Cutting in half the building cost reduction for having stone surplus was exactly the wrong call.

[Ben1612]

I'm not really sure what the problem is here, it was nerfed because of the portential to crazily stack bonuses, and that's a good thing. It really doesn't matter how important stone was in the Ancient World in contrast to other materials either, what we have is an system in a game to represent building tech. It's an abstracted system, in a game. As long as it has some Historical relevance and accuracy and is balanced, that's really all that matters.

Now here's a system that is crazily unbalanced and makes no sense - seeking treatment at 200 Gold a pop...in what universe is that realistic or balanced? that's almost the cost of of TWO FORTS in my current play-through....

My issue was only the nerfing of stone in relation to other bonuses. As I mentioned the arbitrary and ridiculously accessible 'advanced mechanics' tech is still 10%, still makes less sense than stone. Also the nerfing of stone is only partly about the reducing of stacking bonuses, it is relevant where those bonuses come from. They are now even more concentrated on the tech tree, which penalises the oft forgotten 'barbarian' nations even more.