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Copied from my post at EB Tweaks:

Quote Originally Posted by CirdanDharix
Fourthly, right now I'm experimenting with adding pop growth penalties to the unavoidable governor buildings, and it makes getting your cities huge much more challenging. I might increase the costs and build time on some buildings, as well.
Awesome idea! The AI seems to upgrade too quickly -due to the pop and money boost from EBBS maybe- and that makes expansion into different culture land a great pain. While expansion by itself being pain is good it forces the human player into blitzing; taking whatever before reaching the max town size.

So, while slowing pop growth and increasing the building time of the ridiculously indestructible palace buildings, adding law and happiness penalties in a fashion of enforcing town upgrades would make expansion both more stable and more challenging at the same time.
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