Just finished a 48 hour domination victory game. I probably could have won sooner by attacking and seizing/vassaling some weaker AI opponents (which I eventually did) but I insisted on concentrating on the 2nd place AI at my southern border for most of the game. I don't use SVN, just the default d/l, plus the patch. The default siege building damage was absolutely ridiculous.. I'd be outnumbering an opponent on the scale of 2 and 3
dozen to one and still lose since the moment I get adjacent to a city
every unit was immediately reduced to half its health. I had rely on a combination of ridiculously overwhelming numbers and timing the attacks when there was only a skeleton crew of defenders present. Thankfully after the patch things became more manageable.
I think I may have stumbled onto a bug of some sort tho. Initially at the begining of the game when setting the options in game, I set the tile unit limit to 30. I figured that was plenty enough for a bevy of troops. However when I tried to attack one of the AI's cities (after d/l'in the patch to make it feasible

) with 3 nearly full groups amounting to approx 80-90 troops (a mix of about 25-30 siege and the rest composed of Rifleman and Cavalry) I found I didn't have enough troops to destroy all the defenders... After thinking this absolutely wasn't possible, I reloaded my save (always save before declaring war

) and checked the target city. It turns out the AI had over
50 various military units garrisoned in the city! Are cities exempt from the tile unit limit, or was the AI playing with a pair of pocket ace's that it shouldn't be?
Also, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, the siege weapons for renaissance era are way overpowered. They have considerable strength, and bonuses against every possible contemporary unit that could be brought to bear against them.
I think the Three Gorges Dam is overpowered as well. Providing 250 hammers in the modern era? Building it had the effect of turning one of my lower production cities into my
highest production city. I'd suggest reducing it to 100 hammers or so (maybe even lower), and restoring the previous benefit of providing electricity to all cities on the continent.
Caste is probably overpowered as well. I almost didn't bother going off it at all the entire game. The only reason I did was to see if Liberalism was any improvement, and then forgot to switch back after the civic timer reset
*+2 XP for new units
*+15% production in all cities
*+1 Farm/fishing boats
*+1 mine/shaft mine/lumbermill/quarry
*Allows Brahim Library (1 research 2 culture, allows 1 scientist 1 priest).
The only drawbacks are:
*+1

in 4 largest cities
*-50% GP production
Unless I'm using a GP strategy, why
wouldn't I stick with Caste thru most of the game?? I suggest perhaps up'ing the

to maybe +2 in every 4 to 6 largest cities (at least), purging the +15% production bonus, and maybe incorporating a instability increase.
Speaking of instability, there were pretty much no Revolutions at all.

And even when I sent out numbers of spies in a deliberate attempt to destabilize and fracture nations, it was unlikely to instigate a rebellion, even after multiple successful missions.
Overall everything else seem nice. The new terrain definitely changes things up a bit. The heroes are an interesting addition, tho admittedly I didn't use them much for their intended purpose, just to build the national achievements. The heroes don't have a lot of longevity, as they can't be upgraded so once you tech up past their strength, they're done for. And unfortunately I only got access to most of them well after their usefulness had long since passed. However, I did find an alternate use for them as medics. Several of the hero promotions increase healing ability substantially, far past the capability of any of the regular game medical units. So, I found myself in the late modern era with several ridiculously low strength egyptian heroes attached to army groups as medic specialists
