1) I don't follow the deer and bananas other than they're the other food bonus tiles. Thematically that's strange. It is more significant change since it is possible to go an entire game without seeing sugar or spices at all but if you do, you may have some cities with a large bonus. I could see leaving this as is and removing deer from a stables bonus as it currently has for some reason. It's fine just feels odd.
2) I think this one went back and forth several times in CEP. Historically the "mill" is a food building. I think the change was used to provide a balance in case there are few hills around to mine. Thal didn't like random starts much. Upkeep and cost adjustment down should be fine. I'm ambivalent about whether it should be production or food based.
3) I actually really like and prefer the name changes for those reasons. I dislike some of the boring or unflavorful/historic names ("Great War Infantry") and if we have good tooltips in place, the user can quickly determine "yes that's a floating garden", because it does the same things. The confusion suffered is trivial.
I don't know that these were that common of a complaint in CEP excepting the weird changes to the production line names. Which I agree were definitely a problem because the same names were preserved and moved around. The other one I hated was the swap for the frigate and galleon (privateer), which I always had to undo and did not provide any files that did it.
.
4) see cost changes, hospitals were about -33% discounted. I think the extra food and that makes them sufficiently interesting and the cost upkeep is minor to balance against it slightly as an overtime investment. But. I could also see it interacting with the growth effects for happiness as well or instead. Med Lab too.
5) I'd leave the lakes on aqueducts, just to give it something flavorful (assuming you see more than a couple lakes on the map). Or at least leave a lake effect in the game somewhere. I'd definitely bump their upkeep though.
The reason the truffles are weak is camps and the terrain are probably weak. I'd probably move these bonuses to the garden if anywhere.
6) I am not sure why this change was in the game. I didn't remove it because it was such a minor adjustment and I also don't recall why it was justified or when it appeared.
7) Not sure it really helps much but it's something. Maybe move aqueduct bonuses here instead. Another flavor option could be to add +1 food or culture to natural wonders.
Or if you were looking for a tourism option earlier, this would be one.
11) I am not a fan of keeping the name "smith" from CEP either. Though if pressed, I'd probably still move the names around a bit and call the early one the forge, the buildings one the workshop, and remove the "windmill" (replace it with a wind plant later on). The logic of windmills not working on hills just bothers me.
9-10) I'd rather just consolidate the forge out. It really doesn't make it any better to add more resources to it for what it does. If you are building units, you are building a barracks line building anyway in that city. It makes sense to move that effect there to the higher end units rather than have this other building and give the bonus fairly early to unit production (I'd rather it be delayed). The stable is more precise and specific in what it does that widening its effects works. The forge, I'm not so sure.
If it doesn't make sense to add the resources to the barracks, or say anything besides iron early on, I'd attach those effects to the factory to give it a small boost that way.
12-13) Agreed. Stable is also about -40% cheaper.
14) If we aren't using the gold on coast tiles for the seaport (which I'm leaning toward that we should not), I think it needs to keep production/gold on sea resources and maybe do something on atolls in addition to a boost to naval production and a small amount of production on the building itself. That would give it some flavorful uses.
The lack of a harbor requirement is probably optional. I'd be fine either way there and it seems ridiculous to have a "port" without a "harbor".
15) Agreed. Hydro is about -35% cheaper.
17) I build them but they all require resources (except the solar) and they come pretty late in the game. I'd rather they have a little umph in exchange for that. We can however find other ways to achieve that, particularly with the factory.
18) I generally hated the castle idea but there were few places to move it. There was one on the walls too before, which was completely ridiculous (especially with liberty giving free walls in CEP). I think it works fine with 2x on the factory, the default workshop, the windmill, and the iron works, and possibly the forge, if it is kept.
20) Agreed generally. I don't think the extra bonuses on ivory/stable are needed at all here. I'd be fine with seeing the building cost a bit more and leave it as is.
21) mint gets a 25% discount
24) Agreed. It's kind of meh as a change and adds a bit too much gold potentially (consider islands). I'd prefer to remove it and do something else. Gold and production on resources
and atolls would be fine.
25) Luxury tiles were rebalanced as well that they all provide +1 by default and gold/silver others like that only add more with some investment in caravansary/mints. All this does is give the building a bit of flavor and put back roughly the same amount of gold that was already there but moves it around a bit from sources.
I'm not a fan of putting any tourism on it. It's a really early building. The garden makes more sense to me as a place of interest if there's a need for that.
26) Slot change helps the caravansary mostly.
27) Observatory will probably end up being some % of science in the city and science on mountains. Which is fine with me either way.
28) The point isn't to make you think twice about building them, it's to make them cost something roughly in line with the value they should provide by that stage of the game and provide a modest gold sink (I think there's about 15-16 upkeep increases on buildings potentially per city here, which is a lot). An alternative could be to raise the price of production costs, but upkeep is simpler, it provides the benefit sooner but at a higher ongoing cost which is more "realistic" when considering investment in sciences by countries (other than the US, it often takes up a substantial portion of a national budget on an ongoing basis).
29-30) University is a lot more valuable than most other buildings of its era so some minor adjustment down is warranted (move a spec slot, slight reductions in % yield, etc).
I think the main reason to split up the jungle bonus is to stretch out the period that jungles are a pain to develop and use (except for Brazil and maybe Iroquois or Indonesia).
31-32) Unless its a policy effect, I'd prefer not to add happiness to culture buildings. I agree those changes are a little boring but they are something. They can act as a placeholder until something more substantial comes about and is agreeable.
33) If the amphi/opera house are made reasonably useful then I think I'd be fine leaving the tiers as is. But I am not concerned if we want to remove it either.
34) slight upkeep bump is probably warranted even at 33%, for the reason you described. Again, this is adjusted with about a -20-25% discount to the upfront cost.
35) I think there's an interaction with the temple with the happiness mechanic. We could add something to it via the piety tree perhaps. The temple gets lots of bonuses there and that should be maintained.
36) The military base in particular seems like a distinction if it keeps the bomb shelter effects to avoid tiering these. I don't think the aircraft modifier works right now. We'd have to do something different for that.
I would not propose adjusting the building strengths. The
city would be the part I would weaken via population, base strength, and tech adjustments. The investment in defence should count for something. Hit points and strength. If we have to come back to the strengths, fine, but I found that cities were weak enough to do damage to late in the game and the main value is really the hit point bonus anyway. Also I'd rather not mess much with the defence/happiness balance as yet.
37) Capital is significantly stronger mostly because of population in default as it is usually your biggest city. CEP changed the defense calculations somewhat that population isn't as big a factor (but still significant) so the capital won't be automatically super strong but just somewhat stronger.
The main reason for this change isn't a need for your own defence, but the AI capital and CS in particular would be stronger and harder to capture in a rush. I like it for those reasons. You can still cripple a rival with a strong rush to take out their secondary cities, resources/luxuries, but it takes a dedicated assault to capture a capital or take out a CS. The change is minor except early on so that technology and active defence (army) rapidly become more important. A hill city actually gets a stronger strength bonus than the capital.
Another basis is that it makes barbarians a threat because of pillaging and worker/settler/trade route protection but not a serious threat to your empire's survival despite other barbarian changes.
38) I'd much rather have higher upfront costs as well (to represent the cost of cultural/legal assimilation) than the permanent cost. Which is silly. So anything we can do to move that needle that way, good. The other justification for it is it encourages only annexing larger productive cities that could quickly get a courthouse and puppeting or razing other conquered towns.
39) Agreed. "Gardens" were essentially large terraforming projects engaged in by rich people for their estates as it is. The freshwater aspect doesn't make sense if you are busy making artificial lakes. There's also no need to make them that strong on GPP if they may be otherwise useful for other reasons.
40) There is a needed change in relation to the happiness system being changed here. I would not propose porting over the CEP happiness buildings changes.
Having said that I would propose making sure the later versions still are more useful or "feel" potent enough to get them for the cost and the later stage of the game. That should be relatively easy to do, either by adjusting the cost or providing a strong benefit for taller cities.
