Note: I played RoM:aND on Monarch difficulty, no random events, no revolutions (I tried revs long time ago, they just weakened AI, giving me more small opponents instead of a few strong ones), modern corporations, no "guild corporations".
1. Slavery is OP. Yes, you probably heard this many times. Because it's true. Why is slavery OP?
1) Barter is one of the worst starting civics (-33%
!) and slavery is the only early alternative to barter. Actually moving from barter to slavery means +65%
(2/3 to 1 is +50% boost and 1,5*1,1=1,65). +65%! The best strategy is to research slavery as the first tech (or beeline it) and switch ASAP. You should remove science penalty from barter (gold and connections penalties are enough) or move slavery to society category or both.
2) +10%
, commerce bonuses are rare and valuable. I would understand extra
from plantations, but why + to all commerce?
3) Early production: not just +%
, but slave market provides free slave, after modifiers it's +4-5
per city. Very useful, especially in the early game, and has no alternatives. Also unlim-d slaves have a synergy with village hall: another free slave for extra hammers. But personally I avoid building village+ halls outside of capital (increases corp&city costs too much in late game).
4) Other economic civics are too weak. Coinage, guilds, mercantilism are worse than slavery even for science/commerce. And slavery also provides huge production. Also it's funny that coinage unlocks national mint which provides good bonuses with silver and gold... but coinage blocks silver and gold (national mint still is useful for FM, of course). Free market is a first civic that really can compete with slavery. AI doesn't agree with me and used coinage, guilds, mercantilism and avoided slavery (not always). Probably, strange effect "happiness for other civs without slavery" confuses AI?
5) Slavery doesn't generate any serious unhappiness in industrial and modern eras, while it's still a strong civic (+10%
and
) even after slave markets are obsolete. Very unrealistic. Just compare it to unhappiness from conscription or state atheism.
My proposals: 1) move slavery to society category (because slavery is compatible with coinage, mercantilism, free market, but not with liberal societies); 2) remove +10%
bonus, add "+2
to plantations" instead; 3) remove free slave from market; 4) add +50%
from pop size (at least +25%). I'm sure people hate slavery more than monarchy (OK, except American founding fathers) or conscription. As alternative, may be, +4
for slavery from some industrial era buildings like publishing house, public school, factory, computer network - more educated and informed people oppose slavery; 5) also make civs with more advanced civics in same category (nationalist, liberal) react negatively to civ with slavery (especially liberal civs).
2. Monarchy - too many effects? The core parts of the civic are maintenance reduction and happiness per military unit. My proposal is to remove most unimportant effects like archer production boost, +gold from walls, unlimited nobles, no unhappiness in capital. Also I think, you should remove +1 happiness and +5%
for democracy and remove or increase all "+0.5
/
/
per specific specialist".
3. Federalism is useless? No strong sides, monarchy gives bigger upkeep reduction without production penalties of federalism. AI doesn't use it too. And most federal gov-ts IRL are democracies anyway. In current form you can remove federal completely.
4. Society. Currently caste is the best society civic for industrial era: no upkeep and +15%
. At least increase upkeep to high. Maybe, replace 1
with +25%
from population? Tribal actually is a good civic for early game (cities too unhappy to grow), why it gives extra
? Why tribal society is more productive? Bourgeois - another
bonus. Villas need food, and I need food for foundries and power plants, and without villas bourgeois is worse than caste. Proletariat, feudal and liberal look not very useful for me, but AI loves them. Why is liberal civic so bad? -5%
and
. Social liberalism is bad for economy? Freedom is bad for science? I used it for roleplay reasons, I can live with it, but it's still a bad civic.
5. Planned. Not only civic is mediocre by itself, it bans corporations, making it one of the worst civics in the category. Production? Mining corp is the best (both main bonus and +% from special building). If not Mining, than at least CreCon. Even aluminium corp building gives +12%
&
with coal and bauxite. And food corps are very useful to compensate for
from factories and power plants. If you want production, you want corporations, not planned economy.
Corporatism and slavery (even modern slavery) are much better than planned. Proposal: change "no corporations" to "no foreign corporations". If you can have medieval guilds as corps, you can have state-owned enterprises as corps. Also remove inflation bonus and increase
bonus for planning offices. And even after that I would still prefer free market, probably. Not important, but would be nice: planned shouldn't be allowed to build some capitalist buildings like advertising agencies, wall street etc. There were no stock exchanges and mass advertising in planned economy.
6. Military civics. Military civics between banditry and vassalage are bad (though AI likes warrior caste). Warrior caste hurts production and commerce, conscription generates too much unhappiness (even AI avoids it), mercenaries' cost is insanely high for early stage of the game. IRL some countries still have mandatory military service, sadly, and many people in these countries actually approve conscription. It's really strange that conscription gives much more unhappiness than slavery - it should be vice versa, +50%
from pop is more fitting for slavery.
7. Vassalage & shanty towns. Why do shanty towns require vassalage, how are they related to vassalage at all? Why do they improve production and commerce? Why vassalage, civic that's already better than all previous ones, needs extra boost? Proposal: remove shanty towns or remove vassalage requirement from them.
8. I really disliked "foreign policy" category. For me it looks like attempt to represent already existing game mechanics (diplomacy, tribute, aid) with clumsy civics. My commerce drained by "imperium" civs, even though they are on different continent and my navy is more advanced and can easily defeat theirs, but they have megastacks of obsolete units in cities, so they are technically stronger. Protectionism is an economic idea (which contradicts free market). If you want to maximize income, Imperium is the best. If you don't want to annoy neighbors, Interventionism is the only sensible civic. Most AIs use Imperium and Interventionism, some used Appeasement (some without practical reason).
9. No WW. I noticed that my liberal democracy with professional army (-50% WW) and interventionism (-50% WW) has no war weariness at all. Strange and unrealistic.
Is there some special AI code attached to it? Or am I just simply lame? 
