You're right. Maybe we will add it one day.
I don't like the "free" health bonus. They should come with a building, like nearly all other bonus.
Then, how to deal with newly settled cities (or even far worse captured cities where most happy buildings got destroyed) where era unhappinesses+various other sources lead to a city crippled to one or two workable pop. That leads to really long time of setting up happy buildings (and we all assume the great and inexpensive Mob Justice won't be around by that time) and since slavery is doing no good in Realism Invictus (seriously, I say that in bold!), it feels there should be more resources without building supports. There is some wonders, the hemp, but there are two few of them...perhaps it would be advisable to make certain happy buildings indestructible by city conquest, thus it won't be overwhelmed by motherland unhappiness+era ones.
About industrial era, it's a whooping +6 unhappiness. That's huge!
I think there should be work around that more than adding the fishmonger shop. How many times I pray the map generator gives me both hemp and whales because there are the two soles resources without building support.
As always, it's important to think about the balance first.
Another point (unrelated to the previous one) is slavery itself.
The point of slavery in Vanilla BTS was resumed in two points:
Make every city productive (because most things need hammers) through either pure hammers or food. City low in hammers? No problem, slavery was there to equalize.
Urgency militia. What strikes between Warlords (the expansion) and BTS was the AI capacity to whip lotsa units when the city is under siege. I vividly recall how easy is war in Warlords with infantry where I could roam around without the AI whipping tons of units. Since BTS, it makes the AI harder to take out in term of cities and that is a good point!
Marathon speed in vanilla BTS also shows the problem of a well set up invasive army versus a victim not ready for a way. Normal speed in vanilla BTS show the perfect balance where you can still takes the AI pants down, but not entirely as it still can prepare a little welcoming party. In Realism Invictus on Realism speed, it's basically the same problem as we had in marathon (1600 turns for RI and 1500 turns for marathon). The invasive forces (when well prepared) have quite a lead against the victim. Since Realism Invictus made slavery really weak (same for chops), all we can whip are archers in urgency. Perhaps an occasional swordman if pop6 (which doesn't normally happen soon because of the happiness building limitation) or pop2 if was already begun for awhile...
That's the main problem! Archers do nothing good against the
K-mod AI! If that was the base AI, I wouldn't brood at all; that would be the same put a strategic city on a hill near their borders and let the stacks suicide themselves. That simply doesn't happen in K-mod unless feeling a small chance of winning and heck no, I won't gamble 25% chance the stack can invade the city since losing cities are always the worst scenario.
The main problem with archers are their are only good for sitting the city for defense and if there are too many of them, the stack simply roam around and pillage everything. When your capital is next to another AI and stuck with archers, well, let's say au revoir all those villages and towns (which aren't really renewable like a mine or farm).
It's not like we don't prepare; we could prepare in advance a welcome party for any invador, but most often, the odds attacking a stack with one or two promotions are ~50-60%. Well, suffice of bad luck and you lose most of your armies. Way to renew in urgency. Nope, slavery is doing no good. Only archers per two pops and that's harsh on a city of 6-7 pops (classical era; often the worst).
Strangely enough Realism Invictus+K-mod are not working well together as it favors the attacker by a great extent. And it was proven that a game that favors the attacker is no good for balance. Defense should always be the one favored. SMAC (Alpha Centauri) was one game that immensely favored the attackers (and defensive upgrade are often too late) and I recalled that was a mess. You need to prepare well your "attacking" (for avoiding mass pillaging) defenses and since the odds aren't that good, that can lead to doom situations. That happened to me twice (IMM difficulty) and never I was more enraged. And the dude attacking me (Cetshwayo) suffered from 7 workers stolen by me since his first two free workers. Yeah, one could say, if I hadn't attacked, he wouldn't be on my back, but the way the lands were distributed, his peninsula gives a single path towards as sole potential victim and knowing K-mod AI, I expected he would attack me sooner or later. And despite losing 7 workers (thus stoneaged for a while), he gives me tense moments. A weakened AI caused troubles, how would it be a full intact civ. My other neighbour is also damaged by a neighbour, thus I don't wanna imagine two intact civs working together against me on IMM.
And yet, that mod is good as hell. It proposes different ways to win (I just discovered Pastoralism is good sometimes (a lot of early production) or Agrianism other times and that is proof there is not a single line of play!) and the AI is challenging (being a bunch of psychpaths). I am addicted to Realism Invictus like I was my first days to BTS/Warlords. I like how it turned out, but I feel some stuff related to slavery should be tuned. Maybe augment the hammer ratio for units...it certainly needs brainstorming. I know late industrial era leads to correct conversion food-hammer rates thanks to the third "stock" building (added to smoking hut and granary) and augmenting the hammer rate for slavery may screw up the late game, hence the brainstorming factor.
Simply said, the K-mod AI is a really destructive one where one that hates your face force to be in a never-ending war (punctuated by 10 turns enforced peace deals immediated ended by a new once the occasion found by the AI). If sandwiched by two or three AI's then it's a goodbye because they'll stone-age ya.
It's being one EMP and another half and now my first IMM game and I clearly see the pattern. Almost all games with many AI's on a continent lead to one or two AI's stoneaged to a ridiculous extent. The spanish suffered from that and survived with one city at 1 pop for over 1000 years.
Starting IMM, the human can't keep up with two opposite AI's, especially if slavery is underwhelming (which primary function should allow urgency "defensive and attacking" defenses).
You see, there's Titan and deity difficulties...how to batallion there if IMM can be infernal most of time you're not isolated.
BTW, it's not a free rant just to annoy people. I really like this mod, but I feel slavery is a missing key to make the whole perfect. True slaves can be the hidden piece, but that is not sufficient and rely on wars to get them (which are anyways useless for units pumping). On Realism speed, which is the speed by default, it should be easier to raise an army either for good defenses or for attacking purposes. As it is now, it feels a wrong choice in city builds will lead to a quick downfall because slavery can't palliate it.
Last point: the difficulty. One could say, just tone down the difficulty. Yes, I could. Problem is the AI doesn't keep up well around industrial age if the human amassed lots of victorious campaigns and created an empire. It was near 1500 AD and I was about to enter modern times and the biggest AI was barely entering industrial age and that era is long and numerous in techs! Late game becomes uninteresting when the AI can't keep up and hence the IMM+ purposes. Problem is the early game; it feels a huge gamble for survival and it shouldn't be like that I think.
Some say remain small and you'll face later challenge, but that's an artificial way to aid the AI and I don't think that's fun to play peaceful when the AI is constantly pummeling you (K-mod).