Ivory is out. Eles have to be either "everybody gets them", or "nobody gets them", and center-only would be a very, very dangerous idea.
Wonders: I agree with you about the GLH. Especially with 0 Ind civs. Colossus isn't as expensive, since it's built with copper+forge, and therefore only needs 112 base hammers.
Re: Diplomacy: Certainly, that's a possibility. But even in RBP1, getting a full set of 5 players to coordinate attacks or defense has not happened yet. Also, players will have fewer reasons to cooperate, since the only things they can trade are OB (nearly costless; would you send 300H of troops off to die for trade routes?), resources (positive-sum, but sharply limited), and gold (zero-sum). I think the diplomacy is going to be a LOT more interesting; RBP1 was going to go something approximating UTA/NUTA from the scenario design.
Wonders: I agree with you about the GLH. Especially with 0 Ind civs. Colossus isn't as expensive, since it's built with copper+forge, and therefore only needs 112 base hammers.
Re: Diplomacy: Certainly, that's a possibility. But even in RBP1, getting a full set of 5 players to coordinate attacks or defense has not happened yet. Also, players will have fewer reasons to cooperate, since the only things they can trade are OB (nearly costless; would you send 300H of troops off to die for trade routes?), resources (positive-sum, but sharply limited), and gold (zero-sum). I think the diplomacy is going to be a LOT more interesting; RBP1 was going to go something approximating UTA/NUTA from the scenario design.