Thanks for your critique on the Government and Legal civics. I'll go through some of the points individually but I thought I should point out why so many bonuses seem similar across some civics. Basically it comes down to, once again, the ability of the AI to understand any changes. With a few exceptions (like Clan Warfare's pillage bonus) I've stuck to the range of options provided by default in the
CIV4CivicInfos.xml file.
Some of your ideas are excellent but at the moment I don't know if I can find a way to implement them effectively. The AI not understanding civics would be disastrous for balance so I'm being extra cautious. I'd like to make some more adventurous changes in time but for the moment I'll focus on the most vital issues, like Agrarianism and Industrialism.
I think that the +2 happiness for castles is unnecessary.
(I hardly ever build castles. Adding an extra incentive to do so is a good idea.)
I think making Monarchy exactly like Bureaucracy in Civilization IV would be fine; you could add + 2 happiness for the palace, but I would not.
I think the +2 for castle fits better with Aristocracy; each noble is happy to have his own castle protecting himself and his chief city.
You're right, +2 happiness for castle fits much better with Aristocracy. Will match the tech tree layout much better too. I'll scrap the specialist bonus from Aristocracy and replace it with this.
Theocracy:
I think the History Rewritten version of this civic is too weak.
On balance it should be made stronger.
Agreed. Originally I had it with unlimited priest specialists but I was unsure how strong/weak that would be. What do you think? The problem here is that I used all the other available religion specific bonuses in the Religion category itself.
I do not quite understand the logic behind the bonuses in the capital.
My thinking here was that the capital effectively becomes a holy city as the religion's deity or prime representative is situated there. I'll probably double both the wealth and culture bonuses to 100% if I don't find a better bonus to replace it.
I would try to substitute other bonuses that in total are stronger.
Maybe something involving bonuses to buildings of the state religion or to priest in cities with the state religion would be better.
Your suggestions are good but beyond what I can do at the moment.
Confederation:
With the new techs, hopefully there will be one that makes more sense than Writing to go with this civic.
This one is actually proving quite a pain to position in the old and new tech tree ><
The 15% trade bonus does not seem to have much effect until later in the game.
Would a flat +1 commerce per trade route (added to the final value) be better?
It would, but unfortunately BTS only provides the stupid percentage system for modifying trade route yield. The only other option is an extra trade route per city but that's quite powerful and I've already used it for Free Market.
While I have used Confederation early in the game, where the maintenance reduction can be important, I prefer Monarchy once it is available. In the late game, the trade route bonus is more powerful, while the culture penalty is less important, so Confederation should be relatively stronger in the late game than in the middle game.
I think on balance Confederation is too weak. I would lower the upkeep to low and/or perhaps add a small bonus of some sort that would help during the middle game. Perhaps a small bonus (10%) towards the construction of National Wonders not built in the capitol.
Confederation is actually very powerful on archipelagos and in the age of sail if you have colony-style cities spread across the globe. It also synergizes very well with certain other civics, traits and buildings. I'm happy for it to be a situational civic, but I might consider lowering the upkeep to medium.
Once they become available, I am almost always in either Authoritarianism or Warrior Code. Maybe this is just my playing style, or maybe it indicates that these are very powerful civics.
Is it possible to have them instead give +1 happiness for every two military units stationed in a city?
Hmm, that might be possible, I'll do some testing. I agree that 1 happiness per 2 military units would be ideal. I'll also be raising the upkeep to high I think.
While the happiness bonus is good, I find no desire to go to Equal Rights until most of the other civilizations have done so.
Emancipation has a similar feature.
While I understand the idea behind the unhappiness penalty, having two of the series of civics push the player to adopt the last one in the series, may be a bit much. As the game progresses past a certain stage, there is less freedom of choice for the player, not a good feature.
Two things to note about Emancipation and Equal Rights: firstly, I've halved the happiness penalty from what it was in standard BTS (i.e. in HR not having both is only as bad as not having Emancipation in standard BTS). You can probably get away with avoiding one of them but less so both. Secondly, in the new tech tree they won't be available until quite a bit later, maybe as late as the Modern era.
I understand what you're saying about less freedom of choice but I feel this is a very realistic and important aspect of diplomacy and empire management in the late game and I don't wish to remove it. The changes I've mentioned above should make them a little less restrictive though hopefully.
