That's something present in vanilla too, it's strange you are the only one who has noticed this too.
I didn't notice that at all. Natives don't seem to develop quickly in Vanilla C4Cin my opinion
I thought about this some time ago and I reach to the conclusion that the main problem is how native units are generated.
Oh...
First we have units and then professions.
I don't understand this part...
The native unit has no cost in food or any other yield, so all cities are constantly creating new native units.
A native unit costs 50 hammers.
So it does cost something ! You mean it doesn't cost anything
but 50 hammers...
When there is no building left to build, Native's will indeed produce Braves. In Vanilla C4C they only have one or two buildings (one if I'm correct). So they will indeed quickly produce only braves. But since they can't choose the Carpenter's profession (
), they will only get a brave
every 50 turns by this method [
That means only 6 units (per city) in 300 turns with this method!]. Of course their population can grow "normally" (e.g. as Europeans).
However, I've tried playing with natives a few times, and when you start a new game in Vanilla C4C, most of your cities are starving, and you can't do much about it since you can't build improvements nor buildings!
But, we have changed a few things... In TAC some natives have food bonuses, and we've added some buildings giving natives extra hammers. This means that natives can develop more quickly. But that's what I was trying to do!
I added a yield requirement to the native unit. Food, 50. That way I wanted to relate in some way the amount of units a city can support with the food availability of that city.
We could give braves a higher price, and another requirement... But I would really avoid food. Natives already have a food based mechanism
First impression: it works as intended! Natives start with a standard number of units, but now the have to spend more time and resources to create new units. Also due to this system, they now use more population to obtain food; but note that at any moment they can convert population in brave units so there is no bad side of this. Only the grow rate has changed.
I'm not sure I follow you...
But yes. The more expensive braves will be the slower they will develop. But I would rather add more buildings to give them more choices than do this...