Buffs Rome w/out making it op. Rome was one of the worst designed civs in V imo; it had no playstyle and it's Uniques were inconsequential. Specific buffs & reasoning can be found here :)
(And if you have an suggestion/opinion on balancing or anything else in the mod, I'd be really greatful for ur feedback!)
UA: Ontop of their vanilla bonus production towards buildings present the Capital, they pay -50% road maintinence.
Reasoning: Their Vanilla UA sounds consistently nice on paper, turns out consistently ehhh/weakish. Not quite irrelevant, but you probably won't notice and you won't win or lose a game because of it. All the buildings you care about building faster aren't gonna benefit: Wonders, your first factory, and courthouses. Though tbh the road maintinence doesn't buff it much, the reason I'm only including it is cause I wanna see if the UU buffs are sufficient, and ig it fits historically.
LEGION: Gains the Cover I promotion (+33 Defense vs Ranged attacks). To balance this out they cost an extra +10 production (85 vs 75).
Reasoning: Vanilla Legions are a huge improvement on swordsmen, but still an inconsequential UA. Swordsmen are outclassed by Spearmen in the Classical era imo (If you even have Iron to give the option). The higher CS doesn't matter that much when their job is to sit fortified and get shot defending your Compbows from horsemen and the like. Spearmen's price reduction and bonus vs mounted (Probably the only units they'll attack) makes them a better investment. Now the OG Legion imo is strong enough that using it is just about as effective as spearmen: but that's still a net advantage of zilch. Now, they have Cover I; which allows them do do their main/only job significantly better, & it transfers on upgrade, giving Rome some millitary benifet retained past a single era! Plus it makes sence with the Testudo and all
BALLISTA: Doesn't have to set up to attack. In exchange, it bonus vs cities is decreased to 2.5x damage from 3x. (Thus the new Ballista does 25 base damage to cities, while the OG Ballista does 30, and the Catapult does 24; of course not having to set up means the new Ballista gets more shots off on average.)
Reasoning: In summary: Catapults bad (Even moreso in MP), Compbow Good, Compbow outclass Catapults even vs cities, Compbow also outclasses Vanilla Ballista as its less worse stats don't make up for needing to set up and thus often getting half killed/destroyed before even attacking city. So now it's actually better vs cities, and, like an actual ballista, doesn't need a decade to set up.
Other Changes: Preferred Victory type changed from Science to Domination. (This essentially makes Rome more agressive than average, & makes them spend an average amount of production on science and an above average on Units)
Reasoning: Its Rome it fucking conquered things and technologically stagnated I've spent more time writing this than doing the the mod idk why.
Why is Rome bad? (Allegedly): I don't believe Rome in Civ V to be a particularly "underpowered/weak" civ; overall I'd rank them as most people seem to, as thoroughly "Meh". Below average, but not as weak as Venice, about in the 40th percentile. But I'd consider Rome worse design-wise because Venice does what a civ is meant to do: present a set of bonuses to the player that benefits & encourages a specific method of playing, thus making the game playing as Venice and as a whole more interesting. Rome's uniques are insubstantial, thus don't really encourage anything but kinda wide play? I presume the dev's intended to make them a civ focused around Classical-era millitary expansion but since their UU's are replacements for units that are outclassed in that era, they're insubstantial and thus offer no real advantage. Thus you're basically left with a civ that has a consistent but highly trivial & generic bonus and that's it. I get a feeling not many people would ever choose to play Rome fit it wasn't, y'know, Rome. And no I'm not a Romeaboo dw, I just feel like Rome could do a little better than a Hard 4, big sleep.