I have 2 ideas that are logical, and make the game more balanced.
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Give japan 2 cherry orchard start no matter if the map start with berries. It is believed the starting berry bush works like a cherry orchard so japan only start with 1. However, opponent also get their berry bush in that case, you can think it as opponent also start with one cherry orchard. So opponent once run out of hunt can also eat their berry bush. So maps with berry start is giving japan some disadvantage as they have a net loss of one orchard than opponent, compared to non berry start.
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Reduce the size of italy bascillica, and make lombard more efficient but decrease the number of lombards. Those extra buildings are one major reason why italy is unraidable and so difficult to rush. Then they are going to always turtle to age 4. Dutch is famous for that but their banks are not too big. Italy building footprint is completely absurd. Especially the big church it is so huge it can block half of the base. And italy can get two of them. They also give so much xp tricle that they can just ship units to defend, without hunt. On top of that there are numerous lombards that just completely wall up italy base, they don’t need map control and are perfectly safe from early attacks. Make bacillica normal size, like a church, or mexico cathedral size if you want it to be a bit bigger