Hi Houman. First of all - killer mod so far. I'm loving it. I was a big fan of the Balancer mod for C3C, and this is starting to feel a bit more like that gameplay than vanilla Civ, which I found a bit restrictive.
Anyway...
1. I'm having some wierd behaviour of cities, where a city with 10 labour and no buildings to multiply, nevertheless shows a total of sometimes 62, sometimes 133, etc. for a turn or so. The detail shows that (in the case of 62) 40 was from overflow from previous turn. Only there was never a moment where I should have had enough to overflow more than 2 or 3 labour points. I do have zoroastrianism as my state religion which is listed (because of my civics) as providign 25% bonus. I'm wondering if there isn't some wierd math happening to boost it at odd times. I can't verify this, but it seems to happen near when I found a new city.
2. I definitely appreciate the city spacing from a city management perspective, but it's interfering more than it helps. Also some places on the Earth map are a bit small for the distance. Lastly, I think two cities actually should be close. They "compete" for resources, so either one will become a hub, or they will both be limited in growth. I think that's "realistic". I actually wouldn't have a problem with Civ3 rules of can't be adjacent, but can be separated by one square. Let the natural economics of food production limit them. Even the vanilla CivIV rules seem a little restrictive in this matter.
3. The earliest play is really really slow.
I know that's somewhat realistic, but I think a little bit of reduction in time to growth - maybe from 22 to 20 would help a bit. But I like the limited strength of combat units throughout this phase. I think that's a good balance. Warriors through axement, with the odd strength 6 unit, but 2-6 seems right for all the early part of the game (say, before 1 AD).
4. I like having Zoroastrianism in there, I think it's a good fit, and having buddhism historically after hinduism works. I think Taoism is somewhat older, insofar as it has deep roots in chinese tribal spirituality. Again, it's been a long time since my course in Taoism, but I am pretty sure that it was quite established as a philosophical base by the time Buddhism hit the scene. So far the balance seems better though. I wouldn't mind some variety in advantage, though, and I like the "True Prophets" mod idea, though how to make it be both balanced for gameplay and historical is in question. Also, if one were going to go that road, it would be tough to not actually represent the founder of Islam, and recent events have certainly given caution to such representation.
Other things:
I have generated a few "custom continents" with 3 or 4 continents, and ended up being the only civ on the continent. Oddly enough, the game was still very playable, as Barbarians cities and raiders were nearly perfect. In fact, I have maintained a larger empire early on than would normally be economically viable by pillaging barbarian villages, burning them to the ground then retreating and letting them re-spawn. There may be a historical precident to it in some early empires with border raids on smaller tribes who scatter then re-form.
I mentioned the save/crash issue in a previous post
I'm definitely finding wierd promotion behaviour. Promotions seem to work as advertized, but I get seemingly random promotions, not just on creation, but I got one when I upgraded a chariot to a horse-archer. (And boy do I love the horse-archer... it's a light tank of the early world.) As for promotion balance, when they aren't randomly accruing, they're working well for me, balance-wise.
One think that I wanted to suggest is that any military unit that rests in a city with barracks gets .05 points (1/20) experience point per turn there. Barracks have drills and maneuvers, and small amounts of experience should trickle, so that even green troups produced without barracks could benefit by billeting there. I'm not sure if such points could be awarded fractionally, but if so, that would be one way to do it. Green troups would gain more from this than veteran troups, obviously, since a couple of points means promotion at early levels, but to get really valuable experience you need to be in the field. I think that's pretty realistic.
I would reduce the mobility of horse-archer to 3 though, as cataphract is only 2 and wiht roads, horse-archers can get across my whole empire in two turns or less. That seems odd in relation to the other mounted units. I think they should be faster, but not blindingly so.
In generated maps I'm finding that more than half the time deserts with rivers do not generate flood plains. I don't know if that's deliberate or not.
I had map loading trouble - big trouble. I'm going to try the newest version and see if it still occurs.
That's it for now. Cheers, and thanks Houman. Khoda-Hafez and happy almost No-Ruz
regards,
Israfil
For shame indeed 
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(exactly the last one, v0.70) 
