Monacrhy is not pointless
Then Written record and Epiricism and Literacy and Mathematics would be too.
You totally ignore the very interesting part of raising the taxrate.

Besides, Barbarian Hordes comes along far more often than Tyranny. Especially when you have no more than 7 cities a turn, there's no problem.
That could be strategy.

I think Monarchy is well balanced. It'll be very cheap and better coinage if you remove the tyranny drawback.

Removing the volcano-drawback from urbansim lets player choose the civic path even without buying engineering.

Trade Routes:

Good point about buying treasury before acquisition of Advances will allow a player to plan his strategy much better than when it can only happen at the 'return of excess commodity cards' phase.

Further I agree that the combination with Mining might be quite powerful, since the value of a single card can be multiplied by four when buying an advance. However, limiting the ability of Trade Routes to one card per turn, would seriously reduce its value when not combined with Mining. Additionally, when we apply the limit of 2 special abilities per turn, there might be much more interesting special abilities to use rather than Trade Routes. Therefore, I prefer to drop this restriction.

Let's first check the power of this potential Trade Routes/Mining combination.

Trade Routes costs 180 and Mining 230, so a serious expense has to made before these two are in someone's possession.

Mining has two abilities: purchasing of extra trade cards for treasury tokens, and increasing the value of a treasury token when used in acquisition of Advances. These two abilities don't really cooperate, since treasury can either be spent on trade cards, or on advances but not on both. Combined with Trade Routes, consecutively, treasury tokens can be used for purchase of extra cards (Acquire Trade Cards), trade cards can be used to buy treasury (Special Abilities Phase), and treasury can be used to buy advances at the value of 2 per piece.

Since the acquisition of extra trade cards costs at least twice the amount of treasury, it won't be worth selling it again for two times the face value. Although Flo is right that a single 9 card can potentially be worth 36 when buying an advance, it still requires the player to move 18 treasury tokens to stock. Since my experience shows that it's quite hard maintaining an economy of 20 or more 'free' tokens that can be moved between stock and treasury, I think this is the practical limit of this combination. Therefore, I don't think a limit of the amount of cards that can be discarded for treasury tokens by Trade Routes is necessary in order to balance the game.

Conclusion: I would like to playtest Trade Routes with the ability of returning cards during the Special Abilities Phase, without a limit of cards that can be returned in this way.

Civilization is a game with permanent liquidity (credit) crisis, which confirms the theory that reality always tends to reflect a good board game :-)


Urbanism:

In order to get more in line with the attribute text of Architecture, I prefer to use the following text for Urbanism:

Once per turn, up to four tokens from adjacent areas may be used to build a city in an area without a city site.


Engineering:

If we decide to playtest Urbanism as described above, we should indeed remove that line from Engineering; I have to admit I had not thought of that yet.


Public Works:

My suggestion: keep the card as it currently is, or maybe reduce the costs to 220 for playtest.


Monarchy:

I would like to state that the option to increase tax rate is quite an interesting one for a card costing only 60 in a starting economy that is not able to buy Coinage yet. The fact that it reduces Barbarian Hordes is quite helpful early in the game, and I don't mind the additional drawback of Tyranny. The chance of being hit by the Hordes is generally bigger, since it is drawn more frequently due its lower stack number and tradability anyway.


Military, Advanced Military, Naval Warfare:

I will come back to these later; no more time at the moment...

one addition

Those treasury tokens can be used to annex areas with Poilitics and Universal Doctrine too.

I mean, for example, it sometimes happens, that players want to annex an area with Politics, let's say a city area, and then find out they have no treasury left. Trade routes can provide them with cash in there.

Perhaps a good addition would be to state that exactly twice the amount of tokens have to be transferred to treasure in order to avoid, for example, a player to discard an 8 card when he only has 15 tokens in stock.

Indeed,

Just like exactly 5 tokens used for annexing a city area by using politics.

Another suggestion for playtest of the three most offensive Civic-cards. I have adjusted the following properties:

- The Civil War drawbacks are not cumulative.
- The costs for Advanced Military are reduced from 260 to 240.
- The aggravation of Naval Warfare towards Civil War is replaced by Slave Revolt.

Advanced Military (240):

- You may use tokens from areas adjacent by land as casualties in battle, - but must leave at least one token in each area used this way.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.


Military (170):

- You construct and maintain ships, and move, after all players not holding Military.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- Nullifies Diplomacy.


Naval Warfare (160):

- Your ships may carry one additional token.
- You may use ships instead of tokens as casualties in conflict.
- SLAVE REVOLT: Five additional tokens can not be used for city support.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- PIRACY: One less city is replaced.

I still have trouble with a triple civil disorder drawback.

I suggest loose one of the three, and Naval warfare is my favorite of those.

Currently there are eight (!) advances that have impact on Civil Disorder:

Democracy, Drama & Poetry, Law and Music in a positive manner (one less city is reduced in all cases)

Advanced Military, Military, Naval Warfare and Roadbuilding in e negative manner (one additional city is reduced in all cases)

Somehow this seems fairly balanced. However, it would not hurt having a bit more cards protecting against this calamity than aggravating it. For that reason, I am comfortable with the removal of Civil Disorder from one of the three Civics under discussion.

However, since Naval Warfare has a couple of interesting upsides (ships may carry an additional token, ships may be used in battle, and reduction of the impact of Piracy), I am still in favour of this card having negative impact on two calamities.

In case Civil Disorder is dropped from Naval Warfare, I can think of two alternatives:

- Drop Civil Disorder in favour of Slave Revolt while keeping Civil War (so Naval Warfare aggravates Slave Revolt and Civil War, in which case still the non-cumulativity of the unit desctruction should be applied)

- Drop both Civil War and Civil Disorder in favour of Slave Revolt and ... (Anyone who can think of a calamity to fill in the dots that is both balanced and historically valid, please join the discussion.)

I've done some reading on Slavery and Penteconters on the the internet.

Like you said, to make it historically right.

Along some texts, I found this that actually covers it a lot:


(Source: http://www.smso.net/Galley)

The period in which our game takes place ends before early modern times. (0-500 AD)

Though I thought of it myself before, I now refrain from it.
So I think we should leave slave revolt combined with naval warfare alone.

In that case, re-adding the Civil War drawback to Naval Warfare is step one.


Advanced Military (240):

- You may use tokens from areas adjacent by land as casualties in battle, - but must leave at least one token in each area used this way.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.


Military (170):

- You construct and maintain ships, and move, after all players not holding Military.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- Nullifies Diplomacy.


Naval Warfare (160):

- Your ships may carry one additional token.
- You may use ships instead of tokens as casualties in conflict.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- PIRACY: One less city is replaced.


Leaves the same problem.

The main subject that is reflect in our card Naval warfare is the Peloponnesian war.

An article on it on wiki can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War
The destruction of most of the Minoan fleet can be reflected in adding our volvanco/earthquake drawback from urbansim to Naval Warfare.

But this is actually one big calamity in history (that counts) and destroying just ships is not such a great drawback. Especially when all of em are destroyed in conflict already.

(same goes for Cyclone)


Historically treachery should give you an additional city instead of a drawback.

I don't see a calamity that makes sense.


Taking away the Civil Disorder drawback from NW is still an option to me.

As far as we concern about the historic validity, we should try to stick to historic trends and logic rather then single event, so the fact that an earthquake once destroyed a fleet (or a library) that happened to be near the epicenter of the quake does not mean ships (or libraries) stimulate the impact of earthquakes in general. So I agree that Volcanic Eruption/Earthquake should not be linked to Naval Warfare.

Although I don't mind taking away the Civil Disorder drawback in principal, I'm afraid removing the drawback in general makes the card to powerful if we don't replace it with some other drawback. Image the following:

Naval Warfare (160):

- Your ships may carry one additional token.
- You may use ships instead of tokens as casualties in conflict.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- PIRACY: One less city is replaced.

Of course there is the Civil War drawback, but any player already willing to take that risk by buying Military, could under the 'non-cumulative' rule buy this card without having to face any additional drawback. And I think especially the combination of these two cards is quite powerful. In case we try this, I suggest to increase the price to, for example, 180.

Making the card more expensive could do the trick, but I think the card won't get bought anymore because for its price people might rather go for another card, maybe advanced military.


but we were looking to make the whole branch and those 3 cards in the first place, more attractive.

So AT LEAST changing the civil war drawback from cumulative to a total of five for all three cards is an important change.

Removing civil disorder from military and advanced might be too powerfull.

Maybe leaving civil disorder on naval warfare isn't that bad.
Leaving the price as is.

We already lowered advanced military by 20.


Advanced Military (240):

- You may use tokens from areas adjacent by land as casualties in battle, - but must leave at least one token in each area used this way.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.


Military (170):

- You construct and maintain ships, and move, after all players not holding Military.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- Nullifies Diplomacy.


Naval Warfare (160):

- Your ships may carry one additional token.
- You may use ships instead of tokens as casualties in conflict.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- PIRACY: One less city is replaced.

Okay, let's put it on the list for the next playtest round this way.

OVERVIEW: (Reds are changes)

Advanced Military (260-240):

- You may use tokens from areas adjacent by land as casualties in battle, - but must leave at least one token in each area used this way.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.


Military (170):

- You construct and maintain ships, and move, after all players not holding Military.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- Nullifies Diplomacy.


Naval Warfare (160):

- Your ships may carry one additional token.
- You may use ships instead of tokens as casualties in conflict.
- CIVIL WAR: A total of five unit points from both factions are destroyed.
- CIVIL DISORDER: One additional city is reduced.
- PIRACY: One less city is replaced.


Urbanism (50):

- Once per turn, up to four tokens from adjacent areas may be used to build a city in an area without a city site.
(removed: Volcanic Eruption & earthquake drawback)

Engineering (160)

- no change in conflict attributes
- EARTHQUAKE: The city is reduced rather than destroyed.
- Removed effect on Urbansim combined with Volcanic Eruption or Earthquake
- no change in Flood atributes

Trade Routes (180)

- During the Special Abilities phase you may exchange commodity cards for exactly twice the face value in treasury tokens.
- Your hand limit of trade cards is increased by one.

Public Works (230)

- Each area containing one of your cities may also contain one of your tokens