1. Remove Jihad and add effects including founding of Mahdi to Fanaticism. Perhaps change the tech path Fanaticism -> Divine Mandate -> Feudalism or find another way to make Divine Mandate non-dead-end (prereq for Academies?)
Hmm. Maybe. That might be too early to beeline though.
Maybe if Fanaticism founds it, but Divine Mandate is needed for Zealots?
Might be ok with:
2. Make Fanaticism more a bit more expensive.
But we don't want Fanaticsm to be *too* late. I think it should be a risky but feasible strategy to beeline fanaticism rather than getting economy techs, and blitzing a nearby civ out of the game while they have at best a few infantry.
Allow Crysknife Fighters and Bladesman to upgrade to Mahdi Zealots AND/OR auto-replace all Melee units with Mahdi Zealots on discovery of Mahdi.
Maybe... I'd prefer the former to the latter.
I think it would help the AI if the Mahdi Zealot and new Mahdi Mujahid were woven in with main Melee unit upgrade path.
This is dangerous because of the no upkeep on those units and the low cost. Building a massive army of Zealots that you can then hang around upkeep free through peacetime should not allow you to easily convert those into, say, a sizeable instant army of shield troopers.
I think in general the Zealot/Mujahid line should be kept separate.
I don't strongly object to bladesmen upgrading to zealots, but Zealots should not be able to upgrade to anything but Mujahid.
We do not what the Zealot units to be superior melee units, or close counterparts to the regular melee line. They should feel different; the design goal with zealot should be to have masses of cheap, disposable low-quality hordes, rather than professional soldiers of quality.
See some of my other suggestions above that might help accomplish this; making Zealots *only* get Zeal promotions (or a limited line of promotions in general), or having Zealots auto-spawn at a fixed rate from Temple buildings rather than be constructed with hammers.
The latter might help the AI use a mix of zealots and bladesmen, since the AI will tend to build the highest strength unit even if a more cost-efficient weaker one exists.
Make Mahdi Zealots +10% city attack which from testing appears to make the AI value them as better city attackers than Bladesman (6 str +10% vs 5 str +25%).
Again I don't want to make these units too similar.
In my mind, zealots should not be unambiguously better than Bladesmen. They should be cheap, disposable and swarmy. Bladesmen should still be better as specialist city attackers.
5. Reduce the natural spread rate of Mahdi even more, but add the 2/3 chance auto-flipping previously discussed. (From testing, the auto-flipping with the current spread rate can lead to two or three civs adopting Mahdi)
Sounds fine, particularly if we bring founding earlier.
I have no objection to having only a single faction adopt Mahdi pre-conquest.
from barracks. If that is intended it should show in the civics screen (took me a while to realize why my capital was suddenly unhappy after a civic switch).
or 3 
, what choice is that? Even in my military city I toke the 
I must confess I alway rushed to a barbarian city of one of one of the superior races to start spamming settlers there. Paladins where the best. Those slingers (forgot the race) went quite well too though.
). The only complaint I have is that barbarian crysknife fighters (aka Staban Tuek) appear too early and in too vast numbers (could be the difficulty level?) It is impossible to defend against them when you don't even have infantry. Naturally, I beelined to Stillsuits, but still, it might be a good idea to tweak the minimum turns required before crysknife fighters can spawn.
). The game I just played used the modified XML.
