Ok, so here are my more or less qualified opinions:
1. Tech progression is too slow
- Tech progression is far too slow. That is boring to play, especially in multiplayer where you don't have infinite time.
Suggestion : Allow a game option to allow a +50 % science output for players who don't want to wait too much.
Suggestion 2 (alternative) : Reduce the price of all the district by -50 %, to allow faster specialisation in science/gold/culture so then, in science.
I personally dont feel that way. I play only singleplayer though, so my perspective is probably different than yours. I agree, that districts take some time to build in new cities, but they are also very powerful, so the amount of time feels justified.
Suggestion 1 sounds good to me, but its probably not possible to implement easily.
2. Spells are too strong especially in defense and especially against the non magic civs
- Spells wipe out the ennemies armies. It's far too powerfull in defense especially, were you can use spell without using action point. We just did a game were I have a big dwarven army of 35 units, which has been easily exterminated by a small army of armurites with spellcaster inside. I could do nothing : having expansive metal units, having some units, did nothing.
Suggestion : Thre should be anti magic equipement and promotion, and not only rituals and enchantements, because rituals need magical research, and you don't have to reserach spellreserach to counter magic (if you are dwarves or any non magical civ for exemple).
Here i have to agree. It's probably really difficult to balance though, because there is a big difference in use of magic in multiplayer and singleplayer, since the ai cant use magic properly. But even in singleplayer i feel feel bad for the ai, when im able to kill their big stack of units with some mages. However, im not sure wheter this problem is caused be the lack of counter to magic or be the inability of the ai to use the counters.
In either case, i would like to suggest to reduce the amount of spell targets form sorcery promotion to 50% from 100% and maybe increase the spellresistance from wizard promotion form 10 to 20. The extra spelldamage from warlock promotion could also be decreased from 30 to 20 (or maybe 25?).
It would also be cool, to have a promotion or item, which would allow the target to reflect some magic damage to the caster's stack, but i fear thats not easily possible.
3. Do not be able to equipe non leveled units is stupid and make having some ressources pretty useless in most cases
- The impossibility to access to equipement if your unit has not the level 3 (or 4, I am not sure) make equipement useless in most of the case. So you can have situation were you have tons of metal / wood etc. but you cannot equipe your units. It's stupid and unlogical, anyone can use an armor or an axe, it's professional soldiers.
Suggestion : Remove this limitation and autorise any unit to weak any equipement (I see no exploit possible because equipement is expansive, it's your choice if you expand ressources on weak units).
I dont agree here. It makes units feel more special, when they have to reach level 3 to be able to get equipped. That's at least how i feel.
4. Bad design of slaver guilde advantages in high level of guild specialisation
- Slaver guild is bad designed. It give more and more unhappyness, but the benefit are low. It's better to just stay at level 1, with access to Slavery, but without the cumulative unhapyness.
I partially agree here. I dont think, the guild is badly designed and some civs like Balseraph and maybe Aristarkh will find this guild useful. This guild just misses something powerful at the end of the tree. Maybe a building, that increases the amount of hammers you get for sacrificing your population by some percentage. Especially later in the game sacrifing pop for production is compared to the normal amount of production your city has not too usefull.
5. Civs should allow gold rush of buildings not only units
- The civs which allow gold rush are bad, because you need rushing building, not units. You build units in a military center or at least a production city. Moreover there is no logic because you can use gold to "buy" your unit (is that a mercenary ?... no). But you cannot use gold to rush a building. Using gold for a unit sounds more like a mercenary system, which would feat more to slavers or the assassins guilde, but not Arete or Merchant House (more Merchant House, but it's not very usefull to be able to only rush units).
I dont have a strong opinion here. I agree that rushing units is not too useful, but rushing buildings might be too good. I'm indecisive on that.
6. Why Slaver guilde allow the usage of gold to rush buildings, whereas others guild or civics don't allow it ?
- Slaver have access to Slavery. So, food -> population point -> production of buldings and units. Ok. But slaver guild open access to slave unit which you can buy, and use to rush buildings. So, in others term, it's like if you had access to slavery + gold rush of buildings (as Democraty in Civ IV vanilla give).
- I am not againt the possiblity of Slaver guild to autorise gold rush of building, but I am against only them can do it, and not the others civics. Merchant House should do, as Profits. Maybe not Arete, if you consider that Arete is more a religious doctrine, so civs with Arete can count on Faith to rush buildings.
I personally think the prices for selling and buying slaves should be doubled. This would make it more rewarding to capture slaves and increase the importance of later techs in the slave tree.
7. There are weak civis which need a buff if not no one will never use them
- There are civis which are weak and very rarely used. Before all, Profits. Having -20 % production for a so small bonus, it's so weak. It should be completely changed. Liberty civic is weak too, mainly due to the increase of maintenance. I think giving Liberty should not increase the maintenance cost, but decrease it would be more logical. Increasing the war unhappiness, or the military production would be more logical.
- Benevolance and Harvesting are especially bad designed, pretty weak compared to others civs.
I think profits can be quite useful in the early game. It's usually available early and the extra money can help you build the expensive improvements. Later in the game i dont often use it though.
On this note, i find it weird, that there are only 4 lists of civics you can choose from. It feels always a bit empty to me and moving some lesser used civics to new lists would maybe make them more attractive.
, 50-100 Gold :-/ or a map, some EXP :-(. I dont like that. If possible breakers should be reduced to the level of gold.
