So guys, in order to summarize things up as
@ElliotS suggested I will now list what I consider a good starting point changes, feel free to discuss it, so we can work something out:
Authority should be a tree to war, and I don't intend to make war more of a grind so:
Free settler from authority to progress and rework, the simplest and one of the most impactful change we can make. I would like imperium policy to grant science and culture only on city's capture. It would also lead to an indirectly increased difficulty. Because I fear that free settler much more in the hands of Russia and Carthage than Napoleon. Authority AIs should be buffed by increase in their early aggressiveness. Alternative would be eliminating this free settler altogether and giving progress a bonus to production of them.
Free culture and science only on city's capture, it goes hand in hand with authority spirit, weakens authority but not where it's supposed to shine, e.g. at war.
Plus one production dropped from authority's opener, i completes the stripping authority of early development bonuses which deserve to be in progress. You still will have plus five production total but later so it will be not as OP as now.
All of that don't make authority worse at war, or war more of a grind, which I would also like to avoid, but they take away development advantages which make authority so good when they are on top of war bonuses. Gold and production from borders stays and still will be abundant.
Making authority and war more AI friendly, we may implement:
Eliminating heal on kill, but in order to not make war more a grind replacing it with static attack bonus which both player and AI will be able to utilize.
Reducing units experience or making them much more expensive to upgrade, proposed by
@Rhys DeAnno and
@Recursive in this thread. Especially ranged units could take a hit in halving experience, as they are notorious to being more player friendly.
In a move to make authority more manageable and even more war oriented I suggest this:
One happiness and two culture from barracks instead from a garrison, authority should shine at war. Now it can't make use of that policy, I know I can't when I am conquering because of the lack of units due to cap. They can't be in the city, all my units must be at the field conquering. This is a simple solution to make war a less of a grind.
Stuff to make peace a bit better:
Making trade routes more valuable when at peace, maybe bonus for both tradition and progress and not only when you are behind. Culture for interacting with other cultures through trade? Production from learning new business models and developing new tools? Commerce should be naturally buffed in peace-seeking nations, it's logical. Trade units price should stay as it is in my view. Credit for the idea goes to
@chicorbeef
Introducing more penalties for atrocities, maybe you will think twice before exterminating or starving population to raze the city,or conquering the whole continent, if
nobody bar your strongest ally or a vassal wouldn't like to have anything with you including buying or selling any luxuries
at all for a long time.
My others proposals, harder to implement, for future debate:
Loyalty and rebellions when you are seen a week leader, for example you finished authority, so the foundation of your state lies at authority and strength you exert. If you are loosing any war or cities let a third of your units rebel with a first strike and fight you and pillage tiles in you empire. Or if you are not at war for a long time, without any conquest, let happiness drop by one in all your cities until you invade someone and conquer a valuable city or kill enough units.
Courthouses for every city and rework of how occupation works, I never liked an idea for a courthouse to be occupied city only building. Maybe it should be normal building with yield improvement for culture, science, golden age points, or flat one happiness and culture or science reward akin to circus? And maybe then authority should not be able to use it in any city, as it represents independent justice, granting of freedoms, and protection from the state (not exactly, especially in classical era, but you get the idea, tyrannies are not just to the citizen). Then we could have yield penalties for conquered cities. From the lack of better idea, I propose triple times the duration of resistance for halved yields and usual happiness hit which now is taken care of by courthouse, then gain three times the resistance turns with -25% for all yields without happiness hit.
However I don't think that a proposal of tradition not taking a food hit is a good one. Too much of snowballing potential in the hands of AI.
@Recursive my reply to you was also tongue-in-cheek so no hard feelings.