okay you say if you make productivity NOT 'gathering rate' of wood, food, gold and stone makes persia, palmyran and mace and those suck, simply improvise by giving them those techs or they are SOL. i think persia revived after greek rule anyways so shouldnt the greeks provide all their market techs to them??
also to add if you add more techs. i think that egypt and summer needs those shields so they can have armored elephant especially how their civ is and the other to counter the hittites.
i think you still dont understand what 'productivity' means vice gathering rate. productivity meaning it makes more of that resource as i had explained coinage with gold mines. gathering rate is simply gather more but you dont get any extra like with the 'productivity' of coinage gold and the farms. to remind you the numbers lets say....
gold mine:
gathering rate=carry more gold per trip but still only collect 400 gold when finished with 1 gold mine
productivity=collect 500 gold when finished with 1 gold mine in that ratio/percentage of productivity
coinage is a must for experts and you be surprised how many countless superexperts i beat in the old days just because they neglected coinage and came at me with something else other than siege (including bowman) telling me 'i ran out of gold. gg' while i still got enough gold just because of coinage to pump out a few siege to finish them off.
EDIT: as a matter of fact, IIRC in aoc the aztecs got like +33% or something productivity on every resource. that means they collect for example 10 wood out of a tree but only 7 wood is deducted out of the tree and food, gold and stone follows respectively
[This message has been edited by volume (edited 09-05-2009 @ 02:05 PM).]