There's much on agenda these days but this has been bothering me for a while. I feel GM's active ability is very underwhelming compared to others. Growth from WLTKD is nice, but not always needed (or even desired if you're limiting growth), the gold is pretty insignificant maybe except for the early game. If you don't have some strong WLTKD synergy, there's very little reason to bulb rather than to plant. I have two suggestions, I think both are very simple, fit the GM theme, and would make bulbing more desirable and fun. Since both use the existing mechanics, it wouldn't take much work to make the AI use them properly.
1) Trade Mission as Soft Tribute: TM additionally grants +x amount of relevant CS yields (e.g. faith from religious CS), scaling with era and number of towns, without any influence penalties. I think this would be easier to balance and implement. Like Tribute, this can also be boosted through policies.
2) Trade Mission starts special types of WLTKD, boosting relevant yields in addition to growth (e.g. x% food and x% faith from a religious CS): This may be harder to balance, especially at the late game. Very easy to implement though, I'm about finished with this.
What do you think?
1) Trade Mission as Soft Tribute: TM additionally grants +x amount of relevant CS yields (e.g. faith from religious CS), scaling with era and number of towns, without any influence penalties. I think this would be easier to balance and implement. Like Tribute, this can also be boosted through policies.
2) Trade Mission starts special types of WLTKD, boosting relevant yields in addition to growth (e.g. x% food and x% faith from a religious CS): This may be harder to balance, especially at the late game. Very easy to implement though, I'm about finished with this.
What do you think?