Military science: bring back gains & combine it with ME
Simple suggestion, bring back military gains in military science and combine it with ME, so the 15% will be 15% ME and 15% gains.
Any reason why this is a bad idea, can't see it being abused, I guess orcs could be scarier if they max their mil sci but I think it's still worth considering.
while we at it bring back +1 general...I think it's best to give it to a personality, maybe Tactician which is really boring in it's current form, liked it better when it was -20% attack time, so maybe Tactician could be -20% attack time and +1 general?
I guess that might make avian/tact with current avian perks slightly OP.
+1 general lead to only one personality or race being chosen for attackers - or at least a significant bulk of them. The +gains thing, i mean theres the issue of rubberbanding chain victims, which would make chaining harder, so i guess might effect the length of wars.. i think leaders would need to micromanage chains a little more if +gains was brought in. I dont like or dislike the idea though.
I kind of like that idea a bit. When you hit the soft cap of science you get a "breakthrough". But make the soft caps harder to get to so only like 3-4 categories are likely to be capped in an age.
Alchemy: Immune to Greed and 20% less damage from rob the vaults.
Tools: Peasants fill 1.5 jobs for purposes of Building Efficiency
Production: Spells cost 20% less runes to cast. 20% less damage from rob towers and rob granaries.
Housing: Homes now hold 12 population instead of 10. Fireball is 20% less effective.
Military: +1 general
Crime: +1 stealth generation per tick
Channeling: +1 mana generation per tick
Something like that.
Perhaps you can only have 1 breakthrough active at a time or something, and it takes 3 ticks to change your breakthrough.
I can only second that breakthrough is a very appealing idea. It could lead to a sense of long-term development and achievement of a province (during an age).
Try develop that idea to following age I'd say. It could certainly make me see it as a fresh look and development of the science-part of the game.
I have to spin off on this a bit :) below...
An alternative could even be to have several steps in one category, and smaller effects.
For example Crime, breakthrough tier1=+10% sabotage damage, tier2=-20% thief-losses, tier3=+1 stealth... something in that fashion.
The first tiers could have smaller, easier to obtain effect and maybe not be that significant. While the last, difficult to obtain (twice the soft-cap in professors perhaps?) could be of significance.
Could perhaps stimulate some strategic choices what to invest in to get the breakthroughs?
This works well with the removal of abduct, as these breakthroughs should be seen as some kind of "academic achievements". Also works well with amnesia, as you could use that to strip someone of the availability of a breakthrough, for some time. Perhaps that is a bit more difficult to implement well with soft caps, as someone could have over-pumped above and beyond a certain tier so that it becomes difficult to get a significant effect with a row of amnesia spells.