I'm back after a nice long period of college applications, homework, and tests! Either way, point is I fired up this wonderful mod once again, and took a fresh look at the minor issues. After taking this small break, I came up with a few nice small tweaks that could be made!
First of all, the Power civic. This is not the philosophy of Power, so I'm assuming it means something more along the lines of you value military strength highly. Currently, it does very little to help you militarily, and is one of the most harmful civics in the game. I propose that the no foreign trade routes penalty be removed, and replaced with a unit producion modifier, +25% maybe? In addition to that, perhaps the General Combat point accumulation bonus could be increased further to about +100% when in your borders.
Secondly, Emperor. Perhaps the bonus production could be added to ALL levels of cottage? Or even Hamlet and up? The way it stands, Emperor is a rather poor civic, when it really should be a really powerful one. Especially since there's an entire wonder dedicated simply to allow the Rebellion player to become Emperor.
Which brings me to my third point. Since Beliefs are political beliefs, it makes sense that they should be able to be changed relatively fast. The current commandery and advisor mansion converting mechanic is great, but I feel it still takes years to spread the belief you want to change to through your empire. Perhaps either the natural spread rate of beliefs should be increased, or Advocates made cheaper? Perhaps even make certain Advocates cheaper hammer-wise, making that specific belief easier to spread? (Here Rebellion comes to mind. I'd also see Division as a hard spread belief, since it should really be confined to your homeland)
My fourth point! There a few small tweaks that could be added to make each Belief's effects more in line with its goal, without being game-changing. For instance, Division is one of the more isolationist beliefs, next to Hermit. These Beliefs should have a +X% War Weariness modifier tacked on to each of thier buildings, perhaps around +10% each. Since War Weariness only applies when fighting outside borders, this works well to simulate opposition to expansionism (which would be Unification). Rebellion and Revival should get an opposite effect, with lessened War Weariness.
And my fifth point. Some leaders should have more of a belief present in their cities. For instance, I wouldn't mind seeing more Rebellion present in the Unification cities. Also, more Power spread about a bit wouldn't be bad either. That way, some leaders could have an easier shift in Belief (such as Cao Pi from Unification to Rebellion, and Ma Chao could also switch to Power).
Most of my points revolve around making the political scene a bit more dynamic. Right now, the Cao Clan and the Yuan family will always be Unification, and Yuan Shu is really the only leader who switches Beliefs.
And a final idea, which is more major than a few XML changes, is to have each Leader have a Hero unit. I really love the successions that occur, and the random leaders really make the game interesting. Especially when they get fun trait combos!
EDIT: And sorry about the wall of text... I just got carried off!
jdog's ChangePlayer which comes with Better AI can do that with ease. You can do it during the game too, using ctrl-shift-P if I remember right.
, which might be appropriate for Liu Shan.
