3.16 possibilities

[Funak]

All the unique improvements as mentioned still need to be looked at. (Except Terrace Farm and Polder maybe?).

Main problem is the culture balance, easiest would probably be comparing them to the tradingpost, which gives something like 4 gold 1 science 1 culture (1 faith?)

Comparing a 3 gold 3 culture chateau with that is pretty fair, the chateau is about equal, if not a little better. The issue however is that in the basegame the chateau is a lot better than any alternative improvement and is balanced with that in mind(placement requirements).
For the others you kinda need to assume that 1 culture is worth something like 3 gold for them to stay relevant.

Easy(but boring) solution would be to give them all the tradingpost policy bonuses, 1gold from currency, 1 science from knowledge and 1 culture from aesthetics, (1 faith from Religious settlements maybe?). No clue if that would be balanced however, the chateau would end up with 4 gold 4 culture and 1 science (1 faith?), The brasilwood camp would have 3 gold 3 culture 1 science (1 faith?).
The maoi however I have no clue about, I never play polynesia.

The terrace farm is fine, really no need to change anything about it.
The Polder I would still argue should have a freshwater access bonus at Civil service, just to keep it consistently better than a farm. (This would ofc change the bonus at Fertilizer to only give extra food to polder-tiles without freshwater access)

The Kasbah is a lot trickier however. One could either try and keep it unique by just giving it some bonus(that I can't think of tbh.) later on, but that would be a lot of work.

My easier solution would be just to decide what kind of baseimprovement it should be and just give it all those existing bonuses.
You could make it a Farm, a Mine or a Tradingpost without too much trouble I think.
What I mean is that while it would still have the desert only requirement you could either make it a farm with all the existing farmbonuses (And the base 1 production 1 gold),
a mine with all the existing minerelated bonuses (and +1 food +1 gold) or
a tradingpost with all the existing tradingpost bonuses (+1 food 1+ production)

This would however make the kasbah pretty damn strong, sure on flat desert-tiles a tradingpoststyle-kasbah would just be like a tradingpost on plains, not very impressive, on a deserthill or floodplain however that would have 2 extra hammers or 2 extra food which would be pretty powerful (So you would maybe need to put additional tile-requirements on it), however unique improvements are meant to be good, I'm just not sure how good.
In my opinion the Farm-style-kasbah or the tradingpost-style-kasbah makes most sense gameplayvise, a mine would be more unique because there are no mine-replacements.

End pruduct would be something like this(assuming you've gone for every existing bonus, which isn't really realistic):
TP-style-Kasbah: 1 food 1 production 4 gold 1 science 1 culture (1 faith?)
Farm-style-kasbah: 3 food 1 production 1 gold. (assuming you went freedom ofc)
Mine-style-Kasbah: 1 food 4 production 1 gold (assuming you went order)

 

[Zarggg]

Stories in general are poorly balanced I think on yields.

While I definitely agree with this statement in principle, I don't really have any specific examples committed to memory. Do you think there is a need for a discussion on fixing up stories, as well?

If you think that there are enough open topics at the moment, they can definitely wait. I just wanted to mention it.
----
Edit: One particular case just came to mind. I forget what the exact Story was, but the result was adding 4 to a Grassland/River tile. Putting a Farm on that tile, plus all the bonuses to freshwater Farms later in the game gave it some ridiculous Food value. I can't look it up right now, but if I still have a save from that game I'll try to get details.

I realize that this can be normalized by replacing the Farm improvement with something like a Village to diversify resources per tile, but this happened early in the game where Food was a priority for population and basically made that tile mandatory.

I realize this might be a "sky is falling" type situation, where the problem lies more in the player than the mod, but again... I just wanted to mention it.

 

[Funak]

While I definitely agree with this statement in principle, I don't really have any specific examples committed to memory. Do you think there is a need for a discussion on fixing up stories, as well?

If you think that there are enough open topics at the moment, they can definitely wait. I just wanted to mention it.
----
Edit: One particular case just came to mind. I forget what the exact Story was, but the result was adding 4 to a Grassland/River tile. Putting a Farm on that tile, plus all the bonuses to freshwater Farms later in the game gave it some ridiculous Food value. I can't look it up right now, but if I still have a save from that game I'll try to get details.

I realize that this can be normalized by replacing the Farm improvement with something like a Village to diversify resources per tile, but this happened early in the game where Food was a priority for population and basically made that tile mandatory.

I realize this might be a "sky is falling" type situation, where the problem lies more in the player than the mod, but again... I just wanted to mention it.

There are like 6 different stories all giving +3 food on a tile, I really don't think that's a problem tbh, atleast not compared to some of the more broken ones, like +5 culture/production on a desert.
However in all honesty I don't think those are really at all gamebreaking.
Once had a city with a mountain and one of the natural wonders, i think it was sri pada or mount kilimanjaro, lets just assume it was sri pada just for this example.
I had the mountain-event trigger on the natural wonder for another 5 culture, and Machu picchu somehow triggered on the natural wonder aswell giving me a tile with 10 food 12 culture, 7 faith and 5 gold, and while that was pretty damn cool and strong it's not really gamebreaking either.

 

[mystikx21]

There's two things I've noticed producing yield issues like that that to me do seem game breaking. (mostly because it just costs gold, and at the moment, gold isn't a problem).

There seems to be a city ruin bonus of some kind at work. So a city when destroyed leaves behind food or production (if on a hill) on that tile. I think this is a bug we need to address somehow but I am not sure what causes it.

The stories yields are all over the place. They were mostly unchanged from GEM that I can see, although culture looks to have been reduced at least somewhat. The stories might work better if they consisted of yield over time improvements (a bonus to the city's production or food for x turns) or instant yields or benefits. The CS stories are like that, as is the free settler/worker/tiles style effects, or the one that changes a fort to a citadel. This is basically like the "We love the king day" effect, as it allows you to do something in order have an effect take place but with some options as to what that effect will be. There's a lot of options there that were never included, things like spawning a resource/luxury, or "religion has spread", or unique unit promotions, and so on.

I'm almost inclined to say that yields on tiles should probably be avoided entirely as that's the main problem I have with them. And happiness should almost certainly be replaced as a yield if yields remain.

I would put them as a low priority as I said mostly because I don't use them myself but if most people do use them, then they can be addressed yes.

 

[Funak]

There's two things I've noticed producing yield issues like that that to me do seem game breaking. (mostly because it just costs gold, and at the moment, gold isn't a problem).

There seems to be a city ruin bonus of some kind at work. So a city when destroyed leaves behind food or production (if on a hill) on that tile. I think this is a bug we need to address somehow but I am not sure what causes it.

The stories yields are all over the place. They were mostly unchanged from GEM that I can see, although culture looks to have been reduced at least somewhat. The stories might work better if they consisted of yield over time improvements (a bonus to the city's production or food for x turns) or instant yields or benefits. The CS stories are like that, as is the free settler/worker/tiles style effects, or the one that changes a fort to a citadel. This is basically like the "We love the king day" effect, as it allows you to do something in order have an effect take place but with some options as to what that effect will be. There's a lot of options there that were never included, things like spawning a resource/luxury, or "religion has spread", or unique unit promotions, and so on.

I'm almost inclined to say that yields on tiles should probably be avoided entirely as that's the main problem I have with them. And happiness should almost certainly be replaced as a yield if yields remain.

I would put them as a low priority as I said mostly because I don't use them myself but if most people do use them, then they can be addressed yes.

I've noticed that aswell, quite a few bonuses that gives yield to a city is just dropped on the city tile (For convenience I suppose) among others the food bonus from tradition and the production from liberty. These yields stay when the city is burned down. This would be a huge problem if you could actually raze capitals, since they have huge foodbonuses from tradition among other things, but since they can't be razed this is more of a minor issue and shouldn't (imho) be your main focus =D.

And yes the stories giving improved yields on tiles are superpowerful and stack up over time, but the AI get those aswell, so it's not that bad. Fixing/or just removing the happiness however wouldn't hurt.

 

[Hreat]

Todo on ideologies and overall in policies:

Move influence on trade routes to patronage.

That effect is way too powerful to be available on an early-game policy. Even as the patronage finisher it would be OP. As a stand-alone Patronage policy it would be must-have for all playstyles and victory conditions even if the bonus were reduced to +1/turn.

Otherwise, it's nice to see so much balancing work going on and the mod moving forward again

 

[Hreat]

God of the Sea at +1 feels underpowered. Consider how few city spots have 4+ sea resources and it really pales compared to a flat +3 in every city.