Can you elaborate on that or point me in a discussion about that?
Should we reduce the promotion bonus??
I've slipped a complaint about Protective's "Drill IV for everyone" warfare into my comments at any possible opportunity
In AND they now get a free Drill II from the get go. Without seeing warfare of any kind, or getting any free Great Generals - settled or otherwise - a Protective nation can easily get Drill III or IV on a LARGE number of archers without even hitting the medieval. Now think how painful it is to war with a nation like that, and can effortlessly pump out units that shrug off the best military units of that era and almost entirely ignore collateral damage due to the Drill IV benefits, and then get ADDITIONAL promotions from not only combat promotions, but the Great Generals they just now started earning.
I have yet to finish the Classical era without seeing ANY Protective nation come out of it without a full legion of archers all buffed up to Drill IV, usually with City Garrison II on top of it. It takes 10 siege weapons of a given era just to do any sort of damage to a small group of these units, and that damage will just heal up over the next turn or few turns.
I have not had any moment - save for the odd case of being a full era ahead of the other AI - where this has not been the case with a Protective nation in AND. It always ends up being frustrating to say the least unless you have Bombers - and a lot of them - on hand, which isn't the case in the Classical and Medieval.
I would just say "Protective in AND means 'don't war with this nation before the Industrial'" but when THEY declare war on YOU, or when you need to war to catch up with oter nations / get out of a cramped start, you don't have much choice.
Still, from everything I've seen - Protective here in AND always has ended up being immensely frustrating. AND generously hands out experience to archery units in the earlier game, and with Monarchy boosting the training rate of said units it just makes this worse. I have many times seen nations that never went to war still end up with a large number of Drill IV's before the Classical is even over. That, is very bad.
Granted, I'm not the best player out there, but I've yet to find a reliable counter to large fields of Drill IV's that Protectives always sport that doesn't involve suiciding ghastly amounts of Siege weapons or anti-archery Horse units.
Protective itself might not be the problem, but the fact that Drill IV is available so early. We have to wait until Anatomy and onward before the full Medic line is open to us, maybe Drill III and IV shouldn't be allowed access to until later on as well?
