When I replayed this, Rome took the city and the game was fine. Combat didn't go quite the same as before, though, so I don't know if there's anything that may have changed which would hide the behavior. I'll raise it again if it happens again.
Some thoughts on slowing down the ancient/classical era:
* Moving tech transfer bonus to a later tech (alphabet?) might help here. Right now it kicks in immediately as open borders do, which starts adding bonuses early, and creates imbalances where the civs that have met the most other civs get the biggest bonus and start pushing ahead, and at a time where most civs haven't had the chance to meet each other (especially civs stuck at far corners, and/or who've had bad luck with barbs preventing contact with others). The current setup isn't problematic, but pushing tech transfer back a few techs can help add more time to ancient by removing the very early bonuses, and allow civs more time to come into contact with each other and form open borders before it becomes a venue for tech transfer.
* Moving the culture slider to a later tech. Right now many AI civs beeline right for Drama, which currently unocks it, and it becomes an easy way to allow cities to gain happiness early on, leading to more research/production than I think is warranted for this stage of the game. Maybe Aesthetics would be a good place for it?
........
our latest feature!), buildings that make a new resource out of another, the civilopedia itself which is vastly improved, changing names and flags and etc? I'd like to know exactly how these are coded, and how to modify or replicate them, sometimes I wished I could have this kind of stuff in other mods... And I have also been thinking of making one, so all that stuff would be very nice to have.
