Monuments have not been changed in K-Mod. Monuments and Totem Poles are still obsolete with Astronomy, but like all buildings, they continue producing culture after they have become obsolete.
K-Mod changed Stonehenge so that it is not obsolete with Astronomy, so that the monuments from Stonehenge don't disappear leaving the civ worse off compared to civs without Stonehenge. Maybe that's what you were thinking of.
As for the hippodrome, that's something that I've been considering changing for a long time. I don't really think the Byzantines need the buff as such, but the hippodrome is the only unique building which can often end up being
worse than the standard building. On the other hand though, there are a few unique
units which have disadvantages relative to the units they replace. For example, Dog Soldiers are generally worse if you already have copper; and Samurais are worse if you have copper but not iron...
In terms of buildings, I suppose Ziggurats could be worse for civs who don't want to research priesthood, but that only takes a low-cost tech to overcome.
Anyway... I'm inclined to agree that the hippodrome should probably allow artists. I just haven't changed it because I don't think it's very important, and I generally prefer to leave things unchanged unless the benefits are clear.
I hope there are plans for vanilla version of K-Mod should all such balancing changes be implemented. That was one of the major appeal the mod held for me so the option would be appreciated.
I'm not really sure what you mean by a 'vanilla version'. I suppose you're talking about having a version that doesn't have any balance changes - but the thing is, even the very first version of K-Mod had some balance changes; and some of K-Mod's best features are balance changes (eg. the redesign of global warming, culture spread, and religion spread).
I don't intend to try to split the balance changes from the other stuff - but I think it's safe to say that the balance changes in K-Mod have relatively little affect on how the game is played. The general goal of each balance change is to elevate parts of the game which would otherwise be ignored due to lack of viability.
eg. The culture spread changes and global warming unhappiness were in part designed to increase the viability of artists and the culture slider in culture conflicts.
The changes to the Drill promotion line were intended to make those promotions a viable and unique alternative to the Combat line.
The changes to Serfdom were designed to make Serfdom viable in the mid-game but still weak in the end-game.
And so on.
cost, and that discount is enough to drop infantry below the threshold for 1 pop drafting. The K-Mod AI has some understanding of the significance of this, whereas the original BtS AI completely ignored it.)
