Balancing New Uniques: Free citizens

[fyermind]

So I am playing with ideas for new unique units and buildings, and some of the one's I really liked was a worker that could join a city as a free citizen.

I played around with it a but and if the return on investments is 2.7% as once suggested, even with a reduced cost of 40H instead of 60H it is a terrible build just to settle without Rep/hammer multipliers (more than 120 turns to pay off). It becomes a really good use for stolen workers if you wouldn't need the worker for ~20 turns or if you get >50% hammer multipliers. With strong science multipliers in one city and Rep, the free citizen becomes a ~10.5 science/turn build for 40 hammers and can quickly outclass building research. (Assumes an oxford city with academy, library and university).

This is without play testing. Assuming Exp was not an associated leader trait, does anyone see any other serious issues? Do free specialists increase population for diplomacy votes or domination victories? Does this favor running Rep so much as to script the player to rush pyramids? (Note that workers are really important in the early game anyway, so the player might not want to settle any until later)

Another idea was a worker/settler that can rush builds for a fraction (maybe half) of their base cost. This would allow for compounding multipliers, but at halved returns the value would be lost unless multipliers were greater than +100%. The real value would be in pre-building major builds such as wonders and universities as well as using small cities to increase production in large cities. It would also increase the value of having small cities in harsh whipping cycles to churn out building production in large commerce cities.

Both seem like they would be poorly used by the AI, but potentially abused by a player. How do they compare to Praets/Fast Workers/Redcoats/War chariots? What about the middle of the road UUs?

Any particular traps I should avoid in traits/UBs?

 

[Manco Capac]

True, for the early game, it's rather a weak return given workers cost a lot compared to production capacities and added the fact they are needed to improve the lands. But later, in the industrial ages, I can easily imagine heavy abuses out that trait:

1)IronWorks+Forge+Factory+Power=200%, meaning 3 per citizen and workers can be built in 1-2 turns. And that is 60 /3=20 turns for payback. Throw in the Heroic Epic and representation and bam, unholy abuse.

2) Early instance of abuse is throwing workers into the Heroic Epic and make a literally epic city of spewing units each turn.

3) OCC+mass worker steal=unlimited powaaaa

4) Unlimited amount of citizens lead to incredibly nonsense cities.

Everything that is one shot cost without drawback may lead to unholy abuses. Since citizens when settled cost nothing at all except the cost of the worker, with the right amount of multipliers and lack of ceiling in how many you can settle, past the investment, the return is huge.

My two cents: make a thread of this subject in Strategy&Tips and ask people if that is balanced. People there normally like discussing about overpowered things and balance. In modding sections, balance discussions are rarely pushed far. Modders are freelance creators, despite it might engender a monster. Fans of the modder's creation/mod are usually the ones seeing the unbalances/abuses/exploits.