I actually consider this to be a rather misguided and cowardly approach to game design, which seems to be directed more towards public relations and community management rather than what is the best result for the game itself.
Of course when you are looking in terms of the end result, choices in the game should be a selection of benefits rather than a selection of mostly drawbacks. Especially with civics I am trying to be mindful of that and avoid negative effects unless they are absolutely necessary or make sense thematically.
However when it comes to balancing and evolving game mechanics over time I don't think this approach is a good idea. I am following professional Starcraft 2 quite extensively and it has for a while followed this balancing approach (especially the initial post LotV era under David Kim) and I hold it responsible for its worst eras of meta and competitive balance. An approach that only relies on buffs will inevitably result in power creep and escalation as every balance change can potentially leave another element of the game unbalanced, which leads to further buffs. I think there should always be an idea of a target state for the game in terms of balance and the choice of buff or nerf should be made based on that, instead of only thinking in incremental steps and what the audience response for it would be.
per specialist between the "double specialist slots" civics. Out of the four (Constitution for Statesmen, Egalitarianism for Artists, Free Enterprise for Merchants and Secularism for Scientists), Egalitarianism and Secularism were badly nerfed while Constitution was always "just okay" for such a late game civic. Obviously they would have to lose the double specialist slot effect as compensation, and Free Enterprise could need some additional nerf.
