Culture seems really super-slow. I've started next to Wu and Harun. While Wu finished her tree early, she is drowning in -50/-70 Gold per turn. She's been at it for about 100 turns now. I have pics if needed. The year is around 1300AD, Wu has 12 techs and is doing awfully because of the Science malus, Harun has 5 policies, just got wrecked by me and even he had temporal -20GPT despite his super-Gold UB, and Ahmad on another landmass has -20 GPT and also 5 policies. Maybe maintenance scaling doesn't take game length into account or something? That could be why GPTs get so uncontrollable so fast with you not experiencing it, I bet the test games are performed on normal speed. Anyway, it's terrible if Ahmad/Harun, who get Culture in the UA, can get only 5 policies this late in the game.
I'd have barely finished Authority as a God-King (so decent +Culture, best out of all pantheons) + Synagogue + Cathedral Spain in medieval were it not for Oracle which meant getting there in year 1100-1200 (forgot) ensured I came with finished Authority and a Piety opener. With Amber monopoly, too (so decent +Culture +Science), and despite getting G-K which provides pretty much the best culture out of all pantheons. Because of the fact everything depends on culture (happiness policies, produiction policies, gold policies, etc), everything became more sluggish as a result. My Science progress with +2S per mine and God-King yields became slower than what I usually get without any Science monopolies, that's terrible. Everything is slower because the culture is worse, and culture affected everything. I might have delayed Libraries a bit as I wanted Forges and Swordsmen first, but I've fought and killed way more than I typically do as Authority which should've evened that out. I even got three early wonders (Statue, Artemis, Petra) and have Oracle, am soon-to-get Alhambra and maybe even Parthenon. I wonder how many policies will I get if I nick them both. So far my take on the culture is negative, and the gold problems are not fixed. In fact, the latter seems worse - might be the AI not having access to the good policies fast made them experience more problems. I will try playing more, maybe those three just did something badly and I will find someone tough on the other continent.
Culture cost increase is definitely way more than the 15%, even at the start on epic instead of costing 35, the first policy was 45 (so around 20% more), and if you add the added penalty for every city, that's an easy +40% culture cost increase if you want to go warmongering - which I'm doing right now. No way to conquer 4/8 players on Standard map without getting 20-30 cities (sometimes 40).
