Kinda of a huge comment but bear with me, this is constructive criticism on all 3 leaders and after playing all of them these were my thoughts. After thorough thinking for a couple of hours I wrote this:


Bowser:
I kinda agree with @Bragh that Bowser seems to be the most lackluster and difficult of the 3.
Personally if some of the Koopalings had their drawbacks nerfed or even removed entirely, making your Lava Fortress improvement always dormant, only erupting after completing the "terraform" project (to prevent the random eruptions which are a very annoying, especially on cities without governors), as well as making that all of his cities, districts, and improvements should not be damaged by volcano eruptions period, with the established Koopalings instead only providing the bonus to the additional environmental disasters like blizzards/tornadoes/floods/etc, and if there was a way to make the established Koopalings prevent population loss from disasters as well it would be a nice balance change but I'm not sure if it's possible to implement this last one.

Also again on the Airship, just to buff it a little bit since it's very timing based, it ignores all movement which is fine, but it also should ignore cliffs because of it (it doesn't right now), should be reclassified as a siege unit instead of a ranged one and receive it's promotions (replacing the catapult, but it does not upgrade into a trebuchet) however it should not receive the damage penalty to units like regular siege units, and should receive double flanking and support bonuses, but keep its combat damage of 35 the same. It should make it more useful for longer but you'll still want better units for attacking very late into the game anyway.

Koopalings:
Most of them are fine, but like stated earlier some of the downsides are too detrimental and may even make people avoid promoting them in the first place, which seems counterproductive because you would want to collect many governor titles because of Bowser's leader ability, so nerfing some or reworking others would make them fine for what players playing as Bowser want to achieve...

Morton (he is fine, no change)

Larry (he is fine, no change)

Wendy (she is fine, no change)

Roy (he is fine, no change)

Iggy - the reduced food growth and gold is too detrimental so just remove them altogether; Mass Excavation is mostly fine as long as the food penalty is removed, but make the bonus apply to refineries and oil rigs as well; Skip Quality Control's penalty needs to be reworked, just replace the -5 combat strength to "+100% production towards military units in this city, military units built in this city do not need strategic resources to build or upkeep, but the gold upkeep of all military units is 3 times higher" (for example, a Man-at-Arms trained in this city would cost 0 iron to build or heal, but would have a -9 gold upkeep instead of -3, and a GDR trained in this city would cost 0 uranium to build or heal, but would have a whopping -45 gold upkeep instead of -15, etc.)

Lemmy - in contrast to Iggy, all promotions that reduce production need the production penalty removed as well, everything else is fine.

Ludwig - his Practicalism promotion should be moved to the default ability, just like Roy has with culture and faith, and his extra science on enemy kills should be moved to that slot instead, but the bonus should be slightly buffed to 9 tiles; Subsidized research should be reworked into "all district adjacency bonuses in this city provide science as well" and should be unlocked after Autodictatism; Unexthical Experiments would go to the left tree and should be changed entirely into "you now also gain science from defeated units from combats you don't initiate within 9 tiles" meaning it triggers if you lose units, or if people just happen to be fighting barbarians or each other near Ludwig you gain the bonus as well.

I know it all sounds very OP on paper, but you have to understand that his unique unit costs population, and gets overshadowed by other ranged/siege units very quickly, meaning it's only use is as a cheaper settler, or being able to settle islands before you unlock shipbuilding, which thinks you should play wide instead of tall as Bowser, but playing wide is a detriment because you'll want to settle volcanoes or build his unique improvement in every city, and you have a limited amount of Koopalings to protect such cities from the volcanoes in the first place.

These balance changes would allow Bowser to play domination games more effectively, which seems to be what his kit was intended to be balanced around.


Daisy:
On the other hand, Daisy seems to be the most OP when it comes to a culture victory, it's almost effortless on all difficulties and gamemodes, specially if you enable secret societies and choose voidsingers to abuse the Royal Gardener, her leader ability compounds her unique buildings and the preserve immensely, specially since they get tourism from appeal at all times.
My suggestion as a way to nerf or at least rework her leader ability would be that the extra amenity from each preserve, theater square, entertainment complex, and water park applies at all times, but remove the happy city bonus to appeal, instead replace it to something similar to Scotland's civ ability but in different areas: "happy cities gain +5% culture and +5% gold, and generate +1 great merchant point in their commercial hubs, and +1 great musician points in their theater squares (no need for writers or artists), these yields are doubled on ecstatic cities".

As for her Flower Sanctuary, I think builders should be able to build woods on top of them after they've been built just like National Parks, but they should be nerfed as well:
instead of providing +2 flat appeal to its own tile, it instead provides +1 appeal to all adjacent tiles, and it can no longer be built on average, uninviting or disgusting tiles. I think the early tourism is fine but it should be half of the tile's appeal instead of the full value, but the value should go back to full after researching Flight. And to compensate for the rework I think the building should be unlocked earlier, like on Mercantilism or something.

Beanstalk is perfectly fine, no need to change anything on that.

This rework allows Daisy to still be a culture-focused leader, but limiting her OP abilities and limiting which tiles she can build the Flower Sanctuary should allow other players to have a better fighting chance against her.


Peach:
She is relatively the most balanced out of the 3, but her ability relating to Landscape artists makes it extremely easy to theme her art museums, specially since she gets double tourism from Landscapes and a copycat artist in the first place. I do think that her unique wonder should be able to be automatically theme regardless of what is placed in it (I think it's a bug that it doesn't, even after making 6 works of art of the same type by 6 different artists), but in contrast it should only accept Landscapes as an available slot.
It says on the unique wonder about all of her bonuses, but it should be moved to her leader ability since I think it confuses people, and it should at least be more obvious that after you build her wonder the patronage of all great people costs 25% less gold (similar to Oracle and faith).
I think that the copycat artist should just be removed entirely, her ability would be balanced but still unique if it was something like "gain double tourism from landscapes, themed landscape art museums act as portals between other themed landscape art museums on your cities". She still gets the huge bonus of tourism and her unique ability of teleporting units. but it's harder to theme them since the copycat artists won't exist anymore.

Also as an unique take, every single civilization in the game has a unique unit, including your mod with Bowser and Daisy but Peach doesn't have one, so I thought of one that isn't just a reskin of regular combat units, one that replaces the Trader (you can think of a different name for the unit, because I can't, lol):
"cannot be plundered on land or water tiles if the unit is in your territory, has twice the normal range of a regular trader (30 on land instead of 15, 60 on sea instead of 30)"; this unit would help with growth on certain cities if a really productive city is far away and you don't have time to make trading posts, also helps with alliances far away from your own cities, but he is still fair game to barbarians and other players you are at war with if he happens to be on "no man's land" or simply outside your territory.

This rework on Peach simply makes it harder to theme her museums but still keeping everything that is unique about her, as well as giving her a unique unit.


Again sorry for the long comment, I'm sorry if I sounded preachy, but please at least consider some of these. I would love to discuss your own input as well.


tl;dr: buff Bowser and some of the Koopalings, nerf Daisy a bit, rework Peach but just slightly and give her a unique unit

@Soothsayer98 wew yeah that was a good idea to make this thread instead of using the comment section.
Anyway thanks for the input/criticisms, I just read the whole thing, I'll try to ruminate on it a bit more on it and think on what changes I can make.

Overall I agree bowser is a bit weak and I like the changes to the airship you proposed. I was already planning also on nerfing the downsides of some governors. Im still not sure if I want to have the Natural disaster resistance Empire wide instead of just to city with a governor, but your argument makes sense if you want to go wide and have lava fortress in all cities.

As for Daisy, Im not sure when you played her, but I already nerfed the flower sanctuary, they used to give +2 Appeal to adjacent tiles, now they only give +1 Appeal to adjacent tiles. Also they already cannot be built on average, uninviting or disgusting tiles. I also thought of halving the tourism per appeal, but there's a bug in the game that ignores %tourism to appeal ratio and always make it 100% so that cant be an option. However I could make the tourism based on its gold output instead which is 50% of the tile appeal and see if I can make the gold 100% of the tile appeal (thus making the tourism 100% of the tile appeal) when Flight is discovered.
As for the Leader ability change, Im not really sure. I kinda like the compounding effect it has on her whole kit, but I'll look and see what I can do.

For Peach, Im not sure I want to change much, I really like the duplicate painting since it allows for trading that duplicate painting and allow teleporting your units not only to your own places where you have the painting placed, but any ally or even enemies that have theirs placed to. So your rework kinda miss that gameplay element that I liked. As for the confusion about Peach's castle Im not sure I understand whats confusing about it?
However I agree she could use a unique unit. A unique trader sounds like a cool idea, I'll have to think on it a bit more.

Again thanks for taking the time to write all this, it definitely helps!

Originally posted by Mico27:

As for the confusion about Peach's castle Im not sure I understand whats confusing about it?

Again thanks for taking the time to write all this, it definitely helps!

The wonder says "tourism from landscapes are doubled" when it should be part of her leader ability, or does the double tourism only apply after you build the wonder? That's the confusing part to me.

I largely agree with the ideas here. I don't think Peach needs nerfed much, if at all; but instead Bowser buffed a lot. Without the copycat artists it's pretty hard to theme landscape museums before an Online-speed game ends or it at least doesn't matter any more. It's especially difficult if the AI beat you to said artists. I like Peach's kit as a whole; she gives the game a gold-based leader that isn't held back by deserts, and the toad houses can be pretty good but not necessarily plopped everywhere.
Daisy probably needs a nerf, but I'm not sure how far you want to go with it. Her flower sanctuaries are just fun to plop everywhere and reward city planning around appeal in later eras. They're probably a touch too powerful but I'm also not sure where that line should be drawn before too much is done and she's not good anymore at all. Currently she's everything Roosevelt wishes he was, and Roosevelt is pretty explosive with a mountain start as is.

I made a few modifications to Bowser to buff him up a bit compared to the other 2. Forgot to specify in the patch notes that I changed the airship to be a siege unit instead of a ranged unit and removed the combat nerf agaisnt land units that siege unit have.
Lemme know what you guys think of the changes.

Next I'll look into nerfing Daisy and see if I can do so without just making some of her kit useless.

I haven't played a full game as new Bowser yet, but thus far the buffs don't feel like enough. For him to be a militaristic civ early, airships still costing citizens is very rough and sets you back even further than war already does, especially at the time of the game you'd want to be making them. The AI don't have that problem, start with extra free units that you have to be able to fight through, and have higher tech at the same time.

The one governor ability with the food downside still seems to be way too much, doesn't do enough to compensate, and I don't ever want to take it, leaving an entire governor inaccessible, which means if you do get the map with the ideal amount of volcanoes you're still punished.

Additionally, I don't like that the science governor has drawbacks, especially because neither the culture/faith, nor gold ones do. I feel like he should just not. It punishes you further for pursuing your specific game plan and unless you force a downside, you'll never get the promotion for space projects. It's also not much of a benefit. The vanilla science/culture governor does more without promotions at all and with no drawback by the time you'd get to that promotion. At least it's only 4 gold you have to sacrifice, assuming it only affects that one city, but it's still not enough, especially to have an extra cost. It's hard enough getting governor promotions at all. His passive that gives free governors doesn't even come into play until late game, when you need the promotions the least. The flavor is there, but there needs to be enough benefit to using the governor promotions to make it worth wasting all those turns, that could instead be spent counter-spying, risking the life of the spy and a diplomatic incident; not to mention how little the neutralize governor spy mission actually does by itself.

I'll have to add final thoughts once I finish the game, or at least play it out more, it might've been the start position I had with Rome on my face and mountains everywhere that range 1 units can't really fight well around, but it felt a bit discouraging. I didn't feel very powerful thus far.

Also, small thing: Could you please change Bowser's default jersey colors from the black and red to something else? It's the exact same as militaristic city-states and I can't tell my units apart from Ngazargamu's. Thanks! Still love this mod!

Airships being siege units is a detriment to them. They no longer can move and shoot on the same turn. I tried using one to deal with barbs, and was at half health from two crossbowmen before I could even do anything, and then had to retreat because I'd die if I shot. With only range 1, they desperately need to be able to move and shoot on the same turn.

Yeah after the rework into a siege unit, it kinda felt a bit off, also lost the ability to use the agoge card to get the 50% discount when it was a ranged unit.
In the next update I'll revert it back to being a ranged unit but give it the bonus combat strength vs Districts so that it deals the same amount of damage on walls as siege units.
I'll also increase the range to 2 instead of 1.

Also yeah I was meaning to fix the colors for bowser but never got around to do it, I'll do that too

Originally posted by Mico27:

Also yeah I was meaning to fix the colors for bowser but never got around to do it, I'll do that too

Red background and Black icon as a default would be better, since the current colors really makes his units blend in with military city-states.

Peach's default colors can be changed through the options but I think they conflict too much with other civilizations, like Japan, Canada, England, Portugal, etc. who all have a default white color. It would be easier to notice the difference between civilizations without having to use extra color mods if her default colors were a Pink background and Yellow icon (should be her official color scheme I think). And the White + Red can be moved as an alternate color instead.

Also on a side note, I'm okay with the airships still being siege units, but they definitely need more range.

And about what @Bragh mentioned earlier, the downsides of the 3 Koopalings (Iggy, Lemmy, Ludwig, only those 3) would make sense to balance things out if the upsides were incredibly strong, which they're not. Promotions are usually used to give a small boost early-game, and some of them can be easily ignored late game because the downsides are too great. We know Bowser was on the weaker side of things but we don't also want to make him too overpowered either, but I think removing the downsides and reworking Ludwig like I mentioned earlier would be a step in the right direction.

I increased the range of the airship without changin anything else on it.
Also fixed the leader icon colors,
Removed most of the downsides of the governors promotions
And made some reworks on Ludwig.
Lemme know what you think of it.

Bowser feels like a decent-to-good leader to me thus far, possibly on par with Peach now. His terraforming projects aren't worth doing though. It takes too much time spent on a project to maybe put down some volcanic soil, and the one you'd want -once- also risks pop loss and takes even longer. He plays pretty well now just using his lava fortresses as a source of adjacency for his districts and never doing the projects, but I feel like that defeats some of the flavor of his abilities.
His airships are good now. They can at least wreck barbs when they're not out settling. I haven't tried a war yet in my game but I imagine they're pretty good there too with the range buff. It doesn't make sense to me logistically why they can't move and attack on the same turn, but I can understand if that doesn't change for balance purposes. Maybe instead you could add the ability to move AFTER attacking, so at least they're vulnerable before they get big shots off, still can't move before shooting, but at least can increase their maneuverability a little if they get surrounded. Again though, that one's understandable if not. Permanently losing that population for each one that dies is a stiff penalty though, especially if you find yourself on the losing end of a war. Could maybe the governor promo that stops pop loss from settlers also apply to them? So there's at least a limited strategy you can take to be able to mass-produce them without pushing yourself back into the stone age?

@Bragh the governor promo that stops pop loss from settlers already applies to airships.
As for the terraforming project, I might cut the production cost of them by half and reduce the amount of great engineer points they give upon completion.

After more gameplay with Bowser I've come to the conclusion that he is mostly fine, so here's my honest feedback:

-Your proposed changes to the terraforming project make sense, they take too long to give bonuses, so reducing both the cost and the engineer points makes sense.
-The Airship is fine, the range increasing to 2 tiles instead of just 1 was just what it needed, and given how it is a strong siege unit up until you can get Artillery (or Bombards on land-heavy maps), and how it does not get damage penalties against regular units, I think that it costing population is perfectly fine.
-I still feel like Bowser should no longer have a starting bias to Iron, 95% of the games I restarted had 3 to 4 Iron surrounding the city center, it ruins adjacency pretty much everywhere on the capital, and I believe it is affecting his starting bias towards volcanoes and geothermal fissures (I only find one after settling my 6th or 7th city which is a bit annoying).
-Iggy's 2 current drawbacks on his promotion tree are okay, the -1 food on quarries and mines are fine since he emphasizes very high industrialization, but I still feel like the -5 combat strength on his other promotion could be switched to "double the gold maintenance cost on units produced in this city" or something like that. And I haven't tested if it applies to units purchased with gold or faith in his city because I won my previous game without fully promoting him.
-I guess Lemmy can currently be micromanaged in relation to trade routes, but I still think the negative production to trade routes ending there are a bit detrimental, specially since it's reducing production but is also towards the end of the promotion tree. I think that if it was stronger or at least reworked it would give people incentive to promote it. My suggestion is: "your trade routes ending here provide +2 food and +1 loyalty to their starting city"
-Ludwig has been reworked just fine. I would only reduce his bonuses applying to only 9 tiles instead of 10, as the vanilla governors like Victor and Amani also have abilities that only apply up to 9 tiles, but everything else is fine.

I still don't know if Ludwig's new promotion "Unethical Experiments" compounds on top of "Post Mortem" like Julius Ceasar's ability relating to barbarian camps (it says he gains 100 gold, but the game wrongfully gives him 150 for clearing barbarian camps). My question is, if you have both promotions on Ludwig and then you kill a unit, would you get 150% extra science as opposed to only 100%?

Last thing, just so that the words look nicer, I would suggest capitalizing the titles for the Koopalings, right now only "The" is capitalized, when both words should be.
(e.g: The Treasurer, The Militarist, The Trickster, The Rockstar, The Inventor, The Jester, The Scientist)