — and permission only helps if there is room. That extra city has to go on a plains or forest hex that is at least 4 hexes away from every city on the map; on a 480-hex board (Map and terrain) that room can be squeezed between rival regions by the late turns.

The practical consequence: the Expansionist line rewards you early. The Pioneer discount helps exactly here: while the door to expansion is open, the road to a city is cheaper. An opening that delays Pioneer production can reach the turn limit without ever filling the cap — and the moment the cap is full there is no reason left to produce Pioneers at all (Pioneer): the discount falls silent on its own at that point and is no burden in the late game.

The cap counts the cities you own, not the ones you founded: a captured city spends a slot, and so does a Neutral village you take. Taking a village can therefore hand back the step this line gave you — if the extra cap is permission to found a city, spending that permission on a village is a decision too. The number of cities you own also raises the Pioneer's cost (Cities and population). Once the cap is full, production still has a road to score: the Monument exists for exactly that gap.

Yurt: in place of the Farm

When a seat of the Expansionist line goes to build a Farm, the Yurt enters the queue. The Yurt carries the Farm's food share, its fertile-land location share and its population cap step, and adds a production income on top. Its cost is 7, the Farm's cost is 5. Details: Yurt.

Why the cap and not the distance

The effect had two arms — raising the cap, or lowering the minimum distance between cities — and the choice was made by measurement: the distance arm did not move the average city count at all, while the cap arm genuinely filled the extra city the cap allows. What was binding was the quota itself, not a lack of room on the board. The distance arm also lowered the score: cities packed closer have overlapping regions, and an overlapping tile scores once (Territory and score).

That is why the minimum distance does not change with this line; the measurement table and the numbers behind the rejected arm live at the top of packages/data/src/balance/dynasties.ts.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.