Smaller empire sizes and city limits for LT46

[wieder]

LT40 worked reasonably well with the limited empire sizes. However in the end there was too much to do even while there was less cities. For LT46 the empire sizes will be reduced and the empires will be smaller. It's also not going to be possible to choose a good gov in the early game and build all the cities at once. For that we may have the govs split into 2-3 steps.

Monarchy could be something like that:

Ancient Monarchy (max 8 cities)
Medieval Monarchy (max 12 cities)
Modern Monarchy (max 16 cities)

Or Monarchy I, Monarchy II and Monarchy III.

Depending on the government the player could control 6-20 cities without getting extra unhappy from each new city.

The tech costs will be experimental and adjusted to the number of the cities. Less cities in the early game should also fix the issue we have with slightly too cheap techs in the early game.

As a reminder, don't be afraid about having too big changes. All this will only apply to LT46 and will not be used on the traditional games.

[fran]

I agree city limits in LT40 still were to soft to have an impact. It's not a big deal to exceed the limit by 4 cities, so the step should remain 1.

What is disappointing in my opinion was everybody in LT40 -- except fran perhaps -- did basically the same.
Everybody played democracy because nothing beats +2T. Only lordp/zoltan and fran were federation for some time.
If govs could be balanced better that would be great, perhaps if you introduce different forms of monarchy etc. the higher ones also could be given more trade to establish a real choice.
Well, I don't have a suggestion to make, just the feeling it would be great to really set apart the govs like
prod/trade/war/upkeep whatever oriented. With super-sized cities +2T gives you so overwhelming sci/gold/lux that everything else other govs grant is not worth mentioning. So perhaps to have a successor of tribal/despo without war unhappiness, military rule and lots of free upkeep. Totalitarianism so to say. The whole gov system should have some systematics and symmetry.

- making the trade based governments less powerful by making markets, banks, stocks and super highways to give 40% bonus instead of 50%

I'm not so sure that helps, because it applies to every gov.

- new production based improvements for most of those govs without trade bonus (communism, federation, monarchy...)

That's an interesting idea, but why not simply grant +1P (or 0.5 or 0.3 P if that is possible) for certain govs?
+1P for every tile that already produces shields perhaps to much, but a fraction of that should do.
The general problem is that trade with democracy gives you gold and that compensates for production because you can buy. We all know you can end up having more gold than stuff you can buy.
Therefor an easy approach to balance govs simply could be to change max rates of lux/sci/gold. It's nonsense anyway that demo can have 90% tax. Unfortunately it probably won't be possible only to restrict tax and allow 90% sci? That should be restricted, and other govs, like federation, which is no alternative atm, could be boosted by giving greater flexibilty. It would feel more natural if the totalitarian govs have greater freedom than in demo.

- The howitzers would ignore terrain and move like alpines

What nonsense.

[Corbeau]

Democracy is the best government in the game because everybody has grown accustomed to its bonuses and nobody wants to make a step sideways and make an unpopular decision to nerf some of its aspects.

My ruleset has a reverse freedom of choice between taxt/sci maximum. In despotism you can set max 100% of sci/tax/max, while in democracy you can only set 50%. Gameplay and realism rationalisation: obvious.

Also, we should drop the Women Suffrage. Democracies are supposed to be less flexible in sending troops abroad and Women's Suffrage is a technical workaround that simply reduces this very important penalty to 50% which is huge. Also, building a fort abroad shouldn't claim a tile. That's another workaround and, effectively, a cheat.

[wieder]

Yes, the step will remain 1 for LT46.

Nationalism in LT40 was supposed to be the modern version of tribalism. Maybe it will remain than and tribalism already has two steps. I just need to adjust the city limits for those. There could be a 3rd step between those two. city limits yes, but does anyone have ideas about medieval "tribalism" or what could be something like that?

Would make sense to make fighting wars even more difficult for a democracy. Maybe almost forcing the player to switch gov or have serious consequences.