I'd love to see the following for vanilla civs:
1) Replace the Krepost
2) Change the Indian UA
3) Change or add to the American UA
4) Make the Zero have a smaller but more general bonus (say, against all planes, rather than against just fighters)
5) Change the Greek UA or buff it slightly
6) Give the Legion a promotion that carries over
7) Add to the Songhai UA to reflect the importance of Tombuktu as an international marketplace
How many of those changes will occur? Quite possibly none. But of the vanilla civs, I feel like a few of them have been at least a little hampered by G&K. The Legion, once a beast, now feels fairly worthless to beeline to. The Greek UA took a hit since G&K added more city-state quests. Then there are civs that have been less-than-fun to play from release, notably India. And there's a few uniques that have been underpowered all along.
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For G&K changes, I'd appreciate:
1) Make the Pictish Warrior keep the faith-gaining bonus as it upgrades (Foreign Lands bonus is nice, since it stays, but the flavor of the Celts is faith gain, and the UA isn't cutting it)
2) Add something to the Byzantine UA
3) Allow Polders to be built in plains or grassland coastal tiles (some games, I feel like I get no marshes or floodplains)
4) Change the Carthagian UA to buff harbors rather that provide harbors for free from turn 1
Again, not very likely that many of this will happen.
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I mentioned the G&K changes because some other folks brought up the Byzantines and what not, but I can see why the thread was trying to focus on vanilla in particular, as vanilla civs are the least consistent in quality. India is awful. China, the Iroquis, the Aztecs, and possibly Arabia are all great fun or quite powerful. America is boring for about the first 2/3 of the game, then has arguably one of the best late-game UU's, yet the B-17 is generally either overkill or too-little-too-late in many games (depending on difficulty setting, among other things). Japan is awful, given that the UA is okay but both UU's have major flaws (Iron is revealed too late now in G&K, making the Samurai hard to set-up for, while the Zero is very flawed due to the AI rarely bothering to air-sweep or intercept with its fighters). Rome and a few are in the middle. Greece, Germany, and Songhai are civs I only enjoy on Marathon, possibly Epic.
Conversely, many of the G&K civs, as well as DLC civs, are powerful in some way throughout:
- Babylon, Korea, and the Mayans all can do science well
- The Mayans and Ethiopia can both do faith well
- Carthage and the Byzantines rule the early waves
- The Hunnic Empire gets a free tech, extra production on pastures, and a monster UU
- The Celts have a lack-luster UA and I mentioned part of the UU as flawed, but early Foreign Lands bonus on a unit that becomes a Pike
And so forth. Vanilla is where I feel much more could be done than in G&K.
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