The matzl and the cualli have always been among the stronger opponents played by the computer. I dreaded seeing them when starting a game on monarch or higher. And playing as them was 'easy town' They were pretty broken 'before' health changes.. I can only imagine how strong they are now. They had the population and commerce of the elves (without needing to research silly religious techs) and could fuel a massive war engine. In any case, I suspect their tweaks will be simply to bring their food generation in line with everyone else.
True that they don't require techs for their jungles, but jungles, as opposed to ancient forests, only give 1 production.(And if Opera is correct, +0.25 health, and on that note the food doesn't override, but gives -1 for jungle and then +1 for jungle and being Cualli, a jungle on a grassland or marsh gives 2 food and 1 production, note sure about the health though still...) while an ancient forest takes away 1 food, gives 1 prod, and 2 commerce. in addition to this, gives 0.5 health. The problem as I see it is that they get free farms everywhere in addition to this though
((Also I'd argue that being agnostic is worse than having no siege weapons by far. But I always concentrated more on having a strong commerce and industry than the warfare.)
Cualli also cannot get Lost Lands in 1.3, don't know if they could before. Mazatl with lost lands and the ability to get another religion is scary though
You are indeed playing a different game. Some of us use the 'ranged' mechanic on siege weapons to turn solid defenders into tasty 2.5 defense charred herring. Otherwise you have to deal with +105% City +25% Hills 5 defense defenders who will raped your chickens and their daughters. Also... 'just' a fire node.. I'm pretty sure you need mages, which require both xp and a much heftier tech requirement, not to mention a node that could be used on a variety of better things than crappy fire mana. In any case, though you are definately playing a different game (probably some variation of kittens and unicorns OF DEATH), you are right about the huge bonuses from tiles they get. I don't have any issues with them.
And that was a typo.. I meant +0.5
well ranged attacking is what I use archers for. True about the tech though maybe... Mage xp isn't usually a problem for me at least... But you're probably right, I just didn't miss them much personally
Those unicorn riding kitten necromancers are really tough to crack even with catapults though. Sorry about the misunderstanding on the 0.5, I get confused easily hehe.
EDIT: As for the 3 per pop, myeah that area is indeed a bit of a minefield. These orchards also sound scary to me.
EDIT2: humm and yeah I forgot about the commerce from trails in Lizard territory >_>