1.) When running slavery, are there any factors which affect the likelihood of a defeated unit being captured as a slave? Is it a flat percentage, and are (on standard maps) they always worth 30 hammers when sacrificed for construction? Are they on a "timer" for dying when building improvements, or is it also a random chance once the improvement is completed? I didn't even realize that this was a part of the new slavery mechanic, but I love the dynamic it adds, and feels so much more realistic than vanilla BtS, especially the fact that they are exempt from hurrying unit production, which is both implausible and somewhat strategically flat as a more or less "optimal" exploit in the base game, and also how this system functions as a point of balance against serfdom being a strict progression.
2.) Possible bug with the generic spy capture notification revealing its origin per ethnic identity. For instance, in a recent game, while I had reason to suspect Ethiopia was the one sending spies at me, they were the only African civ in the game, so the black spy icon effectively revealed the identity of the spy even while in game terms it was supposed to be hidden. While the culture-specific interface adds a lot of flavor and I like it a lot, this does affect gameplay somewhat. I have no idea if it would be a programming difficulty or not to replace these tags for "unknown" spies with simply a question mark or the generic silhouetted man in a hat used as the espionage symbol elsewhere, but it is a suggestion. However, I could also see this being intentional, as that would be an obvious aspect of their identity in real life.
3.) Do AI military calculations consider naval superiority specifically, and their likelihood of being able to defeat your navy to land an invasion successfully, or is it a simply matter of relative power scores? In a recent game where I got lucky with geography and had an OCN-sized island to myself, I had abysmal relations with many warmongers, yet they seldom attacked me. I knew that until the modern era, as long as my navy was strong they couldn't touch me on land, and so basically had classical era garrisons and focused most of my military research and production on maintaining naval superiority until well into the renaissance. This seems to have worked as intended as a deterrent, but I'm curious if the AI is smart enough to realize that it cannot invade unless it can defeat me at sea. To my excitement (and recent experience with near-always war when this scenario is not the case), I'm thinking so, because my power rating was usually in the 70-80% range, at which they consistently attack me otherwise.
4.) Are there any significant, fundamental changes to the way that "power" is calculated vis a vis BtS? Obviously the number of "soldiers" represented by units, techs, and population would all have to be tweaked to account for massive scaling differences inherent to the size of the mod and the way that food has been reworked to be more parabolic throughout the game, but seeing as this number is crucial to avoiding war, it would be good to know whether or not the major inputs have been altered in general, especially since DPs have been removed, and an unwanted war can be a huge drain of resources. Likewise, is the "threat" meter calculated unaltered from BUG? I read a recent thread which indicated that in BUG mod, a fist will be displayed for nations who "have enough on their hands" and are not currently at war, but in my current game, there is no graphical indication of this for civs to whom that status is in fact applicable.
5.) Possible "polishing" observation: I've noticed most of the tanks and aircraft have been individually modeled and labeled for their respective countries, but the "dreadnoughts" are all generically titled this way, despite having their own country-specific models representing their own historical equivalent class of ship. Was this an oversight, or on purpose, since dreadnought is the accepted term for these "proto-battleships" at the same time that HMS Dreadnought was also her own specific ship? If every country-specific dreadnought was titled with its own national name, then what would the generic unit be called? Perhaps "early battleship" the same way that "superheavy tank" is also represented in each case by country-specific models? So, I can see if that was deliberate and this was the reason for it, but just pointing it out in case it was an oversight or something you would like to tweak.
6.) I started a thread about nukes which WH already replied to, but it wasn't entirely clear whether or not they were made more lethal. It was said that there was a change made but it was so long ago that it wasn't entirely clear, but in BtS, an ICBM does not actually annihilate units in one hit, but that totally happened in the mod! The massive population reduction from nuclear strikes is also not something I see in the base game. I had almost concluded that in Beyond the Sword, nukes are a waste of time because they don't kill units outright in one hit, and there is such a small window of time between you having nukes and the opponent not having SDI that, combined with their expense and the huge penalties for using them, you might as well put the hammers into conventional forces. Also, in the base game, global warming would immediately spiral out of control as soon as you pursued the nuclear option. While I know that the Karadoc aspect of the mod introduced new global warming mechanics based primarily on pollution and levels of forestry, in the game where I launched several nukes, there was no global warming. Do nukes no longer have a direct impact on global warming, but only an indirect one per destroying forests/jungles?
7.) This is something from the base game which is somewhat annoying and I've never understood... "We love the president's/king's/etc.'s day!" what is this and does it even mean anything, other than being an indication that the city is presently not unhappy? The sound effect is loud and in the late game, if you don't have a massive unhappiness problem, this seems to trigger at least every couple of turns.
8.) Possible bug/balance issue: why is the advanced gunship both more expensive and worse?
9.) Are capital ships considered "valuable units" for the sake of combat order? This would represent the value of a screen of escorts, as historically.
10.) Do unit cost scales affect merely hammer/upgrade costs, or also unit upkeep? Also, is there a menu listing "roles" within existing "combat types"? I'm having some trouble discerning these differences outside of memorizing each from their respective Pedia entries. For instance, does "militia" or "irregular" mean anything in combat terms, the same way that "melee" does, as these are both melee units, despite having these separate subcategories?
11.) Possible typo in the 3.55 manual referencing "-100%" separatism for the "end of history" modifier. I think this was supposed to say 10%, as -100% would almost effectively remove the mechanic, unless that was the intention for the end of the game.
12.) Were there any changes made to war-weariness calculations? I reviewed these again recently, and while I know that many "liberal" civics entail war-weariness costs, it would be helpful to know if anything was fundamentally changed here.
13.) Possible balance revision. If the water pump tech allows farms without irrigation, is the only point of the subsequent irrigation systems tech allowing farms to spread irrigation merely the additional food for irrigated farms? An additional food on a tile definitely is quite significant at that phase of the game, but since farms spreading irrigation is the classic mid-game agricultural innovation, I'm not sure if this reverse ordering was intentional or not.
14.) On the left-hand side of the tech screen, there is a "research preference order" list of techs. What does this mean?
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