//This is
Midehoff, found my old password, will be using this username instead.
I will go ahead and start making my suggestions and/or critique of the current ideas being thrown around. These are just ideas, tell me if you don't like em.
Slavery
The concept of slavery is sorely lacking in the vanilla version of civ4c, and that's a shame. Because without slavery you simply do not have an authentic, historically relevant game. Don't agree with slavery? That doesn't mean you should ignore it by playing a game that creates a false reality of its absence. So thumbs up for creating this concept and planning on its implementation into RandR.
I think there should be two slave units, 1. an African slave, purchased and brought to the colonies from African port screen. And 2. a Native slave, converted from Catholic missions when playing as Spain or Portugal, this is historically relevant. Native slaves would be the equivalent of converted natives for the protestant nations. Feel free to not use this unit, but I believe it adds "atmosphere to the game" and creates real historical realism. If you want to use these units, here are some ideas on their implementation, which I saw you (Ray) already addressed the limitations (tile only professions) on African slaves.
1. African Slave: Bonus to all planting professions.
2. Native Slave (Catholic): Bonus to all mining professions.
-Please provide ideas on balance between native types-
3. Converted Native (Protestant): Bonus to all planting professions, Furs, and Horses?.
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With the use of slaves as the primary tile work force, I think we should make the game more efficient by either A. removing Professional Planters altogether (Expert Tobacco Planter, Cotton Planter, etc.), or B. use Rays immigration balance idea, to make these units extremely rare, valuable, and expensive (if you were to purchase in port). Slaves already receive a bonus on tile jobs, which is the players incentive to use them instead of free colonists. Example, if tile produces 4 cotton. African Slave (+2) 6 cotton, Native Slave (0) 4, Free Colonist (0) 4. I think for historical realism, converted natives should only get a bonus on things like corn or fishing, where african slaves only get a bonus on plantation jobs.
Petty criminals and indentured servants should also be allowed to work tiles, but prohibited from working building jobs? The Lbd feature can be used to allow these units to earn their freedom by hard plantation work, fishing, etc. Or they should automatically escape or become a free colonist after 30-50 years
Growing Improvements
With the implementations of slavery. The growing improvements concept (2-3 workers per tile) has potential to create a lot of atmosphere. And it makes sense. Isn't it weird to have 2 people in a carpenters shop, and only 1 cutting down a forest? I think more people would be doing the latter. This feature would also appease the crowd who likes the 2 tile city radius mod (25 squares), which I also saw was discussed. In order to balance the game with this idea though, you should raise the food threshold for population increases, so that you do not produce a new free colonist every turn. You can use the growing improvements concept, and still find a way to balance the game to where it still seems like building a colony is a hard difficult process. At least I hope so!
Missionaries
I saw the idea mentioned to prohibit the ability of a Free Colonist to turn into a Missionary without the presence of a Church. This only makes sense. Ray, you said that you change colonists to missionaries in the Europe screen. That's ok, it makes sense, there are churches in Europe. But if there is no Church in the New World, and one of your free colonists can turn into a missionary, doesn't that seem odd?
Feedback?