Back in the old days, you used to be able to pillage your own improvements. This led to a cheesy exploit - sell a luxury, pillage it, repair it, repeat - and thus it was removed. It was a very quick and dirty solution, but didn't have too many consequences - after all, when would you want to pillage your own stuff? (Answer: in a town you were about a lose, especially strategically important locations like bridges, iron mines, citadels, etc.)
Fast forward to today, and the new pillaging mechanic is awesome. Healing +25hp from pillaging adds a new tactical dimension to combat, and gives mounted units a new breath of life. Unfortunately, it also severely messes with the delicate balance of defender's advantage. The reason? The attacker is allowed to pillage, but the defender isn't! This means that while 5 swordsmen vs 3 swordsmen + a city used to be an easy hold, now it's an easy capture.
How do we fix it? Well, everything would be solved by allowing self-pillaging once more - except it would bring back the cheesy exploit. So why not fix that exploit directly (which still exists by letting barbarians pillage stuff), rather than messing with pillaging? Allow players to pillage their own improvements. Perhaps it can heal more than for the attacker (40hp?), to put defender's advantage back where it used to be. Make sure the AI knows how to use it!
When a trade is cancelled due to a resource being lost, and the trade involved a lump sum payment from the AI to the player, the AI opens a diplomacy screen demanding his money back. If the player agrees, he repays the money. If he does not, he suffers a worldwide diplomatic hit (similar to how promising "my units are only passing through the area" then attacking makes everyone distrustful of you). The player is able to negotiate - if he's low on gold, he can repay through gold-per-turn, for example. If he can't repay in any way, he has no choice but to suffer the diplomatic hit - if you trade resources you can't protect and spend yourself into deficit, your dodgy fiscal management should not be trusted.
AIs who like you enough will also offer your money back when the same thing happens to them. Finally, since trade-then-break-deal now no longer carries any advantage to the player, add a "cancel deal" button to the trade history window. This helps solve the "oops, I accidentally traded away my last luxury when the AI asked me to renew a deal that was actually 50 turns old" situation.
Fast forward to today, and the new pillaging mechanic is awesome. Healing +25hp from pillaging adds a new tactical dimension to combat, and gives mounted units a new breath of life. Unfortunately, it also severely messes with the delicate balance of defender's advantage. The reason? The attacker is allowed to pillage, but the defender isn't! This means that while 5 swordsmen vs 3 swordsmen + a city used to be an easy hold, now it's an easy capture.
How do we fix it? Well, everything would be solved by allowing self-pillaging once more - except it would bring back the cheesy exploit. So why not fix that exploit directly (which still exists by letting barbarians pillage stuff), rather than messing with pillaging? Allow players to pillage their own improvements. Perhaps it can heal more than for the attacker (40hp?), to put defender's advantage back where it used to be. Make sure the AI knows how to use it!
When a trade is cancelled due to a resource being lost, and the trade involved a lump sum payment from the AI to the player, the AI opens a diplomacy screen demanding his money back. If the player agrees, he repays the money. If he does not, he suffers a worldwide diplomatic hit (similar to how promising "my units are only passing through the area" then attacking makes everyone distrustful of you). The player is able to negotiate - if he's low on gold, he can repay through gold-per-turn, for example. If he can't repay in any way, he has no choice but to suffer the diplomatic hit - if you trade resources you can't protect and spend yourself into deficit, your dodgy fiscal management should not be trusted.
AIs who like you enough will also offer your money back when the same thing happens to them. Finally, since trade-then-break-deal now no longer carries any advantage to the player, add a "cancel deal" button to the trade history window. This helps solve the "oops, I accidentally traded away my last luxury when the AI asked me to renew a deal that was actually 50 turns old" situation.
