I'm 99.99% sure this is a bug. First, it makes neither logical nor gameplay sense that only these two specific unique improvements fail to increase population. Second, there’s no mention of this behavior in their descriptions—why would such an important exception go completely unreported? Finally, from a balance perspective, this issue leaves them clearly broken and uncompetitive.
I'm also fairly certain that, like many of the other obvious mistakes in the code, this stems from someone involved in development who wasn’t familiar with the game's mechanics. They likely received the information that "walls have a population of 0"—which makes sense when referring to the standard "walls" building—but then mistakenly applied the same rule to the Han and Ming unique wall improvements. These are not buildings but tile improvements, so applying that logic to them makes no gameplay sense whatsoever (nor historical sense). Why would a tile improvement reduce a city's population growth?
Firaxis likely won’t respond to this, so we as a community need to rely on common sense. And common sense in my opinion says that the most reasonable fix is to correct these two improvements to behave consistently with literally all others.
Also, I report below the video as asked (sorry for the music, my girlfriend had it in the background
)
In the video, you can clearly see that the commander initially has no promotions available. After selecting the attribute, he gains access to one new promotion. Due to an UI bug in the base game, it may appear that two promotions can be selected. However, if you close and reopen the promotion tree (as in the video), you'll notice that only the first selected promotion is actually retained—this confirms it’s just a visual glitch.
When purchasing a new commander (as in the video), it also appears to start with one promotion. Again, the UI may misleadingly show two selectable promotions, but as shown in the video, reopening the promotion screen reveals that only the first choice persists.
The video doesn’t show an Age transition, but I’ve tested this in the past: commanders do not receive a promotion automatically when transitioning into a new Age. In the rare case where a commander is purchased on the exact turn an Age begins, it will not gain a promotion until the following turn. This shouldn't cause gameplay issues—commanders can't be built with production on turn 1, and if purchased, they start with 0 movement anyway. So delaying the promotion by one turn has minimal impact.
If this didn't work in the mod could it be because of something in the SQL code? As I said in the past weeks unluckily I've no idea how mods are built, so maybe it's something there (like reported above, I see no reference in your code about inserting the "REQUIREMENT_GAME_TURN_IS_LESS_THAN_X" in the attribute 09_A, could this be the problem?)
edit: ok seems I can't attach the video....I'll send it with private message to
@Smayo
It's a sort of improvement anyway because in all the other situations it should work, but I'm afraid we can't "fix" it more than this...eventually the solution is to wait the official fix (that I'm really afraid it will never arrive...
