Also, im aware that the later eras are an issue for another day... however I noticed that south americans were participating in colonization for some reason, and major players like the French, British, Spanish, and Russians were still in the Renaissance era in the 1870s
colombian east indies
argentinean senegal
Settlers, or awarded from a congress?
As for tech progress in 1870, before I go about adding other civs or doing any major feature work, I'll run some Canada autoplays to get better feeling for it. While the game past 1900 is currently out of scope for what I'm balancing, I do want the tech rate to be as expected in the late 1800s.
Not sure if it's the base mod issue or specific to this version but when playing on marathon speed the Indus Valley civ ends up surviving a lot longer than it should, I'm approaching 0AD rn and it's still there and well; probly could use balancing, or India or Kushan getting armies spawned to destroy it if it's still there when they spawn.
Also catholicism seems to just not spawn sometimes, not sure why.
Also Jerusalem ends up razed sometimes, it's annoying.
I only play and test on Epic. I simply do not have the time to playtest and balance the mod on all speeds. I will probably disable the other speeds so I don't get feedback which I can't make use of at the moment. Maybe if the mod is ever truly "finished", in that every civ I intend to add is included, as well as any other features, I will give Normal or Marathon a balancing pass.
Catholism not spawning is probably the result of a large Byzantine empire. Are you saying it never spawns? Because at least by about 1200 to 1400, with the population sizes of western and central Europe, and the downfall of the Byzantines, you really should see the birth of Catholism in the worst case.
Occasional razing of Jerusalem I don't consider a big deal, as long as it isn't consistently the case.
Also, yes, I am still alive, just took a bit of a break after pushing out a lot of major content updates for the mod. The next few patches will be balance and bugfix related.