Balance Question on building

A friend of mine and I are having some disagreement on whether the following Civ may be underpowered. Opins?

Special ability: Melee units start with Drill 1. Land Ranged units start with Barrage 1.

[Barracks Replacement]
+2 Happiness
+1 Culture
No maintenance

[Unit Replacement]
Something theoretically good but untested as of yet (getting Science from kills with a Frigate replacement).

Opins? Critique on Barracks is that it's not common to build them before turn 100 given how much else needs to get built and given you have wait until you research Bronze Working.

The Barracks replacement is really, really strong here. The +2 Happiness and +1 Culture outshadows most of the Classical Era buildings.
Also, I think this thread is in the wrong section...

Yeah, remove the +2 happiness and I think it would be OK.
Don't underestimate the strength of it, especially on higher difficulties.

Moderator Action: All questions and requests for help should go in the main Creation and Customisation forum - I've moved the thread there. The other subforums are for completed work.
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Hoop Thrower said:

The Barracks replacement is really, really strong here. The +2 Happiness and +1 Culture outshadows most of the Classical Era buildings.
Also, I think this thread is in the wrong section...

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But -- weaker than the Ikanda, Stele, Bazaar, Mud Pyramid, Pyramid, Ikanda, or no?

TheGrumpyBuddha said:

But -- weaker than the Ikanda, Stele, Bazaar, Mud Pyramid, Pyramid, Ikanda, or no?

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Happiness bonus for warmongering Civs is absolutely powerful, way more than if it was for a peaceful one. I do believe that +1 Happiness and +1 Culture is balanced enough, though.

Bear in mind that the main purpose of the Barracks is to give an essentially 'free' promotion choice, and is in and of itself pretty powerful. The Ikanda and Krepost I've always found to be a bit OP in and of themselves, but that's an arguable position from which I am quite content to be over-ruled by the community of opinion.

LeeS said:

Bear in mind that the main purpose of the Barracks is to give an essentially 'free' promotion choice, and is in and of itself pretty powerful. The Ikanda and Krepost I've always found to be a bit OP in and of themselves, but that's an arguable position from which I am quite content to be over-ruled by the community of opinion.

Click to expand...

Well, it's not free in that it's XP-based, so it costs more XP to get to the next promotion. The civ's starting bonus of Drill/Barrage for melee/archery units *is* free, though, and in playtesting so far is pretty cool.

I think I will suggest perhaps knocking the happiness bonus to +1 but, given the theme of the school, making the prereq pottery instead of bronze working. (The idea is that the barracks is actually a pub.)

The thing about early Barracks is that they generally suck, there's always something better to build -- even units, for warmongerers -- better to build a couple of archers than to build a barracks first just for +15 XP.