Advancing to the next civ bonus/thoughts

Soap Box

There are a few civs that need about a 10% increase in win rate just to make it on the low end of Cysion's 55%-45% win rate goal. In an interview, he said that he wanted to only modestly buff civs but there is no way that you will get that big of a win increase with husbandry or an attack upgrade for example. He also mentioned that some of the Rajas civs are still newish and maybe haven't found a meta for the civ. It's been 3 years so I think it's safe to say that some civs just can't compete. He contrasts the newest civs to the Huns that have been around for a long time and have more of a defined meta. The problem is he makes it sound like once the "meta" is found then you can use that play style forever. The game isn't played the way it was 10 years ago and 10 years ago the game wasn't played the same way as when it first came out. From the ideas that I have seen proposed here many of the creative or unique bonuses get hated on as being dumb or OP or not AOE2 worthy. It seems like many people want the game to stay as is for the most part. The problem is that there will continue to be big disparities among the civs.

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Civ Bonus

The civ bonus would keep the food requirement but substitute wood for the gold cost. Basically this would make civ advancement cost trash. It would allow gold unit production without sacrificing any gold needed to get to the next age. Yes this would be strong but if you need a civ to drastically get better just to barely make the 45% minimum win rate goal then that is what needs to happen.

If this is Frank status strong in practice then you could have 2 solutions. 1) Make the gold cost now the food cost so you would only need food to advance. Food takes longer to get than wood since you need to invest wood into farms and then wait for that to produce food. It still doesn't cost gold but may actually take way too long to get that much food. 2) Stagger the discount to the next age like 15%/25%/35% give or take 5%. I don't like this since the Italians and Byzantines have Age advancement discounts.

TL;DR same food requirement but substitute wood for the gold cost.