Most valuable unique tile improvement?

Terrace Farm by a Mile.

(On water maps) I like Japan with the +1 Culture bonus per fishing boat (which are free with Samurai) ... combine it with the pantheon for +1 Production per fishing boat and Exploration Tree in Social Policies (synergy) or with the pantheon for +1 Culture per plantation to increase Culture ...

Drawback is that early fishing boats are not built by workers and cost valuable production ...

I might by hijacking this thread, but I wonder what simple changes could be made to the less viable unique improvements to make them better without making them stronger in the strongest of cases.

For Moai, I would make them give +1 culture per adjacent water tile instead of +1 culture per adjacent Moai.
For Polders, I would lower their food yield by 2 and their gold yield by 1, but have them get +1 food from Civil Service, let them be built on any tile with fresh water (in addition to Marshes), and give +1 food on Marshes to negate the feature's food penalty. They would essentially be better farms that give +1 production and +1 gold (and act as better, freshwater farms on Marshes).
For Kasbahs, I would make them enable Plantation resources and give +1 extra gold at Economics. If this is too much, the defensive bonus can be lowered or removed to compensate.
For Brazilwood Camps, I would have them unlock at Iron Working, shift 1 of their gold yield to Machinery (ie. lower base gold yield by 1, have Machinery give +1 gold), and shift 1 of their culture yield from Acoustics to Chivalry (ie. Chivalry and Acoustics both give +1 culture instead of Acoustics giving +2).
For Chateaux, I would shift the +1 culture from Flight to Architecture, shift 1 of their gold yield from Flight to Economics, lower their defense bonus to +25%, and have them not remove features. This essentially makes them harder to build, culture-oriented Trading Posts with a slight defense bonus.
For Feitoria, I would allow Scouts to build them and make them unable to be removed by another improvement.
Japan's ability to build fishing boats with embarked land units is given to Workers instead of Samurai.

Those are interesting ideas Delnar.

If plodders could be built anywhere farms could, is that too OP?

You have hardly buffed Brazilwood Camps. At the very least they should always get whatever buff TPs get. Until this thread, I did not realize they were short on gold!

Likewise, what is the real player advantage for your suggested change to Chateaux? There would be fewer of them, so the net culture is less. I guess I would like a more straightforward buff.

I love the idea of scouts building Feitorias. When building, scouts would also have to not anger CS like they do now. If not removable, then they would have to provide a resource to CS like citadels do. Feitorias build on tundra oil is the main reason they go away. Really, why can't a fetoria be build on a lux instead of next to it?

Japan workers building fishing boats is a no-brainer and not OP. Samurai come too late.

beetle said:

If plodders could be built anywhere farms could, is that too OP?

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They could only be built on marshes and tiles with fresh water, so they couldn't be built everywhere farms could. Plus, you couldn't build them right away like farms, you would have to get to Guilds to unlock them, so you would have to spend some time rebuilding polders on your farms tiles.
The +1 hammer and +1 gold is roughly equivalent to Terrace Farms' food bonus when there is one neighboring mountain. The fact that Polders wouldn't require a special terrain condition for those bonus yields is offset by the gold yield being delayed until Economics, by the fact that yield bonuses don't scale the way Terrace Farms' do (eg. hills next to 3 peaks would give +3 food to Terrace Farms), and by the fact that Polders unlock at Guilds while Terrace Farms unlock at Construction.

beetle said:

You have hardly buffed Brazilwood Camps. At the very least they should always get whatever buff TPs get. Until this thread, I did not realize they were short on gold!

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They're only short on gold when you compare them to Trading Posts with Commerce finisher. Having Commerce finisher give Brazilwood Camps +1 gold would be the solution then. Otherwise, the main issues I find with Brazilwood Camps is that they come too late to have a significant impact. Maybe I could swap their yields so that they give +1 culture as their base yield and get +1 gold from Chivalry, that way they'd be different from Trading Posts from the very start.

beetle said:

Likewise, what is the real player advantage for your suggested change to Chateaux? There would be fewer of them, so the net culture is less. I guess I would like a more straightforward buff.

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Architecture comes much earlier than Flight, so their culture bonus gets maxed out sooner. The "does not remove features" thing is also a soft yield boost of 2 science when the Chateau is built on Jungle. Net culture isn't very precise, because you'll always have to somehow provide food for every citizen working a cultural improvement. The idea isn't necessarily to make Chateaux straight-up more powerful, but to allow the player to build them by removing their opportunity cost. Besides having them no longer remove features, the only thing I might add is a +1 food from fresh water to make up for the opportunity cost of not being able to build Civil Service farms.

beetle said:

I love the idea of scouts building Feitorias. When building, scouts would also have to not anger CS like they do now. If not removable, then they would have to provide a resource to CS like citadels do. Feitorias build on tundra oil is the main reason they go away. Really, why can't a fetoria be build on a lux instead of next to it?

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Yeah, having Feitorias enable resources they are built on is definitely not a bad idea. Having Scouts that build Feitorias not anger CS could be exploitable, which is why I left it out (maybe have Feitorias give influence on completion?). I'll see if I can come up with a way to let Feitorias work on non-coastal CS too, so that Portugal isn't completely useless on land maps.

beetle said:

Japan workers building fishing boats is a no-brainer and not OP. Samurai come too late.

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Plus Samurais activate at Steel, which is the least vital Medieval Era tech in the game.

I'm going to make a separate thread to avoid hijacking this one.

Brazilwood Camps are very strong in late game. In my current game on a TSL Giant Earth Map there are probably hundreds of jungle tiles in South America and Brazil gets
2 Food,
3 Gold,
3 Culture (1 from Pantheon) and
2 Science (University) per Brazilwood Camp tile.

They lack production, but with enough gold they may just buy all necessary buildings.

historix69 said:

Brazilwood Camps are very strong in late game. In my current game on a TSL Giant Earth Map there are probably hundreds of jungle tiles in South America and Brazil gets
2 Food,
3 Gold,
3 Culture (1 from Pantheon) and
2 Science (University) per Brazilwood Camp tile.

They lack production, but with enough gold they may just buy all necessary buildings.

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It would be 2 gold, but otherwise yes, this is why I think that Brazilwood Camp's biggest drawback is how they unlock, not their final yields. Having to deal with unimproved jungle tiles for almost half of the game before unlocking Brazilwood Camps is such a downside.

Maybe Brazil had an Golden Age when I was looking at the map.

I have failed brazilwood camp in multiplayer before and to a vanilla civilization. Expansion civilizations sometimes suffer in quality when vanilla civilizations get changed and modified to the expansion.

I'm not sure why Japan is being mentioned. They don't have a UI; they have a UU that can build a specific improvement (much like how Legions can build roads and forts).