I would expect Warrior Caste trait to give me some kind of 1-per-Faction-Academy that strongly enhances the units trained in the city it was build in. That seems more fitting imo.

If your basing your Warrior Caste changes on the Samurai than beef up the attack since samurai are known for there ability with the Samurai sword. Meaning offensive statss (attack and accuracy) would fit. But you could look at early greek states and think of the Warrior Caste in a more defensive thing like the Phalanx, meaning you'd want to instead increase it's defensive stats (defense and hit points).

I don't think that +25% gold income would be worthwhile. Money just isn't worth that much in the game due to how expensive rushing anything is and how much it costs to buy stuff in the shop, with cheap items and low rush costs costing tens or even hundreds of turns worth of income. A 25% income bonus might sound nice, but it's only going to cut the time requirement for being able to afford something by 20%, and when we're already talking about tens or hundreds of turns to afford something, the difference there is rather neglectable - sure, taking 40 turns to get enough money to buy something is better than taking 50 turns for the same, but not that much so.

Better would be something like a small unrest bonus (perhaps -5 in all cities, or something like that), or a production bonus (perhaps +1 per material), or some kind of civic-minded demiwonder that gives -1 global unrest per city in your empire or something like that.

I also aggree with Illauna that Civics is better than you're giving it credit for. I wouldn't say it's great, but it at least unlocks something that's useful in all cities from the start of the game (Bell Towers, which reduce unrest, thereby improving production and research). The trait granting the Training technology doesn't compare to this in any way unless you're in a slower rush (get up an early fortress, build the structure unlocked by Training, build army, crush enemy).

I have long thought that Warriors and Warrior Caste should be merged. I would also suggest that, if you merge them through a mod, you should use Warrior Caste as the trait which gives +1 level to trained units and the Training technology, because to me a warrior caste is a portion of the population which is dedicated to training for warfare; an extra level and the Training technology would seem to suit this. If you want to keep Warriors around, then I'd suggest going with a flat bonus (e.g. +1 attack) rather than a percentile bonus so as to allow its benefit to be overshadowed by advancing technology. This would make Warriors be a better choice for a more aggressive early game, but perhaps not as good in the later portions of the game.

A past suggestion involving the merger of Warriors and Warrior Caste suggested that whichever trait lost its bonus should provide a wage reduction.

Other suggestions might be:

1. Have whichever trait loses its bonus provide +1 counterattack to all units, possibly with improved counterattack damage
2. Provide a small bonus to attack and/or defense, perhaps 1 attack and/or 2-3 defense
3. Unit health adjustments - Tough gives +10% and Ironeer blood gives +1 per level; there's room for a flat +X base health if you wanted to do it
4. Give a small initiative bonus, say +1 or perhaps +2
5. Give a bonus to attack, accuracy, or initiative for each sequential successful hit made by a unit
6. Make a few special unit traits available
7. Grant a couple of special weapons in the early portion of the game, like perhaps a sling granting a ranged attack ability; possibly include upgrades of these items in the Warfare tree

I'm sure if you look, you can find other suggestions, or think of some yourself. I would suggest, though, that you keep Warriors and Warrior Caste as traits which are of greater benefit in the early game than in the late game, the way they currently are, rather than turning them into something that's great all game long or which is of greatest benefit in the late game.

I could agree with this idea.

One thing to consider with civics is that i normally play on epic setting which means research for me takes considerably longer, so getting the additional tech from the start actually helps a lot as it gives me a good number turns advantage over the other players in terms of technology. Not to mention with it taking so much longer to research things my unrest (due to bell towers) is generally far lower than theirs during this time, meaning my production and income is more efficient during what is the most critical part of the game.

However if you don't play in epic than the advantage isn't as large. I don't know if i'd be as interested in it at that point.

I am not really sure that we are talking about what a "Warrior Caste" usually entails.  A caste system generally means that society is divided into clear groupings and ranked against each other with relatively little potential to move from one caste to another.  Usually, whatever caste your parents were in is what caste you are going to be in.

So there might be a caste system that breaks down like this:

Royal

Political

Warrior/Military

Engineer/Scientist

Trader/Merchant

Manual Laborer

Anyone in a caste can give orders that must be followed to anyone in a lower caste.  With a breakdown like this, warriors would have a lot of power in the society it applies to.  Obviously, there would be rules in place to prevent orders like "give me all your money" that serve to govern what sort of orders are lawful and which not, but the warriors would still exert a great deal of control over the comings and goings of such a society with a rank structure like the above.

Most societies don't even have castes anymore and even in caste based societies, warriors aren't usually ranked nearly so highly.  Caste societies with rank structures like the above are most often found in lawless countries where local warlords who can rule as much as they can conquer.  This occurs primarily in third world countries like Africa and former Russian territories.

In any event, if a race was going to have a warrior caste and count it as an advantage (like spend racial picks on it) then whatever the pick does should in some way reflect a rank structure like the above.  Just giving some country a free military tech doesn't really accomplish that.

I don't know if it is possible to mod this, but a more thematic ability would be to make Warrior Caste give +20% to military research and -10% to both of the other kinds of research.  That would better reflect the concepts that warrior prominence is above that of the economic and magic castes and they get to use some of that sway to force more research to be done to benefit themselves at the expense of the lower castes.

A caste based society never has everyone in one caste.  That would negate the whole reason to have castes to begin with.  The trait isn't named well, IMHO, but the only logical thing you can take from the name is that the society that picks the trait would have a specific warrior caste and give prominence to it.

It's too bad that research speed has to be the same for all 3 types.  Being able to differentiate themselves that way would be pretty nice if races could do that.

Warrior Culture or Savage Society would be better for what you are describing.

Still, it wouldn't make sense for every member of a certain race to be a warrior.

In the real world there are a lot of organizations one might say has a warrior culture, like the U.S. Marines.  They say every Marine's first job is to be a warfighter and their second job is whatever they do outside of battle (cook, IT, administrative, etc).  There are also various commando kind of groups where everyone carries a rifle and one person has comm equipment, another explosives, and so on.

You can't really take that concept very far, though.  The active duty Marines account for less than 300,000 people out of more than 300,000,000 Americans and that is one of the largest "warrior cultures" you are going to find.

There would be no way you could apply that to, say, all of America.  If every man, woman, and child in America was a warrior then all of society would collapse as nothing else ever gets done.

No matter how you slice it, societies need laborers, traders/merchants, scientists/researchers, technicians/engineers, and so on in order to function.

I could see the Yithril having a straight up warrior caste where the warriors make the majority of important decisions for the whole culture and it sounds reasonable based on what I know about them, just free Training isn't going to really do anything to show that in game.

If it is just that their race is more hardy than usual or something then they could get a + to HP/unit, or if they spend a lot of time training with weapons growing up they could have +1 attack per unit or +10% attack or something.  

The free training technology just isn't a great way to convey what it sounds like everyone means.

@Raiddinn - the U.S. (which is what I assume you mean by "America") is not really a good model for the in game cultures, nor are really any modern nation-states; these are supposed to represent relatively small societies of survivors from a global magical apocalypse who are just piecing back society together.  However, for some examples of modern day cultures that enforce more or less universal military training, see Switzerland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Armed_Forces

...and Israel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces#Service

If you wanted a closer analogy to what the game might be thinking of, though, you'd probably look at tribal societies that equate being a warrior with gaining full stature within the tribe, such as the Maasai:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Social_organization

Either way, I think the concept is that the general culture provides a higher baseline level of fighting knowledge and competence, so that taking any random recruits is likely to provide a more highly skilled unit vs. green recruits from other cultures.

All that said, I think there are probably many ways to represent this in-game, and probably any minor fighting bonus would approximate it well enough for game purposes.  The main question for webusver's initiative is whether the existing traits are balanced, which doesn't really get into how "realistic" the trait is.

Without trying to force this game into a detailed simulation (which it's not), if you wanted an example of an evolving city-state with a "warrior culture" you could perhaps look at Sparta. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_army

Getting back on-topic, some things that might be alternatives for a revamped "Warriors" or "Warrior Caste" faction trait could include (either in addition to or instead of the minor +Attack/+Defense/+Init bonuses mentioned above):

• Training time reduction - populace is naturally geared for war
• Armor cost reductions - populace is expected to provide some of their own equipment
• This could be either bonuses like the Fortress buildings, or by giving faction-trait restricted access to duplicates of the base armor and/or weapon types, but with reduced costs, similar to how "Defensive" switches out some spears and shields.
• Access to additional unit design traits (not sure if this is doable, haven't checked)
• Fortress-line buildings (training grounds, blacksmith, etc.) could be cheaper (again, haven't checked if this is doable, would probably require duplicating the existing buildings)
• Could possibly modify the tech tree so that certain warfare tech improvements come earlier
• Not sure if this is feasible, but perhaps it could modify the unit structure, maybe giving a +1 individual per unit bonus (naturally inclined toward troop discipline & teamwork) - I think Stormworld for FE used to do something like this for the Greenskin faction.