May I make some suggestions?
I just came here after playing the mod for a second time, and I have to say that it really got me hooked, and impressed with the finesse and completeness of its state. The last and first time I played was when there was no Judaism; instead, it was substituted for Zoroastrianism. It felt kinda senseless, because Zoroastrianism is not that much of a major religion either, to justify substituting Judaism. That, along with many of the new mechanics which I felt were limiting (like the bounding of wonders to religions and civis), made me prefer the old RFC.
But now, I became quite a fan of the mod. Been playing it for some months, at the very least.
There are some things, though, that I would like to suggest or ask; because I don't know if someone has already suggested them, or what is the current state of features planned to be added in the next updates.
That said, immediate things come to mind, like adding South Africa and Australia, which would improve late game a lot. Also, adding WWI tanks, since we currently have WWI planes, and the first tanks we get are WWII-looking ones.
But what I would most strongly suggest is changing a little the core, historical and contested areas for some civilizations, because that is easy to do (or at least seems easy to me) and hugely affects gameplay. Of course, pondering this issue begs the question of what such areas are supposed to mean, that is, what are they supposed to represent as computerized reductions of real world vicissitudes.
If we were to adopt a strict definition of "core area" for the Latin civilization, for instance, we would, in a serious discussion, almost certainly arrive at the conclusion that only the Latium region should be first considered its core; since it was the region that was first inhabited by the ancient Latin tribes. But that, of course, would not be good. Rome, as represented in the game, would never be able to control all the regions comprising the Roman Empire if we only assigned Latium as their core area, because then the empire would have collapsed way before that due to stability issues. In other words: the game mechanics would not allow the existence of the Roman Empire in the first place.
Unless, of course, we increase the limit so that Rome can control much larger areas and populations with a reduced core; or, alternatively, we change the expansion limit to allow for certain civilizations to control a relative non-core population. In other words: we make it so that certain civilizations will be able to control large populations with a small core population, while other civilizations will need a larger core population to control these same, non-core, just-as-large populations; which is also a valid measure.
But, since none of the possibilities above are in the game anyway, one must assume that what "core areas" are supposed to represent is something else quite different. Similarly, the French case also bears considerable resemblance to the Latin one. It is well known that, before Parisian French became the frame with which French, as the national language of the french people, became spoken in all parts of France, other Romance languages were standard languages in most regions of France. Yet, France's core area comprises basically the whole of France
Without delving too much, let us just conclude by stating that "core areas" are apparently and strongly defined by the consummation of the phenomenon known as national states, over certain areas of the globe. As such, France's core are came to be France itself, and Rome's came to be the Italian peninsula - which seems, to me, a consideration based more on modern factors than ancient ones. There doesn't seem to be much ground to support that northern Italy (which was inhabited by Celts) was somehow considered "more Roman" than, say, the Basque country or Portugal.
A second point appears self evident to me as well. The core areas of a civilization are apparently relative to their total expansion, that is, when they reach the apex of their empires; as there also would be no sense in having any major civilization be entirely comprised of core areas and no historical or contested areas. Therefore, a balance, a proportion between such areas (and a proportion in which "balance" is a certain mean between maximum and minimum historical expansion) should be the case; and a measure for judging which areas are going to be considered "core areas" (because, as we've seen, "core areas" are somewhat of an arbitrary category); "historical areas" (which translates into "areas that have been long controlled by a certain civilization, but that are not its core) and "contested areas" (areas that are disputed by civilizations); the maps, furthermore, for France and Rome, all appear to be quite balanced to me.
As such, there are some imbalances - or just imprecisions - that I would like to point out, and argue for a correction as I present them.
First, Brazil.
Areas for Brazil
What I would say about this is map that it is entirely wrong. No Brazilian would ever agree with this allocation of core and historical areas. I must be vehement, because Brazilian history and demographics strongly suggests a different set of core, historical and contested areas.
First argument: Brazilian colonization began in the northeast region, and such used to be one of the most populated and economically developed areas of the colony until sugar processing became a less profitable activity, and the colony's capital was moved from there to Rio de Janeiro.
Second argument: a small deal of the areas considered on this map to be "core areas", were actually occupied practically exclusively by american natives by the time Brazil became an independent nation. How can they be core areas, counting for core population score, if such population is not even Brazilian in the first place?
Here is a map indicating the predominant ethnic group in any given region of Brazil, as it constituted itself demographically by the late 19th century:
Where brown represents white people; green, mixed race (black-white); purple, mixed race (white-native american) or just plain native americans.
Also, it should be noted that most purple areas amounted to an empty wilderness inhabited by natives back then. Most people are, still to this date, and have always been, living in the coastal areas.
Third argument: Uruguay and the Brazilian state of Acre should be contested areas, and not whatever they are represented with in the current map. Uruguay used to be part of the Empire of Brazil until it revolted, and the 1828 treaty of Montevideo, signed by Brazil and Argentina, recognized the independence of Uruguay. However, since Uruguay is not a civilization currently in the mod, it should remain an area of attrition between the civilizations of Brazil and Argentina. The state of Acre was bought from Bolivia after the region was settled by Brazilians and revolted into its own independent government, which was subsequently annexed by the Brazilian government. The government of Brazil, however, decided to resort to diplomacy and bought it from Bolivia. Bolivia, in turn, had difficulties managing the territories invaded by Brazilian settlers, due to the geographical barrier of the Andes, while Brazilian troops only needed the region's rivers to reach and aid such settlers. Due to this inherently competitive nature of the issue, it should thus be a contested area.
All in all, a map which accounts for such qualities of Brazilian history should look more or less like this:
Second, Argentina.
How Argentina's map currently looks:
As for Argentina, I would like to argue for two minor changes:
I. To include Uruguay as a core area, since Argentina's core area should represent, in my view, the core areas of the Spanish provinces of Rio de la Plata.
II. To remove Patagonia from the core and make it instead a historical area. Just as it was with Brazil, most of Patagonia was still inhabited by natives when it became independent. The flip zone, however, should remain the same.
Such as Argentina's map would look more like this:
That's all. Thank you for reading, I know it's quite a wall of text, and I would be glad if it provoked some thoughts among you, as I would be interested in discussing the matter further if you'd like.
) through trade, you have 2 gold available. However, probably not stacking—if you acquire 2 gold through trade, you're treated as having 3, not 4.
