Well, while we're at it, some of my thoughts on some of the features mentioned.
Forest Protection - This still plays a big role when it comes to things like mines, windmills, etc., that don't destroy the forest, as with dirty improvements, you can offset part of the negatives by leaving the forest. It also means the woodsman promotions can actually stay partially relevant past the ancient era. And, as Thomas pointed out, it's not very realistic to cut down a whole forest just because you put a mine into a hill.
Feature and Terrain Damage - This is one of my favorite things in this mod, though a few changes could make it better in my opinion(I'll get to that). I always though it odd that a large army could march into a desert with no repercussions, or that the troubles that plagued the French and the Germans invading Russia weren't represented in game. Now it's much more difficult for those who are unprepared to enter such hostile environments to launch an invasion, creating the kind of natural geographic boundaries we actually see in real life.
Assimilation - my main question here is if the 'bug' described by some where for instance a viking city is captured with a 'lighthouse' (meaning the trading post was reverted to a light house upon capture) then the conquerers can also build a trading post, resulting in +2 food on all water tiles. Obviously this could happen with any UB, so a check needs to occur for this, automatically replacing the generic with the UB, if it's not already done.
On that note, for gameplay purposes, I just assume it either stay 'assimilated' forever(as I think it currently is), or at least for a very long time before losing it's cultural identity, despite the cultural makeup. Especially since conquered civ's lose all their culture (another thing that might be due for a change... .. . )
Now, getting back to terrain and feature damage. There are a few things about this that might be improved. The biggest concern I have is when I see a civ that is on mostly desert(tundra, jungle, etc.), yet almost none of their units have desert promotions. So their units are wandering around their territory, taking damage, and yet the people live pretty much
exclusively in the desert. This would be like the bedouin tribes never figuring it was important to figure out how to live in the desert.
The problem comes up I think because you
have to make the choice between desert promo, or that extra combat or drill or what-have-you, which makes it a kinda
big price to pay for civs in such circumstances, especially when most new units can only count on one or two promos initially. Heck, I wouldn't want to waste my promotions either. Nor does it make sense to.
A potential solution is that under the right circumstances (city is almost all desert), the first promo would be given to units produced there, basically representing that you are recruiting from a populace that knows, is adapted to, and is provisioned/equipped for that terrain. This
could work on some threshold of tiles (e.i. 75% desert), or based on percentage of tiles to give a probability (e.i. the city has 33% desert tiles, new units have a 33% chance of receiving the promo), a combo of the two, or some more complex model even.
Personally, I'd think (initially without any testing) that a percentage based approach that scales up to 100% chance @ 75% of tiles (e.i. (% of tiles) * 1.33333 = % chance) would work well. This prevents the necessity of hard cutoff lines(I don't like thresholds
) without needing the city to be in 100% desert to guarantee the promo(that would be rather difficult, harsh, and most importantly, unrealistic I think).
Obviously, units that don't automatically get the promo are still eligible to get it the traditional way, and invaders hoping to go after desert dwellers (or jungle, etc.) will still have to earn it the hard way.
In addition(this part's more iffy and certainly would be a lot more involved), maybe at some point in the industrial or modern era, it becomes possible to 'train' units, for a price, to have a weaker (let's say 50% or 75% reduction in damage at least) promo. This would be something like Americans training and equipping otherwise fresh troops to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. The AI would have to know however that if they have war plans against an enemy occupying largely inhospitable terrain, it might be a good idea to give such training and ignore it otherwise. Just spitting out ideas
.
I also like the idea put forward recently that damage be based on remaining hit points rather than total, though units
very low on strength in inhospitable terrain should have a
chance of dying(without this, units would never die on their own, even if they would be more vulnerable to animals/barbarians/enemies), so crossing the terrain is not guaranteed. I personally very much appreciate systems that aren't 100% predicable, and at present you know that if I spend 7 turns in inhospitable terrain, I die.