In the setting of the New World, I am missing one thing, without which the whole colonization effort would perhaps not even have succeeded:
Slaves.
I would say, introduce African slaves, but in present day world, that might offend people.
So I suggest adding just 'slaves'.
What do they do?
Slaves improve your farming efforts.
You need a slave, a metal pin, metal shackles with chain to install a slave on your farms.
The metal pin would be a building, used for determining the center of the slave's action radius. It can be placed via the building menu, and uses one iron bar.
The shackles with chain would have to be applied to a slave (rightclick shackles on slave), after which you can attach the chain with slave to the pole (rightclick shackles on pole).
The slave will then start work on increasing the yield / reducing the growth time of any fields within it's action radius. (Think of the beehives in H&H for mechanics)
Optionally, make slaves gain experience te longer they keep working, for increased benefits. (purity modifier?)
How do I get slaves?
- buy them in the capital. New NPC, slave trader. Sells slaves-on-a-chain. Very expensive.
- random rare spawn: natives. If natives are already planned for another purpose, make that 'runaway slave'. Those can be fought, and like turkeys, will KO instead of die. If you have shackles in your inventory, you can apply them to the KO'd native to capture him. If you don't, you can execute the KO'd slave in hopes of finding an inspirational (described below, under More...).
optional: - when you PvP kill a player, and have shackles in your inventory, you can capture the KO'd char, and it will turn into a slave with the dead player's name + Boy. The dead player can spawn a new character as usual, it is just for teasers.
More...
- When a claim with slaves is raided, they can be killed. They might fight back when you get too close though, so shooting them is best. They can drop an inspirational, "free spirit" when killed. Said inspirational would improve faith and wisdom, law and lore, and perennial philosophy.
- Slaves suffer from decay hits. WHen they've gotten too many hits, they will die. Slaves can be healed using the free spirit inspirational mentioned above.