the cost reduction does work in other cases, teutonic knights still get the goth cost reduction

found some issues with the mediteranean civs
first off the 15% gold reduction cost doesnt apply to unique units (conqs as spanish + organ guns as portugese)
and the 25% gunpowder cost doesnt apply on them either. considering this is one of the most interresting options this set has that kinda sucks.

any way to fix this?

That might be a bug, I'll look in to it when I have the time

How can you upgrade Caravels as Spanish or Byzantines? I have access o them but don't know how to get to Elite

I guess it's a good thing you didn't think about having Franks and Persians on the same set of civs.

And all of those techs cost a lot of resources that in an average game you're not going to be able to research all unless you just camp, the resources itd take to get full upgrades on your elephants including the unique techs, champions, full blacksmith, and forced levy, not to mention any archer options youd want to tech into, on average would get you killed if you tried committing to only researching them because you'd throw away so much military presence and map control for such a long amount of time that you wouldn't be able to use them. That's like trying to full boom as Goths when everyone knows you're a ticking time bomb. The only difference is with Goths it's one research and done, for elephants it's like 4. Pikemen also move faster than swordsmen and can kite them.

I see your point but frank paladins are the best of their unit right out of the gate whereas you need a shit ton of costly upgrades to get the most out of SE Asian elephants

Well elite BE get 4 base armor +4 from blacksmith upgrades +1 from burmese tech, bringing them to 9 pierce armor and Post Imp arbs have 10 damage which means that they only deal 1 damage to BE per shot, meaning they need 370 shots from an arb to die. Given that the're cheaper than a knight and are that beefy, i still think that even halbs will have problems fighting BE. the South East civs also have the goldless champions and can either choose between vietnamese and malay which means that they'll have a counter to halbs.

It's also okay for them to have trash champions with +7 attack lol
West europe still has a lot of versatility because they all get eco bonuses and some of the most useful bonuses towards most generic units (infantry faster which helps dealing with archers, archers extra range which helps dealing with virtually everything, siege fires faster and has more hp) and still get the best paladins in the game

Even if you go fully upgraded BEs they die pretty fast to halb/kamayuks + arbs which is their usual counter

It's not ok for Frank paladin to get bloodlines but it's ok for Southern Asian eles having extra attack, hp, speed, armor, and being cheaper?