I am playing it too and I dare say I am a better Pearson than all of you because I am the one warmongering. After all, the "B." in leader's name stands for "Brute", so I am clearly the one playing it right. I started close, but on another continent to the Iroquois and Russia. They're all covering their dishes with copious amounts of maple syrup now lest they face death by Lester "Bad Person" Pearson, the true king of evil and all things dastardly. Supply free units, more supply/production to build units with, faith GG access, lower unit maintenance actually make it synergise pretty nicely. I don't think I would've done anything better with progress, but I would've maybe considered Tradition. Progress seems like a bad idea for this civ.
This is the weakest early game civ. It has nothing before you get to mid-game. Even Austria with bad quests is better off. I spawned a citadel in the ancient era, put an unit on it, and it did counteract the upkeep of one unit while giving me 1 GG point, but that's not worth much. It's the worst UA in the game by far, but that is fine considering the other uniques. Delegate stuff is situational and I could see situations it'd hurt me, and internal route thing isn't useful for my gamestyle which involves shanking people multiple times until they die or submit. A shame the last part doesn't work for naval routes as that'd make an impassable line in the middle of the ocean which has no purpose but annoying others and that'd be pretty funny. I know it's for the best, though.
Anyway, it's first, true bonuses came after Hudson's was made. That's late medieval, so it's late to get someone's first true 'anything'. I did make forts before that, but that's just 1 GG point and no maintenance on an inert unit which is not all that useful. Does Hudson have the power to make up for the UA? I think so, but am not convinced. I mean, compare this to Egypt's burial tomb and consider Egypt actually has a strong early game thanks to chariot (and nilometer in 4uc). Upping the Culture on colonial capitalism to 2, which is mentioned above, might be a step in the right direction. Maybe too big a step because it's easy to spam those things, but I really don't think it'll be too much.
Hudson is a nice power up, and mah bois do deliver quite an economical punch, so things work very well anyway. I like the flavour and uniqueness of wanting to make forts and putting units on them. Making it 2 C for garrisons will be nice for when maintenance of units grows more, which is later eras. I haven't yet invented hockey and the way other continent got crippled by hotfix bug, I don't think I'll get to see the infantry either unless I delay it all on purpose.
Hudson's Culture/Gold from guys on forts has a bug by the way. The pink pop-up on the right will say stuff like I got 9 of each, which is impossible. Gold is twice as much. I guess it would be too much text, and the values will probably all be 18 in the future version if I read the above stuff right, so that'll fix itself. I don't think that'll be imbalanced because of how little the civ has to get them here.
In addition, there's no way to check how much gold/GG points you're getting per turn. I suppose Portugal shares the problem, but in their case icons appear over where the movement was initiated. Is there a possibility of introducing something like that here or a pop-up, but without exhausting the luas or sqls or those other moddy thingies? Granted, Canada might have way more garrisoned forts/citadels than Portugal has trade routes, so it might become too cluttered even if it's those tiny icons with a number, so I don't think anything should be done.
Overall, I'm liking this civ. The way it relies on forts and citadels is pretty fun. Lovely stuff.
/2
on colonial capitalism.
