I have been rather distracted by illness, earthquakes, and interface tweaking, but focussing back on traits now.
-10% cost towards any techs already owned by friendly civs
That's an interesting idea, suits Diplomatic quite well. Should be doable in some fashion.
+1 commerce on tiles with 3 commerce
I prefer not to use that mechanic, for any yield. Scaling can get out of control.
+2 experience in every city (or +1)
This is already used by numerous civics and buildings so I'd prefer to avoid it.
100% faster production of units already obsolete for any other civ
Interesting but I'm not sure that would have a lot of benefit. Would also require a python callback with numerous checks (and thus a performance hit) so it's probably not worth it.
I've reduced the Traditional Palace bonus, and split the cheaper Settlers and Workers to other traits
Reasonable.
I kept Diplomatic at +2 relations, mostly because +1 feels like background noise and won't help the AI much at all.
Agreed, it needs to stay at +2 for the AI's sake.
Another idea to shake up diplomacy is to add further bonuses to various trait pairings: Aggressive/Diplomatic, Creative/Disciplined, Martial/Urbane, Progressive/Traditional, Organized/Revolutionary. Leaders with the same trait would have +2 relations; leaders with the opposite trait would have -2 relations.
Intriguing idea, though some pairings would feel a bit forced. Keep it in mind for the future.
On the question of bonus specialist slots or free Great People per era, I side firmly with specialists. (And Creative must have Artists; easy border pops is a defining feature of the trait.)
I was doing it mostly to increase variety and, as mentioned earlier, ideally each free Great Person would come from a different source. Feedback taken on board though. Basically we're looking at Artists, Merchants, and Scientists working well as specialist slots, Priests possibly being too weak (depending where that free specialist ends up), Engineers and Spies being too strong.
I'm still very tempted to leave Progressive with a free Great Scientist per era. It adds variety, makes thematic sense, and I don't think it's overpowered compared to a scientist slot. Build research at 100% is an alternative but I've already used the wealth and culture equivalents and would prefer to avoid it for variety's sake.
I've no problem reverting Creative back to an Artist slot, general consensus seemed to be that the trait was too strong with the Great Artist anyway. Enterprising can keep its Merchant slot and we'll have to wait and see about Spiritual. So that's specialist slots used either twice or thrice across all traits. That's reasonable.
I'd still like Industrious to associate with engineers and Political to associate with spies, specialist or great, in some way though.
I'm not sure that a free specialist for the Palace would be much better, either. That would start GPP counters a bit too early, and weaken certain starting techs and the Spiritual trait.
It would start GPP accumulation earlier, but only in the capital. You'd need to grow your other cities a bit before filling that specialist slot is feasible. Cemeteries are pretty powerful buildings for the era, and make Ceremonial Burial the most powerful starting tech. I don't think it hurts to have either of these weakened so long as we adjust the affected traits accordingly, Spiritual in particular.
espionage per trade route and spy slots - As others have mentioned, it does imbalance the early game. The only espionage bonus that fits is a discount on missions, as it leaves espionage points alone. -20% is equivalent to the Open Borders discount. (By comparison, you can get a 50% discount by waiting in the target city for 5 turns.)
Espionage is surprisingly and frustratingly unmoddable compared to other systems in BTS. Pretty much nothing we can do that doesn't involve EP. I really want Political to have an espionage focus though. Not essential for Diplomatic where it's only meant to be a relatively minor bonus. Need to think of interesting espionage bonuses that won't kick in too early.
defense against espionage - A boring bonus, since you'll never see it working; it's completely in the background
Boring yes, but still useful. Best used as a minor bonus though.
Beyond that, I've added some more free promotions, since units so rarely earn more than a couple.
City Raider I promotion for siege units
Drill I promotion for Melee, Archery, Gunpowder units
Flanking I promotion for Melee, Mounted, Gunpowder units
Something that is worth considering here perhaps is that many of the new and redesigned UUs have free promotions. I specifically avoided giving Combat I, Medic I, Commando and Sentry to UUs so that they wouldn't clash with traits.
This comes down to personal taste, but I've always found it's more interesting to go with more flexible leader traits, particularly since you can then combine them for more specialization.
I think the ideal is somewhere in the middle; a good balance of focus and flexibility.
I hardly ever settle Great People, for instance.
It's not a common use of Great People, no. I attached it to Philosophical because they are mostly likely to make use of it and the trait didn't need a second bonus that was too strong. Because Great People have other uses that are usually more valuable or strategic, I'm not sure it would see much use if attached to another trait, unless it was strengthened considerably.
+1 culture from specialists means you can build Cemeteries early and skip Monuments, as you get +1 culture either way.
My only reason for scrapping this bonus (and the espionage equivalent) was that they are duplicates of civic bonuses.
I'm only really attached to Revolutionary, as it seems much more interesting than bland "Political."
I considered 'Revolutionary' as trait but ultimately rejected is as it didn't really match with all that many of HR's leaders nor leaders that I intend to add. When choosing the new traits I looked at which existing ones I was always wishing I had more slots available for. Diplomatic was one of those and thus I chose Political as an alternative. My concept is that Diplomatic is about external negotiations and unifications (e.g. Hiawatha, Mongkut, Bismarck) while Political is more about internal machinations and intrigue (e.g. Joao, Wu, Herod).
I'm also hoping you can code +1 production for unhappy citizens.
I cannot sorry.
Hmm. You could restrict it to Ocean tiles in that case. And maybe add +1 commerce on Reefs. Or +1 commerce to Oases. Those can't be improved either.
I can't alter tile or improvement yields for traits, without checking every tile for change of ownership every turn. Which obviously isn't at all practical. I can only do river and sea tiles via fake buildings (Levee and Dike effects). The latter doesn't distinguish between Coast and Ocean either, which is frustrating.
I'd like to say that I have a 34 xp archer in one my cities right now because of barbs and the +1 experience per combat victory effect. That's well above the limit from barb combat, simply because of the charismatic trait
Easy to disable the extra experience from Barbarian combat, should we desire.
Anyway, work on a 2nd draft is underway, lots of new ideas and considerations to juggle. Keep your suggestions and criticism coming.
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in every city, it's just impossible to balance everything for every possible situation. Most players start in ancient era either way (I guess) and the ones who don't should be aware of the fact that some things are much more powerful and other things are useless in later starts. That's just natural. I would rather focus on balancing more common things such as different kinds of maps (specially the amount of water on a map), but not on options as later starting eras which are not even considered by many people (I guess). Of course, if there is a possibility to adjust trait effects on later start eras (I like the idea of giving a free great person at the beginning to Creative/Industrious etc. leaders if you start later, for example), that's nice, but I would not bother if there is no option to do, specially regarding Defensive's happy bonus (1
is much less worth later than in the beginning). And actually... I don't know a single building which goes obsolete in HR, not even walls.
(if that has not been changed) and since you only start with a few settlers (-> not much pop), that's about 7.500
