Ahriman
Tyrant
Well, we want the spice to be the primary source of commerce, but clearly there is some balancing required.
Spice as *a* major source of commerce is a cool mechanic (makes the mod different, adds flavor), but the problem is how it all gets concentrated into a single city, and so building a ton of % bonuses in that city skyrockets your economy insanely.
Maybe try to find some way of spreading the wealth through multiple cities? Cut down the bonus per spice resource, but make the corporation spreadable (or automatically spread) through all your cities?
@david
Make soil enrichers buildable only on bonus resource, so the AI doesn't build them uselessly to spread fresh water.
Make the drip farm require fresh water to be build (or bonus resource), like farms in vanilla.
Put mines back to +1 hammers, deep mines to +2 hammers, so mines built on hills give a hammer boost, OR make them buildable only on bonus resources, to make sure that the AI builds windtraps on hills and so gets fresh water for their farms.
Strongly recommend: make the spice guild require the palace, to make sure that the AI builds it in its capital.
Consider: removing fresh water spread from drip farms.
But also: what matters is not AI commerce relative to vanilla, what matters is AI commerce relative to human player commerce.
If the human player can easily exploit the system to gain an advantage over the AI, then thats what makes the mod too easy and breaks the system.
If the human and AI economy growth are similar, but lower than vanilla, you could easily fix this by lowering or removing inflation.
I hate inflation in civ; its just a drain on your resources, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. I was finding by turn ~200-250 that inflation was getting near 100%. Ie all unit and civic and city upkeep costs were doubled. Thats a huge economy drag.
In your simulations, try to note what turn number the AI builds its spice guild - it should be recorded in the noteworthy events log (cities built, wonders built, corporations and religions founded, etc), right?